On the Wings of an Angel (Part Two #2)
On the Wings of an Angel (Part Two) #2
Back to Part Two (1)
Disclaimer and author's note, etc., back in the Master Post
On the Wings of an Angel
text by phoenix.writing
illustrations by creepylicious
Part Two (2)
Harry ended up flat on his arse on the ground-which was sand now, so at least the landing had been reasonably soft. The sky was rippling through a thousand colours and settling on a pink that resembled the most brilliant sunset he had ever seen. There was a castle flowing into existence in the distance-flowing, the stone pouring into the proper form like a video of something melting done in reverse. It resembled Hogwarts from the films, a little, but was made of greenish stone that complemented the new sky. There was snow on the rooftops. A cliff was … growing before his very eyes, raising the castle higher and higher, and the ground level where Harry lay was sprouting lush tropical forest complete with humidity-rolling over him and clinging to his clothes-and wildlife-he could hear birds, insects, and something big in the underbrush-except for to his right where a valley had formed; from here, he could see the top parts of the unbelievable skyscrapers that rose towards the sky. They were too delicate and fantastically shaped to be manmade, spires that twisted into the sky like spun glass, all the colours of the rainbow.
He twisted round to see behind him and found a sparkling, crystal clear body of water-so clear that he could see the city beneath its surface, domed buildings that clearly teemed with life. And was that a …mermaid?
Bugger him. Cobb had been good. Ariadne had been better. Arthur … Arthur was incredible.
Arthur-
Eames turned back to find that the other man was no longer in front of him.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Arthur had clearly been reluctant, and Harry had pushed anyways, and this was bloody limbo, and Arthur had just made him promise to wake up as though Arthur wasn't going to be here to ensure that he did, and-Shit, shit, shit.
Where could he have gone? Eames hadn't been distracted for that long. He looked around frantically. The cover was dense here, growing denser by the minute, but surely Eames would have heard something, would have-
Fuck me.
Eames didn't think about it, he just scrambled to his feet and ran flat out, launching himself at Arthur where he was hovering out amongst those fantastic skyscrapers.
He'd thought that they were going to go crashing towards those very sharp spires. He hadn't anticipated crashing into the other man and just sort of … stopping, both hovering in the middle of the air.
Eames was clinging for dear life to someone who might as well have been standing on a sidewalk. Arthur had swayed back the equivalent of a step or two with the force of the impact, but not nearly as much as Eames would have expected-though clearly anything he was expecting at this point was going to be debunked.
"Why aren't we falling?"
"What's gravity?"
Eames couldn't tell if the question was meant literally or meant to imply that gravity was an arbitrary rule that could easily be lifted here, but Eames was distracted when he pulled back enough that he could see Arthur's face.
His pupils were blown wide so that there were only little rims of brown around the edges. Eames had a sense of how disconcerting it must have been for Arthur to interact with Eames day after day when Eames didn't know him because there was no hint of recognition in Arthur's face now.
He wasn't wearing a suit anymore, and the jeans and a t-shirt that had replaced the previous garb seemed particularly … inappropriate. He was barefoot, the jeans were ratty, worn into thin strings at the bottom, and there was a rip in the knee. The worn green t-shirt had, of all improbable items, a cartoon of spider-man across it.
Not the sort of thing that he had worn even when he had been dressing down in Harry's dream.
It was … distinctly odd. Still, though, Eames knew that you could lose yourself in limbo, had clearly done so quite spectacularly himself, so he wasn't sure why he was so shocked by Arthur. Perhaps it was just because he was always so in control. This was a complete departure.
If Eames understood correctly, it was something that Arthur had been worried about, but he had done it anyway.
Arthur had lost himself here to save Eames.
It was in the eyes, Eames decided finally, or maybe the whole expression a bit, but definitely the eyes. Because it wasn't big pupils like he was on a mind-altering substance of some sort-and Eames had seen enough of that in his lifetime to know. That would be too easy here. It wasn't inhuman, because that would be very alienating. It was other, but it was … freedom. It was lack of inhibitions.
This was Arthur undone and at peace and just … gone somewhere where Eames was afraid he wouldn't be able to reach him again.
Given the expression, Eames would actually spare a moment to wonder if he should try, but he knew full well that Arthur had been trying to get them both out of here, that he had spent all his time here trying to attain that goal. Now that he couldn't, Eames had to step in.
Eames had no idea how much real time Arthur had spent down here trying to convince Eames that this wasn't reality, but assuming Arthur was right-and when was the annoying man not-then they were treading on borrowed time as it was.
Eames didn't have months or weeks-and maybe not even days or hours. Eames couldn't navigate this blossoming, chaotic world, and he had the feeling that he would never find Arthur again if he lost him now.
"It's time to go," he told Arthur.
"Yes, go."
Eames found himself drifting away without even realising he was moving, no visible or tangible external force acting on him, he simply suddenly wasn't pressed up against Arthur anymore.
"Shit!" he swore and leaned back in to clutch at Arthur, who looked vaguely puzzled by the hands clasped around his wrists.
Eames looked the other man straight in the eye. "You promised me that reality was out there with Arthur alive in it."
Arthur just kept staring and staring, and then he blinked, a slight frown puckering his brow.
"That isn't what I said."
"Yes, it is," Eames insisted. "That's what you meant. And I will hold you to it, do you hear me? We both leave, or we both stay right here."
The frown deepened, and Eames only became aware that they'd moved again-together, at least-when his feet touched ground. Well, building, anyway. They were standing now on one of the upper levels of one of the skyscrapers, a balcony, he supposed, though you didn't normally see clouds drift past when you were standing on a balcony.
"You can't stay here." Arthur was speaking slowly as though from a long way off, as though it were taking him a lot longer than normal to process anything. "You'll die."
"So will you."
"I'm meant to be here," Arthur negated simply. "Go home."
There was no way that Eames could beat Arthur with sheer creative talent here. And it didn't seem like the other man was confused about whether or not this was reality, he'd just decided he belonged here in limbo.
So Eames went with the tried and true. He glared at Arthur and then he went and deliberately sat down with his back against the building and his arms crossed. It wasn't very adult, but it was quite pointed.
Challenging Arthur had always worked.
The material of the building, he couldn't help noticing, was silky smooth and a little bit warm to the touch-almost more like it was living than a building material.
Had it grown? Not the point, clearly, but Eames couldn't help but notice the wonders of the world that Arthur had created in the blink of an eye.
Eames wasn't ever again going to be able to accuse Arthur of being lacking in imagination. Actually, he wasn't going to be able to accuse him of anything ever again if he didn't fix this.
"I'm going to sit here until I'm dead. Have fun out there. Feel free to come back and visit my body when you want a reminder of the real world."
Actually, Eames had no idea if your body stayed in limbo once you died. But now was really not the time to try to find out. There wouldn't be more experimenting here. So far, the body count in limbo-the people who went bat-shit crazy were another issue entirely-didn't make the possible return worthwhile even to a gambler like him.
Part of Eames hated putting that worry and confusion back on Arthur's face, but he reminded himself sternly that it was for a good cause-the best cause.
"You and me, Arthur," Eames promised. "You came to get me, and I don't go unless you go."
They were surrounded by a fantasy setting that was achingly beautiful and continuing to grow and shift even as Eames forced this standoff. The sky was growing more purple now-night coming?-and the sky to the left showed what he was pretty sure were two moons-too large to be Earth's satellite-appearing above the horizon.
Arthur's shoulders slumped, and his voice was vulnerable and childish when he said, "I can't stay?"
Eames climbed immediately to his feet, scrambling over to Arthur and hating how heartbroken he sounded.
"We can wake up together," he promised, infusing every bit of hope and certainty that he possessed into his voice. He held out his hand. "You and me?"
Arthur looked at him for an infinite moment. Everything was frozen in place in painstaking detail, and Eames knew that they could spend a lifetime here exploring everything that Arthur had created.
Eames knew that they could die here, and he was pretty sure that Arthur wouldn't regret it.
Eames was still on the fence. How exciting was reality, really? How bad would it be if they spent their lifetime here until the coma put an end to it?
And then Arthur put his hand in Eames's, and Eames stopped thinking. The decision had been made, and now there was only to act.
They moved as one, leaping off the balcony just as though they'd planned it, and this time gravity behaved just like normal, and they were rushing down and down and down.
Improbably, he and Arthur were still holding hands, and now there were feathers everywhere, white feathers that were swirling around them, obscuring their vision, and-
~*~
The first moments were terribly anticlimactic. Eames was aware that he was awake, and then he opened his eyes.
Quite simple, really, and not very interesting at all.
And then sensation rushed in.
He ached everywhere. His body felt heavy. There was all this extraneous noise. The air smelled sterile. It was too bright. It was too … everything.
And then the babble of noise crested.
"Eames?"
"Arthur!"
"Eames! Oh, my God!
"How could you-"
"Are you-"
"Eames!"
Eames found himself closing his eyes and trying desperately to shut all of it out.
"Out!"
Silence stretched, taut, and then-
"Arthur-"
"What-?"
"Out. Right. Now."
There was no mistaking the order, something very hard in the voice, and Eames listened with his eyes closed to the sound of clearly cowed people shuffling out of the room until it was blessedly silent.
Cautiously, he cracked his eyes open again.
Arthur was seated next to his bed, and Eames couldn't even begin to understand or cope.
"What is it? Too bright? Too noisy?"
Eames struggled to articulate, his voice a croak. "Too … everything. Too nothing."
It was nonsensical and contrary, but Arthur didn't chastise him or demand clearer answers. Instead, he climbed into the bed and wrapped his arms around Eames, and Eames found to his surprise that he was able to breathe again.
The world was too much, or maybe it was too little-it was certainly not supportable just at the moment, but Arthur wrapped around him seemed to keep it at bay. The feeling of the warm body pressed up against his told him that he was safe, and Eames didn't question it right now.
He let the reassuring feeling of the other man's heart beating soothe him until, improbably, he fell asleep.
~*~
Eames had no idea how he would have survived without Arthur. Eames had regained his sense of self when he'd properly realised that he was in limbo, but that didn't undo the time that he had spent there, didn't alter the shock of being back in the real world and finding that nothing worked the way that he expected it to. His body had been in a coma for almost three months, which meant that he was weak and uncoordinated and tired easily.
At the same time, he found himself often expecting the body that he still felt as though he had had for the last three months-for the last several years, because knowledge of being here in a coma for months was really only words since he could fill in all the things that he had been doing in that time.
He could remember bookshops and forging books and Arthur always there for him-just as Arthur was always here for him now. He never let Eames fall, not even when he pushed himself too hard in physiotherapy and his legs felt like jelly. He helped Eames get to the bathroom, helped feed him when Eames's fingers shook too much to hold his utensils. And he did it all unobtrusively.
He seemed always to know when it was too much for Eames, when he needed to order everyone else out of the room-including doctors and nurses-and when he needed to invite someone in for a visit because Eames needed to be distracted and reminded that a world existed outside of this room. Though Arthur never said so, Eames was also sure that the other man was responsible for the fact that Eames had switched rooms three times so that he would have a different view from the window and subtly different configurations inside. The flowers that appeared every few days were probably him, too, but Arthur treated it as completely normal that they just kept showing up, and Eames didn't push the point.
Arthur ate all of Eames's peas and carrots so that he didn't have to, sneaked out and got Eames good coffee when he was desperately in need of it. He ignored Eames when he got snippy and frustrated, gave him space when he needed it, and invariably curled up with Eames at night so that Eames would be able to sleep.
There were days where Eames felt like he was crawling out of his own skin, days where everything seemed so dull and lacklustre that he thought he would go insane, and days where everything was so sharp he felt like he would injure himself if he moved.
Arthur seemed to find no reaction bizarre, and while he seemed to have an uncanny ability to know when Eames wanted to be teased-a replica, at least, of their normal banter-he never mocked in any way, shape, or form, any reaction that Eames had right now.
Arthur never acted as though Eames was taking him away from the rest of his life, never seemed to have something better to do, but he'd practically moved into the hospital.
As Eames began to feel more human and alive again, however, he had the chance to start assessing the situation, to piece together what had happened, and to realise that he was so angry with Arthur he could barely see straight.
Arthur had thought that Eames had betrayed him. That was why he had disappeared. He had faked it with Eames only long enough to get Ariadne to safety, and it had been she that he had come back to. The fact that he had learned that Eames was in a coma was incidental, only then he had apparently felt guilty enough that he had come to get Eames.
Arthur's behaviour in limbo had been completely atypical. He had claimed that he was interested but had ensured that nothing ever happened between them. Eames had inadvertently shared his soul with the other man, and Arthur fucking pitied him and felt guilty about what had happened.
Not once had Arthur brought up anything that had happened in limbo, hadn't implied by so much as a flicker of an eyelash that he cared about any of it. He just calmly and matter-of-factly took care of Eames, just like he'd taken care of Cobb, just like he took care of his team.
How could he think that Eames would ever betray him? He had consigned Eames to the devil with no evidence, and this hurt far more than Eames ever intended to admit, especially to the man of fucking stone.
Yet another instance of Arthur being perfectly kind and perfectly patient, and Eames snapped.
"You said I had to come back here for me."
Arthur nodded, giving nothing away, being all silently fucking supportive, because that was what he did best, of course.
"Then why the fuck are you here all the time?"
Arthur blinked, looking thrown for the first time since Eames had been back in reality, and Eames pushed.
"If this was all for me and my life, then why have you grafted on like a sponge?" Arthur looked stricken, but Eames couldn't stop the words. Even as he hated himself a little for saying them, part of him was viciously delighted to be getting them out there, to be affecting the man that much. "Desperate desire to be the hero once more? Like to see me weak? Like to make me need you?"
Arthur got up and left without a word.
Eames told himself that he was well satisfied.
The truth, however, was that Eames was not only rather the opposite of well-satisfied-probably something closer to miserable-the following days gave him the chance to enumerate the many ways that he was an idiot.
He wanted answers, and he wasn't going to get any of them if Arthur wasn't here to tell him. Only in the man's absence did he appreciate all the things Arthur had been doing for Eames. He was no longer distracted during his physiotherapy sessions, and that made them much more difficult than he would have thought. The first time he fell on his arse with no one there to catch him, he stayed down more out of the shock than the pain.
He had to insist on his own account that he was not going to see a psychiatrist-he hadn't even realised that Arthur was running interference on that front-and the nights stretched unbearably long. Eames wasn't sleeping well at all, and he no longer had treats to look forward to. (He'd had no idea how many little flourishes of food Arthur was slipping onto the trays until they came without them and he realised that there had not been a massive overhaul in the kitchen.) The doctors and nurses didn't seem nearly as inclined to listen to his desires to have them present or absent-nor his visitors, for that matter-and without Arthur as a buffer, they were asking a lot more questions.
Eames was bored and not coping very well with real life on his own, and maybe that was actually the best reason for him to push through, but even in the depths of his anger, Eames knew that you didn't do what he had just done to someone who had done so much for you.
Eames might question Arthur's motives and his judgement, might believe that their friendship had just come to an end, but Arthur had saved Eames's life literally and comprehensively. Eames could have gone mad coming back from limbo, and Arthur had not just ensured that he came back to begin with, he had made the transition as painless as possible.
Could guilt really make someone do that? Pity? Eames hadn't felt a lot of either, not in the strength that would make him do something similar, anyway. But there was something that felt uncomfortably like guilt churning in his stomach along with the righteous anger when it became clear that Arthur was not coming back, that he'd driven the man off completely.
So completely, in fact, that he'd done that vanishing into the wind thing again. When two weeks had passed, Eames knew for certain that Arthur was not returning. Swallowing his pride and asking for Saito's help was as ineffectual as last time, when Eames had erroneously assumed that Collins had interfered. Arthur might as well have vanished off the face of the planet-and when Saito couldn't find you, that was saying something about your abilities.
There was at least a precedent, so Eames didn't think this time that something nefarious had happened, but he didn't have the slightest idea what to do next.
He checked himself out, insisting that he was well enough by now, and went to see Cobb.
Probably predictably, this did not go well. Eames was spoiling for a fight, after all.
"I have no idea where he is, and if I did, I wouldn't tell you. If he wanted you to know, he would have told you."
"Don't you dare take that righteous tone with me," Eames snarled. "You're the one who took everything from him."
"What?" Utter incomprehension.
"Do you have any idea what it was like for him to lose Mal? Of course you don't," he scoffed at Cobb's look of shock, "because the moment she died, it became all about you, your grief and your mistakes and your love. And Arthur was right there for you all the time, picking up the fucking pieces. He took care of you, and he took care of your kids, and he kept you together long enough for you to lay Mal to rest."
Cobb looked like he wanted to protest but couldn't figure out where to start-which would be because there was nothing he actually could protest.
"And the second you could get back to your kids, you just abandoned him," Eames snapped, everything he had ever wanted to say on this subject boiling up and out. "You let Marie tell him he wasn't welcome when he has dropped everything and devoted his entire life to those kids and to you."
A frown had added itself to the confusion on Cobb's face, and Eames wondered if this meant that the other man really hadn't known what his mother-in-law had said. Honestly, though, what the hell did he think had happened, that Arthur had truly gone from practically living with the kids to disappearing off the face of the planet because Cobb was back?
But then, since this was all about Cobb, he probably hadn't spared so much as a moment to consider Arthur and his relationship with the kids. Fuck but the man was clueless.
"I thought he'd want a break," Cobb tried to explain. "He didn't ask for any of this."
"No, he didn't," Eames agreed viciously. "So did you ever ask yourself why it was that he did it? Did it ever occur to you in that pea-sized brain of yours why he did all of it? Do you have any idea what it did to him every time your projection of Mal hurt or killed him? She was his friend, and you didn't even let him grieve properly."
Shit.
This wasn't what he'd gone to say at all. He was angry with Arthur, and yet he'd gone and chewed Cobb out.
Cobb actually looked kind of chastened, and while this made Eames want to punch him in the face because it was so clear that most of this had never even occurred to him, Eames felt sort of satisfied that he'd been able to say it, that he'd made the man think about it.
"You used him when you had to and dumped him just as soon as you could."
"I wouldn't," Cobb protested.
"You did."
"And you think you did any better?" Cobb finally retorted sharply. "Let him do everything for you and then drove him off as soon as you could cope on your own?"
It was a low blow, and they both knew it. Eames was so torn between anger and kind of believing that he deserved it that he didn't even know what to say. Although, he wasn't so sure that he was coping on his own.
Cobb let out a sigh. "I didn't think about any of it like that. I've always been selfish when it comes to my kids. It was not my intention to hurt him."
Fuck. Eames wasn't so sure that he could handle Cobb going all honest and emotional on him. Normally, he wouldn't hesitate to be an ass to kill the moment, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do so under the circumstances.
"That's why I'm looking for him."
"I really don't know where he is. When you find him, tell him I'd like to talk?"
Eames would take that as an apology-and he kind of appreciated the vote of confidence. Research wasn't his strong point-not like the point man, anyway-and if Saito couldn't do it with all his resources, then Eames was effectively screwed.
But Cobb thought that he was going to find him anyway.
Eames needed to be a lot smarter than he had been so far.
~*~
On to Interlude
Back to Part Two (1)
Disclaimer and author's note, etc., back in the Master Post
On the Wings of an Angel
text by phoenix.writing
illustrations by creepylicious
Part Two (2)
Harry ended up flat on his arse on the ground-which was sand now, so at least the landing had been reasonably soft. The sky was rippling through a thousand colours and settling on a pink that resembled the most brilliant sunset he had ever seen. There was a castle flowing into existence in the distance-flowing, the stone pouring into the proper form like a video of something melting done in reverse. It resembled Hogwarts from the films, a little, but was made of greenish stone that complemented the new sky. There was snow on the rooftops. A cliff was … growing before his very eyes, raising the castle higher and higher, and the ground level where Harry lay was sprouting lush tropical forest complete with humidity-rolling over him and clinging to his clothes-and wildlife-he could hear birds, insects, and something big in the underbrush-except for to his right where a valley had formed; from here, he could see the top parts of the unbelievable skyscrapers that rose towards the sky. They were too delicate and fantastically shaped to be manmade, spires that twisted into the sky like spun glass, all the colours of the rainbow.
He twisted round to see behind him and found a sparkling, crystal clear body of water-so clear that he could see the city beneath its surface, domed buildings that clearly teemed with life. And was that a …mermaid?
Bugger him. Cobb had been good. Ariadne had been better. Arthur … Arthur was incredible.
Arthur-
Eames turned back to find that the other man was no longer in front of him.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Arthur had clearly been reluctant, and Harry had pushed anyways, and this was bloody limbo, and Arthur had just made him promise to wake up as though Arthur wasn't going to be here to ensure that he did, and-Shit, shit, shit.
Where could he have gone? Eames hadn't been distracted for that long. He looked around frantically. The cover was dense here, growing denser by the minute, but surely Eames would have heard something, would have-
Fuck me.
Eames didn't think about it, he just scrambled to his feet and ran flat out, launching himself at Arthur where he was hovering out amongst those fantastic skyscrapers.
He'd thought that they were going to go crashing towards those very sharp spires. He hadn't anticipated crashing into the other man and just sort of … stopping, both hovering in the middle of the air.
Eames was clinging for dear life to someone who might as well have been standing on a sidewalk. Arthur had swayed back the equivalent of a step or two with the force of the impact, but not nearly as much as Eames would have expected-though clearly anything he was expecting at this point was going to be debunked.
"Why aren't we falling?"
"What's gravity?"
Eames couldn't tell if the question was meant literally or meant to imply that gravity was an arbitrary rule that could easily be lifted here, but Eames was distracted when he pulled back enough that he could see Arthur's face.
His pupils were blown wide so that there were only little rims of brown around the edges. Eames had a sense of how disconcerting it must have been for Arthur to interact with Eames day after day when Eames didn't know him because there was no hint of recognition in Arthur's face now.
He wasn't wearing a suit anymore, and the jeans and a t-shirt that had replaced the previous garb seemed particularly … inappropriate. He was barefoot, the jeans were ratty, worn into thin strings at the bottom, and there was a rip in the knee. The worn green t-shirt had, of all improbable items, a cartoon of spider-man across it.
Not the sort of thing that he had worn even when he had been dressing down in Harry's dream.
It was … distinctly odd. Still, though, Eames knew that you could lose yourself in limbo, had clearly done so quite spectacularly himself, so he wasn't sure why he was so shocked by Arthur. Perhaps it was just because he was always so in control. This was a complete departure.
If Eames understood correctly, it was something that Arthur had been worried about, but he had done it anyway.
Arthur had lost himself here to save Eames.
It was in the eyes, Eames decided finally, or maybe the whole expression a bit, but definitely the eyes. Because it wasn't big pupils like he was on a mind-altering substance of some sort-and Eames had seen enough of that in his lifetime to know. That would be too easy here. It wasn't inhuman, because that would be very alienating. It was other, but it was … freedom. It was lack of inhibitions.
This was Arthur undone and at peace and just … gone somewhere where Eames was afraid he wouldn't be able to reach him again.
Given the expression, Eames would actually spare a moment to wonder if he should try, but he knew full well that Arthur had been trying to get them both out of here, that he had spent all his time here trying to attain that goal. Now that he couldn't, Eames had to step in.
Eames had no idea how much real time Arthur had spent down here trying to convince Eames that this wasn't reality, but assuming Arthur was right-and when was the annoying man not-then they were treading on borrowed time as it was.
Eames didn't have months or weeks-and maybe not even days or hours. Eames couldn't navigate this blossoming, chaotic world, and he had the feeling that he would never find Arthur again if he lost him now.
"It's time to go," he told Arthur.
"Yes, go."
Eames found himself drifting away without even realising he was moving, no visible or tangible external force acting on him, he simply suddenly wasn't pressed up against Arthur anymore.
"Shit!" he swore and leaned back in to clutch at Arthur, who looked vaguely puzzled by the hands clasped around his wrists.
Eames looked the other man straight in the eye. "You promised me that reality was out there with Arthur alive in it."
Arthur just kept staring and staring, and then he blinked, a slight frown puckering his brow.
"That isn't what I said."
"Yes, it is," Eames insisted. "That's what you meant. And I will hold you to it, do you hear me? We both leave, or we both stay right here."
The frown deepened, and Eames only became aware that they'd moved again-together, at least-when his feet touched ground. Well, building, anyway. They were standing now on one of the upper levels of one of the skyscrapers, a balcony, he supposed, though you didn't normally see clouds drift past when you were standing on a balcony.
"You can't stay here." Arthur was speaking slowly as though from a long way off, as though it were taking him a lot longer than normal to process anything. "You'll die."
"So will you."
"I'm meant to be here," Arthur negated simply. "Go home."
There was no way that Eames could beat Arthur with sheer creative talent here. And it didn't seem like the other man was confused about whether or not this was reality, he'd just decided he belonged here in limbo.
So Eames went with the tried and true. He glared at Arthur and then he went and deliberately sat down with his back against the building and his arms crossed. It wasn't very adult, but it was quite pointed.
Challenging Arthur had always worked.
The material of the building, he couldn't help noticing, was silky smooth and a little bit warm to the touch-almost more like it was living than a building material.
Had it grown? Not the point, clearly, but Eames couldn't help but notice the wonders of the world that Arthur had created in the blink of an eye.
Eames wasn't ever again going to be able to accuse Arthur of being lacking in imagination. Actually, he wasn't going to be able to accuse him of anything ever again if he didn't fix this.
"I'm going to sit here until I'm dead. Have fun out there. Feel free to come back and visit my body when you want a reminder of the real world."
Actually, Eames had no idea if your body stayed in limbo once you died. But now was really not the time to try to find out. There wouldn't be more experimenting here. So far, the body count in limbo-the people who went bat-shit crazy were another issue entirely-didn't make the possible return worthwhile even to a gambler like him.
Part of Eames hated putting that worry and confusion back on Arthur's face, but he reminded himself sternly that it was for a good cause-the best cause.
"You and me, Arthur," Eames promised. "You came to get me, and I don't go unless you go."
They were surrounded by a fantasy setting that was achingly beautiful and continuing to grow and shift even as Eames forced this standoff. The sky was growing more purple now-night coming?-and the sky to the left showed what he was pretty sure were two moons-too large to be Earth's satellite-appearing above the horizon.
Arthur's shoulders slumped, and his voice was vulnerable and childish when he said, "I can't stay?"
Eames climbed immediately to his feet, scrambling over to Arthur and hating how heartbroken he sounded.
"We can wake up together," he promised, infusing every bit of hope and certainty that he possessed into his voice. He held out his hand. "You and me?"
Arthur looked at him for an infinite moment. Everything was frozen in place in painstaking detail, and Eames knew that they could spend a lifetime here exploring everything that Arthur had created.
Eames knew that they could die here, and he was pretty sure that Arthur wouldn't regret it.
Eames was still on the fence. How exciting was reality, really? How bad would it be if they spent their lifetime here until the coma put an end to it?
And then Arthur put his hand in Eames's, and Eames stopped thinking. The decision had been made, and now there was only to act.
They moved as one, leaping off the balcony just as though they'd planned it, and this time gravity behaved just like normal, and they were rushing down and down and down.
Improbably, he and Arthur were still holding hands, and now there were feathers everywhere, white feathers that were swirling around them, obscuring their vision, and-
~*~
The first moments were terribly anticlimactic. Eames was aware that he was awake, and then he opened his eyes.
Quite simple, really, and not very interesting at all.
And then sensation rushed in.
He ached everywhere. His body felt heavy. There was all this extraneous noise. The air smelled sterile. It was too bright. It was too … everything.
And then the babble of noise crested.
"Eames?"
"Arthur!"
"Eames! Oh, my God!
"How could you-"
"Are you-"
"Eames!"
Eames found himself closing his eyes and trying desperately to shut all of it out.
"Out!"
Silence stretched, taut, and then-
"Arthur-"
"What-?"
"Out. Right. Now."
There was no mistaking the order, something very hard in the voice, and Eames listened with his eyes closed to the sound of clearly cowed people shuffling out of the room until it was blessedly silent.
Cautiously, he cracked his eyes open again.
Arthur was seated next to his bed, and Eames couldn't even begin to understand or cope.
"What is it? Too bright? Too noisy?"
Eames struggled to articulate, his voice a croak. "Too … everything. Too nothing."
It was nonsensical and contrary, but Arthur didn't chastise him or demand clearer answers. Instead, he climbed into the bed and wrapped his arms around Eames, and Eames found to his surprise that he was able to breathe again.
The world was too much, or maybe it was too little-it was certainly not supportable just at the moment, but Arthur wrapped around him seemed to keep it at bay. The feeling of the warm body pressed up against his told him that he was safe, and Eames didn't question it right now.
He let the reassuring feeling of the other man's heart beating soothe him until, improbably, he fell asleep.
~*~
Eames had no idea how he would have survived without Arthur. Eames had regained his sense of self when he'd properly realised that he was in limbo, but that didn't undo the time that he had spent there, didn't alter the shock of being back in the real world and finding that nothing worked the way that he expected it to. His body had been in a coma for almost three months, which meant that he was weak and uncoordinated and tired easily.
At the same time, he found himself often expecting the body that he still felt as though he had had for the last three months-for the last several years, because knowledge of being here in a coma for months was really only words since he could fill in all the things that he had been doing in that time.
He could remember bookshops and forging books and Arthur always there for him-just as Arthur was always here for him now. He never let Eames fall, not even when he pushed himself too hard in physiotherapy and his legs felt like jelly. He helped Eames get to the bathroom, helped feed him when Eames's fingers shook too much to hold his utensils. And he did it all unobtrusively.
He seemed always to know when it was too much for Eames, when he needed to order everyone else out of the room-including doctors and nurses-and when he needed to invite someone in for a visit because Eames needed to be distracted and reminded that a world existed outside of this room. Though Arthur never said so, Eames was also sure that the other man was responsible for the fact that Eames had switched rooms three times so that he would have a different view from the window and subtly different configurations inside. The flowers that appeared every few days were probably him, too, but Arthur treated it as completely normal that they just kept showing up, and Eames didn't push the point.
Arthur ate all of Eames's peas and carrots so that he didn't have to, sneaked out and got Eames good coffee when he was desperately in need of it. He ignored Eames when he got snippy and frustrated, gave him space when he needed it, and invariably curled up with Eames at night so that Eames would be able to sleep.
There were days where Eames felt like he was crawling out of his own skin, days where everything seemed so dull and lacklustre that he thought he would go insane, and days where everything was so sharp he felt like he would injure himself if he moved.
Arthur seemed to find no reaction bizarre, and while he seemed to have an uncanny ability to know when Eames wanted to be teased-a replica, at least, of their normal banter-he never mocked in any way, shape, or form, any reaction that Eames had right now.
Arthur never acted as though Eames was taking him away from the rest of his life, never seemed to have something better to do, but he'd practically moved into the hospital.
As Eames began to feel more human and alive again, however, he had the chance to start assessing the situation, to piece together what had happened, and to realise that he was so angry with Arthur he could barely see straight.
Arthur had thought that Eames had betrayed him. That was why he had disappeared. He had faked it with Eames only long enough to get Ariadne to safety, and it had been she that he had come back to. The fact that he had learned that Eames was in a coma was incidental, only then he had apparently felt guilty enough that he had come to get Eames.
Arthur's behaviour in limbo had been completely atypical. He had claimed that he was interested but had ensured that nothing ever happened between them. Eames had inadvertently shared his soul with the other man, and Arthur fucking pitied him and felt guilty about what had happened.
Not once had Arthur brought up anything that had happened in limbo, hadn't implied by so much as a flicker of an eyelash that he cared about any of it. He just calmly and matter-of-factly took care of Eames, just like he'd taken care of Cobb, just like he took care of his team.
How could he think that Eames would ever betray him? He had consigned Eames to the devil with no evidence, and this hurt far more than Eames ever intended to admit, especially to the man of fucking stone.
Yet another instance of Arthur being perfectly kind and perfectly patient, and Eames snapped.
"You said I had to come back here for me."
Arthur nodded, giving nothing away, being all silently fucking supportive, because that was what he did best, of course.
"Then why the fuck are you here all the time?"
Arthur blinked, looking thrown for the first time since Eames had been back in reality, and Eames pushed.
"If this was all for me and my life, then why have you grafted on like a sponge?" Arthur looked stricken, but Eames couldn't stop the words. Even as he hated himself a little for saying them, part of him was viciously delighted to be getting them out there, to be affecting the man that much. "Desperate desire to be the hero once more? Like to see me weak? Like to make me need you?"
Arthur got up and left without a word.
Eames told himself that he was well satisfied.
The truth, however, was that Eames was not only rather the opposite of well-satisfied-probably something closer to miserable-the following days gave him the chance to enumerate the many ways that he was an idiot.
He wanted answers, and he wasn't going to get any of them if Arthur wasn't here to tell him. Only in the man's absence did he appreciate all the things Arthur had been doing for Eames. He was no longer distracted during his physiotherapy sessions, and that made them much more difficult than he would have thought. The first time he fell on his arse with no one there to catch him, he stayed down more out of the shock than the pain.
He had to insist on his own account that he was not going to see a psychiatrist-he hadn't even realised that Arthur was running interference on that front-and the nights stretched unbearably long. Eames wasn't sleeping well at all, and he no longer had treats to look forward to. (He'd had no idea how many little flourishes of food Arthur was slipping onto the trays until they came without them and he realised that there had not been a massive overhaul in the kitchen.) The doctors and nurses didn't seem nearly as inclined to listen to his desires to have them present or absent-nor his visitors, for that matter-and without Arthur as a buffer, they were asking a lot more questions.
Eames was bored and not coping very well with real life on his own, and maybe that was actually the best reason for him to push through, but even in the depths of his anger, Eames knew that you didn't do what he had just done to someone who had done so much for you.
Eames might question Arthur's motives and his judgement, might believe that their friendship had just come to an end, but Arthur had saved Eames's life literally and comprehensively. Eames could have gone mad coming back from limbo, and Arthur had not just ensured that he came back to begin with, he had made the transition as painless as possible.
Could guilt really make someone do that? Pity? Eames hadn't felt a lot of either, not in the strength that would make him do something similar, anyway. But there was something that felt uncomfortably like guilt churning in his stomach along with the righteous anger when it became clear that Arthur was not coming back, that he'd driven the man off completely.
So completely, in fact, that he'd done that vanishing into the wind thing again. When two weeks had passed, Eames knew for certain that Arthur was not returning. Swallowing his pride and asking for Saito's help was as ineffectual as last time, when Eames had erroneously assumed that Collins had interfered. Arthur might as well have vanished off the face of the planet-and when Saito couldn't find you, that was saying something about your abilities.
There was at least a precedent, so Eames didn't think this time that something nefarious had happened, but he didn't have the slightest idea what to do next.
He checked himself out, insisting that he was well enough by now, and went to see Cobb.
Probably predictably, this did not go well. Eames was spoiling for a fight, after all.
"I have no idea where he is, and if I did, I wouldn't tell you. If he wanted you to know, he would have told you."
"Don't you dare take that righteous tone with me," Eames snarled. "You're the one who took everything from him."
"What?" Utter incomprehension.
"Do you have any idea what it was like for him to lose Mal? Of course you don't," he scoffed at Cobb's look of shock, "because the moment she died, it became all about you, your grief and your mistakes and your love. And Arthur was right there for you all the time, picking up the fucking pieces. He took care of you, and he took care of your kids, and he kept you together long enough for you to lay Mal to rest."
Cobb looked like he wanted to protest but couldn't figure out where to start-which would be because there was nothing he actually could protest.
"And the second you could get back to your kids, you just abandoned him," Eames snapped, everything he had ever wanted to say on this subject boiling up and out. "You let Marie tell him he wasn't welcome when he has dropped everything and devoted his entire life to those kids and to you."
A frown had added itself to the confusion on Cobb's face, and Eames wondered if this meant that the other man really hadn't known what his mother-in-law had said. Honestly, though, what the hell did he think had happened, that Arthur had truly gone from practically living with the kids to disappearing off the face of the planet because Cobb was back?
But then, since this was all about Cobb, he probably hadn't spared so much as a moment to consider Arthur and his relationship with the kids. Fuck but the man was clueless.
"I thought he'd want a break," Cobb tried to explain. "He didn't ask for any of this."
"No, he didn't," Eames agreed viciously. "So did you ever ask yourself why it was that he did it? Did it ever occur to you in that pea-sized brain of yours why he did all of it? Do you have any idea what it did to him every time your projection of Mal hurt or killed him? She was his friend, and you didn't even let him grieve properly."
Shit.
This wasn't what he'd gone to say at all. He was angry with Arthur, and yet he'd gone and chewed Cobb out.
Cobb actually looked kind of chastened, and while this made Eames want to punch him in the face because it was so clear that most of this had never even occurred to him, Eames felt sort of satisfied that he'd been able to say it, that he'd made the man think about it.
"You used him when you had to and dumped him just as soon as you could."
"I wouldn't," Cobb protested.
"You did."
"And you think you did any better?" Cobb finally retorted sharply. "Let him do everything for you and then drove him off as soon as you could cope on your own?"
It was a low blow, and they both knew it. Eames was so torn between anger and kind of believing that he deserved it that he didn't even know what to say. Although, he wasn't so sure that he was coping on his own.
Cobb let out a sigh. "I didn't think about any of it like that. I've always been selfish when it comes to my kids. It was not my intention to hurt him."
Fuck. Eames wasn't so sure that he could handle Cobb going all honest and emotional on him. Normally, he wouldn't hesitate to be an ass to kill the moment, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do so under the circumstances.
"That's why I'm looking for him."
"I really don't know where he is. When you find him, tell him I'd like to talk?"
Eames would take that as an apology-and he kind of appreciated the vote of confidence. Research wasn't his strong point-not like the point man, anyway-and if Saito couldn't do it with all his resources, then Eames was effectively screwed.
But Cobb thought that he was going to find him anyway.
Eames needed to be a lot smarter than he had been so far.
~*~
On to Interlude