A Source of Little Visible Delight (parts 7-9)
Title: A Source of Little Visible Delight (parts 7-9)
Characters: Arthur, Eames, OCs
Pairing: pre-slash Arthur/Eames
Word Count: 3800
Rating: PG
Summary: Arthur attempts to go on vacation. Mild angst and much introspection ensues. It’s an Arthur character study and appreciation fic!
Originally posted on the kink meme in 12 parts as a response to sho_no_tabi ’s awesome prompt.
I'm writing an Arthur/Eames-heavy sequel to this right now that I'll post as a WIP on this journal.
~
Arthur is lying supine, floating weightless in an endless ocean of white. Next to him sits a dark presence blurred at its edges by a halo of filtered light. Arthur feels as a mote of dust in that halo: buoyant, directionless, free. It’s not a feeling Arthur enjoys.
The dark figure speaks, “Good morning, sunshine.”
The voice pulls Arthur back into his body at a crushing velocity. Everything snaps into focus and the throbbing pain in his right thigh blooms anew. He opens his mouth to verbalize his pain, but all that comes out is a weak moan.
“Arthur?”
The dark presence next to him dissipates to reveal a curvy black girl. Her baby face is offset by a lip ring and a newly shaved head.
“Cadence?” Arthur rasps.
She springs up from her chair. “Yeah. I’m here. What do you need? The nurse? Maybe some water?”
Water. Water. “WATER.” Arthur practically begs.
Cadence fills up a pink cup and places it in his hands. He gulps it down with trembling fingers and gives it back to her to refill. He downs five cups before collapsing back onto the pillows.
“The morphine button’s right there if you need it.”
It’s tempting what with the dizzying pain he’s in, but he has questions that need answering immediately.
“The kids,” he remembers aloud, “What happened to the kids?”
“The kids... Ah, the guys they found you with. I think they’re alright. I haven’t heard otherwise...”
“Police been around?”
“Arthur, are you sure you want me to give you the details now? You should probably get some more rest.”
“Two minutes. And then I’ll press the button. Go.”
“Fine. Yes, the police have been here. They want to get a statement from you whenever you’re ready... I would also like to hear what happened. But the real version. Not the one you’re going to tell the cops.”
“And the leg?” Arthur motions weakly down the bed. He hopes what he’s feeling is not pain from a phantom limb.
“You’re one lucky bastard. The bullet hit the outside of your thigh. Missed your femoral artery. You lost a lot of blood, though.”
“How long have I been out?”
“About three days.”
Arthur absorbs the information and nods.
Cadence stares at him incredulously. “How are you doing this?”
Arthur looks up at her. “Doing what?”
“Arthur, you just woke up from a three-day-long morphine nap. You should not be physiologically able to hold this coherent of a conversation with me.”
But I can, Arthur thinks to himself. He shrugs.
Cadence fixes him with a look that suggests amusement as well as wariness. “You are a mysterious man, Arthur.”
It takes Arthur a moment to think of how to respond to this heretofore unknown tidbit of information about himself. “Cadence, if you ever want to know anything about me, all you have to do it ask.”
“What if I ask you a question that you don’t want to answer?”
“Then I won’t answer it.”
Cadence bows her head, conceding the point.
Arthur smiles at her affectionately. There’s something different about her that he can’t quit put his finger on. It takes him a few moments of rather awkward staring to figure it out. “Your hair is gone.”
She smiles almost sadly and runs her hand over her scalp. “Yeah. Yeah, it was getting a bit... impractical. I ended up having to fight my way out of Quito a few weeks ago. A guy grabbed on to it and almost got a machete to my throat.”
Arthur knows Cadence well enough to recognize the faraway look in her eyes as meditation over her lost hair, not her brush with death.
“It looks good.” He assures her.
“You think so?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Thanks.” She smiles, and for a moment she looks like any other young, slightly shy girl. As opposed to a woman who does things like trudge through jungles in search of new ingredients for compounds.
Arthur is beginning to feel fatigue pull him down. “Time’s up. I’m pressing the button. Will you be here when I wake up?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Cadence.”
She walks back to her seat, “Go to sleep, Arthur.”
~
“How long you been up for?” Cadence’s sleep-roughened voice cuts into Arthur’s daydream. She yawns and squirms in the ugly, uncomfortable chair she’s fallen asleep in, wearing her canvas jacket backwards as a makeshift blanket.
“I’m not sure.” Arthur continues to stare out the window at the tops of gray buildings. The drug haze having lifted, he’s caught in a natural daydream. Gazing into space. Contemplating nothing. It’s lovely.
Cadence yawns again. “You could have woken me.”
Arthur shrugs. “You just got back from a two month job. You could use some rest.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
Arthur smirks and looks pointedly at the book sitting in Cadence’s lap: The Haunting of Hill House. He quotes, “‘No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.’”
Cadence smiles in understanding. “It’s a great first sentence.”
“It’s a great book. What made you choose it?”
“It was recommended to me by an architect. A guy named Ander.”
Arthur stares at her in disbelief. “Ander. Tall? Blonde? Swedish?”
“That’s the one. Why?”
Ander was one of the first people that Arthur met when he went off the grid, an architect. The words best used to describe him would be ‘decent human being.’ But at times his structures could be lifeless. Arthur had given him his copy of the book partially as inspiration and partially as a joke. Arthur wonders if the copy Cadence is holding right now is the same one he gave to Ander. “I gave him that book.”
“Really? I never had you pegged for a fan of Gothic literature.”
“I’m not. It was given to me by a friend.” That friend being Eames. He’d quoted that first line to Arthur at night on a beach in Maryland. They were both hammered. When Arthur had looked at him perplexed, Eames had shook his head and said, “You should know that one. She’s one of yours.” By ‘yours’ he’d meant ‘American’. Later on that night, Arthur had puked all over Eames’ shoes.
Arthur reaches towards Cadence, palm up in a small gesture of hope, “Could I see it for a minute? The book?”
Cadence hands it to him. Arthur frowns when he sees that the jacket of the book has been removed and with it any identifying marks. He opens up the back cover. What he sees there turns the corners of his mouth up into an unabashed grin: a paper pocket where a checkout card used to rest, stamped with the words PROPERTY OF THE ANNAPOLIS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
He speaks to Cadence but is unable to take his eyes off of the words.
“This is the copy that I gave to Ander. This used to be mine.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.” Eames had presented it to Arthur proudly just a few days after that night on the beach. Arthur had been pissed. “You’re giving me a book that you stole out of a public library as a present?” Eames had looked genuinely hurt by Arthur’s anger. “Does that mean you don’t like it?” Arthur had gone to return it several times but never had the heart to complete his task.
Cadence is looking back and forth between Arthur and his book. “Annapolis. So, it’s from your days in the military.”
“Yeah...” Arthur pauses and looks up at her. “How did you know I was in the military?”
Cadence smiles coyly. “I didn’t. But I do now.”
Arthur fixes her with a stare that tries to be withering but is mostly amused.
She persists, “Is that how you got into dreamsharing? Through the military?”
“Is this you asking me about myself?”
“Is this you telling me to mind my own business?”
“I’m just wondering why you’re suddenly interested in my past.”
Cadence tries to be earnest and fails miserably. “Am I not allowed to take interest in the personal lives of my fellow dreamers?”
Arthur just stares at her.
“Jin and I have a bet going.”
Arthur laughs. “I knew it. What’s the bet?”
“It’s regarding how you got into dreamsharing. I can’t give you anymore details. Don’t want you changing the story on my behalf.” She grins. “I know you’re not Jin’s biggest fan.”
Arthur smiles. He looks back down at the book he’s holding. “Well, since my story now has a monetary value...”
Cadence doesn’t say anything. She just waits for Arthur. Allows him to take his time.
Arthur takes a deep breath. He speaks lowly and slowly. And without emotion. As if he's telling her what he ate for breakfast that morning. “It was my second year of active duty. They put my entire squad under for training purposes. They led us into this giant theater and hooked us all up. We went to sleep and woke up in a tent in the middle of the desert, being given orders by our Sergeant. I freaked out. I realized that I had no idea how I had arrived there. I couldn't smell anything. I put my finger in my mouth, and it didn't taste like anything. I just knew something wasn't right. And no one else besides me seemed to notice it. As soon as our Sergeant finished speaking and asked if there were any questions, my hand shot up and I said ‘Sir, how did we get here, sir?’ He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me. He was baffled. He dismissed everyone, and then he brought me into his private quarters and he stuck his sidearm in between my eyes and said ‘Sorry about this, Segel.’ And he shot me. When I woke up, the engineers and my COs asked me what had happened. I explained it to them, and they gave me the same look that my Sergeant had given me. They took me into a room and had me fill out a sort of quiz. It was mostly questions regarding details of the dream. Once I was done, they took a look at it, and one of the engineers said ‘Sixteen out of twenty.’ I said, ‘Is that good?’ He just stared at me and said, ‘That’s impossible.’” Arthur tells Cadence this last bit with a certain amount of pride.
“You weren’t supposed to remember the dream?” Cadence’s eyes have moved from Arthur to the floor, her gaze turned inward in contemplation. She wiggles her lip ring between her thumb and forefinger.
Arthur continues, his own eyes fixed on his hands resting in his lap. “Not in the detail that I did. It was an expected side effect of the sedative they were using at that point. Remembering details of the dream is only important if you’re using it for something like extraction or therapy. Not so much with military training. In that context, it was more important that the soldier remember the feel of it, the experience.”
Cadence nods. “That would explain your ability to recall so much so quickly after three straight days of morphine dosing.”
“That would explain it.”
“I’m guessing that they didn’t send you back to base with your squad that day.”
“No, they ran a few more tests on me. Had me go under a few more times. Put some brain wave sensors on me. Sedated me and gave me an MRI.”
“That’s kind of creepy.”
“It wasn’t that bad, actually. There were no scary men in lab coats. No exploratory surgeries or cavity searches-”
“They didn’t even have the courtesy to give you a rectal exam? Poor Arthur.”
Arthur squints at her sideways. “Screw you.”
“So they were perfect gentlemen.”
“Yeah, they were. They answered all of my questions within reason. They explained everything they were doing and why. They told me that they had never encountered anyone else that was able to recall details the way I could, even under heavy sedation. And they offered me the chance to assist them with research and development.”
“Did they actually offer you a position? Did they give you a chance to walk away if you’d wanted to?”
“Why would I have wanted to?” For the first time since he’s started speaking, he looks up from his hands and at Cadence. The corners of his eyes crinkle and his mouth is turned up slightly. He looks at her, but his gaze is distant and wistful. “That first dream scared the shit out of me, but the instant I woke up, I wanted to go back under. That was it for me. I was spoken for. If they had sent me back to my squad, I would have begged them to let me stay.”
Cadence gives an affectionate huff. “You wouldn’t have begged, Arthur. You would have kept your head down and done as you were told.”
Arthur turns his head back to let his gaze rest on the book that sits in his lap. He turns it over in his hands. “Yeah. I guess I would have.”
“How long were you there for?”
“About eighteen months.”
“What were you... developing exactly?”
“Everything. Different versions of the PASIV. Different compounds. Dream physics. Kicks.”
“Kicks. So you did a lot of dying.”
“Yes, I did. Many times and in lots of creative ways.”
“What about the compounds? How did those treat you?”
Arthur smiles. “There were some fun ones. Getting high at the request of the U.S. government was a bit of trip. Pun intended. There were some nasty ones though. I once went blind for four days. I once lost all feeling in my extremities for twenty four hours. I flew into a rage one day after going under and nearly cracked an engineer’s skull open.”
Arthur’s gaze is distant. His mouth is smiling, but he’s beginning to fiddle nervously with the book in his hand, picking at the corner of its spine.
A pregnant pause. Cadence takes her hand away from her lip ring and frowns. “You don’t talk about this very often, do you?”
“I don’t ever talk about this.”
“I think you need to.”
Arthur snaps his head up and levels a confrontational stare at Cadence. “Why? So I can be pitied?” The volume of his voice has risen without his permission. And his mouth is moving, speaking words that have only ever passed through his mind but not his lips. “I wasn’t a lab rat, Cadence. I did what I was asked to do, and I’m damn proud of it. And I sure as hell don’t want anyone’s pity.”
Cadence is now so far forward in her chair that she’s about to fall out of it, and she’s meeting Arthur’s stare with her own angry one. “That’s not what I’m trying to say at all. I’m not saying that I think you should talk about this. I’m saying that you have to.”
“It’s my story. I don’t have to tell it if I don’t want to.”
That’s when Cadence snaps. “That’s just the point, Arthur. It’s not your story. It’s our story. All of us. Everyone in the dreamshare community. The instant that you agreed to live in a lab for eighteen months with dream engineers, you became a part of something much bigger than yourself. That’s part of our history, Arthur. You can’t hoard that away. That’s the kind of shit that people need to know about.” She pauses. Takes a deep breath, trying to exhale some of the anger that is visibly shaking her. “I don’t pity you one damn bit for what you went through. This isn’t me telling you that you don’t have to bear the burden of your past by yourself. This is me telling you that you don’t get to.”
Arthur feels like there’s fire running through his veins. His indignation at Cadence’s perceived pity has curdled into anger at his own short-sightedness. I never thought about it that way, he thinks. Why did I never think about it that way?
His jaw is working furiously and his eyes are beginning to burn. Arthur feels as though he’s floating. In orbit around an ever growing mass. Standing in the middle of a roundabout. Near the center of a great wheel. He breaths deeply, lets a weigh drop from his shoulders and takes a step back, away from the center.
He looks down at the book in his hands. Opens it up to the inside back cover. It’s not your story, he thinks. Not anymore than the book he’s holding belongs exclusively to him. Not anymore than the words written on its pages are the property of the Annapolis Public Library.
“I know that you’re a fan of taking responsibility for everything and everyone, Arthur. But you have to stop. For the sake of yourself and everyone else.” Arthur flinches when he feels a light touch on his shoulder. Cadence is standing next to him, wearing a look that is equal parts frustration and affection. “You can’t carry the entire dreamsharing community on your shoulders, Arthur. They’re too narrow.”
MORE
Characters: Arthur, Eames, OCs
Pairing: pre-slash Arthur/Eames
Word Count: 3800
Rating: PG
Summary: Arthur attempts to go on vacation. Mild angst and much introspection ensues. It’s an Arthur character study and appreciation fic!
Originally posted on the kink meme in 12 parts as a response to sho_no_tabi ’s awesome prompt.
I'm writing an Arthur/Eames-heavy sequel to this right now that I'll post as a WIP on this journal.
~
Arthur is lying supine, floating weightless in an endless ocean of white. Next to him sits a dark presence blurred at its edges by a halo of filtered light. Arthur feels as a mote of dust in that halo: buoyant, directionless, free. It’s not a feeling Arthur enjoys.
The dark figure speaks, “Good morning, sunshine.”
The voice pulls Arthur back into his body at a crushing velocity. Everything snaps into focus and the throbbing pain in his right thigh blooms anew. He opens his mouth to verbalize his pain, but all that comes out is a weak moan.
“Arthur?”
The dark presence next to him dissipates to reveal a curvy black girl. Her baby face is offset by a lip ring and a newly shaved head.
“Cadence?” Arthur rasps.
She springs up from her chair. “Yeah. I’m here. What do you need? The nurse? Maybe some water?”
Water. Water. “WATER.” Arthur practically begs.
Cadence fills up a pink cup and places it in his hands. He gulps it down with trembling fingers and gives it back to her to refill. He downs five cups before collapsing back onto the pillows.
“The morphine button’s right there if you need it.”
It’s tempting what with the dizzying pain he’s in, but he has questions that need answering immediately.
“The kids,” he remembers aloud, “What happened to the kids?”
“The kids... Ah, the guys they found you with. I think they’re alright. I haven’t heard otherwise...”
“Police been around?”
“Arthur, are you sure you want me to give you the details now? You should probably get some more rest.”
“Two minutes. And then I’ll press the button. Go.”
“Fine. Yes, the police have been here. They want to get a statement from you whenever you’re ready... I would also like to hear what happened. But the real version. Not the one you’re going to tell the cops.”
“And the leg?” Arthur motions weakly down the bed. He hopes what he’s feeling is not pain from a phantom limb.
“You’re one lucky bastard. The bullet hit the outside of your thigh. Missed your femoral artery. You lost a lot of blood, though.”
“How long have I been out?”
“About three days.”
Arthur absorbs the information and nods.
Cadence stares at him incredulously. “How are you doing this?”
Arthur looks up at her. “Doing what?”
“Arthur, you just woke up from a three-day-long morphine nap. You should not be physiologically able to hold this coherent of a conversation with me.”
But I can, Arthur thinks to himself. He shrugs.
Cadence fixes him with a look that suggests amusement as well as wariness. “You are a mysterious man, Arthur.”
It takes Arthur a moment to think of how to respond to this heretofore unknown tidbit of information about himself. “Cadence, if you ever want to know anything about me, all you have to do it ask.”
“What if I ask you a question that you don’t want to answer?”
“Then I won’t answer it.”
Cadence bows her head, conceding the point.
Arthur smiles at her affectionately. There’s something different about her that he can’t quit put his finger on. It takes him a few moments of rather awkward staring to figure it out. “Your hair is gone.”
She smiles almost sadly and runs her hand over her scalp. “Yeah. Yeah, it was getting a bit... impractical. I ended up having to fight my way out of Quito a few weeks ago. A guy grabbed on to it and almost got a machete to my throat.”
Arthur knows Cadence well enough to recognize the faraway look in her eyes as meditation over her lost hair, not her brush with death.
“It looks good.” He assures her.
“You think so?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Thanks.” She smiles, and for a moment she looks like any other young, slightly shy girl. As opposed to a woman who does things like trudge through jungles in search of new ingredients for compounds.
Arthur is beginning to feel fatigue pull him down. “Time’s up. I’m pressing the button. Will you be here when I wake up?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, Cadence.”
She walks back to her seat, “Go to sleep, Arthur.”
~
“How long you been up for?” Cadence’s sleep-roughened voice cuts into Arthur’s daydream. She yawns and squirms in the ugly, uncomfortable chair she’s fallen asleep in, wearing her canvas jacket backwards as a makeshift blanket.
“I’m not sure.” Arthur continues to stare out the window at the tops of gray buildings. The drug haze having lifted, he’s caught in a natural daydream. Gazing into space. Contemplating nothing. It’s lovely.
Cadence yawns again. “You could have woken me.”
Arthur shrugs. “You just got back from a two month job. You could use some rest.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
Arthur smirks and looks pointedly at the book sitting in Cadence’s lap: The Haunting of Hill House. He quotes, “‘No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.’”
Cadence smiles in understanding. “It’s a great first sentence.”
“It’s a great book. What made you choose it?”
“It was recommended to me by an architect. A guy named Ander.”
Arthur stares at her in disbelief. “Ander. Tall? Blonde? Swedish?”
“That’s the one. Why?”
Ander was one of the first people that Arthur met when he went off the grid, an architect. The words best used to describe him would be ‘decent human being.’ But at times his structures could be lifeless. Arthur had given him his copy of the book partially as inspiration and partially as a joke. Arthur wonders if the copy Cadence is holding right now is the same one he gave to Ander. “I gave him that book.”
“Really? I never had you pegged for a fan of Gothic literature.”
“I’m not. It was given to me by a friend.” That friend being Eames. He’d quoted that first line to Arthur at night on a beach in Maryland. They were both hammered. When Arthur had looked at him perplexed, Eames had shook his head and said, “You should know that one. She’s one of yours.” By ‘yours’ he’d meant ‘American’. Later on that night, Arthur had puked all over Eames’ shoes.
Arthur reaches towards Cadence, palm up in a small gesture of hope, “Could I see it for a minute? The book?”
Cadence hands it to him. Arthur frowns when he sees that the jacket of the book has been removed and with it any identifying marks. He opens up the back cover. What he sees there turns the corners of his mouth up into an unabashed grin: a paper pocket where a checkout card used to rest, stamped with the words PROPERTY OF THE ANNAPOLIS PUBLIC LIBRARY.
He speaks to Cadence but is unable to take his eyes off of the words.
“This is the copy that I gave to Ander. This used to be mine.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.” Eames had presented it to Arthur proudly just a few days after that night on the beach. Arthur had been pissed. “You’re giving me a book that you stole out of a public library as a present?” Eames had looked genuinely hurt by Arthur’s anger. “Does that mean you don’t like it?” Arthur had gone to return it several times but never had the heart to complete his task.
Cadence is looking back and forth between Arthur and his book. “Annapolis. So, it’s from your days in the military.”
“Yeah...” Arthur pauses and looks up at her. “How did you know I was in the military?”
Cadence smiles coyly. “I didn’t. But I do now.”
Arthur fixes her with a stare that tries to be withering but is mostly amused.
She persists, “Is that how you got into dreamsharing? Through the military?”
“Is this you asking me about myself?”
“Is this you telling me to mind my own business?”
“I’m just wondering why you’re suddenly interested in my past.”
Cadence tries to be earnest and fails miserably. “Am I not allowed to take interest in the personal lives of my fellow dreamers?”
Arthur just stares at her.
“Jin and I have a bet going.”
Arthur laughs. “I knew it. What’s the bet?”
“It’s regarding how you got into dreamsharing. I can’t give you anymore details. Don’t want you changing the story on my behalf.” She grins. “I know you’re not Jin’s biggest fan.”
Arthur smiles. He looks back down at the book he’s holding. “Well, since my story now has a monetary value...”
Cadence doesn’t say anything. She just waits for Arthur. Allows him to take his time.
Arthur takes a deep breath. He speaks lowly and slowly. And without emotion. As if he's telling her what he ate for breakfast that morning. “It was my second year of active duty. They put my entire squad under for training purposes. They led us into this giant theater and hooked us all up. We went to sleep and woke up in a tent in the middle of the desert, being given orders by our Sergeant. I freaked out. I realized that I had no idea how I had arrived there. I couldn't smell anything. I put my finger in my mouth, and it didn't taste like anything. I just knew something wasn't right. And no one else besides me seemed to notice it. As soon as our Sergeant finished speaking and asked if there were any questions, my hand shot up and I said ‘Sir, how did we get here, sir?’ He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me. He was baffled. He dismissed everyone, and then he brought me into his private quarters and he stuck his sidearm in between my eyes and said ‘Sorry about this, Segel.’ And he shot me. When I woke up, the engineers and my COs asked me what had happened. I explained it to them, and they gave me the same look that my Sergeant had given me. They took me into a room and had me fill out a sort of quiz. It was mostly questions regarding details of the dream. Once I was done, they took a look at it, and one of the engineers said ‘Sixteen out of twenty.’ I said, ‘Is that good?’ He just stared at me and said, ‘That’s impossible.’” Arthur tells Cadence this last bit with a certain amount of pride.
“You weren’t supposed to remember the dream?” Cadence’s eyes have moved from Arthur to the floor, her gaze turned inward in contemplation. She wiggles her lip ring between her thumb and forefinger.
Arthur continues, his own eyes fixed on his hands resting in his lap. “Not in the detail that I did. It was an expected side effect of the sedative they were using at that point. Remembering details of the dream is only important if you’re using it for something like extraction or therapy. Not so much with military training. In that context, it was more important that the soldier remember the feel of it, the experience.”
Cadence nods. “That would explain your ability to recall so much so quickly after three straight days of morphine dosing.”
“That would explain it.”
“I’m guessing that they didn’t send you back to base with your squad that day.”
“No, they ran a few more tests on me. Had me go under a few more times. Put some brain wave sensors on me. Sedated me and gave me an MRI.”
“That’s kind of creepy.”
“It wasn’t that bad, actually. There were no scary men in lab coats. No exploratory surgeries or cavity searches-”
“They didn’t even have the courtesy to give you a rectal exam? Poor Arthur.”
Arthur squints at her sideways. “Screw you.”
“So they were perfect gentlemen.”
“Yeah, they were. They answered all of my questions within reason. They explained everything they were doing and why. They told me that they had never encountered anyone else that was able to recall details the way I could, even under heavy sedation. And they offered me the chance to assist them with research and development.”
“Did they actually offer you a position? Did they give you a chance to walk away if you’d wanted to?”
“Why would I have wanted to?” For the first time since he’s started speaking, he looks up from his hands and at Cadence. The corners of his eyes crinkle and his mouth is turned up slightly. He looks at her, but his gaze is distant and wistful. “That first dream scared the shit out of me, but the instant I woke up, I wanted to go back under. That was it for me. I was spoken for. If they had sent me back to my squad, I would have begged them to let me stay.”
Cadence gives an affectionate huff. “You wouldn’t have begged, Arthur. You would have kept your head down and done as you were told.”
Arthur turns his head back to let his gaze rest on the book that sits in his lap. He turns it over in his hands. “Yeah. I guess I would have.”
“How long were you there for?”
“About eighteen months.”
“What were you... developing exactly?”
“Everything. Different versions of the PASIV. Different compounds. Dream physics. Kicks.”
“Kicks. So you did a lot of dying.”
“Yes, I did. Many times and in lots of creative ways.”
“What about the compounds? How did those treat you?”
Arthur smiles. “There were some fun ones. Getting high at the request of the U.S. government was a bit of trip. Pun intended. There were some nasty ones though. I once went blind for four days. I once lost all feeling in my extremities for twenty four hours. I flew into a rage one day after going under and nearly cracked an engineer’s skull open.”
Arthur’s gaze is distant. His mouth is smiling, but he’s beginning to fiddle nervously with the book in his hand, picking at the corner of its spine.
A pregnant pause. Cadence takes her hand away from her lip ring and frowns. “You don’t talk about this very often, do you?”
“I don’t ever talk about this.”
“I think you need to.”
Arthur snaps his head up and levels a confrontational stare at Cadence. “Why? So I can be pitied?” The volume of his voice has risen without his permission. And his mouth is moving, speaking words that have only ever passed through his mind but not his lips. “I wasn’t a lab rat, Cadence. I did what I was asked to do, and I’m damn proud of it. And I sure as hell don’t want anyone’s pity.”
Cadence is now so far forward in her chair that she’s about to fall out of it, and she’s meeting Arthur’s stare with her own angry one. “That’s not what I’m trying to say at all. I’m not saying that I think you should talk about this. I’m saying that you have to.”
“It’s my story. I don’t have to tell it if I don’t want to.”
That’s when Cadence snaps. “That’s just the point, Arthur. It’s not your story. It’s our story. All of us. Everyone in the dreamshare community. The instant that you agreed to live in a lab for eighteen months with dream engineers, you became a part of something much bigger than yourself. That’s part of our history, Arthur. You can’t hoard that away. That’s the kind of shit that people need to know about.” She pauses. Takes a deep breath, trying to exhale some of the anger that is visibly shaking her. “I don’t pity you one damn bit for what you went through. This isn’t me telling you that you don’t have to bear the burden of your past by yourself. This is me telling you that you don’t get to.”
Arthur feels like there’s fire running through his veins. His indignation at Cadence’s perceived pity has curdled into anger at his own short-sightedness. I never thought about it that way, he thinks. Why did I never think about it that way?
His jaw is working furiously and his eyes are beginning to burn. Arthur feels as though he’s floating. In orbit around an ever growing mass. Standing in the middle of a roundabout. Near the center of a great wheel. He breaths deeply, lets a weigh drop from his shoulders and takes a step back, away from the center.
He looks down at the book in his hands. Opens it up to the inside back cover. It’s not your story, he thinks. Not anymore than the book he’s holding belongs exclusively to him. Not anymore than the words written on its pages are the property of the Annapolis Public Library.
“I know that you’re a fan of taking responsibility for everything and everyone, Arthur. But you have to stop. For the sake of yourself and everyone else.” Arthur flinches when he feels a light touch on his shoulder. Cadence is standing next to him, wearing a look that is equal parts frustration and affection. “You can’t carry the entire dreamsharing community on your shoulders, Arthur. They’re too narrow.”
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