(no subject)
OK! When you read this, keep in mind that I wrote it for someone specific, so if you hate an element make sure you go to elizardbits's journal and tell her how she messed up your story.
I'll probably tinker with and edit this for about a week. Sigh.
I now must thank Amber for reading this at all, but also for listening to me ~talking about it. Hrm, yeah, we do tolerate some serious bullshit from our friends, don't we?
Also thank you to stoney for indulging me, Heidi for the same thing, and green_postit for betaing the 1300 words of "part three."
If you keep the title in mind as you read, it will help.
Part 1
Part 2
Unexpected Plot Twist: Act 3 in two parts, part one
Arthur groggily comes to in a hospital.
The combination of fresh IV bruising and chemical disorientation isn't new to him. He lies perfectly still and hopes his heart rate and respiration don't give him away as he takes stock of his situation through the haze of opioids.
He's been shot. He knows the feeling too well. His left shoulder has the unmistakable hallmarks of recent surgery. He can feel the clammy cling of pain lingering under the meds and the pull of stitches. He has a catheter.
His mind won't boot all the way. The drugs mute his thoughts into an impressionist landscape of half-perceived awareness. He definitely smells his mother's perfume, though. That's a touch that he's never experienced in the field, not even when dreaming.
Cool fingers touch the inside of his wrist. A woman's voice says, "This is just habit, the machines do this now." There's a pause. "Arthur? Are you awake?"
He can't exactly speak yet, but he curls his fingers towards the hand.
"He's waking up," the woman says. There's a flurry of movement in the room.
The first voice he hears is Dom. "Arthur?" his steady, well-known hand touches his leg.
"Jimjam?" So it is his mom. "Baby?" She's not crying, but she doesn't sound good.
He cracks his eyes open, and it takes all the willpower that he's coded into his soul over the years. The lights are dim. There're too many civilians in the room. He needs a sitrep and can't demand one with his mom kissing his cheek and stroking his hair.
"Eames?"
"Not here," Dom responds in his terse work voice.
"Is. He. Dead?" Arthur grits out.
No one answers aloud, but Dom taps out NOT OFFICIALLY, NOT YET.
He passes back out.
*
The second time Arthur wakes up, it's a little better. He immediately orients and struggles to get the oxygen cannula off of his face.
"You're supposed to wear that." Arthur stares up at Yusuf uncomprehendingly when he leans over the bed. "Surprised to see me?" His smile's warm. "You're not going to do something stupid like rip your IV out, correct?"
There are a lot of questions Arthur could be asking, but he's exhausted. He's not all that surprised to see Yusuf once the shock's worn off. He's a medical doctor (among all the other things) after all.
"VA?" he asks.
"Yes, under guard, of course." Yusuf shakes a cup. "Ice chips?"
Arthur lets Yusuf feed him ice chips.
"You have questions, of course. Where is your family for instance. Cobb herded them away so I could wake you up to speak to you privately." Arthur sucks on his ice and cuts his eyes in a go-on gesture. "You were shot by a man named Thomas Collins. He was a very sick man. His most recent psychopathic obsession appears to have been those nasty homosexuals and their gay agenda. None of us saw that coming."
Arthur struggles to pull himself up in the bed. Yusuf gets an arm under his good shoulder and helps. "I can call the nurse and we can pull you with the draw sheet." Arthur shakes his head. He grunts and pushes his tongue around in his mouth to form words, but he's feeling nauseated and his skin's too tight.
"You probably won't be able to talk until the next time you wake up, unfortunately, calm down." Yusuf pulls a pen light out of his pocket and shines it in Arthur's eyes. "You'll be fine." He pauses when he stands back. "This is the part we needed privacy for. There's no easy way to put this." Arthur's stomach drops. "Eames…overreacted to you getting shot. He beat your assailant to death. It's already been covered up by the right people, and it's not something anyone wants out there, to be honest. But we also can't find him. He's dropped off the face of the earth. How, is a mystery. The technical details, this is. No one who knows him is particularly surprised he could manage it."
He pauses to examine something on one of the machines attached to Arthur before turning back.
"Also, I have it under good authority that you're not going to leave this facility 'officially alive.' How and when they're going to "kill" you, I have not been apprised, but you'd best take your leave before they tighten up the security." He actually makes quote fingers. If it wouldn't hurt so bad, Arthur would laugh.
Arthur feels consciousness fragmenting on the edges. "You sleep now, and when you wake up, there will be balloon bouquets and chocolates."
*
Third time's a charm. This saying has always irked Arthur.
When he struggles up from unconsciousness next, he's actually really awake and not in some liminal half-sedated state. His eyes pop open and he's greeted by the sight of Col. Bryan Myers snoozing in a chair by his bed.
"Sir?" Arthur coughs.
The colonel shocks awake, his hat sliding off his lap onto the floor. He doesn't immediately reach to pick it up. Instead he scratches at his salt and pepper buzz cut and wipes a hand over his face. He looks about twenty years older than he did the last time Arthur saw him.
"Son." He has a pleasant voice that always sounds indulgently fond, not the typical career military man's tone. "I've been expecting to run into you one of these days, but not in this particular scenario. I have to admit you've surprised me again." He smiles, but it comes across more depressed than happy.
"I gave up on MPs rousting me years ago." He lets his eyes close again.
"What you do isn't actually illegal. We have bigger fish. You're one of the smartest people I've ever met, so I'll lay you dollars to doughnuts that you know I'm not here to take you in."
Of course he does.
"This is something of a debrief. This is one hell of a situation." Myers blows out a breath in an almost-whistle. "It's not every day that former black ops soldiers go on Ellen. Not when they're former anyway."
In the early days of the PASIV program, the theory was that if they used soldiers who had been in the media that subjects would be less likely to balk at strangers showing up in their subconscious. The idea was that there was at least some chance of an inkling of recognition, that subconsciouses would process these invaders the way a regular dreamer does when random people they've met once or seen once on television pop up as the checkout clerk at dream Safeway.
Arthur laughs. His shoulder screams and he breaks off into a pained cough.
"I just need to hear it from your mouth," Myers says.
"Exposing dreamsharing is hardly my agenda."
"Ok, that's all I needed. Now, let's talk about inception…"
He's surprised that Myers is naïve enough to just take Arthur's word for that. Arthur hasn't spent much time around people who live by The Honor Code in years.
*
He doesn't expect to be offered a fucking commission. So they want him in the power structure. He wonders if Yusuf was wrong and they're going to do this all above board. Ok, he wonders this for 1/16th of a second before he goes cold and starts to formulate an escape plan. His life is a farce. He wishes Eames was here to laugh with him, escaping from the military is Eames's favorite hobby.
Eames not being here is a wound he doesn't want to pick at, but his mind cycles to it constantly. Arthur's desperate to get the fuck out of this place so he can find Eames, find out what really happened. This is made all the more unbearable because his mother keeps giving him her conspiracy-theory face and his father just looks as exhausted as Arthur feels. Emma's whispered to him about non-disclosure paperwork and stonewalling. Arthur would have known his real life was burned even if Yusuf hadn't told him by the simple fact that no one's bothering lying to his family in any convincing way. They're so far off the radar that there's not even an official lie besides "no comment."
Yusuf and Dom have disappeared, leaving him to his mother's clucking and his dad's stoic support. Arthur decides to not say anything to his family about what's going on. That doesn't take much thought regarding his parents, but Emma's a different story. She's reliable and would aid him however he'd ask, but he doesn't have it in him to make her an accomplice in what amounts to sedition.
"How many times have you been shot now?" Emma's hair is a lot shorter than the last time he saw her. Her eyes are bruised from lack of sleep, and she's too thin. She's sitting by his bed with her cheek pressed to the back of hand, staring up at him like she can't quite believe he's alive. He feels ancient, all the extra years from dreamsharing a gulf between them suddenly. He turns his hand over to cup her cheek.
"I'm fine. Really." It's not that bad, a through and through by a sniper round in flesh. The bullet didn't hit anything but muscle and skin.
"What're you going to do now?" she whispers. He would tell her, but he's not sure. He has to wait out Eames's revenge spree and decide which direction his life is going to take.
"Recently my life has mostly been things happening to me instead of me deciding anything concrete. I guess I'll keep going with that."
"Since when are you carried by the tide? You're the least passive person in the world." Emma sits up and stares him down. "You're a force of nature, dumbass. What happens to you that you don't orchestrate?"
"Getting shot?" he spits at her.
"Please, that was a by-product of several strategic decisions you made."
"Are you really taking the stress of being sleep deprived and scared out on me?" She's his sister, so he can pull that kind of bullshit passive aggressive argument and not feel an iota of guilt about it.
"No," she says. "I'm pissed off that you're throwing yourself a pity party instead of being angry. Why aren't you fucking angry?"
"I'm just tired," he says and sighs. He actually is, so it's not even a lie.
"Are you fucking kidding me? Some asshole shot you and you're all oh well, whatever, no biggie!?" She stands up and looms over him so he can't avoid her. "You, the guy who exacted a year-long elaborate revenge when I stole a box of Girl Scout cookies-not even Thin Mints, either-is not bothered about being shot?"
Arthur closes his eyes and counts backwards from ten. He opens his eyes again and reaches out to grab Emma's hand. "It's just not the most pressing problem, Em. I'll be mad, I'll be livid, murderous even, but not right now." He wants to tell her, but he just can't risk it.
"But why?" She's not going to let it go.
"I fucking hate you sometimes." There's more heat in the words than is probably necessary, but family can do that to you, make you feel things you don't even realize before the words are out of your mouth. "It's because I'm too busy being disgustingly lovesick." This is also not a lie, but a deeper problem than the one directly at hand.
She looks at him for a second before she bursts out laughing. She literally laughs in his face when he confesses his heartbreak.
"You'll rue the day," he says, mock grave. Her face is so bright, color high on her cheeks and their shared hair curling on her cheek. He loves her profoundly.
*
Arthur flows with tide of the hospital, shift changes and staff schedules. Doctors and nurses come and go. He knows when he's strong enough to make a break for it. He's been injured in sketchier situations enough that he can assess his fitness with pinpoint precision.
Arthur has sized up the staff and he susses out the weak links. He has to wait for his family to be elsewhere coinciding with the right nurse or doctor passing through his room. Major Jackson is a pretty good candidate for persuasion, she Arthur's ready when he strides into his room right after his father's bundled Emma and his mom off for ice cream.
Arthur announces, "I need to be discharged."
"No." Major Jackson has two layers of authority entitlement, his rank and again his honorific, but he also walks with the kind of limp that's most likely from shrapnel and he has the air about him of the hardened combat vet.
"It's not a question. We can pretend I'm just asking to be discharged, but we both know I'm asking you to be complicit in helping me escape. I'm shortly going to die in the fiction that the Pentagon is about to release to the media. I can assure you that I'm more than too well aware that this kind of fake death is always a precursor to actual death, and I'm not the kind of man who just allows myself get killed even if it's my patriotic duty to do so. I doubt you have the clearance to read my personnel file, but maybe you've heard about my service record by word of mouth." Dr Jackson meets his eyes. "You're not going to be able to keep me here short of sedation or four-points."
This gets the guy's attention. "It sounds like you don't get told no a lot." He clicks his pen closed and sticks it in the pocket of his scrubs.
"You're wrong, I just don't allow it to be the final answer." Arthur feels more like himself than he has since he's been here. It could be the diminishing amount of drugs in his system, but it's probably snatching a little bit of control back over his life.
"There's only one guard. We're not on a secure floor." He lays his pen on the blanket in Arthur's lap. They make eye contact again. "I'm proud to serve with men like you, Sergeant Da Costa."
"Thank you," Arthur's voice doesn't crack, but it's a near thing. He's not used to being able to utilize the easiest gameplan.
*
The most difficult part of his escape is finding a pair of shoes so that he's not too suspicious when he exits the building. Scrubs aren't hard to locate, but people don't just leave shoes lying around. He ends up ducking in and out of patient rooms until he comes across a pair of Nikes that are two sizes too big.
What you have to learn on your own in a life of crime is how to think on your feet (as it were) and keep reevaluating your script on the fly.
The thing is, this is what Arthur does. THIS is Arthur's entire career. The Pentagon's such a clusterfuck of cloudy thinking bureaucrats and legacy brass that when they decided to stop-loss him-his mom will be thrilled to learn she was right for once-back into the fold that they didn't think themselves out of the paperbag: they trained him to be the kind of man they can't catch.
Fucking amateurs.
Shoes on his feet and hooded coat pulled around him, Arthur hits the parking structure and is driving in an unremarkable Camry out of the parking structure in under three minutes. The entire escape takes less time than the average bathroom run for the nurse on his floor.
He calls Sergei with the phone he lifted during his shoe hunt on his way to his safety deposit box after he ditches the first car.
"Privyet?"
"I need egress."
There's no pause of shock. "How do I hide celebrity?"
"Don’t fucking bullshit me," Arthur rhythmically checks the side mirrors and rearview.
"Very expensive proposition." He clears his throat.
"Do you know where Eames is?" Arthur's not even going to bother with the financial end of this.
"This no one knows."
Arthur doesn't believe that for a second. Arthur collects his stash of cash, guns, clothes, and paperwork in various names.
"Maybe I know boat in area…"
On board the Ursilina, Arthur borrows a razor and buzzes his hair on the second to shortest setting and picks a fight to take a few jabs to the face.
*
Sergei's waiting for him in San Francisco. He's standing on the dock chitchatting with a burly fellow who looks like Longshoreman #6, straight from central casting. He watches Arthur walk down the gangway with a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth. Longshoreman wanders off as Arthur approaches.
Sergei scrutinizes Arthur, a neutral expression on his extremely attractive, Central Asian features. His hair's still long, tied back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. "Bruises for insurance, for when you find Eames and tell him I double crossed you?" He flicks his cigarette towards the water.
He knows full well the bruises are camouflage, but he's just making conversation.
"You've heard from him?" Arthur can't quite keep that inside his mouth, and he recognizes fully what kind of liability he's functioning with.
Sergei lifts an eyebrow. "Love is sorrow, moi drug."
"Can we move this along? I have an itch being out in the open right now."
Sergei laughs. "No snipers, I'm professional."
*
Sergei is, in fact, a professional. If he wanted to be, he could probably set himself up somewhere and become something of a despot of a minor domain. Instead he plays x-box and smokes a lot of dope. Arthur's pretty shocked when he's allowed into his inner-sanctum.
Sergei snorts at Arthur's surprised grumbles. "If you die, I die. I like life."
"I think they'd probably just send you to Gitmo," Arthur says after wiping mayo off his face.
Sergei stares at him, lowering his sandwich to his plate. He switches to Russian. "No one's told you?"
"Told me what?" His skin prickles with ice. He's rarely out of any loop and the humiliation of being caught without a piece of vital information floods him.
"Eames is systematically working his way through every person who ever did you any harm. Everyone assumes it's Eames, since he's so far off the grid and no one can pin the killings on anyone."
"Who?" He packs his emotions up into the place they go when he's working. He'll evaluate his own reaction to this later.
"He started with the Ukrainian lingerers, there were just a couple. Kenzie, Lister, the guys from Madrid."
Eames is, indeed, working his way through Arthur's enemies. It's kind of romantic in a deranged way.
*
Arthur passes over the Canadian border in the trunk of a car. His life is such that this isn't the first time for this.
Vancouver is just as Arthur left it last time, beautiful. He and Sergei eat dumplings in a place so small they're practically in each other's laps. He's the only Caucasian in the place and everyone ignores him completely. Sergei chitchats with an elderly lady in Cantonese and Arthur half-listens to their complaints about how long it takes to get a podiatrist appointment.
Arthur's surprised to see Sabrina pop in the place, but he doesn't show it. He doesn't acknowledge her until she's kissing him on both cheeks, gingerly around his bruises, and saying, "You've looked better. Let's get you home so I can get your clothes off."
"I'm engaged," Arthur deadpans as Sergei takes his leave from Mrs Achyfeet.
"So I hear. How big's his cock, specific parameters requested."
Arthur laughs and regrets it when his face hurts.
*
"Ow," Arthur glares at the top of Sabrina's curly head but doesn't flinch.
"You're such a baby. Did you cry this much when you tore these stitches?"
"No," Arthur can admit that came out pretty bitchy. "Could you try to be gentle?"
"Not really. I have to take out my aggression somehow." She snips off the suture and sits back.
Arthur downs the shot Sergei passes him as Sabrina slithers around Arthur's side to palpate the wound on his back. "They did a good job, so I guess they were planning to keep you. It would've been easy to let you die on the table and issue a boo-hoo press release. You've a valuable asset. Don't suppose you want to come work for us?"
"No." He's used to that kind of invitation. Every quasi-governmental or independently operating outfit has made a bid for his skills. For years it was because he valued is freedom too much, then there was the matter of the Cobb-psychodrama he always needed to be a minute's call away from cleaning up. Now he really does want to retire. And he can admit to himself that he doesn't want to do that alone.
He can't go back to work because he has a weakness so easy to exploit that he's the kind of liability that he would have burned without a second's hesitation.
Sabrina bandages him back up watching his face. He knows he's giving away more than he usually would. He's having a hard time caring. "Ariadne's in Toronto," Sabrina says.
"Who?" Arthur pulls on the shirt Sergei gives him.
"This life's too much of a good ol' boys club for the girls not to stick together." She closes her case. "You know that." The second part comes out as a whisper.
When he was younger he'd found the ways that women let gay men into their circle annoying, demeaning , another way people emasculate gay men-even if it was intended as a kind of fond intimacy--it was one he didn't want. Now he recognizes that life is a complex series of compromises and that rejecting overtures of friendship when they're truly offered is self-defeating.
"I need to send my family a message," he says to change the subject.
"Give credit, dickhead," Sergei replies in something of a snarl.
Arthur laughs.
*
Ariadne appears two hours after Arthur's ensconced himself in the apartment Sabrina and Sergei direct him to. He's trawling the usual haunts where people like him leave people like Eames messages online--Wikipedia edit pages, IMDB comments, Huffpo, the usual. He hasn't found anything likely, but he could also be missing something too obscure to register.
Arthur recognizes Ariadne's footfall and re-holsters his gun before she finds him on the couch.
"Those bruises're gross. Effective, though, I suppose, people look away from anyone with a bruised face." She flops down next to him. "Hey, by the way."
"Astute. You could be scary with some training."
He knows she's dabbling with people who're more or less not too dangerous, for their line of work anyway. They stick to corporate and private jobs that don't involve organized crime lords or drug dealers. They stay away from military operations. She could do worse.
She just stares him down. "Before you ask, I know where he is." She touches his arm lightly and pulls away. "He's calmed down now."
This is a glaring blind spot in Arthur's personal intel. They're good enough friends for him to go to her of all people? How the fuck did that happen?
"He told me to string you along and wind you up about it, but I'm not that cruel." She laughs to herself. "Unless you steal my leftovers out of the fridge and I have no breakfast, then I might drown you in a toilet or something. But not normally." She pauses and flicks her eyes around his face. "But anyway, we're pen-pals."
Arthur just stares at her.
"We have an email loop. You know how Yusuf sends the cute animal links? Like that, except mostly it's 4chan threads about stalking people. We have a similar sense of humor."
"It's not a loop if it's just two people," is Arthur's pedantic response. Everything else he has to say is rather pathetic and too exposing.
She collapses on her side laughing, pulling a pillow over her face.
"He predicted I'd say that." Arthur sighs.
*
Ariadne has family in Toronto. The apartment they're using is her cousin's. "They're on vacation in Barbados. I told them it wasn't warm there this time of year, but whatever, I guess there's no snow."
"I can't meet your family looking like this." Arthur points to his cheek where it's purple-black.
"Look, I can't come into town from Paris and not see everyone. I don't live some big life of intrigue like you. I only commit mind-crime, and I like it that way. I come to T-dot, I see my peeps."
Arthur has the weird second hand embarrassment at her turn of phrase that he associates with Emma's poor hairstyle choices and his mother's singing voice. "Did you…"
"Yes, I totally just said that. I have the bruise thing covered-hockey injury." She snaps her fingers to punctuate this with a flourish.
"Do I look like I play hockey?" He indicates his thin frame.
"It's Canada, everyone plays hockey. Even me."
"What?" Arthur feels like the shag's been pulled out from under his feet.
*
Ariadne's other cousins are a law student, an aid for a MPP, and the black sheep of the family is, apparently, a nonprofit agitator who champions urban gardens for the poor-she has white girl dreads and is wearing hemp sandals in the middle of winter.
"Do I know you?" Megan asks him. She squints behind her glasses and scrutinizes him.
"I doubt it, I live in France." Arthur is, of course, Ariadne's boyfriend. He's from New Brunswick.
"Megan, please," Ariadne says in a tight voice. She's become aggressively polite as the lunch progresses. Everyone's apologizing zealously and talking in subdued voices. Arthur stays as quiet as possible and figures he's in character.
Arthur accidentally-on-purpose knocks his glass over and ducks under the table spouting a chorus of "sorry, I'm so sorry, sorry." He prays to the gun on his right hip that this excruciating experience is over as soon as possible.
*
Arthur just stares stone-faced at Ariadne when she lays out her so-called plan. She's undeterred. "Listen, these people are crazier than Julian Assange when it comes to fucking over the government. You'll be their personal hero, I swear to god."
Arthur just continues to stare at her.
"You want to create a world of misinformation and confusion about where you are and what you're doing? These people will do it persistently, for free, and with a dedication that makes you look like an amateur." She's really getting into this, flapping her arms around and almost dislodging the cup of tea on the table next to her. Arthur leans over and pushes the mug and coaster back from the edge.
"But your EVE online network?" He still can't believe this is her plan. "Does Eames know about this?"
"He loves this plan, are you kidding?" She looks completely annoyed at him for even asking this.
He supposes Eames's love of chaos could influence him into thinking involving a bunch of internet malcontents in this completely fucked situation would be a capital idea.
"Eames really signed off on this plan? Also, where is he?" Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to decide if this is worse than dealing with Dom or not.
"No matter how many times you ask, I'll still not know until I know you're not going to do something dangerous." She spears him with what she probably thinks is a dramatic look. "He told me to keep you safe."
This is seriously Arthur's real life right now. He pulls the die out of his pocket and doesn't bother to shield Ariadne seeing it land on five over and over.
*
He calls Emma from a disposable cell right before they leave cell service area in central Ontario.
"You shouldn't have called," she sighs sternly, a shhh in the library kind of hush.
"I know they're monitoring this, don't worry. I just wanted you to know I'm safe, that I'm alive, and that any misinformation they put out there about me is just that." He speaks rapidly in his placid field tone.
"Yeah, we know. Mom's having a field day with this. It's Christmas For the Jews," she sings.
That has the desired effect, he feels much better. "I bet she is. Tell them I love them."
"Who is this, and what have you done with my robo-brother?"
"Fuck off," he laughs and makes an exaggerated kissy sound. The phone goes dead and he rolls the window down to toss it out.
"I wonder if they're going to make you a terrorist…" Ariadne muses from behind the wheel.
It's plausible, and he's wondered the same thing. He's surprised the Pentagon haven't played their hand yet. "They'll probably just manufacture something else to engage the news cycle and bury people's memory of us."
"Huh," Ariadne advances her iPod from the shrieky song that blasted through the speakers.
"What?" he says because he's genetically unable not to.
"You said us, not me."
Arthur looks out the window at the trees and the snow to hide the fact that he hadn't even noticed.
*
They hop a flight with a fake flight plan in Churchill. They skid to a halt on an icy runway in Greenland, the pilot, a contact of Sabrina's, doesn't say one word to them the entire flight. He refuels as Arthur and Ariadne wait, huddled together in thermals and parkas, and they land again in Scotland in wordless silence. Arthur likes it just fine this way, no small talk means decreased chances of Ariadne babbling something out accidentally.
They're at an improvised air depot out in the sticks--mostly used by smugglers and other unsavory types-basically Eames's natural habitat. Ariadne looks around with a blank face and doesn't ask questions. Arthur took to her upon first meeting because he could tell that she was the sort of quick learner that dreamsharing collects. She's brilliant, no doubt about that-he just worries about her and the fact she has a moral compass.
He sees her knock over her queen out of the corner of his eye when the plane comes to a complete halt. Yeah, it's all a bit too James Bond to be real, he agrees, but he's also used to the feeling of surreality in his waking life, though. He's sure everyone who has the kind of life he does has moments, all the same, when they're brought short by all the fuckery going on around them.
As they hustle across the field of waist-high dead hay, she whispers to him "You have to teach me how to use a gun."
He nods once. He thinks she should have learned that before she ever shared a dream. Dom's not the most practical person in the world, it's why he needs Arthur.
Eames's pal Morris awaits them on the other side of the field next to a Landrover. He's smoking, holding himself in the lazy slouch of a krav maga master. "Long time," he drawls and stubs his cigarette out on his shoe, depositing the butt in his pocket. Arthur isn't impressed because he expects no less.
Ariadne plays it cool, but Arthur can tell by the way her hands flutter into her pockets that she feels Morris's charisma. He's got the central casting square jaw and long eyelashes, dashing in a chunky knotted sweater and grey slacks. Arthur would roll his eyes, but he's been there and knows what it's like to be stunned a little bit by one of these sorts of guys.
He realizes, as he straps himself into the backseat, that his last little thought oubliette was the last vestige of his shame curling up and dying quietly in the corner of his mind. He doesn't sigh, because he's working.
*
Morris has papers for them, a car, phones, cash, the usual. Ariadne defaults to silent watchfulness around him, even when he starts smiling at her and winking, Eamesing it up. He leans against the wall of the kitchen in the apartment he'd secured for them, the Scots in his voice suddenly much more piquant than before.
"You're not on the lam, sweetheart, why don't you come have a pint with me 'round the way?"
"If that's a euphemism, I've heard better from drunk frat boys." Ariadne's making herself coffee while Arthur was going to get himself a snack, but instead sidles out of the room. It's a cowardly retreat, but he's not in the mood to deal with watching this dance.
"It's whatever you want it to be. Just like me," Morris's voice floats after Arthur. He allows himself to laugh at Ariadne's expense even though he knows he'll pay for abandoning her later.
*
She stomps into the room he's commandeered for a study a half hour later. Her face is so comically outraged that she's almost a cartoon character with exclamation marks over her head. "He offered to take me to a shooting range."
"As far as pick up lines go, that's a classic." Arthur doesn't look up from the 4chan thread he's reading. "Tell me where Eames is and I'll get rid of Morris. I can kill him easily and without any guilt."
"I'm going to the shooting range, then I'm coming back here and taking you down," Ariadne fumes.
*
Ariadne introduces Arthur bit by bit to her bizarre internet friends. They are clearly unhinged, but amusingly so. It's not like Arthur hasn't spent a weekend trolling youtube and leaving misspelled, nonsensical comments in half-English/half-Urdu because he's high on vicodin.
Everyone's done that.
Arthur allows himself to spam all of Eames's emails with
Tell me where you are.
He doesn't tack on
I woke up in the hospital thinking you were dead.
even though his inner-Jew really wants to.
*
Arthur's fucking off on wikileaks bears unexpected dividends when such knowledge appears to be a Rubicon for one of Ariadne's asset (as he's decided to think of these people), XdickjokeX.
You're too knowledgeable to be a FBI plant the asset emails.
Arthur compiles a file of what, exactly, he thinks this guy can do. This xdickjokex is just an entry-level contact, so Arthur doesn't expect much. All the same, this introduction will lead to more.
The FBI doesn't even know to look for people like us Arthur replies. The best cons are true.
Part 3b
I'll probably tinker with and edit this for about a week. Sigh.
I now must thank Amber for reading this at all, but also for listening to me ~talking about it. Hrm, yeah, we do tolerate some serious bullshit from our friends, don't we?
Also thank you to stoney for indulging me, Heidi for the same thing, and green_postit for betaing the 1300 words of "part three."
If you keep the title in mind as you read, it will help.
Part 1
Part 2
Unexpected Plot Twist: Act 3 in two parts, part one
Arthur groggily comes to in a hospital.
The combination of fresh IV bruising and chemical disorientation isn't new to him. He lies perfectly still and hopes his heart rate and respiration don't give him away as he takes stock of his situation through the haze of opioids.
He's been shot. He knows the feeling too well. His left shoulder has the unmistakable hallmarks of recent surgery. He can feel the clammy cling of pain lingering under the meds and the pull of stitches. He has a catheter.
His mind won't boot all the way. The drugs mute his thoughts into an impressionist landscape of half-perceived awareness. He definitely smells his mother's perfume, though. That's a touch that he's never experienced in the field, not even when dreaming.
Cool fingers touch the inside of his wrist. A woman's voice says, "This is just habit, the machines do this now." There's a pause. "Arthur? Are you awake?"
He can't exactly speak yet, but he curls his fingers towards the hand.
"He's waking up," the woman says. There's a flurry of movement in the room.
The first voice he hears is Dom. "Arthur?" his steady, well-known hand touches his leg.
"Jimjam?" So it is his mom. "Baby?" She's not crying, but she doesn't sound good.
He cracks his eyes open, and it takes all the willpower that he's coded into his soul over the years. The lights are dim. There're too many civilians in the room. He needs a sitrep and can't demand one with his mom kissing his cheek and stroking his hair.
"Eames?"
"Not here," Dom responds in his terse work voice.
"Is. He. Dead?" Arthur grits out.
No one answers aloud, but Dom taps out NOT OFFICIALLY, NOT YET.
He passes back out.
*
The second time Arthur wakes up, it's a little better. He immediately orients and struggles to get the oxygen cannula off of his face.
"You're supposed to wear that." Arthur stares up at Yusuf uncomprehendingly when he leans over the bed. "Surprised to see me?" His smile's warm. "You're not going to do something stupid like rip your IV out, correct?"
There are a lot of questions Arthur could be asking, but he's exhausted. He's not all that surprised to see Yusuf once the shock's worn off. He's a medical doctor (among all the other things) after all.
"VA?" he asks.
"Yes, under guard, of course." Yusuf shakes a cup. "Ice chips?"
Arthur lets Yusuf feed him ice chips.
"You have questions, of course. Where is your family for instance. Cobb herded them away so I could wake you up to speak to you privately." Arthur sucks on his ice and cuts his eyes in a go-on gesture. "You were shot by a man named Thomas Collins. He was a very sick man. His most recent psychopathic obsession appears to have been those nasty homosexuals and their gay agenda. None of us saw that coming."
Arthur struggles to pull himself up in the bed. Yusuf gets an arm under his good shoulder and helps. "I can call the nurse and we can pull you with the draw sheet." Arthur shakes his head. He grunts and pushes his tongue around in his mouth to form words, but he's feeling nauseated and his skin's too tight.
"You probably won't be able to talk until the next time you wake up, unfortunately, calm down." Yusuf pulls a pen light out of his pocket and shines it in Arthur's eyes. "You'll be fine." He pauses when he stands back. "This is the part we needed privacy for. There's no easy way to put this." Arthur's stomach drops. "Eames…overreacted to you getting shot. He beat your assailant to death. It's already been covered up by the right people, and it's not something anyone wants out there, to be honest. But we also can't find him. He's dropped off the face of the earth. How, is a mystery. The technical details, this is. No one who knows him is particularly surprised he could manage it."
He pauses to examine something on one of the machines attached to Arthur before turning back.
"Also, I have it under good authority that you're not going to leave this facility 'officially alive.' How and when they're going to "kill" you, I have not been apprised, but you'd best take your leave before they tighten up the security." He actually makes quote fingers. If it wouldn't hurt so bad, Arthur would laugh.
Arthur feels consciousness fragmenting on the edges. "You sleep now, and when you wake up, there will be balloon bouquets and chocolates."
*
Third time's a charm. This saying has always irked Arthur.
When he struggles up from unconsciousness next, he's actually really awake and not in some liminal half-sedated state. His eyes pop open and he's greeted by the sight of Col. Bryan Myers snoozing in a chair by his bed.
"Sir?" Arthur coughs.
The colonel shocks awake, his hat sliding off his lap onto the floor. He doesn't immediately reach to pick it up. Instead he scratches at his salt and pepper buzz cut and wipes a hand over his face. He looks about twenty years older than he did the last time Arthur saw him.
"Son." He has a pleasant voice that always sounds indulgently fond, not the typical career military man's tone. "I've been expecting to run into you one of these days, but not in this particular scenario. I have to admit you've surprised me again." He smiles, but it comes across more depressed than happy.
"I gave up on MPs rousting me years ago." He lets his eyes close again.
"What you do isn't actually illegal. We have bigger fish. You're one of the smartest people I've ever met, so I'll lay you dollars to doughnuts that you know I'm not here to take you in."
Of course he does.
"This is something of a debrief. This is one hell of a situation." Myers blows out a breath in an almost-whistle. "It's not every day that former black ops soldiers go on Ellen. Not when they're former anyway."
In the early days of the PASIV program, the theory was that if they used soldiers who had been in the media that subjects would be less likely to balk at strangers showing up in their subconscious. The idea was that there was at least some chance of an inkling of recognition, that subconsciouses would process these invaders the way a regular dreamer does when random people they've met once or seen once on television pop up as the checkout clerk at dream Safeway.
Arthur laughs. His shoulder screams and he breaks off into a pained cough.
"I just need to hear it from your mouth," Myers says.
"Exposing dreamsharing is hardly my agenda."
"Ok, that's all I needed. Now, let's talk about inception…"
He's surprised that Myers is naïve enough to just take Arthur's word for that. Arthur hasn't spent much time around people who live by The Honor Code in years.
*
He doesn't expect to be offered a fucking commission. So they want him in the power structure. He wonders if Yusuf was wrong and they're going to do this all above board. Ok, he wonders this for 1/16th of a second before he goes cold and starts to formulate an escape plan. His life is a farce. He wishes Eames was here to laugh with him, escaping from the military is Eames's favorite hobby.
Eames not being here is a wound he doesn't want to pick at, but his mind cycles to it constantly. Arthur's desperate to get the fuck out of this place so he can find Eames, find out what really happened. This is made all the more unbearable because his mother keeps giving him her conspiracy-theory face and his father just looks as exhausted as Arthur feels. Emma's whispered to him about non-disclosure paperwork and stonewalling. Arthur would have known his real life was burned even if Yusuf hadn't told him by the simple fact that no one's bothering lying to his family in any convincing way. They're so far off the radar that there's not even an official lie besides "no comment."
Yusuf and Dom have disappeared, leaving him to his mother's clucking and his dad's stoic support. Arthur decides to not say anything to his family about what's going on. That doesn't take much thought regarding his parents, but Emma's a different story. She's reliable and would aid him however he'd ask, but he doesn't have it in him to make her an accomplice in what amounts to sedition.
"How many times have you been shot now?" Emma's hair is a lot shorter than the last time he saw her. Her eyes are bruised from lack of sleep, and she's too thin. She's sitting by his bed with her cheek pressed to the back of hand, staring up at him like she can't quite believe he's alive. He feels ancient, all the extra years from dreamsharing a gulf between them suddenly. He turns his hand over to cup her cheek.
"I'm fine. Really." It's not that bad, a through and through by a sniper round in flesh. The bullet didn't hit anything but muscle and skin.
"What're you going to do now?" she whispers. He would tell her, but he's not sure. He has to wait out Eames's revenge spree and decide which direction his life is going to take.
"Recently my life has mostly been things happening to me instead of me deciding anything concrete. I guess I'll keep going with that."
"Since when are you carried by the tide? You're the least passive person in the world." Emma sits up and stares him down. "You're a force of nature, dumbass. What happens to you that you don't orchestrate?"
"Getting shot?" he spits at her.
"Please, that was a by-product of several strategic decisions you made."
"Are you really taking the stress of being sleep deprived and scared out on me?" She's his sister, so he can pull that kind of bullshit passive aggressive argument and not feel an iota of guilt about it.
"No," she says. "I'm pissed off that you're throwing yourself a pity party instead of being angry. Why aren't you fucking angry?"
"I'm just tired," he says and sighs. He actually is, so it's not even a lie.
"Are you fucking kidding me? Some asshole shot you and you're all oh well, whatever, no biggie!?" She stands up and looms over him so he can't avoid her. "You, the guy who exacted a year-long elaborate revenge when I stole a box of Girl Scout cookies-not even Thin Mints, either-is not bothered about being shot?"
Arthur closes his eyes and counts backwards from ten. He opens his eyes again and reaches out to grab Emma's hand. "It's just not the most pressing problem, Em. I'll be mad, I'll be livid, murderous even, but not right now." He wants to tell her, but he just can't risk it.
"But why?" She's not going to let it go.
"I fucking hate you sometimes." There's more heat in the words than is probably necessary, but family can do that to you, make you feel things you don't even realize before the words are out of your mouth. "It's because I'm too busy being disgustingly lovesick." This is also not a lie, but a deeper problem than the one directly at hand.
She looks at him for a second before she bursts out laughing. She literally laughs in his face when he confesses his heartbreak.
"You'll rue the day," he says, mock grave. Her face is so bright, color high on her cheeks and their shared hair curling on her cheek. He loves her profoundly.
*
Arthur flows with tide of the hospital, shift changes and staff schedules. Doctors and nurses come and go. He knows when he's strong enough to make a break for it. He's been injured in sketchier situations enough that he can assess his fitness with pinpoint precision.
Arthur has sized up the staff and he susses out the weak links. He has to wait for his family to be elsewhere coinciding with the right nurse or doctor passing through his room. Major Jackson is a pretty good candidate for persuasion, she Arthur's ready when he strides into his room right after his father's bundled Emma and his mom off for ice cream.
Arthur announces, "I need to be discharged."
"No." Major Jackson has two layers of authority entitlement, his rank and again his honorific, but he also walks with the kind of limp that's most likely from shrapnel and he has the air about him of the hardened combat vet.
"It's not a question. We can pretend I'm just asking to be discharged, but we both know I'm asking you to be complicit in helping me escape. I'm shortly going to die in the fiction that the Pentagon is about to release to the media. I can assure you that I'm more than too well aware that this kind of fake death is always a precursor to actual death, and I'm not the kind of man who just allows myself get killed even if it's my patriotic duty to do so. I doubt you have the clearance to read my personnel file, but maybe you've heard about my service record by word of mouth." Dr Jackson meets his eyes. "You're not going to be able to keep me here short of sedation or four-points."
This gets the guy's attention. "It sounds like you don't get told no a lot." He clicks his pen closed and sticks it in the pocket of his scrubs.
"You're wrong, I just don't allow it to be the final answer." Arthur feels more like himself than he has since he's been here. It could be the diminishing amount of drugs in his system, but it's probably snatching a little bit of control back over his life.
"There's only one guard. We're not on a secure floor." He lays his pen on the blanket in Arthur's lap. They make eye contact again. "I'm proud to serve with men like you, Sergeant Da Costa."
"Thank you," Arthur's voice doesn't crack, but it's a near thing. He's not used to being able to utilize the easiest gameplan.
*
The most difficult part of his escape is finding a pair of shoes so that he's not too suspicious when he exits the building. Scrubs aren't hard to locate, but people don't just leave shoes lying around. He ends up ducking in and out of patient rooms until he comes across a pair of Nikes that are two sizes too big.
What you have to learn on your own in a life of crime is how to think on your feet (as it were) and keep reevaluating your script on the fly.
The thing is, this is what Arthur does. THIS is Arthur's entire career. The Pentagon's such a clusterfuck of cloudy thinking bureaucrats and legacy brass that when they decided to stop-loss him-his mom will be thrilled to learn she was right for once-back into the fold that they didn't think themselves out of the paperbag: they trained him to be the kind of man they can't catch.
Fucking amateurs.
Shoes on his feet and hooded coat pulled around him, Arthur hits the parking structure and is driving in an unremarkable Camry out of the parking structure in under three minutes. The entire escape takes less time than the average bathroom run for the nurse on his floor.
He calls Sergei with the phone he lifted during his shoe hunt on his way to his safety deposit box after he ditches the first car.
"Privyet?"
"I need egress."
There's no pause of shock. "How do I hide celebrity?"
"Don’t fucking bullshit me," Arthur rhythmically checks the side mirrors and rearview.
"Very expensive proposition." He clears his throat.
"Do you know where Eames is?" Arthur's not even going to bother with the financial end of this.
"This no one knows."
Arthur doesn't believe that for a second. Arthur collects his stash of cash, guns, clothes, and paperwork in various names.
"Maybe I know boat in area…"
On board the Ursilina, Arthur borrows a razor and buzzes his hair on the second to shortest setting and picks a fight to take a few jabs to the face.
*
Sergei's waiting for him in San Francisco. He's standing on the dock chitchatting with a burly fellow who looks like Longshoreman #6, straight from central casting. He watches Arthur walk down the gangway with a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth. Longshoreman wanders off as Arthur approaches.
Sergei scrutinizes Arthur, a neutral expression on his extremely attractive, Central Asian features. His hair's still long, tied back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. "Bruises for insurance, for when you find Eames and tell him I double crossed you?" He flicks his cigarette towards the water.
He knows full well the bruises are camouflage, but he's just making conversation.
"You've heard from him?" Arthur can't quite keep that inside his mouth, and he recognizes fully what kind of liability he's functioning with.
Sergei lifts an eyebrow. "Love is sorrow, moi drug."
"Can we move this along? I have an itch being out in the open right now."
Sergei laughs. "No snipers, I'm professional."
*
Sergei is, in fact, a professional. If he wanted to be, he could probably set himself up somewhere and become something of a despot of a minor domain. Instead he plays x-box and smokes a lot of dope. Arthur's pretty shocked when he's allowed into his inner-sanctum.
Sergei snorts at Arthur's surprised grumbles. "If you die, I die. I like life."
"I think they'd probably just send you to Gitmo," Arthur says after wiping mayo off his face.
Sergei stares at him, lowering his sandwich to his plate. He switches to Russian. "No one's told you?"
"Told me what?" His skin prickles with ice. He's rarely out of any loop and the humiliation of being caught without a piece of vital information floods him.
"Eames is systematically working his way through every person who ever did you any harm. Everyone assumes it's Eames, since he's so far off the grid and no one can pin the killings on anyone."
"Who?" He packs his emotions up into the place they go when he's working. He'll evaluate his own reaction to this later.
"He started with the Ukrainian lingerers, there were just a couple. Kenzie, Lister, the guys from Madrid."
Eames is, indeed, working his way through Arthur's enemies. It's kind of romantic in a deranged way.
*
Arthur passes over the Canadian border in the trunk of a car. His life is such that this isn't the first time for this.
Vancouver is just as Arthur left it last time, beautiful. He and Sergei eat dumplings in a place so small they're practically in each other's laps. He's the only Caucasian in the place and everyone ignores him completely. Sergei chitchats with an elderly lady in Cantonese and Arthur half-listens to their complaints about how long it takes to get a podiatrist appointment.
Arthur's surprised to see Sabrina pop in the place, but he doesn't show it. He doesn't acknowledge her until she's kissing him on both cheeks, gingerly around his bruises, and saying, "You've looked better. Let's get you home so I can get your clothes off."
"I'm engaged," Arthur deadpans as Sergei takes his leave from Mrs Achyfeet.
"So I hear. How big's his cock, specific parameters requested."
Arthur laughs and regrets it when his face hurts.
*
"Ow," Arthur glares at the top of Sabrina's curly head but doesn't flinch.
"You're such a baby. Did you cry this much when you tore these stitches?"
"No," Arthur can admit that came out pretty bitchy. "Could you try to be gentle?"
"Not really. I have to take out my aggression somehow." She snips off the suture and sits back.
Arthur downs the shot Sergei passes him as Sabrina slithers around Arthur's side to palpate the wound on his back. "They did a good job, so I guess they were planning to keep you. It would've been easy to let you die on the table and issue a boo-hoo press release. You've a valuable asset. Don't suppose you want to come work for us?"
"No." He's used to that kind of invitation. Every quasi-governmental or independently operating outfit has made a bid for his skills. For years it was because he valued is freedom too much, then there was the matter of the Cobb-psychodrama he always needed to be a minute's call away from cleaning up. Now he really does want to retire. And he can admit to himself that he doesn't want to do that alone.
He can't go back to work because he has a weakness so easy to exploit that he's the kind of liability that he would have burned without a second's hesitation.
Sabrina bandages him back up watching his face. He knows he's giving away more than he usually would. He's having a hard time caring. "Ariadne's in Toronto," Sabrina says.
"Who?" Arthur pulls on the shirt Sergei gives him.
"This life's too much of a good ol' boys club for the girls not to stick together." She closes her case. "You know that." The second part comes out as a whisper.
When he was younger he'd found the ways that women let gay men into their circle annoying, demeaning , another way people emasculate gay men-even if it was intended as a kind of fond intimacy--it was one he didn't want. Now he recognizes that life is a complex series of compromises and that rejecting overtures of friendship when they're truly offered is self-defeating.
"I need to send my family a message," he says to change the subject.
"Give credit, dickhead," Sergei replies in something of a snarl.
Arthur laughs.
*
Ariadne appears two hours after Arthur's ensconced himself in the apartment Sabrina and Sergei direct him to. He's trawling the usual haunts where people like him leave people like Eames messages online--Wikipedia edit pages, IMDB comments, Huffpo, the usual. He hasn't found anything likely, but he could also be missing something too obscure to register.
Arthur recognizes Ariadne's footfall and re-holsters his gun before she finds him on the couch.
"Those bruises're gross. Effective, though, I suppose, people look away from anyone with a bruised face." She flops down next to him. "Hey, by the way."
"Astute. You could be scary with some training."
He knows she's dabbling with people who're more or less not too dangerous, for their line of work anyway. They stick to corporate and private jobs that don't involve organized crime lords or drug dealers. They stay away from military operations. She could do worse.
She just stares him down. "Before you ask, I know where he is." She touches his arm lightly and pulls away. "He's calmed down now."
This is a glaring blind spot in Arthur's personal intel. They're good enough friends for him to go to her of all people? How the fuck did that happen?
"He told me to string you along and wind you up about it, but I'm not that cruel." She laughs to herself. "Unless you steal my leftovers out of the fridge and I have no breakfast, then I might drown you in a toilet or something. But not normally." She pauses and flicks her eyes around his face. "But anyway, we're pen-pals."
Arthur just stares at her.
"We have an email loop. You know how Yusuf sends the cute animal links? Like that, except mostly it's 4chan threads about stalking people. We have a similar sense of humor."
"It's not a loop if it's just two people," is Arthur's pedantic response. Everything else he has to say is rather pathetic and too exposing.
She collapses on her side laughing, pulling a pillow over her face.
"He predicted I'd say that." Arthur sighs.
*
Ariadne has family in Toronto. The apartment they're using is her cousin's. "They're on vacation in Barbados. I told them it wasn't warm there this time of year, but whatever, I guess there's no snow."
"I can't meet your family looking like this." Arthur points to his cheek where it's purple-black.
"Look, I can't come into town from Paris and not see everyone. I don't live some big life of intrigue like you. I only commit mind-crime, and I like it that way. I come to T-dot, I see my peeps."
Arthur has the weird second hand embarrassment at her turn of phrase that he associates with Emma's poor hairstyle choices and his mother's singing voice. "Did you…"
"Yes, I totally just said that. I have the bruise thing covered-hockey injury." She snaps her fingers to punctuate this with a flourish.
"Do I look like I play hockey?" He indicates his thin frame.
"It's Canada, everyone plays hockey. Even me."
"What?" Arthur feels like the shag's been pulled out from under his feet.
*
Ariadne's other cousins are a law student, an aid for a MPP, and the black sheep of the family is, apparently, a nonprofit agitator who champions urban gardens for the poor-she has white girl dreads and is wearing hemp sandals in the middle of winter.
"Do I know you?" Megan asks him. She squints behind her glasses and scrutinizes him.
"I doubt it, I live in France." Arthur is, of course, Ariadne's boyfriend. He's from New Brunswick.
"Megan, please," Ariadne says in a tight voice. She's become aggressively polite as the lunch progresses. Everyone's apologizing zealously and talking in subdued voices. Arthur stays as quiet as possible and figures he's in character.
Arthur accidentally-on-purpose knocks his glass over and ducks under the table spouting a chorus of "sorry, I'm so sorry, sorry." He prays to the gun on his right hip that this excruciating experience is over as soon as possible.
*
Arthur just stares stone-faced at Ariadne when she lays out her so-called plan. She's undeterred. "Listen, these people are crazier than Julian Assange when it comes to fucking over the government. You'll be their personal hero, I swear to god."
Arthur just continues to stare at her.
"You want to create a world of misinformation and confusion about where you are and what you're doing? These people will do it persistently, for free, and with a dedication that makes you look like an amateur." She's really getting into this, flapping her arms around and almost dislodging the cup of tea on the table next to her. Arthur leans over and pushes the mug and coaster back from the edge.
"But your EVE online network?" He still can't believe this is her plan. "Does Eames know about this?"
"He loves this plan, are you kidding?" She looks completely annoyed at him for even asking this.
He supposes Eames's love of chaos could influence him into thinking involving a bunch of internet malcontents in this completely fucked situation would be a capital idea.
"Eames really signed off on this plan? Also, where is he?" Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to decide if this is worse than dealing with Dom or not.
"No matter how many times you ask, I'll still not know until I know you're not going to do something dangerous." She spears him with what she probably thinks is a dramatic look. "He told me to keep you safe."
This is seriously Arthur's real life right now. He pulls the die out of his pocket and doesn't bother to shield Ariadne seeing it land on five over and over.
*
He calls Emma from a disposable cell right before they leave cell service area in central Ontario.
"You shouldn't have called," she sighs sternly, a shhh in the library kind of hush.
"I know they're monitoring this, don't worry. I just wanted you to know I'm safe, that I'm alive, and that any misinformation they put out there about me is just that." He speaks rapidly in his placid field tone.
"Yeah, we know. Mom's having a field day with this. It's Christmas For the Jews," she sings.
That has the desired effect, he feels much better. "I bet she is. Tell them I love them."
"Who is this, and what have you done with my robo-brother?"
"Fuck off," he laughs and makes an exaggerated kissy sound. The phone goes dead and he rolls the window down to toss it out.
"I wonder if they're going to make you a terrorist…" Ariadne muses from behind the wheel.
It's plausible, and he's wondered the same thing. He's surprised the Pentagon haven't played their hand yet. "They'll probably just manufacture something else to engage the news cycle and bury people's memory of us."
"Huh," Ariadne advances her iPod from the shrieky song that blasted through the speakers.
"What?" he says because he's genetically unable not to.
"You said us, not me."
Arthur looks out the window at the trees and the snow to hide the fact that he hadn't even noticed.
*
They hop a flight with a fake flight plan in Churchill. They skid to a halt on an icy runway in Greenland, the pilot, a contact of Sabrina's, doesn't say one word to them the entire flight. He refuels as Arthur and Ariadne wait, huddled together in thermals and parkas, and they land again in Scotland in wordless silence. Arthur likes it just fine this way, no small talk means decreased chances of Ariadne babbling something out accidentally.
They're at an improvised air depot out in the sticks--mostly used by smugglers and other unsavory types-basically Eames's natural habitat. Ariadne looks around with a blank face and doesn't ask questions. Arthur took to her upon first meeting because he could tell that she was the sort of quick learner that dreamsharing collects. She's brilliant, no doubt about that-he just worries about her and the fact she has a moral compass.
He sees her knock over her queen out of the corner of his eye when the plane comes to a complete halt. Yeah, it's all a bit too James Bond to be real, he agrees, but he's also used to the feeling of surreality in his waking life, though. He's sure everyone who has the kind of life he does has moments, all the same, when they're brought short by all the fuckery going on around them.
As they hustle across the field of waist-high dead hay, she whispers to him "You have to teach me how to use a gun."
He nods once. He thinks she should have learned that before she ever shared a dream. Dom's not the most practical person in the world, it's why he needs Arthur.
Eames's pal Morris awaits them on the other side of the field next to a Landrover. He's smoking, holding himself in the lazy slouch of a krav maga master. "Long time," he drawls and stubs his cigarette out on his shoe, depositing the butt in his pocket. Arthur isn't impressed because he expects no less.
Ariadne plays it cool, but Arthur can tell by the way her hands flutter into her pockets that she feels Morris's charisma. He's got the central casting square jaw and long eyelashes, dashing in a chunky knotted sweater and grey slacks. Arthur would roll his eyes, but he's been there and knows what it's like to be stunned a little bit by one of these sorts of guys.
He realizes, as he straps himself into the backseat, that his last little thought oubliette was the last vestige of his shame curling up and dying quietly in the corner of his mind. He doesn't sigh, because he's working.
*
Morris has papers for them, a car, phones, cash, the usual. Ariadne defaults to silent watchfulness around him, even when he starts smiling at her and winking, Eamesing it up. He leans against the wall of the kitchen in the apartment he'd secured for them, the Scots in his voice suddenly much more piquant than before.
"You're not on the lam, sweetheart, why don't you come have a pint with me 'round the way?"
"If that's a euphemism, I've heard better from drunk frat boys." Ariadne's making herself coffee while Arthur was going to get himself a snack, but instead sidles out of the room. It's a cowardly retreat, but he's not in the mood to deal with watching this dance.
"It's whatever you want it to be. Just like me," Morris's voice floats after Arthur. He allows himself to laugh at Ariadne's expense even though he knows he'll pay for abandoning her later.
*
She stomps into the room he's commandeered for a study a half hour later. Her face is so comically outraged that she's almost a cartoon character with exclamation marks over her head. "He offered to take me to a shooting range."
"As far as pick up lines go, that's a classic." Arthur doesn't look up from the 4chan thread he's reading. "Tell me where Eames is and I'll get rid of Morris. I can kill him easily and without any guilt."
"I'm going to the shooting range, then I'm coming back here and taking you down," Ariadne fumes.
*
Ariadne introduces Arthur bit by bit to her bizarre internet friends. They are clearly unhinged, but amusingly so. It's not like Arthur hasn't spent a weekend trolling youtube and leaving misspelled, nonsensical comments in half-English/half-Urdu because he's high on vicodin.
Everyone's done that.
Arthur allows himself to spam all of Eames's emails with
Tell me where you are.
He doesn't tack on
I woke up in the hospital thinking you were dead.
even though his inner-Jew really wants to.
*
Arthur's fucking off on wikileaks bears unexpected dividends when such knowledge appears to be a Rubicon for one of Ariadne's asset (as he's decided to think of these people), XdickjokeX.
You're too knowledgeable to be a FBI plant the asset emails.
Arthur compiles a file of what, exactly, he thinks this guy can do. This xdickjokex is just an entry-level contact, so Arthur doesn't expect much. All the same, this introduction will lead to more.
The FBI doesn't even know to look for people like us Arthur replies. The best cons are true.
Part 3b