fic: leaving this old fairground behind [2/2]
PART TWO OF leaving this old fairground behind
---
“If you drop that, I will make your life a living nightmare,” Yusuf calls as Eames stumbles under the weight of the trick magician’s trunk he’s carrying.
“You know you’re not meant to put actual bodies in these things,” Eames manages to grunt out.
“It’s all the swords I store in there. Sorry.” He doesn’t really sound very sorry at all. In fact, he looks like he’s really enjoying watching Eames haul all his equipment out to one of the trucks while he carefully packs up some of the so-called ‘delicate instruments’ of his art, which appear to mainly be colourful glass bottles useful only in terms of decoration. Yusuf’s cat climbs out of the box, looking quite irritated to find that his sleeping place is being hauled around and leaps off, significantly lightening the load.
“You ought to consider putting that beast on a diet,” Eames says, releasing a breath of relief as he sets the trunk down in the back of one of the many vans.
Yusuf sniffs, as though insulted. “Why don’t you go help Dom with the ticket office. It’s getting a bit late now, and you’re too lazy by a half to do this properly. Send me that new girl, she looks quite efficient.”
Eames agrees, ambling away. He’s always delegated to helping whoever asks for it on packing up day because Arthur has very particular ideas about how their things should be stored properly and he insists that Eames only gets in the way. It’s a somewhat recurring theme. Eames is not really well known for his organisational skills.
After sending Ariadne out to help Yusuf, Eames heads out to the ticket office, which has been loaded onto its trailer and attached to a car.
“Dom?” Eames asks, clambering through to door, which is a bit awkward to reach without the usual accompanying stairs.
“Eames?” Dom asks. “Is that you? Maybe you can make some sort of sense of this. Your degree is in math, isn’t it?”
“Yep, with a minor in theoretical physics,” Eames notes, snapping the desk lamps on to see better in the late afternoon gloom. “That doesn’t really lend itself to accountancy particularly well. Let’s see anyhow.”
Dom is leaning over a folding table completely covered in papers. “Mal always made it look so easy,” he says. Eames is glad to note that the guilt in his voice is nearly gone. Every time he mentions her, it seems to be with a slightly lighter heart. “I just need someone to look at this and confirm to me that we’re totally fucked.”
Eames glances through the sheaf of figures that Dom hands to him. “Is this the profit total, right here?” he asks, gesturing. “Saito is not going to be very happy.”
“Ugh,” Dom says, clasping his hand over his eyes. “There’s nothing we can do against the competition of Fischer and Friends Circus Extravaganza. They’ve got established shows on the East and West coasts, and they’ve got all the animal acts. It doesn’t matter how authentic we are, or that we get better reviews nine out of ten times. The sheer size of Fischer’s company leaves us in the dust.”
“I keep telling you, if you want to make money, we’ve got to tour the European circuit. The interest is just bigger. We could draw crowds twice the size.”
“With what money?” Dom snaps. “With what fucking money am I gonna ship the whole company across the ocean?”
Eames fights to keep the sneer off his face. It’s no use rising to Dom’s bait. Arthur would be pissed if they got in yet another fight. “I’m just saying. Saito has been asking you about it for years, I don’t get why you won’t even consider it. Fischer’s sucking the market dry in America, we need to hit a niche or we need to get out.”
“It was the show in France that killed her, Eames. If I hadn’t promised her France...” Dom says, staring at the floor resolutely.
Eames feels his fists clench, nails digging into the skin of his palms. “No,” Eames says, icily quiet. “No, it wasn’t, Dom. Mal killed herself because she was too ambitious and because she wasn’t using any fucking safety gear like a careless child, and I loved her and it shouldn’t have happened, but if you use her as an excuse to me one more fucking time I’m going to--”
“What? What are you going do? As if everything is roses in your personal life right now. I know you fucked up your shoulder because you were distracted by that letter from Fischer’s company.”
Eames’s mouth drops open in surprise.
“Oh, yeah. What, you think I don’t notice when Fischer’s people come scouting around. Well, I’m not an idiot. You fucked up because you feel guilty that you’re considering going. About leaving us. Yusuf, me and the kids, the whole team. Arthur. Thinking maybe you’ll just take the fame and fortune and disappear? When are you even going tell him? When are you going to break his heart?”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, so shut the hell up,” Eames says, voice even lower than before, becoming quieter at the same rate that Dom’s pitch increases. He turns on his heal, throwing the papers down on the desk and wrenching the office door open to leave.
Arthur stands on the other side, hands fisted at his sides, knuckles white.
“Arthur!” Eames says, feeling his stomach drop. “Arthur. Shit. Look, I was going to tell you about the letter, I just hadn’t--”
“Dom, could you leave us alone for a minute?” Arthur asks, voice deceptively even.
“Uh, I guess?”
“Thanks.”
Dom steps out of the trailer, jumping to the ground and pushing the door shut behind him.
“I already knew,” Arthur says quietly.
“What?” Eames asks, shell-shocked.
“I know about the letter from Fischer’s Circus.” Arthur repeats. “I found it when I was looking through your bedside table for some scratch paper. I thought...I don’t know, I don’t really have a very good excuse for reading your mail, but I didn’t think it would be important. I just thought, ‘how odd, Eames has a letter from Fischer’. That’s why I’ve been mad at you for the last few days. I didn’t even think that you were considering going. I just...fuck, at first I just assumed you wouldn’t, I don’t know, I just...fuck.” He looks sick at the thought and Eames honestly wants to punch himself in the face for putting that expression there.
“You would have been right, Arthur. You’re right to assume I didn’t even think of leaving. But I’m afraid that you don’t know the full story?”
“What more could there possibly be?” Arthur asks.
Eames feels conflicted for a moment. He wishes he could just tell Arthur to forget the whole thing. Then he sticks his hand into his pocket and draws out a slightly crumpled envelope.
Arthur is silent as he takes it to read, face almost perfectly inscrutable. Once he has come to end of the letter he folds it up again, puts it back into the envelope and tucks it into his own pocket.
“So you see, I can’t really blame you for looking at my post, can I?”
“No,” Arthur says, face still unreadable. “I suppose not.”
“I called Fischer’s people and explained to them that we wouldn’t want to be separated and that offering you a place in the West coast show and me a place in the East coast one was great but that we’d be more likely to consider it if we were placed together, even if we weren’t performing together. Not because I wanted us to go, understand. Just because I wanted to have all the options ready when I spoke to you. But they said no. Apparently they’ve just got those two specific openings and they said their audience is too mainstream to appreciate the “quirkiness” of a fire-breather-trapeze double act.”
“And?” Arthur asks, apparently somehow sensing that there is more to the story.
“When I first met you, Arthur, all you ever talked about was being at the top. Being the very best at what you do. You’ve really finally got the chance to do it, but I couldn’t bear the thought of you leaving. I was trying...I’ve been trying. It was easier when we weren’t performing together but, Jesus Christ, after last night. I don’t know how I was going to make myself tell you.”
“That’s it?” Arthur asks.
“That’s it,” Eames confirms.
“I think--”
The door bursts open revealing Ariadne, panting, hair wild and ash streaking her face. “There’s a fire,” she says, gasping between breaths. She’s clearly run the whole way here. “There’s been a fire. It’s taking out the wagons with the rides and the practise tent equipment. Dom sent me to get you.”
“Fucking hell,” Eames says, following Ariadne as she turns back from the room. Arthur follows close at their heals. It’s fully dark now, the blaze of the fire bright against a corner of the navy sky. It is smoking heavily.
“Dom’s on the phone with the fire brigade,” Ariadne says as they run towards the flames. “But we’re having problems because we’re a little far out from the town. Technically we’re in the next county over, but they haven’t got a fire station for miles and miles. They’re trying to circumvent the problem, but it’s taking time.”
“Right,” Arthur says. “Eames, I’ll take that, you get the--”
“Already on it,” Eames replies. When they’ve reached the burning wagons, Eames strides over to the gathering crowd of workers and Arthur makes a beeline for Dom.
“Get the children back. Laura, you’re in charge of keeping them away from the flames. May and Sara, get the hoses we use to wash the practise tent out. May, take the sandbags we use to hold the outside tables down in wind, and wet them down in the kitchen. Yusuf, gather up a few people and move the other wagons away so the fire doesn’t catch and spread.”
Leaving Eames to deal with containing the fire, Arthur grabs the phone from Dom. “This is Arthur Reed speaking. Put whoever is in charge on the phone, now.”
A bewildered voice replies on the other end of the line, “I am in charge.”
“If you were in charge, this would have been fixed already, because I know a man in charge of a fire brigade wouldn’t be sitting around trying to find a reason not to do his job.”
“Sir, I’m trying to do what I can, but we’re legally tied here. We have to deal with insurance claims and local government, and....”
“Look, I’m going to make a call that’s going to make all these problems go away, so when I hang up, send out your men, and by the time you get here, everything will be just fine. Got it?”
“Sorry?”
“I said, ‘Have you got that?’”
“Uh...yes.”
“Great. See you in ten, sir.”
Arthur hangs up the phone and dials another number. The conversation this time is much quicker.
“What just happened?” Ariadne asks. Dom stands next to her, watching Arthur’s phone conversation expectantly.
“Arthur wasn’t always in the circus,” he says, giving her an exhausted half-smile. Eames’ efforts are already beginning to subdue the flames. Sirens can be heard in the distance. “He’s a well connected man.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I am pretty sure I’m actually legally obliged not to say anything more.”
Ariadne looks at him doubtfully. Arthur hangs up the phone and comes towards them, handing it back to Dom. “Anyone hurt?” he asks.
“No. We’d already finished packing this all up. The crew is all accounted for. As far as I know, no one was anywhere near here when the fire started. That’s why is grew to the size it did. No one around to notice.”
Arthur’s expression darkens. “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want a look at the fire pattern after it’s put out. I’ve already had a good glance while it’s been live. Hopefully the firemen won’t mess it up too much.”
“Arthur, what do you mean?”
“Well, no one was hurt, the fire occurred in a totally abandoned area, but it’s probably totally destroyed some of our most expensive equipment. Even with the insurance this is going to cost us a fortune in both time and money.”
“You think it was arson?” Ariadne asks, looking truly shocked.
“I don’t think anything until I’ve looked at the pattern,” Arthur says shortly.
“Who would do that?”
“Who do you think?” Arthur mutters.
“Fischer,” Dom growls, clenching his fists.
“As I said, I’m not drawing any conclusions until I look at the fire.” But the grim twist of his mouth as he makes his way over to Eames to be directed towards the hoses is an answer all in itself.
---
“You smell like smoke,” Arthur says. It’s after midnight. The road is stretching wide and straight out in front of them. The rolling plains lining either side of the highway are a roiling sea in the windy, ink dark night. The caravan train created by the circus wagons moving on to the next town makes a long trail of colourful radiance that looks like a string of Christmas tree lights from far away.
“You always smell of smoke,” Eames replies, letting his hand rest on the ledge of the open car window, buffeted by a cool breeze.
“Yes, but I come by it naturally, don’t I?”
“Everything comes naturally to you, Arthur.” He says it with a fondness so deep that Arthur looks away from the road for a moment. Eames is gazing at him, eyes warm and a little sad. He looks tired. They are all exhausted after the fire disaster of the evening, but the show quite literally must to go on. They can’t miss their dates in the next town or they’ll be short of money they’re now desperate for.
“I’m sorry, by the way,” Arthur says.
“You’re sorry,” Eames says, incredulously. “What have you got to be sorry for? I’m the one who was keeping all sorts of terribly important secrets and being typically selfish and--”
“Will you just shut up for five seconds?” Arthur says, exasperated, but gentling his tone. “I’m sorry because I’m doing something really wrong if you think I’d leave you to work for Fischer’s circus.”
“What?”
“It’s ridiculous that you think I’d just drop the family I’ve built here with Dom and the kids and Yusuf and everyone else, but it crushes me that you think I care more about being famous than you. And this is all leaving aside the fact that I’m barely worth watching when we’re not performing together, because it is you that makes me great. If Fischer can’t see that, than his fucking scouting agency is absolutely useless…. God Eames, I love you. I love you. I’m never leaving.”
“I...” Eames seems to realise that words are not enough. He leans across the space between them and kisses Arthur on the corner of his mouth. Arthur keeps his hands steady on the wheel but turns his head, leaning back into the kiss for a moment, pulling away just as Eames’ hand comes up to cup the back of his head. Eames slides his hand down to rest on Arthur’s neck.
They are quiet for a long time, watching the road together with Eames’ fingers brushing the fine hairs at the nape of Arthur’s neck rhythmically.
“You good?” Eames says.
Despite everything, the circus finances on the verge of spiralling out of control, their fight, the fire, when Arthur answers “Better than,” he means it with the most profound honesty he can manage.
---
So. Here’s something not that not a lot of people know about Arthur and Eames.
They may or may not have met as Interpol agents.
As it turns out, retiring from Interpol without actually letting them know about it (read jumping ship) makes it quite difficult to find a viable career path afterwards. As it turns out, the options look something like (a) criminal or (b) circus performer. Arthur and Eames have tried their hands at both. So far, only one has really stuck.
So. Let’s just say that maybe Fischer made the wrong choice trying to take down the Dream Circus from the inside and then the outside. Not that anyone is being threatening, here.
Oh no. No one is making threats.
Arthur and Eames are much too subtle for threats.
---
Robert Fischer wakes up to the warm, sweet smell of hay and the familiar sound of father screaming at him. He levers himself up quickly, pulling strands of grass out of his hair and dusting spilled oats from his trousers.
“Robert Michael, get out of there right now and get this horse to stop kicking the door or I will have it taken out to the field and shot.”
Robert spits into his hand and does his best to smooth the front of his hair down. Royal Blue Flight is really having a fit now, kicking hard at the door until it bows out with every strike, which isn’t a surprise. He absolutely hates Maurice. None of the horses like him, of course, but Roy has a particular grudge against him.
Robert presses his palm into the joint at Roy’s hip and the horse quiets immediately and turns into the motion, sidestepping until he is face to face with Robert. “Hush now,” he mutters, lips nearly touching the dryer-lint softness of the horse’s nose. Roy stills, ears twitching out from flat back tension.
Robert slides around to the stall gate as the oats that he has been sleeping in distract Roy.
“Sir,” Robert says, letting himself out of the stall. Maurice is standing well back from the door. Robert has to squint against the glare of the sun after the cool dark of the stall. His father is wearing a dark suit and slick black leather dress shoes. He has a briefcase and a pinched expression. The fine white stable yard dust is already settling on the suit and ruining it. Robert becomes acutely aware of the fact that he is dressed in old grey cotton riding trousers and a partially ripped long sleeve t-shirt.
“You were not at the business meeting I arranged for you to attend today.”
“Correct,” he confirms. There is no use giving an explanation. Maurice is not interested in what Robert has to say. That is a lesson he learned at an early age.
“In the future,” Maurice says, “for every one task I ask of you that you fail to complete, you will miss one of your performances. If this does not prove to be ample encouragement, I will begin to take away your horses.”
“Understood, sir,” Robert says. It’s not unexpected. It’s a threat that’s been used many times before. Robert is not bad at business. In fact he’s very probably excellent at it. But he also loathes it. Every now and then he slips up and hints to his father that there’s something else he loves so much that there isn’t any room for sales figures and marketing and knocking out the competition and right away he’s on probation again. It’s for the best. Robert’s been told what to do by his father his whole life and the boundaries are familiar and safe to him. Robert doesn’t do very well with free reign. No pun intended.
His father has become much smarter in how to deal with his son in the last few years. In fact, the only real mistake he’s made yet was nearly ten years ago now, to insist that Robert get some hands on experience in the circus. Robert took to that order like he hasn’t any other before or since.
“When is the next meeting I’ll be expected at?”
“Tomorrow at ten o’clock. Don’t be late.”
“Very well.”
“Also, I expect you to be dressed appropriately. Not in that trash. You look like one of them.” Maurice gestures vaguely to the direction of the practise circus tent, which Robert takes to mean he looks like an ordinary circus performer and not the boss’s son.
“Obviously, sir.”
Maurice turns on his heel and walks away. Robert watches until he climbs into the back seat of his sharp black town car and drives off. Robert slumps down, leaning against the stall door. He can feel Roy’s hot breath snuffling at the bottom edge of the door, making Robert’s back damp.
“Glad it was only you around to see that, Roy,” Robert says. He sounds exhausted to himself. Much older than his twenty-three years, but at the same time, embarrassed of his father like a child.
He knows what people think of him. They fall into two groups. All of his father’s associates think he’s a joke and a disappointment. Their opinions shadow his father’s. They can’t understand why he is incapable of looking at the Fischer and Friend’s Circus as just another branch of the franchise, existing to make money and nothing more. But, frankly, Robert doesn’t really care what they think.
It’s the other circus folk’s opinions that matter.
The things about Robert’s life that they don’t understand are more complex and more important. He sees them staring after his father has screamed at him, threatened his horses, told him he’s worthless and useless and that everything Robert cares most about is a mistake. They think that Robert’s an idiot for sticking around. Why doesn’t he just leave? And then the flip side: if he won’t leave, what is he doing hanging around with them. He should just join the business and be what he was born for. They don’t get why he insists on never quite belonging anywhere.
Robert can’t explain it. He doesn’t quite understand himself. He can’t make them understand that once he knew his father loved him and he’d do almost anything to get back to that place. Anything except give up his horses and performing.
The show goes particularly well that evening. Sometimes having a fight with his father can snap him into some sort of higher plane for a few days. It’s probably something to do with desperation, or with a need for the kind of blind animal comfort only the horses can lend. Robert doesn’t look into it too deeply. He is an expert at not thinking too hard about anything important.
The cloudless sky and absent moon make the night very dark and cold. Robert lets the stillness wash over him like rainwater. He is brushing down one of the youngest mares, a small, sleepy chestnut, when a young girl appears out of nowhere at the stable door.
“Jesus Christ,” Robert squeaks, dropping the brush and slightly spooking the mare. He swallows his fear, knowing the horse will smell it and react badly and presses a soothing hand against the mare’s neck.
“Sorry,” the little girl says, not really sounding it. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to see the horses.”
“That’s okay,” Robert says. “But you should be careful. Horses don’t ever like being surprised.”
“I know. Ari always tells me to walk louder when I come up behind Dandelion. I just forget.”
“Isn’t it a bit late for you to be wandering around out here? Who are you parents?”
“No. I just watched the show.” The girl explains. “It was okay. Not as good as my circus obviously, but your bit was the best! Ari says it’s really hard to get horses to listen to you so well. She says you’re making it look easy but I shouldn’t believe you. It’s like your talking to them with your mind! I want to learn to do it too, but Ari says Dandelion probably won’t be very good at that kind of thing.”
“Look, not that I really mind myself, but you shouldn’t be back here. Why don’t you go…run along and find your parents.”
“My dad isn’t here, though,” the girl pouts.
Robert pinches at the bridge of his nose.
“Do you need help finding the people who are looking after you? This ‘Ari’ person, perhaps?”
“Not really,” the girl says. “I want to know about the horses some more. Can I pet her?”
Robert sighs. “One little pat on the nose, and then you have to let me help you find your parents or whoever.”
“Deal,” the girl says. She clambers onto the stool in the corner of the stall. The mare turns round to greet her and snuffles at her sweater, which makes the girl giggle. Robert smiles despite himself. She pulls a few sugar cubes out of the pocket the horse was particularly interested in.
“Cheat,” Robert says, good-naturedly. The girl grins up at him cheekily.
The girl strokes the mare’s nose for a long moment.
“Okay,” Robert says. “Time to go.”
“Fine,” the girl says, clearly disappointed. She steps down from the stool and takes the hand he offers.
“So, who are we looking for?” Robert asks, leading her in the direction of the public parking lot.
“Either an Arthur or an Eames or an Ariadne.”
“What do they look like?”
“Well… Eames is easy to see from far away, cause he’s pretty tall and he’s really English so you can pick out his voice in a crowd and he’s wearing a blue shirt today and…”
Robert begins to suspect that he’s bitten off more than he can chew when he spots three people standing in a tight circle arguing with each other in the otherwise empty lot. There are two men and one woman, turned away so that they most likely won’t notice Robert and the girl’s approach until they’re right upon them.
By the time Robert is close enough to hear them, they’re beginning to look frantic.
“Stop telling me off, Arthur. Eames was supposed to be watching her while you went out to find the--”
The girl is quickly silenced by the dark haired man, “Shhh, don’t talk about it out here, anyone could overhear. This is a fucking parking lot for Christ’s sake. Undercover 101.”
“Well sorry if I’m not trained up to your satisfaction, but it’s not my fault she’s missing so don’t try to take it out on me.”
“The two of you ought to calm down. She’s probably just gone to see about the horses and she’ll turn up any minute.” The broader of the two men says in a low-voiced Englishman’s drawl.
“We don’t have a minute to spare, and you’re the one who lost her so if you could just keep your mouth shut for one second and let me think,” the other man snaps.
“How are we going to get into the office-”
“Ariadne, don’t talk about it,” both men say in unison.
Robert is concentrating so hard of figuring out exactly what they’re talking about besides the missing girl he doesn’t notice the curb coming up and accidentally drags the girl right over the edge. She trips up, crying out as her knees scrape against the gravel.
The group of three turn instantly and the little girl starts sobbing, huge gulps that Robert knows are as much from surprise as pain.
“Aw, fuck,” Robert says, “I mean, crap, I mean, no, sorry. Hey, shhh, you’re gonna be okay.”
He picks her up and her arms go around his neck like an octopus even as she cries, “No, no I don’t want you, I want Arthur.”
“I’m sorry, shhh, shhh, I’m sorry. You’ll be okay.”
The group is quickly crossing the parking lot now. “Pippa?” the woman calls, “Pippa, is that you.”
“Ari,” she girl says, and begins to cry louder, somehow managing to make Robert feel like a total monster even though he hasn’t really done anything wrong.
The dark haired man reaches them first, holding out his arms. Pippa breaks away from Robert, lunging across the space between them to wrap herself even more tightly around the other man. She buries her face in his neck.
“Come on, Pip, it was only a little fall, you’ll be alright,” the English one says, coming up from behind to rest one hand on her shaking back.
“I’m sorry I ran off, Eames,” she says, unwilling to look up at him.
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t worry about that. Is that why you’re crying?”
“Arthur was gonna yell at you,” she mumbles into the man Robert presumes must be Arthur’s neck.
“It won’t be the first or last time,” he says, soothingly. “No tears, right. You’re too grown up for that.”
She sniffles a few times and allows Arthur to shift her around so she’s propped against his hip. Arthur wipes at the tear tracks running down her cheek and smoothes her hair down. “All right?” he asks.
Pippa nods solemnly.
“Can I put you down so Ari can have a look at you knees?”
Another nod. He sets her down gently and finally turns, seeming to only now notice Robert.
“I’m so sorry,” Robert says. “I was trying to work out if you looked like the guardians she described and then there was the curb and she just went right over.”
“No worries,” Arthur says. “Thanks for bringing her back over. I hope she wasn’t getting into trouble?”
“She wanted to see the horses.”
“Ah, I should have guessed.”
“Told you,” the other man, who Robert presumes must be Eames says, sullenly. Arthur rolls his eyes.
“Arthur Reed,” says Arthur, holding out his hand to shake.
“Robert Fischer,” Robert replies. The name seems familiar to him, but he can’t remember where from.
“Yes, I know,” says Arthur.
“Right, obviously,” Robert says, feeling the beginnings of a blush. “The performance.”
“Yes,” Arthur says, he pauses for a moment, as if trying to make a decision, and then, slowly, he adds, “But I also know your father.”
Robert is unable to prevent himself from grimacing. “Oh,” he says. “Of course. My dad. I guess I better be going. I need to finish putting the horses up. I’ll be busy with the business tomorrow, so I won’t have time then.”
“The business? I didn’t know you were interested in that side of things,” Arthur says.
Robert wonders where on earth Arthur could know his father from that would give him that impression. It seems like Maurice spends a good half of his time with Robert trying to prove to other people that the whole horse thing is just a hobby and that his true interests lie with the annual sales figures and the merchandising distribution and whatever the fuck else he’s supposed to care about.
“Umm, yeah,” Robert says. Then, going out on a limb, he adds, “You must know what he’s like. I’ve got to take time with the horses where I can get it.”
Arthur smiles. It’s a thin and sharp thing, like the edge of a knife. For some reason, the incongruous thought that Arthur must be very intelligent pops into his head.
“I certainly do,” Arthur says. He turns around briefly and shares a look with Eames, the kind of look that’s a whole conversation. “Listen Robert,” Arthur says. “If you ever want a chance for some more free time, maybe you should give me a call.” He hands Robert a business card he hadn’t even noticed Arthur take out of his pocket.
“Are you asking me out on a date?” Robert asks, genuinely bewildered.
Eames laughs, but Arthur just looks at him, disconcerting.
“No,” Arthur says. “I’m offering you a job.”
They turn away as one, and Robert watches them as they cross the parking lot. Eames wraps his arm around Arthur’s waist and Ariadne holds hands with Pippa. Only Pippa turns back to look at him, offering him a half wave that Robert returns almost unconsciously.
He has the distinct feeling he was being offered something much greater than just a job and that Arthur knew it.
---
“What was that?” Ariadne asks once they’re in the car, headed back to the circus. She leans forward from the back so that her head is poking through the two front seats. Phillipa shifts on her lap. “Are you even kidding me. What happened to the plan? I thought we were going to steal the records from Fischer’s office so we can work out how to make it look like he’s embezzling. We just…we just talked to his kid and left?”
“Oh darling,” Eames says. “Welcome to a life of crime. Lesson one is to go with the flow.”
“Tell her lesson two, Eames,” Arthur says, with his sharp smile.
Eames grins as he answers, his teeth catching the flash of headlights from an oncoming car. “Lesson two is always play the long con when you get the chance.”
---
Months pass and a day doesn’t go by without Robert taking that card out of his pocket and turning it over and over in his hands. He looks the circus up, reads reviews, watches one of their performances online. Ariadne, he learns, is the newest performer, started only a week before they’d met in the parking lot. The arch of her foot in the air and the tiny glimpse of empty space between the horse and her hands as she flips, before she fits back into position like she is a part of whole - he nearly weeps. Arthur and Eames - shadows in an orange, half-light glow steal his breath. The edges of the business card begin to fray.
He reads an article in the paper about how the Dream Circus nearly lost one of their necessary permits on a mere paperwork technicality pointed out by an anonymous letter. He clenches his fist around the business card. The number in now unreadable, but Robert has it memorised.
Men in high positions in his father’s company begin to retire without notice or reason. The company looses shareholder faith. Robert spends the day in a business meeting about increasing revenue and his father suggests they figure out how to stop bothering with the measures they take to comply with animal rights. Wouldn’t it be more cost effective just to threaten an official every now and then, Maurice asks?
Robert gets drunk that night and composes an angry letter to his father. He doesn’t do anything with it, just crumples it up and shoves it in the drawer. It makes him sick, what a coward he’s turned out to be. Or maybe that’s just the whiskey.
In the morning, the letter is no longer in his desk and Roy is no longer in his stable. Robert is gone by nightfall.
---
Dom runs into a horse as he leaves his trailer. He has a curious sense of Déjà vu. “You aren’t Dandelion,” he says, looking the horse up and down. It’s dapple-grey and eating the paperwork he’s dropped everywhere. He looks up. A young man with posture that’s too stiff and eyes that are too blue, like the Gulf of Mexico in July, stares forlornly back at him. Four more horses crowd together at his shoulder.
“Oh no,” Dom says. “We do not have room for this.”
“Hello,” he says. He’s soft-spoken and polite, but there is a sense of pride about him. A self-righteousness he was trained to - it doesn’t come to him naturally. He comes from money and carries it uncomfortably. “My name is Robert Fischer and I’d like to join your circus.”
Jesus Christ, Dom really needs to see a doctor about these fucking headaches.
---
“Have you seen him yet?” Ariadne asks.
“Nope,” Eames says, peeling posters of their old merchandise off a wooden board. The new shipment came in this morning and apparently Eames has been delegated to organise it. James is balanced on his hip, sleepily sucking his thumb.
“Your sister would be teasing you so much right now if she saw that,” Ariadne points out. James glares and stubbornly keeps his thumb in his mouth.
“If looks could kill,” Eames murmurs good-naturedly.
“You must know a few rumours, at least.”
“Well,” Eames demurs. “It’ll cost you…”
“What?” Ariadne asks. She puts on a fake pout. “I thought we were friends.”
“Which job are you on right now?”
“Passing out schedules for this week’s performances and breakfast and dinner shifts.” Ariadne answers, gesturing to her armful of papers.
“Brilliant!” Eames grins. “Someday you’re going to have to teach me how you always get the good jobs. Anyway, I’ll tell you what I know if you switch with me.”
“Fine.” Ariadne rolls her eyes.
“Right,” Eames says, lowering his voice into that particular tone reserved for gossip. “Arthur’s been in and out of the meeting with Dom all day. Robert is definitely all set for joining up.”
“But how are we going to pay for the horses and everything. He’ll bring a bit more revenue, especially since he’s the golden boy of Fischer and Friends, but we’ve only just begun to make ends meet again.”
“That’s the brilliant bit. In return for a performance spot, space for his little herd of horses and his own wagon, he’s going to invest the majority of his trust fund into the circus. They’ve got Saito on conference call to set up the business side of things. Robert also already owns a good bit of his father’s company which he’s going to sell off on the open market to weaken his father’s power over Fischer and Friends.”
“Wow,” Ariadne says, honestly a little astounded. “This is some serious shit, isn’t it?”
“I haven’t even gotten to the best part.” Eames announces, gleeful. “Robert’s got a head for business, you know. He thinks I’m right about touring Europe and he told Dom that’s he’s been going about advertising all wrong. Finally someone with some fucking sense!”
“You think Dom will listen?”
Eames looks thoughtful. “It’s too soon to tell right now. Dom’s never been very good at being told what to do, but at the same time the biggest problem he’s had listening to Arthur and me is that Mal is always lurking there in the background of every conversation like a ghost of the mistakes we made together. Having new blood will be good for us.”
“Aren’t I new blood?” Ariadne asks, sniffing, but not really offended. She sets the weekly schedules down on the tables and picks up the glitter glue Eames had been carefully working round the edge of each new merchandise poster.
“The very newest,” Eames answers, voice twisting on ‘new’. Ariadne gets the message. For all she is a rising star, if she has learned nothing else since coming to the circus, it was that she had first arrived knowing nothing at all.
“Ariadne?” A voice behind them asks.
Ariadne’s blood runs cold. She feels her hands begin to shake. Eames notices immediately and grabs hold of them, looking past her, over her shoulder at the voice.
“Mother?” Ariadne whispers. Eames’s grip tightens around her fingers. Slowly, she turns around.
It’s been nearly six months, but they don’t look any different. Even her father’s beard is trimmed exactly the way she remembers, close and dark. The beard of a man who pretends at carelessness, but is, in fact, entirely obsessed with controlling everything down to the last minute detail.
“Father,” she says, a toneless acknowledgement.
“Ariadne, my dear, we’ve been so worried,” he mother holds out her arms as though she honestly expects Ariadne to run into them.
She hears Eames make a noise behind her, a long, low whistle in a minor key. She recognises it immediately. It’s a warning noise he and Arthur use in performance, if one of them notices something wrong with their equipment or has an unsteady grip.
Arthur appears around the corner nearly instantly. He stands out of sight of her parents, examining the situation, planning, forming the escape route. It’s a look she’s come to know well and one she is sure Arthur learned in that other mysterious life he led before he became a performer.
“We’ve come to bring you home Ariadne,” her father says. “It has taken us so long to find you. But we’re here now. I am sorry that you felt the need to test us, but we can forgive you.”
“The last thing I am interested in is your forgiveness,” Ariadne says tightly. She wonders how it is possible for a man who has known her all her life to misunderstand her so completely.
“My sweet, we’ve missed you. Please.” Ariadne thinks her mother sounds like she’d stood in front of a mirror to practise her lines. It makes her nauseous.
Eames’ grip begins to loosen and Ariadne holds on convulsively. He is having some sort of silent conversation with Arthur over her parent’s shoulders.
“Why are you really here?” Ariadne asks. “You’ve had six months. I definitely didn’t cover my trail that well. Tell me, why now?”
“You turn eighteen in two months, dear heart. Don’t you want to become a grown woman at home? We want to show society our beautiful daughter. We’ll have a party. You can wear a white dress. It’ll be the event of the year.”
“It isn’t the nineteenth century anymore, mother. Grow up. And anyway, I know that isn’t the reason. I’ve always been little more than an embarrassment in front of your friends.”
“You wanted to go to a good university. My connections at Yale-” he father begins.
“Tell me the fucking truth,” Ariadne spits.
“Ariadne, dove, your grandmother’s will-”
Ariadne smiles. “Oh, I see now.” She lets go of Eames’ hand. They don’t have anything on her after all. It’s just about money. She should have guessed. Even Arthur looks a bit relieved. “You wanted to bring me back into the fold before I came of age for my inheritance. Well, tough luck. Maybe you should have thought of that before you stopped speaking to me or looking at me or barely even making sure I was fed as soon as it became clear I’d never be the docile debutante you wanted in a daughter. Give me a son, or a puppet and I was neither.”
“If you want that money-” her father snaps. Showing his true colours now, at least.
“If I want that money I just have to wait another two months. It’s mine and you can’t get your hands on it. I know. I had it checked out and explained to me.”
Her father looks livid. “By whom? By your white trash boyfriend there, with the tattoos and that grubby cap and the unwashed child, doubtlessly the offspring of one of his previous sluts?”
Ariadne turns to see whom he could possibly be referring to. After a moment, she realises he’s talking about Eames. It makes her laugh. Apparently it’s funny to Arthur as well because he begins to laugh too. He’s standing close to Ariadne’s mother, having approached silently from behind, and she nearly shrieks as she catches sight of him at her shoulder.
Ariadne is still busy trying to reconcile ‘white trash’ with Eames, who paints like Monet on lazy Sunday afternoons and Miro when he’s drunk and Rembrant when he’s trying to get on Arthur’s good side; Eames, who makes this incredible avocado and grapefruit salad with lemon-cilantro dressing; Eames, who has never missed an episode of ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’; Eames, who reads comic books, who is so English he trips over it; who claims he did his post-doctorate at MIT, and maybe isn’t even lying about it.
It is as though her parents are caricatures of the cruel and wealthy and they can’t help but see every one else in the same two-dimensional plane of existence. For the first time in her life, it doesn’t make Ariadne angry. It makes her sad.
“No, “ she says, “Not by Eames. By his boyfriend.”
They aren’t even listening.
“I’m not going back with you,” she says. “And you can’t make me.”
“You aren’t eighteen yet,” her father says. “By law, I can.”
“Unfortunately not,” Arthur says, crossing in front of Ariadne’s parents to stand shoulder to shoulder with Eames. “Ariadne is an emancipated minor.”
“What?” he mother says, stunned.
“Yep,” Ariadne chirps.
“Surely we would have been informed?” her father demands.
“She had the paperwork sent to your office. Your secretary who quit a few months ago is a friend of mine,” Eames explains.
“You have no right to -!”
“No, you have no right,” Eames says. “Now if you don’t mind turning yourself around there and heading right back to your car. It’d be a shame if I had to rough you up in front of my illicit love-spawn, here.” Eames shifts James’ weight on his hip.
“Ewww, Eames,” he says, around his thumb.
Ariadne’s father grabs his wife by the sleeve of her coat and turns around, tugging her after. “Let’s go,” he says sharply when she fails to hurry.
Ariadne stands frozen as they leave. She feels Arthur’s hand on her shoulder once they’ve disappeared from sight. “You alright?” he asks, gently.
She shakes herself, smiling up at him. “Better than,” she admits. It’s a surprise to her, how utterly right she feels with the world.
Now, Eames will complain that it isn’t fair he always has to play the muscle while Arthur gets to play the man with the answers and Ariadne will ask what the hell they think they’re talking about, don’t they know they aren’t international spies anymore and Eames will tell her cryptically that once a spy is always a spy and she’ll finally get him to promise to teach her to pick locks. They’ll walk to the ticket office and Phillipa will be trying to alphabetise the bills from Z to A. Dom will be fighting with someone on the phone about ordering more oats and hay and Robert will be sitting in the middle of the chaos looking utterly lost. Ariadne will think, is that what I looked like when I first arrived? She’ll wonder when she stopped looking so afraid all the time. She’ll want to say to Robert, stop worrying, you’re home now. But she’ll hold her silence.
There are no shortcuts to teaching the lesson of found family, but it will happen for Robert just like it happened for her. They’ll teach him that from the outside, the life of true circus folk looks like a story of what gets left behind, but from the inside it’s about being one piece of a whole that will always carry him through even as he carries it - it’s about being the wind.
---
See the review:
---
Click for article:
[See below for full text of Independent Article]
Dom Cobb’s Dream Circus is on the rise
Where did they come from, where are they going and can one motley crew of American Circus performers who were nearly unknown a few months ago really bring a love of the circus back into the mainstream?
In recent decades, the circus has come to be something of a lost art. Certainly Cirque du Soleil will pull a really spectacular new show out of the bag every few years, there are a few longstanding circuses around the world with enough nostalgic value to continue pulling in crowds and for the last few years, Fischer and Friends has been lording over their corner of the American entertainment market. But now there are new players on the scene.
I say new, but in fact, Dream Circus has been around for nearly ten years as a small travelling carnival winding it’s way back and forth across the US. Dream Circus’s owner, Mr Saito claims that if the circus continues its trend of success in this years’ venue shows across the UK and in select stages throughout Europe, they may bring their road show along next season, which will include traditional rides, smaller performance tents to go alongside the big top show and other attractions. Dream Circus’ recent rise, Mr Saito claims, is almost as much to do with better handling of the business side of the company as it is to do with changes made to the show’s acts.
Over the weekend, I got a chance to see the Dream Circus in the opening night of their show Inception at the Royal Albert Hall. It was honestly the most spellbinding theatrical performance I have seen this year. Dream Circus inexplicably manages to embody a brand new twist on modern carnival shows that steps distinctly away from the precise art of Cirque or the mass-produced, sickly sweet cheer of Fischer and Friends while at the same time capturing a magic that transports you instantly back to child-like wonder.
The performance has most of the familiar elements of classic circus performance - clowns, tightrope walkers, a magician, a flock of doves, equestrian tricks, fire dancing, and a trapeze artist all ruled over by the clever and whimsical ringmaster Dominic Cobb. It is not the individual elements of the show that create its truly unique allure, but the unexpected way they are put together.
Equestrian vaulter Ariadne Westmere is the newcomer, only nineteen and with no previous professional experience, yet the vitality and subtle enthusiasm brought to her performances show why she is a fast-rising star, already being courted by the Voltige giants of France. Yet Westmere shows no signs of being tempted away from Dream Circus. In their last few shows, Westmere has begun to do a small section of her performance in a double act with fellow horse performer, Robert Fischer. Fischer’s horse whispering was renowned long before he joined the Dream Circus as possibly the only redeeming quality of Fischer and Friends Circus Extravaganza. His split from father Maurice Fischer and defection to Dream Circus was huge news in the entertainment world for months, and probably brought a lot of press attention to Dream Circus. Luckily, it seems the attention was well deserved. Since moving companies, Robert Fischer’s act has gone from the sharp-edged and short-lived bursts of brilliance in otherwise nearly timid performances to something like release, an unfolding of creativity and control over his horses that never seems overbearing, only delicate.
Despite the strength of Dream Circus’s many other performers, the undeniable backbone of the show is the fire-dancing and trapeze-ing duo, Arthur Reed and Eliot Eames.
After last May’s Interpol-Wikileaks scandal, there was a host of rumours claiming the pair were ex-Interpol agents, now untouchable thanks to the released information. Some claim the rumors were actually started by the Dream Circus as a marketing hoax. Neither Reed nor Eames have ever confirmed or denied the reports. Yet, it isn’t difficult to see why such seemingly ridiculous speculation gained ground so quickly after watching them perform together.
There is something dangerous, almost chilling about the utter ease with which Eames floats through the air through walls of flame spun effortlessly into existence by Reed’s hands. The duo’s most recent trick is to ask a member of the audience to tell one of the two to do some previously unknown stunt, which the other must intuit in order to avoid both of their imminent fiery deaths. It seems utterly impossible unless they can actually read each other’s minds. There is something devastating about their performances, an element that seems unplanned. Every movement is like the elegant afterthought of its predecessor. It would come across as messy if Reed and Eames didn’t tie everything together so tightly between themselves with striking chemistry.
But then, that does seem to be the true charm of the Dream Circus. Dream Circus shows are never accused of looking polished or exact. No two shows are ever the same. The order, the funniest and most astounding moments of each show, the acts themselves have a spontaneous, home-grown quality about them. The performers seem to be in a constant state of flux halfway between dysfunctional family and heartbreak.
I caught up with Dominic Cobb, manager of the circus as well as its ringmaster, for a few minutes during opening night’s after-party. The gathering was relatively small, mostly performers and guests and only a few fellow members of the press. Cobb was standing towards the back of the room, on his own. “What’s on your mind, Mr Cobb?” I asked, trying for joviality. He turned, surprised, perhaps. I introduced myself, and repeated my question.
“Watching my daughter,” he said, gesturing. Cobb’s two children are known for occasionally appearing with the clowns at the beginning of shows. Some speculate that the death of Cobb’s wife and mother of his children, Mallorie during a tightrope performance in the second night of the company’s first attempt at a European tour nearly five years ago is the real reason for Dream Circus’ long period of relative anonymity.
I turn to follow his gaze. The girl is perched on the edge of the bar, sandwiched safely between Arthur and Eames (as he prefers to be called), with Ariadne standing near. As we watch, Arthur leans forward to wipe some of the glitter from their performance costuming off Eames’ cheekbone and Ariadne offers the girl a tiny sip of her champagne. Robert appears a moment later, looking like he’s about to scold Ariadne, but instead offers the girl a little sip of his own red wine. The girl makes a face and the adults gathered around her laugh.
“I’m proud of the life I’ve built for my children,” Dom tells me. “I never thought I could be, a few years ago. That’s all you really need to know about us.” He shook my hand and crossed over to the little group of performers, clasping Robert on the shoulder and ruffling his daughter’s hair.
He was right, of course. What makes Dream Circus so great is that the people involved aren’t doing it to put on a show; they’re doing it to build a life.
LUCY FLETCHER
---
[Here, I also drew a poster for the pre-Europe tour: (CLICK HERE for a very badly drawn horse and Arthur in spandex cut too low!). Hopefully once Robert sets them straight, they hire someone not drunk to do the advertising.]
fin
End Notes:
1. My campaign to let every piece end in SHMOOP is successful yet again. TROLLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.
2. Sorry about how Ariadne’s life was like cliché no. 345 from the book of tragic pasts. At least I tried to make her an interesting comparison of similarities with Robert??? Is that excuse enough??? No. No, I know. It’s a circus fic, alright. Just be glad I didn’t have her under the threat of being sent to a nunnery, which was genuinely my first plan.
3. In case I was a bit vague about what exactly Robert does in his show, he is a horse whisperer, kind of like Jean-Francois Pignon. Here is a youtube video of a bit of one of his shows: (CLICKY).
4. That was the very last of the half-started inception fic documents on my comp that I intended to definitely finish at some future date. :(
5. Title lyrics are from White Lies, Farewell to the Fairground.
Link back to part one: (HERE).
(x-posted to eames_arthur)
---
“If you drop that, I will make your life a living nightmare,” Yusuf calls as Eames stumbles under the weight of the trick magician’s trunk he’s carrying.
“You know you’re not meant to put actual bodies in these things,” Eames manages to grunt out.
“It’s all the swords I store in there. Sorry.” He doesn’t really sound very sorry at all. In fact, he looks like he’s really enjoying watching Eames haul all his equipment out to one of the trucks while he carefully packs up some of the so-called ‘delicate instruments’ of his art, which appear to mainly be colourful glass bottles useful only in terms of decoration. Yusuf’s cat climbs out of the box, looking quite irritated to find that his sleeping place is being hauled around and leaps off, significantly lightening the load.
“You ought to consider putting that beast on a diet,” Eames says, releasing a breath of relief as he sets the trunk down in the back of one of the many vans.
Yusuf sniffs, as though insulted. “Why don’t you go help Dom with the ticket office. It’s getting a bit late now, and you’re too lazy by a half to do this properly. Send me that new girl, she looks quite efficient.”
Eames agrees, ambling away. He’s always delegated to helping whoever asks for it on packing up day because Arthur has very particular ideas about how their things should be stored properly and he insists that Eames only gets in the way. It’s a somewhat recurring theme. Eames is not really well known for his organisational skills.
After sending Ariadne out to help Yusuf, Eames heads out to the ticket office, which has been loaded onto its trailer and attached to a car.
“Dom?” Eames asks, clambering through to door, which is a bit awkward to reach without the usual accompanying stairs.
“Eames?” Dom asks. “Is that you? Maybe you can make some sort of sense of this. Your degree is in math, isn’t it?”
“Yep, with a minor in theoretical physics,” Eames notes, snapping the desk lamps on to see better in the late afternoon gloom. “That doesn’t really lend itself to accountancy particularly well. Let’s see anyhow.”
Dom is leaning over a folding table completely covered in papers. “Mal always made it look so easy,” he says. Eames is glad to note that the guilt in his voice is nearly gone. Every time he mentions her, it seems to be with a slightly lighter heart. “I just need someone to look at this and confirm to me that we’re totally fucked.”
Eames glances through the sheaf of figures that Dom hands to him. “Is this the profit total, right here?” he asks, gesturing. “Saito is not going to be very happy.”
“Ugh,” Dom says, clasping his hand over his eyes. “There’s nothing we can do against the competition of Fischer and Friends Circus Extravaganza. They’ve got established shows on the East and West coasts, and they’ve got all the animal acts. It doesn’t matter how authentic we are, or that we get better reviews nine out of ten times. The sheer size of Fischer’s company leaves us in the dust.”
“I keep telling you, if you want to make money, we’ve got to tour the European circuit. The interest is just bigger. We could draw crowds twice the size.”
“With what money?” Dom snaps. “With what fucking money am I gonna ship the whole company across the ocean?”
Eames fights to keep the sneer off his face. It’s no use rising to Dom’s bait. Arthur would be pissed if they got in yet another fight. “I’m just saying. Saito has been asking you about it for years, I don’t get why you won’t even consider it. Fischer’s sucking the market dry in America, we need to hit a niche or we need to get out.”
“It was the show in France that killed her, Eames. If I hadn’t promised her France...” Dom says, staring at the floor resolutely.
Eames feels his fists clench, nails digging into the skin of his palms. “No,” Eames says, icily quiet. “No, it wasn’t, Dom. Mal killed herself because she was too ambitious and because she wasn’t using any fucking safety gear like a careless child, and I loved her and it shouldn’t have happened, but if you use her as an excuse to me one more fucking time I’m going to--”
“What? What are you going do? As if everything is roses in your personal life right now. I know you fucked up your shoulder because you were distracted by that letter from Fischer’s company.”
Eames’s mouth drops open in surprise.
“Oh, yeah. What, you think I don’t notice when Fischer’s people come scouting around. Well, I’m not an idiot. You fucked up because you feel guilty that you’re considering going. About leaving us. Yusuf, me and the kids, the whole team. Arthur. Thinking maybe you’ll just take the fame and fortune and disappear? When are you even going tell him? When are you going to break his heart?”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, so shut the hell up,” Eames says, voice even lower than before, becoming quieter at the same rate that Dom’s pitch increases. He turns on his heal, throwing the papers down on the desk and wrenching the office door open to leave.
Arthur stands on the other side, hands fisted at his sides, knuckles white.
“Arthur!” Eames says, feeling his stomach drop. “Arthur. Shit. Look, I was going to tell you about the letter, I just hadn’t--”
“Dom, could you leave us alone for a minute?” Arthur asks, voice deceptively even.
“Uh, I guess?”
“Thanks.”
Dom steps out of the trailer, jumping to the ground and pushing the door shut behind him.
“I already knew,” Arthur says quietly.
“What?” Eames asks, shell-shocked.
“I know about the letter from Fischer’s Circus.” Arthur repeats. “I found it when I was looking through your bedside table for some scratch paper. I thought...I don’t know, I don’t really have a very good excuse for reading your mail, but I didn’t think it would be important. I just thought, ‘how odd, Eames has a letter from Fischer’. That’s why I’ve been mad at you for the last few days. I didn’t even think that you were considering going. I just...fuck, at first I just assumed you wouldn’t, I don’t know, I just...fuck.” He looks sick at the thought and Eames honestly wants to punch himself in the face for putting that expression there.
“You would have been right, Arthur. You’re right to assume I didn’t even think of leaving. But I’m afraid that you don’t know the full story?”
“What more could there possibly be?” Arthur asks.
Eames feels conflicted for a moment. He wishes he could just tell Arthur to forget the whole thing. Then he sticks his hand into his pocket and draws out a slightly crumpled envelope.
Arthur is silent as he takes it to read, face almost perfectly inscrutable. Once he has come to end of the letter he folds it up again, puts it back into the envelope and tucks it into his own pocket.
“So you see, I can’t really blame you for looking at my post, can I?”
“No,” Arthur says, face still unreadable. “I suppose not.”
“I called Fischer’s people and explained to them that we wouldn’t want to be separated and that offering you a place in the West coast show and me a place in the East coast one was great but that we’d be more likely to consider it if we were placed together, even if we weren’t performing together. Not because I wanted us to go, understand. Just because I wanted to have all the options ready when I spoke to you. But they said no. Apparently they’ve just got those two specific openings and they said their audience is too mainstream to appreciate the “quirkiness” of a fire-breather-trapeze double act.”
“And?” Arthur asks, apparently somehow sensing that there is more to the story.
“When I first met you, Arthur, all you ever talked about was being at the top. Being the very best at what you do. You’ve really finally got the chance to do it, but I couldn’t bear the thought of you leaving. I was trying...I’ve been trying. It was easier when we weren’t performing together but, Jesus Christ, after last night. I don’t know how I was going to make myself tell you.”
“That’s it?” Arthur asks.
“That’s it,” Eames confirms.
“I think--”
The door bursts open revealing Ariadne, panting, hair wild and ash streaking her face. “There’s a fire,” she says, gasping between breaths. She’s clearly run the whole way here. “There’s been a fire. It’s taking out the wagons with the rides and the practise tent equipment. Dom sent me to get you.”
“Fucking hell,” Eames says, following Ariadne as she turns back from the room. Arthur follows close at their heals. It’s fully dark now, the blaze of the fire bright against a corner of the navy sky. It is smoking heavily.
“Dom’s on the phone with the fire brigade,” Ariadne says as they run towards the flames. “But we’re having problems because we’re a little far out from the town. Technically we’re in the next county over, but they haven’t got a fire station for miles and miles. They’re trying to circumvent the problem, but it’s taking time.”
“Right,” Arthur says. “Eames, I’ll take that, you get the--”
“Already on it,” Eames replies. When they’ve reached the burning wagons, Eames strides over to the gathering crowd of workers and Arthur makes a beeline for Dom.
“Get the children back. Laura, you’re in charge of keeping them away from the flames. May and Sara, get the hoses we use to wash the practise tent out. May, take the sandbags we use to hold the outside tables down in wind, and wet them down in the kitchen. Yusuf, gather up a few people and move the other wagons away so the fire doesn’t catch and spread.”
Leaving Eames to deal with containing the fire, Arthur grabs the phone from Dom. “This is Arthur Reed speaking. Put whoever is in charge on the phone, now.”
A bewildered voice replies on the other end of the line, “I am in charge.”
“If you were in charge, this would have been fixed already, because I know a man in charge of a fire brigade wouldn’t be sitting around trying to find a reason not to do his job.”
“Sir, I’m trying to do what I can, but we’re legally tied here. We have to deal with insurance claims and local government, and....”
“Look, I’m going to make a call that’s going to make all these problems go away, so when I hang up, send out your men, and by the time you get here, everything will be just fine. Got it?”
“Sorry?”
“I said, ‘Have you got that?’”
“Uh...yes.”
“Great. See you in ten, sir.”
Arthur hangs up the phone and dials another number. The conversation this time is much quicker.
“What just happened?” Ariadne asks. Dom stands next to her, watching Arthur’s phone conversation expectantly.
“Arthur wasn’t always in the circus,” he says, giving her an exhausted half-smile. Eames’ efforts are already beginning to subdue the flames. Sirens can be heard in the distance. “He’s a well connected man.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I am pretty sure I’m actually legally obliged not to say anything more.”
Ariadne looks at him doubtfully. Arthur hangs up the phone and comes towards them, handing it back to Dom. “Anyone hurt?” he asks.
“No. We’d already finished packing this all up. The crew is all accounted for. As far as I know, no one was anywhere near here when the fire started. That’s why is grew to the size it did. No one around to notice.”
Arthur’s expression darkens. “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want a look at the fire pattern after it’s put out. I’ve already had a good glance while it’s been live. Hopefully the firemen won’t mess it up too much.”
“Arthur, what do you mean?”
“Well, no one was hurt, the fire occurred in a totally abandoned area, but it’s probably totally destroyed some of our most expensive equipment. Even with the insurance this is going to cost us a fortune in both time and money.”
“You think it was arson?” Ariadne asks, looking truly shocked.
“I don’t think anything until I’ve looked at the pattern,” Arthur says shortly.
“Who would do that?”
“Who do you think?” Arthur mutters.
“Fischer,” Dom growls, clenching his fists.
“As I said, I’m not drawing any conclusions until I look at the fire.” But the grim twist of his mouth as he makes his way over to Eames to be directed towards the hoses is an answer all in itself.
---
“You smell like smoke,” Arthur says. It’s after midnight. The road is stretching wide and straight out in front of them. The rolling plains lining either side of the highway are a roiling sea in the windy, ink dark night. The caravan train created by the circus wagons moving on to the next town makes a long trail of colourful radiance that looks like a string of Christmas tree lights from far away.
“You always smell of smoke,” Eames replies, letting his hand rest on the ledge of the open car window, buffeted by a cool breeze.
“Yes, but I come by it naturally, don’t I?”
“Everything comes naturally to you, Arthur.” He says it with a fondness so deep that Arthur looks away from the road for a moment. Eames is gazing at him, eyes warm and a little sad. He looks tired. They are all exhausted after the fire disaster of the evening, but the show quite literally must to go on. They can’t miss their dates in the next town or they’ll be short of money they’re now desperate for.
“I’m sorry, by the way,” Arthur says.
“You’re sorry,” Eames says, incredulously. “What have you got to be sorry for? I’m the one who was keeping all sorts of terribly important secrets and being typically selfish and--”
“Will you just shut up for five seconds?” Arthur says, exasperated, but gentling his tone. “I’m sorry because I’m doing something really wrong if you think I’d leave you to work for Fischer’s circus.”
“What?”
“It’s ridiculous that you think I’d just drop the family I’ve built here with Dom and the kids and Yusuf and everyone else, but it crushes me that you think I care more about being famous than you. And this is all leaving aside the fact that I’m barely worth watching when we’re not performing together, because it is you that makes me great. If Fischer can’t see that, than his fucking scouting agency is absolutely useless…. God Eames, I love you. I love you. I’m never leaving.”
“I...” Eames seems to realise that words are not enough. He leans across the space between them and kisses Arthur on the corner of his mouth. Arthur keeps his hands steady on the wheel but turns his head, leaning back into the kiss for a moment, pulling away just as Eames’ hand comes up to cup the back of his head. Eames slides his hand down to rest on Arthur’s neck.
They are quiet for a long time, watching the road together with Eames’ fingers brushing the fine hairs at the nape of Arthur’s neck rhythmically.
“You good?” Eames says.
Despite everything, the circus finances on the verge of spiralling out of control, their fight, the fire, when Arthur answers “Better than,” he means it with the most profound honesty he can manage.
---
So. Here’s something not that not a lot of people know about Arthur and Eames.
They may or may not have met as Interpol agents.
As it turns out, retiring from Interpol without actually letting them know about it (read jumping ship) makes it quite difficult to find a viable career path afterwards. As it turns out, the options look something like (a) criminal or (b) circus performer. Arthur and Eames have tried their hands at both. So far, only one has really stuck.
So. Let’s just say that maybe Fischer made the wrong choice trying to take down the Dream Circus from the inside and then the outside. Not that anyone is being threatening, here.
Oh no. No one is making threats.
Arthur and Eames are much too subtle for threats.
---
Robert Fischer wakes up to the warm, sweet smell of hay and the familiar sound of father screaming at him. He levers himself up quickly, pulling strands of grass out of his hair and dusting spilled oats from his trousers.
“Robert Michael, get out of there right now and get this horse to stop kicking the door or I will have it taken out to the field and shot.”
Robert spits into his hand and does his best to smooth the front of his hair down. Royal Blue Flight is really having a fit now, kicking hard at the door until it bows out with every strike, which isn’t a surprise. He absolutely hates Maurice. None of the horses like him, of course, but Roy has a particular grudge against him.
Robert presses his palm into the joint at Roy’s hip and the horse quiets immediately and turns into the motion, sidestepping until he is face to face with Robert. “Hush now,” he mutters, lips nearly touching the dryer-lint softness of the horse’s nose. Roy stills, ears twitching out from flat back tension.
Robert slides around to the stall gate as the oats that he has been sleeping in distract Roy.
“Sir,” Robert says, letting himself out of the stall. Maurice is standing well back from the door. Robert has to squint against the glare of the sun after the cool dark of the stall. His father is wearing a dark suit and slick black leather dress shoes. He has a briefcase and a pinched expression. The fine white stable yard dust is already settling on the suit and ruining it. Robert becomes acutely aware of the fact that he is dressed in old grey cotton riding trousers and a partially ripped long sleeve t-shirt.
“You were not at the business meeting I arranged for you to attend today.”
“Correct,” he confirms. There is no use giving an explanation. Maurice is not interested in what Robert has to say. That is a lesson he learned at an early age.
“In the future,” Maurice says, “for every one task I ask of you that you fail to complete, you will miss one of your performances. If this does not prove to be ample encouragement, I will begin to take away your horses.”
“Understood, sir,” Robert says. It’s not unexpected. It’s a threat that’s been used many times before. Robert is not bad at business. In fact he’s very probably excellent at it. But he also loathes it. Every now and then he slips up and hints to his father that there’s something else he loves so much that there isn’t any room for sales figures and marketing and knocking out the competition and right away he’s on probation again. It’s for the best. Robert’s been told what to do by his father his whole life and the boundaries are familiar and safe to him. Robert doesn’t do very well with free reign. No pun intended.
His father has become much smarter in how to deal with his son in the last few years. In fact, the only real mistake he’s made yet was nearly ten years ago now, to insist that Robert get some hands on experience in the circus. Robert took to that order like he hasn’t any other before or since.
“When is the next meeting I’ll be expected at?”
“Tomorrow at ten o’clock. Don’t be late.”
“Very well.”
“Also, I expect you to be dressed appropriately. Not in that trash. You look like one of them.” Maurice gestures vaguely to the direction of the practise circus tent, which Robert takes to mean he looks like an ordinary circus performer and not the boss’s son.
“Obviously, sir.”
Maurice turns on his heel and walks away. Robert watches until he climbs into the back seat of his sharp black town car and drives off. Robert slumps down, leaning against the stall door. He can feel Roy’s hot breath snuffling at the bottom edge of the door, making Robert’s back damp.
“Glad it was only you around to see that, Roy,” Robert says. He sounds exhausted to himself. Much older than his twenty-three years, but at the same time, embarrassed of his father like a child.
He knows what people think of him. They fall into two groups. All of his father’s associates think he’s a joke and a disappointment. Their opinions shadow his father’s. They can’t understand why he is incapable of looking at the Fischer and Friend’s Circus as just another branch of the franchise, existing to make money and nothing more. But, frankly, Robert doesn’t really care what they think.
It’s the other circus folk’s opinions that matter.
The things about Robert’s life that they don’t understand are more complex and more important. He sees them staring after his father has screamed at him, threatened his horses, told him he’s worthless and useless and that everything Robert cares most about is a mistake. They think that Robert’s an idiot for sticking around. Why doesn’t he just leave? And then the flip side: if he won’t leave, what is he doing hanging around with them. He should just join the business and be what he was born for. They don’t get why he insists on never quite belonging anywhere.
Robert can’t explain it. He doesn’t quite understand himself. He can’t make them understand that once he knew his father loved him and he’d do almost anything to get back to that place. Anything except give up his horses and performing.
The show goes particularly well that evening. Sometimes having a fight with his father can snap him into some sort of higher plane for a few days. It’s probably something to do with desperation, or with a need for the kind of blind animal comfort only the horses can lend. Robert doesn’t look into it too deeply. He is an expert at not thinking too hard about anything important.
The cloudless sky and absent moon make the night very dark and cold. Robert lets the stillness wash over him like rainwater. He is brushing down one of the youngest mares, a small, sleepy chestnut, when a young girl appears out of nowhere at the stable door.
“Jesus Christ,” Robert squeaks, dropping the brush and slightly spooking the mare. He swallows his fear, knowing the horse will smell it and react badly and presses a soothing hand against the mare’s neck.
“Sorry,” the little girl says, not really sounding it. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to see the horses.”
“That’s okay,” Robert says. “But you should be careful. Horses don’t ever like being surprised.”
“I know. Ari always tells me to walk louder when I come up behind Dandelion. I just forget.”
“Isn’t it a bit late for you to be wandering around out here? Who are you parents?”
“No. I just watched the show.” The girl explains. “It was okay. Not as good as my circus obviously, but your bit was the best! Ari says it’s really hard to get horses to listen to you so well. She says you’re making it look easy but I shouldn’t believe you. It’s like your talking to them with your mind! I want to learn to do it too, but Ari says Dandelion probably won’t be very good at that kind of thing.”
“Look, not that I really mind myself, but you shouldn’t be back here. Why don’t you go…run along and find your parents.”
“My dad isn’t here, though,” the girl pouts.
Robert pinches at the bridge of his nose.
“Do you need help finding the people who are looking after you? This ‘Ari’ person, perhaps?”
“Not really,” the girl says. “I want to know about the horses some more. Can I pet her?”
Robert sighs. “One little pat on the nose, and then you have to let me help you find your parents or whoever.”
“Deal,” the girl says. She clambers onto the stool in the corner of the stall. The mare turns round to greet her and snuffles at her sweater, which makes the girl giggle. Robert smiles despite himself. She pulls a few sugar cubes out of the pocket the horse was particularly interested in.
“Cheat,” Robert says, good-naturedly. The girl grins up at him cheekily.
The girl strokes the mare’s nose for a long moment.
“Okay,” Robert says. “Time to go.”
“Fine,” the girl says, clearly disappointed. She steps down from the stool and takes the hand he offers.
“So, who are we looking for?” Robert asks, leading her in the direction of the public parking lot.
“Either an Arthur or an Eames or an Ariadne.”
“What do they look like?”
“Well… Eames is easy to see from far away, cause he’s pretty tall and he’s really English so you can pick out his voice in a crowd and he’s wearing a blue shirt today and…”
Robert begins to suspect that he’s bitten off more than he can chew when he spots three people standing in a tight circle arguing with each other in the otherwise empty lot. There are two men and one woman, turned away so that they most likely won’t notice Robert and the girl’s approach until they’re right upon them.
By the time Robert is close enough to hear them, they’re beginning to look frantic.
“Stop telling me off, Arthur. Eames was supposed to be watching her while you went out to find the--”
The girl is quickly silenced by the dark haired man, “Shhh, don’t talk about it out here, anyone could overhear. This is a fucking parking lot for Christ’s sake. Undercover 101.”
“Well sorry if I’m not trained up to your satisfaction, but it’s not my fault she’s missing so don’t try to take it out on me.”
“The two of you ought to calm down. She’s probably just gone to see about the horses and she’ll turn up any minute.” The broader of the two men says in a low-voiced Englishman’s drawl.
“We don’t have a minute to spare, and you’re the one who lost her so if you could just keep your mouth shut for one second and let me think,” the other man snaps.
“How are we going to get into the office-”
“Ariadne, don’t talk about it,” both men say in unison.
Robert is concentrating so hard of figuring out exactly what they’re talking about besides the missing girl he doesn’t notice the curb coming up and accidentally drags the girl right over the edge. She trips up, crying out as her knees scrape against the gravel.
The group of three turn instantly and the little girl starts sobbing, huge gulps that Robert knows are as much from surprise as pain.
“Aw, fuck,” Robert says, “I mean, crap, I mean, no, sorry. Hey, shhh, you’re gonna be okay.”
He picks her up and her arms go around his neck like an octopus even as she cries, “No, no I don’t want you, I want Arthur.”
“I’m sorry, shhh, shhh, I’m sorry. You’ll be okay.”
The group is quickly crossing the parking lot now. “Pippa?” the woman calls, “Pippa, is that you.”
“Ari,” she girl says, and begins to cry louder, somehow managing to make Robert feel like a total monster even though he hasn’t really done anything wrong.
The dark haired man reaches them first, holding out his arms. Pippa breaks away from Robert, lunging across the space between them to wrap herself even more tightly around the other man. She buries her face in his neck.
“Come on, Pip, it was only a little fall, you’ll be alright,” the English one says, coming up from behind to rest one hand on her shaking back.
“I’m sorry I ran off, Eames,” she says, unwilling to look up at him.
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t worry about that. Is that why you’re crying?”
“Arthur was gonna yell at you,” she mumbles into the man Robert presumes must be Arthur’s neck.
“It won’t be the first or last time,” he says, soothingly. “No tears, right. You’re too grown up for that.”
She sniffles a few times and allows Arthur to shift her around so she’s propped against his hip. Arthur wipes at the tear tracks running down her cheek and smoothes her hair down. “All right?” he asks.
Pippa nods solemnly.
“Can I put you down so Ari can have a look at you knees?”
Another nod. He sets her down gently and finally turns, seeming to only now notice Robert.
“I’m so sorry,” Robert says. “I was trying to work out if you looked like the guardians she described and then there was the curb and she just went right over.”
“No worries,” Arthur says. “Thanks for bringing her back over. I hope she wasn’t getting into trouble?”
“She wanted to see the horses.”
“Ah, I should have guessed.”
“Told you,” the other man, who Robert presumes must be Eames says, sullenly. Arthur rolls his eyes.
“Arthur Reed,” says Arthur, holding out his hand to shake.
“Robert Fischer,” Robert replies. The name seems familiar to him, but he can’t remember where from.
“Yes, I know,” says Arthur.
“Right, obviously,” Robert says, feeling the beginnings of a blush. “The performance.”
“Yes,” Arthur says, he pauses for a moment, as if trying to make a decision, and then, slowly, he adds, “But I also know your father.”
Robert is unable to prevent himself from grimacing. “Oh,” he says. “Of course. My dad. I guess I better be going. I need to finish putting the horses up. I’ll be busy with the business tomorrow, so I won’t have time then.”
“The business? I didn’t know you were interested in that side of things,” Arthur says.
Robert wonders where on earth Arthur could know his father from that would give him that impression. It seems like Maurice spends a good half of his time with Robert trying to prove to other people that the whole horse thing is just a hobby and that his true interests lie with the annual sales figures and the merchandising distribution and whatever the fuck else he’s supposed to care about.
“Umm, yeah,” Robert says. Then, going out on a limb, he adds, “You must know what he’s like. I’ve got to take time with the horses where I can get it.”
Arthur smiles. It’s a thin and sharp thing, like the edge of a knife. For some reason, the incongruous thought that Arthur must be very intelligent pops into his head.
“I certainly do,” Arthur says. He turns around briefly and shares a look with Eames, the kind of look that’s a whole conversation. “Listen Robert,” Arthur says. “If you ever want a chance for some more free time, maybe you should give me a call.” He hands Robert a business card he hadn’t even noticed Arthur take out of his pocket.
“Are you asking me out on a date?” Robert asks, genuinely bewildered.
Eames laughs, but Arthur just looks at him, disconcerting.
“No,” Arthur says. “I’m offering you a job.”
They turn away as one, and Robert watches them as they cross the parking lot. Eames wraps his arm around Arthur’s waist and Ariadne holds hands with Pippa. Only Pippa turns back to look at him, offering him a half wave that Robert returns almost unconsciously.
He has the distinct feeling he was being offered something much greater than just a job and that Arthur knew it.
---
“What was that?” Ariadne asks once they’re in the car, headed back to the circus. She leans forward from the back so that her head is poking through the two front seats. Phillipa shifts on her lap. “Are you even kidding me. What happened to the plan? I thought we were going to steal the records from Fischer’s office so we can work out how to make it look like he’s embezzling. We just…we just talked to his kid and left?”
“Oh darling,” Eames says. “Welcome to a life of crime. Lesson one is to go with the flow.”
“Tell her lesson two, Eames,” Arthur says, with his sharp smile.
Eames grins as he answers, his teeth catching the flash of headlights from an oncoming car. “Lesson two is always play the long con when you get the chance.”
---
Months pass and a day doesn’t go by without Robert taking that card out of his pocket and turning it over and over in his hands. He looks the circus up, reads reviews, watches one of their performances online. Ariadne, he learns, is the newest performer, started only a week before they’d met in the parking lot. The arch of her foot in the air and the tiny glimpse of empty space between the horse and her hands as she flips, before she fits back into position like she is a part of whole - he nearly weeps. Arthur and Eames - shadows in an orange, half-light glow steal his breath. The edges of the business card begin to fray.
He reads an article in the paper about how the Dream Circus nearly lost one of their necessary permits on a mere paperwork technicality pointed out by an anonymous letter. He clenches his fist around the business card. The number in now unreadable, but Robert has it memorised.
Men in high positions in his father’s company begin to retire without notice or reason. The company looses shareholder faith. Robert spends the day in a business meeting about increasing revenue and his father suggests they figure out how to stop bothering with the measures they take to comply with animal rights. Wouldn’t it be more cost effective just to threaten an official every now and then, Maurice asks?
Robert gets drunk that night and composes an angry letter to his father. He doesn’t do anything with it, just crumples it up and shoves it in the drawer. It makes him sick, what a coward he’s turned out to be. Or maybe that’s just the whiskey.
In the morning, the letter is no longer in his desk and Roy is no longer in his stable. Robert is gone by nightfall.
---
Dom runs into a horse as he leaves his trailer. He has a curious sense of Déjà vu. “You aren’t Dandelion,” he says, looking the horse up and down. It’s dapple-grey and eating the paperwork he’s dropped everywhere. He looks up. A young man with posture that’s too stiff and eyes that are too blue, like the Gulf of Mexico in July, stares forlornly back at him. Four more horses crowd together at his shoulder.
“Oh no,” Dom says. “We do not have room for this.”
“Hello,” he says. He’s soft-spoken and polite, but there is a sense of pride about him. A self-righteousness he was trained to - it doesn’t come to him naturally. He comes from money and carries it uncomfortably. “My name is Robert Fischer and I’d like to join your circus.”
Jesus Christ, Dom really needs to see a doctor about these fucking headaches.
---
“Have you seen him yet?” Ariadne asks.
“Nope,” Eames says, peeling posters of their old merchandise off a wooden board. The new shipment came in this morning and apparently Eames has been delegated to organise it. James is balanced on his hip, sleepily sucking his thumb.
“Your sister would be teasing you so much right now if she saw that,” Ariadne points out. James glares and stubbornly keeps his thumb in his mouth.
“If looks could kill,” Eames murmurs good-naturedly.
“You must know a few rumours, at least.”
“Well,” Eames demurs. “It’ll cost you…”
“What?” Ariadne asks. She puts on a fake pout. “I thought we were friends.”
“Which job are you on right now?”
“Passing out schedules for this week’s performances and breakfast and dinner shifts.” Ariadne answers, gesturing to her armful of papers.
“Brilliant!” Eames grins. “Someday you’re going to have to teach me how you always get the good jobs. Anyway, I’ll tell you what I know if you switch with me.”
“Fine.” Ariadne rolls her eyes.
“Right,” Eames says, lowering his voice into that particular tone reserved for gossip. “Arthur’s been in and out of the meeting with Dom all day. Robert is definitely all set for joining up.”
“But how are we going to pay for the horses and everything. He’ll bring a bit more revenue, especially since he’s the golden boy of Fischer and Friends, but we’ve only just begun to make ends meet again.”
“That’s the brilliant bit. In return for a performance spot, space for his little herd of horses and his own wagon, he’s going to invest the majority of his trust fund into the circus. They’ve got Saito on conference call to set up the business side of things. Robert also already owns a good bit of his father’s company which he’s going to sell off on the open market to weaken his father’s power over Fischer and Friends.”
“Wow,” Ariadne says, honestly a little astounded. “This is some serious shit, isn’t it?”
“I haven’t even gotten to the best part.” Eames announces, gleeful. “Robert’s got a head for business, you know. He thinks I’m right about touring Europe and he told Dom that’s he’s been going about advertising all wrong. Finally someone with some fucking sense!”
“You think Dom will listen?”
Eames looks thoughtful. “It’s too soon to tell right now. Dom’s never been very good at being told what to do, but at the same time the biggest problem he’s had listening to Arthur and me is that Mal is always lurking there in the background of every conversation like a ghost of the mistakes we made together. Having new blood will be good for us.”
“Aren’t I new blood?” Ariadne asks, sniffing, but not really offended. She sets the weekly schedules down on the tables and picks up the glitter glue Eames had been carefully working round the edge of each new merchandise poster.
“The very newest,” Eames answers, voice twisting on ‘new’. Ariadne gets the message. For all she is a rising star, if she has learned nothing else since coming to the circus, it was that she had first arrived knowing nothing at all.
“Ariadne?” A voice behind them asks.
Ariadne’s blood runs cold. She feels her hands begin to shake. Eames notices immediately and grabs hold of them, looking past her, over her shoulder at the voice.
“Mother?” Ariadne whispers. Eames’s grip tightens around her fingers. Slowly, she turns around.
It’s been nearly six months, but they don’t look any different. Even her father’s beard is trimmed exactly the way she remembers, close and dark. The beard of a man who pretends at carelessness, but is, in fact, entirely obsessed with controlling everything down to the last minute detail.
“Father,” she says, a toneless acknowledgement.
“Ariadne, my dear, we’ve been so worried,” he mother holds out her arms as though she honestly expects Ariadne to run into them.
She hears Eames make a noise behind her, a long, low whistle in a minor key. She recognises it immediately. It’s a warning noise he and Arthur use in performance, if one of them notices something wrong with their equipment or has an unsteady grip.
Arthur appears around the corner nearly instantly. He stands out of sight of her parents, examining the situation, planning, forming the escape route. It’s a look she’s come to know well and one she is sure Arthur learned in that other mysterious life he led before he became a performer.
“We’ve come to bring you home Ariadne,” her father says. “It has taken us so long to find you. But we’re here now. I am sorry that you felt the need to test us, but we can forgive you.”
“The last thing I am interested in is your forgiveness,” Ariadne says tightly. She wonders how it is possible for a man who has known her all her life to misunderstand her so completely.
“My sweet, we’ve missed you. Please.” Ariadne thinks her mother sounds like she’d stood in front of a mirror to practise her lines. It makes her nauseous.
Eames’ grip begins to loosen and Ariadne holds on convulsively. He is having some sort of silent conversation with Arthur over her parent’s shoulders.
“Why are you really here?” Ariadne asks. “You’ve had six months. I definitely didn’t cover my trail that well. Tell me, why now?”
“You turn eighteen in two months, dear heart. Don’t you want to become a grown woman at home? We want to show society our beautiful daughter. We’ll have a party. You can wear a white dress. It’ll be the event of the year.”
“It isn’t the nineteenth century anymore, mother. Grow up. And anyway, I know that isn’t the reason. I’ve always been little more than an embarrassment in front of your friends.”
“You wanted to go to a good university. My connections at Yale-” he father begins.
“Tell me the fucking truth,” Ariadne spits.
“Ariadne, dove, your grandmother’s will-”
Ariadne smiles. “Oh, I see now.” She lets go of Eames’ hand. They don’t have anything on her after all. It’s just about money. She should have guessed. Even Arthur looks a bit relieved. “You wanted to bring me back into the fold before I came of age for my inheritance. Well, tough luck. Maybe you should have thought of that before you stopped speaking to me or looking at me or barely even making sure I was fed as soon as it became clear I’d never be the docile debutante you wanted in a daughter. Give me a son, or a puppet and I was neither.”
“If you want that money-” her father snaps. Showing his true colours now, at least.
“If I want that money I just have to wait another two months. It’s mine and you can’t get your hands on it. I know. I had it checked out and explained to me.”
Her father looks livid. “By whom? By your white trash boyfriend there, with the tattoos and that grubby cap and the unwashed child, doubtlessly the offspring of one of his previous sluts?”
Ariadne turns to see whom he could possibly be referring to. After a moment, she realises he’s talking about Eames. It makes her laugh. Apparently it’s funny to Arthur as well because he begins to laugh too. He’s standing close to Ariadne’s mother, having approached silently from behind, and she nearly shrieks as she catches sight of him at her shoulder.
Ariadne is still busy trying to reconcile ‘white trash’ with Eames, who paints like Monet on lazy Sunday afternoons and Miro when he’s drunk and Rembrant when he’s trying to get on Arthur’s good side; Eames, who makes this incredible avocado and grapefruit salad with lemon-cilantro dressing; Eames, who has never missed an episode of ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’; Eames, who reads comic books, who is so English he trips over it; who claims he did his post-doctorate at MIT, and maybe isn’t even lying about it.
It is as though her parents are caricatures of the cruel and wealthy and they can’t help but see every one else in the same two-dimensional plane of existence. For the first time in her life, it doesn’t make Ariadne angry. It makes her sad.
“No, “ she says, “Not by Eames. By his boyfriend.”
They aren’t even listening.
“I’m not going back with you,” she says. “And you can’t make me.”
“You aren’t eighteen yet,” her father says. “By law, I can.”
“Unfortunately not,” Arthur says, crossing in front of Ariadne’s parents to stand shoulder to shoulder with Eames. “Ariadne is an emancipated minor.”
“What?” he mother says, stunned.
“Yep,” Ariadne chirps.
“Surely we would have been informed?” her father demands.
“She had the paperwork sent to your office. Your secretary who quit a few months ago is a friend of mine,” Eames explains.
“You have no right to -!”
“No, you have no right,” Eames says. “Now if you don’t mind turning yourself around there and heading right back to your car. It’d be a shame if I had to rough you up in front of my illicit love-spawn, here.” Eames shifts James’ weight on his hip.
“Ewww, Eames,” he says, around his thumb.
Ariadne’s father grabs his wife by the sleeve of her coat and turns around, tugging her after. “Let’s go,” he says sharply when she fails to hurry.
Ariadne stands frozen as they leave. She feels Arthur’s hand on her shoulder once they’ve disappeared from sight. “You alright?” he asks, gently.
She shakes herself, smiling up at him. “Better than,” she admits. It’s a surprise to her, how utterly right she feels with the world.
Now, Eames will complain that it isn’t fair he always has to play the muscle while Arthur gets to play the man with the answers and Ariadne will ask what the hell they think they’re talking about, don’t they know they aren’t international spies anymore and Eames will tell her cryptically that once a spy is always a spy and she’ll finally get him to promise to teach her to pick locks. They’ll walk to the ticket office and Phillipa will be trying to alphabetise the bills from Z to A. Dom will be fighting with someone on the phone about ordering more oats and hay and Robert will be sitting in the middle of the chaos looking utterly lost. Ariadne will think, is that what I looked like when I first arrived? She’ll wonder when she stopped looking so afraid all the time. She’ll want to say to Robert, stop worrying, you’re home now. But she’ll hold her silence.
There are no shortcuts to teaching the lesson of found family, but it will happen for Robert just like it happened for her. They’ll teach him that from the outside, the life of true circus folk looks like a story of what gets left behind, but from the inside it’s about being one piece of a whole that will always carry him through even as he carries it - it’s about being the wind.
---
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[See below for full text of Independent Article]
Dom Cobb’s Dream Circus is on the rise
Where did they come from, where are they going and can one motley crew of American Circus performers who were nearly unknown a few months ago really bring a love of the circus back into the mainstream?
In recent decades, the circus has come to be something of a lost art. Certainly Cirque du Soleil will pull a really spectacular new show out of the bag every few years, there are a few longstanding circuses around the world with enough nostalgic value to continue pulling in crowds and for the last few years, Fischer and Friends has been lording over their corner of the American entertainment market. But now there are new players on the scene.
I say new, but in fact, Dream Circus has been around for nearly ten years as a small travelling carnival winding it’s way back and forth across the US. Dream Circus’s owner, Mr Saito claims that if the circus continues its trend of success in this years’ venue shows across the UK and in select stages throughout Europe, they may bring their road show along next season, which will include traditional rides, smaller performance tents to go alongside the big top show and other attractions. Dream Circus’ recent rise, Mr Saito claims, is almost as much to do with better handling of the business side of the company as it is to do with changes made to the show’s acts.
Over the weekend, I got a chance to see the Dream Circus in the opening night of their show Inception at the Royal Albert Hall. It was honestly the most spellbinding theatrical performance I have seen this year. Dream Circus inexplicably manages to embody a brand new twist on modern carnival shows that steps distinctly away from the precise art of Cirque or the mass-produced, sickly sweet cheer of Fischer and Friends while at the same time capturing a magic that transports you instantly back to child-like wonder.
The performance has most of the familiar elements of classic circus performance - clowns, tightrope walkers, a magician, a flock of doves, equestrian tricks, fire dancing, and a trapeze artist all ruled over by the clever and whimsical ringmaster Dominic Cobb. It is not the individual elements of the show that create its truly unique allure, but the unexpected way they are put together.
Equestrian vaulter Ariadne Westmere is the newcomer, only nineteen and with no previous professional experience, yet the vitality and subtle enthusiasm brought to her performances show why she is a fast-rising star, already being courted by the Voltige giants of France. Yet Westmere shows no signs of being tempted away from Dream Circus. In their last few shows, Westmere has begun to do a small section of her performance in a double act with fellow horse performer, Robert Fischer. Fischer’s horse whispering was renowned long before he joined the Dream Circus as possibly the only redeeming quality of Fischer and Friends Circus Extravaganza. His split from father Maurice Fischer and defection to Dream Circus was huge news in the entertainment world for months, and probably brought a lot of press attention to Dream Circus. Luckily, it seems the attention was well deserved. Since moving companies, Robert Fischer’s act has gone from the sharp-edged and short-lived bursts of brilliance in otherwise nearly timid performances to something like release, an unfolding of creativity and control over his horses that never seems overbearing, only delicate.
Despite the strength of Dream Circus’s many other performers, the undeniable backbone of the show is the fire-dancing and trapeze-ing duo, Arthur Reed and Eliot Eames.
After last May’s Interpol-Wikileaks scandal, there was a host of rumours claiming the pair were ex-Interpol agents, now untouchable thanks to the released information. Some claim the rumors were actually started by the Dream Circus as a marketing hoax. Neither Reed nor Eames have ever confirmed or denied the reports. Yet, it isn’t difficult to see why such seemingly ridiculous speculation gained ground so quickly after watching them perform together.
There is something dangerous, almost chilling about the utter ease with which Eames floats through the air through walls of flame spun effortlessly into existence by Reed’s hands. The duo’s most recent trick is to ask a member of the audience to tell one of the two to do some previously unknown stunt, which the other must intuit in order to avoid both of their imminent fiery deaths. It seems utterly impossible unless they can actually read each other’s minds. There is something devastating about their performances, an element that seems unplanned. Every movement is like the elegant afterthought of its predecessor. It would come across as messy if Reed and Eames didn’t tie everything together so tightly between themselves with striking chemistry.
But then, that does seem to be the true charm of the Dream Circus. Dream Circus shows are never accused of looking polished or exact. No two shows are ever the same. The order, the funniest and most astounding moments of each show, the acts themselves have a spontaneous, home-grown quality about them. The performers seem to be in a constant state of flux halfway between dysfunctional family and heartbreak.
I caught up with Dominic Cobb, manager of the circus as well as its ringmaster, for a few minutes during opening night’s after-party. The gathering was relatively small, mostly performers and guests and only a few fellow members of the press. Cobb was standing towards the back of the room, on his own. “What’s on your mind, Mr Cobb?” I asked, trying for joviality. He turned, surprised, perhaps. I introduced myself, and repeated my question.
“Watching my daughter,” he said, gesturing. Cobb’s two children are known for occasionally appearing with the clowns at the beginning of shows. Some speculate that the death of Cobb’s wife and mother of his children, Mallorie during a tightrope performance in the second night of the company’s first attempt at a European tour nearly five years ago is the real reason for Dream Circus’ long period of relative anonymity.
I turn to follow his gaze. The girl is perched on the edge of the bar, sandwiched safely between Arthur and Eames (as he prefers to be called), with Ariadne standing near. As we watch, Arthur leans forward to wipe some of the glitter from their performance costuming off Eames’ cheekbone and Ariadne offers the girl a tiny sip of her champagne. Robert appears a moment later, looking like he’s about to scold Ariadne, but instead offers the girl a little sip of his own red wine. The girl makes a face and the adults gathered around her laugh.
“I’m proud of the life I’ve built for my children,” Dom tells me. “I never thought I could be, a few years ago. That’s all you really need to know about us.” He shook my hand and crossed over to the little group of performers, clasping Robert on the shoulder and ruffling his daughter’s hair.
He was right, of course. What makes Dream Circus so great is that the people involved aren’t doing it to put on a show; they’re doing it to build a life.
LUCY FLETCHER
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[Here, I also drew a poster for the pre-Europe tour: (CLICK HERE for a very badly drawn horse and Arthur in spandex cut too low!). Hopefully once Robert sets them straight, they hire someone not drunk to do the advertising.]
fin
End Notes:
1. My campaign to let every piece end in SHMOOP is successful yet again. TROLLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.
2. Sorry about how Ariadne’s life was like cliché no. 345 from the book of tragic pasts. At least I tried to make her an interesting comparison of similarities with Robert??? Is that excuse enough??? No. No, I know. It’s a circus fic, alright. Just be glad I didn’t have her under the threat of being sent to a nunnery, which was genuinely my first plan.
3. In case I was a bit vague about what exactly Robert does in his show, he is a horse whisperer, kind of like Jean-Francois Pignon. Here is a youtube video of a bit of one of his shows: (CLICKY).
4. That was the very last of the half-started inception fic documents on my comp that I intended to definitely finish at some future date. :(
5. Title lyrics are from White Lies, Farewell to the Fairground.
Link back to part one: (HERE).
(x-posted to eames_arthur)