Inception fic: After the storm (I run and run as the rain's come)
Title: After the storm (I run and run as the rain's come)
Author: mellaithwen.
Pairings: Eames/Arthur.
Rating: R.
Word Count: 4, 325
Warning: Character death, dark.
Summary: Eames dies, and his projection haunts Arthur's subconscious.
Written for this prompt over at inception_kink .
.
Eames dies on a Thursday.
Outside it’s raining, each drop hammering against the window Arthur’s leaning against like great giant pellets trying to cut through glass.
Like gunfire...
He throws his dice along the floor seventeen times before Ariadne puts her hand on his and whispers this isn’t a dream.
No, it’s not. Because in his dream he rolls the dice, and it falls and drops and hides under the table. The rain stops, and a hand on his shoulder and fingers in his hair tell him to leave it be, and he does. The man behind him leans down, and Arthur tilts his head back to meet him halfway with a kiss.
Did you miss me?
Oh, you have no idea.
*
It starts with pacing, fists clenched and nails digging into the palms of his hands. It starts with an idea, a notion that leads to Arthur hooking himself up to the dream. He stands in the foyer of his subconscious and waits for Eames to find him there.
When he does, they spend their time together wandering the corridors of grand hotels, choosing the very best room to stay in. At first Arthur is leading the way, taking his projection by the hand (holding ever so tightly, lest he disappear completely) and guiding him through the immaculate maze, up and down stairs with no end, around and around and around.
Now Eames is the one leading, pretending to deliberate when really he’s just picking the next room along each time, each night. They make it as far as the 12th floor in Arthur’s dreams before the rest of the team begins to suspect that their point man has picked a dangerous way of coping with his loss.
“No expense spared.” Eames mumbles into Arthur’s ear as the two of them fall back onto the expensive sheets, sated and smiling.
“You could say that.”
“You never did like Motels, or alleyways, or that one time under that bridge on the-”
“Or your apartment.” Arthur interrupts, laughing, while Eames feigns offence. The forger rises up off of the bed and stands before the point man clutching at his chest. He puts a hand to his forehead and gasps.
“You wound me!” Eames cries dramatically, imitating a thespian, as Arthur smiles from his position on the bed.
But then Eames stumbles forward, folding in on himself, his face contorted, his body tensed. His acting becomes too real, his knees buckle underneath him and there’s a fast growing stain on the front of his shirt.
Arthur’s smile vanishes.
“You wound me.” Eames whispers again as he falls in the hotel room and lands in new surroundings. The walls are gone, it’s raining and the water beneath him is red as it runs down the asphalt, mixed with dirt and grime as it races to the drains. There’s shouting and screaming and Arthur’s trying to get to Eames’s side but everyone keeps pulling him back and telling him there’s no use.
They let go as soon as the music starts. Dropped to the ground, he crawls closer to Eames, as the fallen forger smiles, singing along to the tune in Arthur’s headphones.
Non, rien de rien, non je ne regrette rien.
“What are you doing?” Cobb asks him in reality, taking the music player away before Arthur throws it at him.
“None of your damn business.” Arthur can’t help but retort angrily, scrubbing at his face to try and forget the dream, fondling the dice in his pocket with such fervour that he can hardly breath.
He doesn’t know that he’s the subject of the rest of the team’s discussions. He doesn’t know of Yusuf asking if it’s really so bad for them to be together again, and Dom and Ariadne saying yes without any hesitation. They know first-hand how destructive a shade can be.
*
Arthur tries to avoid dreaming, because waking hurts so much more now, but he only lasts three days before he’s creeping into the warehouse when no one’s there. He doesn’t want their pity or their understanding. He wants space, and he wants to fill that space with Eames. So he lies back in a darkened corner of the warehouse, and waits for Eames to show up like he didn’t just spend this morning numb at the other man’s funeral.
As par for the course, Arthur doesn’t remember the moments that lead up to this one in the dream-he’s never appreciated the blissful ignorance of dreams until now. The not knowing that leads to being is no matter, not here, not now.
Their bodies collide. They crash against the shores of one another, hot and wet and gasping for air. As they kiss, Eames’s teeth brush hard against Arthur’s lips and with his hands clutched in the edges of his suit jacket, he drags him forward until they’re both falling onto the sheets on a bed that wasn’t there five seconds ago. Arthur calls him impatient, and Eames calls Arthur a tease, but Eames is the one who takes care with Arthur’s precious attire while Arthur practically rips every piece of clothing in his way.
Eames bites down on Arthur’s shoulder as he thrusts, and below Arthur claws at the sheets, groaning. When he wakes up there’s no trace, no bite marks, no bruising. Just a little pinprick where the IV had been, and a faint pain in his chest that’s been there for a while.
Of course there’s nothing there, he thinks later on when he’s at home; clean and staring at himself exposed in the mirror, imagining where the bruising might have been had his dice not confirmed reality. He can almost see them if he concentrates. He can almost feel the tenderness of his skin, spread too thin across his shaking bones. Just like he can almost feel hands ghosting across his shoulders, easing him back into this world, even when he no longer feels he belongs in it.
*
This dream is a memory, not a construct. Eames always said that Arthur lacked imagination in dreams, but his memory? Oh, Arthur’s memory is immaculate. He finds solace in perfection and detail and grandeur like they’re old drinking buddies who go way back.
And currently, in this memory, the team are all practising together in the dreamscape, many weeks before the final plans of inception were set in motion. Ariadne is new at this and her fascination with changing things so drastically around her is not going away any time soon. Eames and Arthur sit at a café table while Yusuf and Saito are on the other side of the street. It’s best to split off into groups of two in case the projections attack. Ariadne is creating the surroundings, while Eames dreams and populates the area.
For the most part his subconscious appears welcoming.
“Deux café noisette, si vous plait.” Eames orders for the both of them, making Arthur smile behind his menu. There’s something about the way Eames’s tongue curls around the French language that makes him stop. The accent is mild and not as overbearing as you might expect. It’s strange but somehow fitting, somehow wonderful.
He still won’t tell Arthur why he chose Paris though.
“Oh darling, look.” He says instead, pointing towards the Eiffel Tower with one hand and spreading apricot jam upon a piece of bread with the other. Arthur turns in time to see the architecture shift and bend and loop and fold around the afternoon sky. Ariadne’s at it again.
The tip of the tower blooms outward like a rollercoaster, like a flower, like nothing he’s ever seen before. In the distance, Cobb is telling her to stop, and Yusuf and Saito are shifting uncomfortably in their seats. The strangers in Eames’s subconscious are slowly starting to turn and stare. Eames tells Arthur something, a whispered confession but Arthur’s sure he’s heard wrong and asks for it to be repeated.
“Come now, Arthur, let’s not play silly buggers.” Eames says, before adding, “Actually, let’s!” And they laugh, the sound making their newly arrived coffee cups rattle on the table. It acts as a calming influence on everyone around them as the projections return to their business, and Ariadne promises to tone it down. Arthur and Eames slip away from the group and make their way upstairs to the room above the café; Eames smiling seductively, and Arthur following, feeling as light as air.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Eames will ask him later, when the dream is over and they’re waking up in the warehouse once more. “We can actually say We’ll always have Paris, and have it ring true!”
“As if you’d ever let me get on the plane.” Arthur will reply.
“As if you could pull off being Ingrid Bergman!” Eames will scoff.
“Hey!”
Arthur doesn’t realise that he’s become one of those people Dom told him about in Mombassa. The constant dreamers that lie together in the makeshift opium den in need of a fix. He doesn’t realise that he’s becoming Cobb, and that one day Eames will turn into Mal.
*
They run from the rain, and find shelter in the doorways of great big giant skyscrapers that lead up through the clouds to infinity. They cling together in the cold and laugh when one or both of them gets splashed by a passing car. They kiss, and their lips taste of ozone and bittersweet misery.
“Arthur, dear, dear Arthur, let me have my wicked way with you already.” Eames says with a flash of his crooked grin, leaning his forehead against Arthur’s as though they haven’t already done it twice in the rain.
“On one condition.” Arthur plays along.
“Name it.”
“Be there when I wake up.”
Eames’s fingers ghost across Arthur’s wet cheek.
“If only, darling. If only.”
Non, rien de rien, non je ne regrette-regrette-regrette-regrette.
Waking comes with the knowledge that his music player is broken and his mind even more so.
*
It’s the first job they’ve done together since the funeral, and while Arthur insists he’s up to it-intent on distracting himself with work-his subconscious proves otherwise. They’re at a bookstore watching the mark when Cobb whispers What’s he doing here?
Arthur can’t ignore the wave of déjà vu that rushes over him as he turns around.
Eames is leaning against the back wall, smirking, and Arthur promises he’ll sort it out. Cobb tells him to take his time because while they’re there to work, this is the first time Dom’s seen Eames since that day, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t miss him too.
“Hello, darling.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not? You want me here.”
“No I don’t.”
“Liar. Come have a quick drink with me. There’s a bar just across the road.”
“Eames you can’t be here, I’m working, I need to focus.”
“Alright then, I can help. I’ll change, seduce the mark, and get all the information you need.”
“I wish it were that easy.”
“Maybe I’ll just seduce you instead. Force you to have that drink with me. One drink. One little drink and I’ll disappear.”
“Don’t, don’t disappear, just...not now, okay? Not while I’m working.”
“One drink.”
One drink, one kiss, one begged request for the other to leave, one refusal to ever go.
“I’ll be back later, I just need to finish this job.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
*
The more Arthur focuses on his projection of Eames, the greyer the sky becomes. Buildings lose their grandeur and the architecture loses its detail until the scenery around them is grey and faded.
In the midst of it all Eames stands there, bright and shining. The perfect projection. Each detail in place.
He is there, he is breathing.
He is real.
Almost.
They’re lying on a deserted beach when Beethoven fills the air and Eames asks if Arthur’s been raiding his music collection again. Out to sea, a memory of the two of them sitting at a grand piano plays out behind a sheet of fragile glass.
There’s something in the music that makes him stop, something that lingers. Memories of guided fingers on piano keys, no, darling, like this, as the first chords of the Moonlight Sonata ring out around them. Its melody ominous as his feet drown in sea foam as it curls along the shore.
For a moment the dull ache is a sharp pain, the longing, the loss... and then Arthur’s awake, his new music player set to a timer, his heart pounding in his chest.
*
The longest Arthur has stayed under is fourteen hours. An entire week in the dream, lost in the throws of his desperate fantasy where they are both alive and well and beyond happy in one another’s embrace.
He doesn’t tell Yusuf what it’s for and the chemist doesn’t ask. He just tells him to be careful while Ariadne tells him softly that this is no way to live. Arthur thinks dinner in Paris with his lover is the perfect way to live.
She doesn’t presume to know what Eames would have wanted (not this, never this) and he’s thankful for that much at least.
Cobb gives him a knowing look that Arthur desperately tries to avoid but for six mornings, he woke up to Eames beside him, and he can’t help but think there’s nothing wrong with that.
*
When the first movement of Elgar’s Cello Concerto makes the buildings around them shake with vibrato, Eames grins and calls Arthur adventurous. The skyscraper they’re standing under explodes and concrete falls heavy and fast-turning into autumn leaves as the ground lifts up to meet them halfway. Eames ushers Arthur under his umbrella as the leaves fall harder and the wind around them picks up.
Time to go, love.
No, not yet.
The umbrella is whisked away by the wind and they dance in the downpour as the orchestra kicks in. In seconds fresh leaves curl and crunch beneath their feet. The increasing fervour of a cello has all the trees along the boulevard shed their leaves in one fell swoop.
Arthur. Eames whispers.
Arthur. Ariadne calls.
Arthur. Cobb shakes.
Arthur! They shout as they push him off of the cot.
Eames, Arthur thinks but does not say.
*
In a market place surrounded by baroque architecture reminiscent of the Kramgasse in Switzerland, Eames appears before Arthur with a sandwich.
“When was the last time you ate?” He asks, walking away just as another Eames appears with a flask of whisky, another juggling chess pieces, another laughing, another undressing.
This is the curved streetscape of Arthur’s memories of him. His quirks, his traits, their moments shared together. He stands there watching until he can bear it no longer, but as he turns to leave a hand grabs his wrist in a tight grip. He turns to see that it is night, the market stalls packed away, and only one manifestation of Eames remains, standing before him.
“Stay.” He says, but Arthur cannot, and for days when he wakes he cannot shake the angry expression on Eames’ face.
*
“I thought you said you’d never gone to see the New York Philharmonic.”
“I believe my exact words were that I’d never paid to see the New York Philharmonic.”
They are eating in a restaurant that doesn’t actually exist, discussing a concert that does. If Arthur notices Ariadne smiling sadly four tables over, he doesn’t mention it, or bring it to the attention of everyone around him. When their dinner is finished, and their wine glasses are almost empty, Eames’s demeanour changes and he leans in close to talk to Arthur.
“You know there is a way.”
“Yusuf’s compound? You’re talking about limbo?” Arthur asks, needing no clarification.
"Think about it-”
“Don’t-”
“Why the hell not?”
“Eames...”
“You leave me here day after day. Would staying with me be so bloody terrible?”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“Then tell me why this isn’t good enough for you!” Eames slams his hand down hard against the table just as in reality Ariadne wakes and “accidentally” knocks Arthur’s chair enough for him to lose his momentum in the dream. She’s gone by the time he opens his eyes, and when he does, for a fleeting second he can see the interior of the restaurant laid out before him like a transfer draped across the foundations of reality.
He shivers and holds his totem so tightly that his knuckles turn white.
*
There are two Eames’ in front of him-and unbeknownst to Arthur this is soon to become a regular occurrence. One is feral. Screaming at him to stay in the dream, to not leave him there like a locked up animal. Screaming and yelling and shouting at Arthur to stay there with him forever, to be together.
The other stands silent, hands in his pockets, staring at Arthur, whispering, Oh darling, what have you done?
While the second Eames stands patient and curious, the first Eames snarls and launches forward, pinning Arthur to the ground and kissing him desperately. Music fills the air and Eames’s hold increases in strength, his fingers bruise, his nails draw blood, his eyes are alight with a furious statement; you will not leave. You cannot leave me! I won’t let you!
As his anger becomes too much to bear, he pushes Arthur back hard against the concrete and turns on his stoic self instead. He hits and kicks and yells and after a while the angry Eames has Arthur’s face. From the ground, Arthur watches himself shout at the forger. Hit him hard and yell and scream that he had no right to leave and how dare he be so cruel and unfair.
“Why did you have to die?” Angry Arthur shouts falling to his knees and vanishing without a trace. The pity on Eames’s face is all the kick he needs and Arthur wakes up with a jolt.
*
Eames appears twice more while they’re working a job, and then one day when they’re training in the dreamscape, their fallen forger kills the rest of the team and grabs Arthur’s wrist so tightly that if he hadn’t been jolted out the dream, he would have felt it break.
*
Two Eames’s stand before him once more. It happens again and again until angry Eames isn’t screaming for Arthur to stay but he’s screaming that Arthur is to blame. It’s your fault that I’m stuck here! It’s your fault that I’m dead.
Later when angry Eames has turned into angry Arthur and he has disappeared on the street corner, the other Eames will help him up and call him a daft sod for blaming himself. He will sigh, ever patient, reaching out, and he will say stop doing this to yourself, my darling, please, and it will be the last time he ever appears.
From now on Eames will be angry and nothing more.
Arthur is tearing himself apart from the inside out and using Eames’s face to do it.
*
When Arthur stops coming to the warehouse, the team have no choice but to take their intervention to him. Yusuf stays behind while Cobb invades Arthur’s dream first, arriving on a murky street corner in the midst of what looks like a hurricane.
“What are you doing here?” Arthur’s argument with Eames is cut off by the sudden presence of a stranger in his subconscious.
“You wouldn’t talk to me up top, I had to do something.”
“So you came here uninvited?”
“It was either this or leave you to grieve to death.” Dom answers evenly.
“Of everyone Cobb, you should understand.”
“Arthur, that’s why I’m telling you this. I always told you I had it under control and I never did. You have to stop this before it goes too far.”
The wind picks up.
“He’s not always like this. Sometimes-” Arthur stops himself, because he’s lying and he knows it.
“That isn’t him, Arthur.” Dom is edging closer, palms turned outward in friendship. “I know how it feels, I know how it hurts, how it burns, and I know you’d rather have a cheap imitation than nothing at all but this isn’t Eames, it isn’t him, you need to stop this.
“I can’t.”
“You won’t. You’re tarnishing his memory by convincing yourself that it’s better than nothing.”
“You hypocrite! You dreamt with Mal for years and all I’m entitled to is a few months?”
“Arthur, that’s why I’m telling you this. I never let her go, I never moved on. I kept her locked inside and she hated it. You saw what she turned into. You can’t keep going under and hoping he’ll be himself again. He won’t. He’ll get angrier and angrier and he won’t stop until he has you forever.”
Projections that weren’t there a minute ago make a beeline for Cobb, just as Eames stalks closer to the pair.
“Let him go, Arthur, for your sanity’s sake.”
When the projections get closer, Cobb makes no effort to fight them off, though Arthur screams for it to stop. For a moment they part like the red sea, and Eames appears to finish the job. He rips Dom apart and Arthur feels sick at the sight. Eames turns, hands red, advancing, and says let’s have a drink, pet.
When Ariadne appears in the dream, Eames has pinned Arthur to the ground next to the remains of Cobb’s body. She gasps and Arthur stares at her in dismay while Eames snarls and advances. In those small moments, Arthur breaks, and for as much as he wants to stay with his lover, he cannot bear to see another of his friends die in front of him. Ariadne starts to back away and her hands are shaking and Arthur knows this is wrong and he can’t let this happen.
He pulls Eames back and gets shoved into the wall of a nearby building for his trouble. He doesn’t stop there; he gets up and runs forward, determined to not punish Ariadne with his own grief. The hurt in his heart, manifest. He pulls Eames back with all of the strength he can muster. He spins the dead man around and takes his face in his hands.
“Don’t do this, look at me, you have me, I won’t leave. I promise.” Eames does not pull away and Arthur’s fingers curl into the mussed up hair and he holds his gaze-in search of something that isn’t there anymore, in search of someone who is long gone.
“You always leave.” Eames growls-but Arthur thinks he hears more hurt than anger this time.
“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”
I’m sorry you died, I’m sorry I wasn’t there, I’m sorry I didn’t protect you, I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I’m sorry I did this to you. I’m sorry I kept you here.
“Then stay here, with me.”
He considers it, and that’s when Ariadne reacts. She recognises that expression, she’s seen it before. The raw grief weighing someone down being shown a way out. A reprieve. An escape. It doesn’t matter that they’re not on a job, or that they’re not in limbo-Ariadne’s sure if she lets this continue there’ll be no going back. Arthur doesn’t have two children begging him to come home, and his closest thing to family is dead.
She feels the weight of a gun in her hand. There are tears running down her cheeks but when she takes aim she sees something different in Arthur’s eyes. They’re just as haunted, but somehow she knows he’s not following his projection into limbo.
“How can you think I’m not real?” Arthur thinks of blood on asphalt and Ariadne’s voice in his ear, It's Eames... I’m sorry, and the world around them crumbles.
“Do you remember Paris?” Arthur asks, for himself more than anything else. Eames nods.
“You ordered us espresso in French, and I was watching Ariadne screwing around with the physics of the Eiffel Tower,” Arthur continues, eyes shining with unshed tears. “And you said something to me. You said something and-”
“You didn’t hear me.” “
No, I heard you. I just...I couldn’t believe you were telling me you loved me over breakfast. And then you were looking at me like I was an idiot.”
“You were an idiot. But as I recall we then went upstairs and had some ridiculously good sex, so I forgive you.” Eames’s voice is evening out, his anger dissipating and maybe it’s because Cobb is gone and Ariadne is standing so still, so sad, that she might as well not be there at all. Maybe she’s influencing his projection with her own imprinted memory of Eames. Or maybe it’s because there’s something cathartic in Arthur’s words, maybe he’s finally saying what needs to be said.
“I never said it back. I never got a chance to. I kept meaning to but it didn’t seem necessary and now I can’t say it, I can’t tell you, and it’s killing me.”
“Arthur, if there’s one thing you should know about me, after everything, is that you never needed to say it back.”
Arthur responds with a kiss. His grasp is tight on the material at the front of Eames’s shirt; his hands run along the man’s chest, his collarbone, his jaw line. He wants to touch every part of him because he knows this will be the last time; it has to be the last time; he’s already half mad, and he’s brought Eames’s projection down with him.
Oh Arthur, dear, dear Arthur, what have you done to yourself?
My darling, he replies. I’m sorry.
They hold one another for as long as is left before Ariadne vanishes and Cobb initiates the kick in the real world. Arthur doesn’t need to roll his loaded dice to know that he’s awake, and alone again, but his fingers trace along the misspelt etchings of the poker chip in his pocket all the same, finding comfort in its solidity, its presence.
-Fin.