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But I, I am compassionate and I am cruel.
Be on your guard!
The Thunder, Perfect Mind
Arthur is careful to speak.
****
"Quickly," Arthur remembers Eames saying, "quickly, quickly."
"Dear Eames," Yusuf had said, the calmness in his tone belied by the pressure with which he was gripping Arthur’s forearm, "Patience."
"Dear Yusuf," Eames had said, his voice slipping into the worn-smooth groove that was his mocking register, "cast a damn spell if you have to, just wake us up."
"You know he isn't a spellcaster," Arthur had interjected. He reached with his opposite hand to pry gently at Yusuf's grip. "We're at the mercy of the thorn."
"There are better ways to sleep," Eames muttered. "I don't know why we continue to rely so on our beauty here."
"Because I'm reliable," Yusuf snapped.
"What he said," Arthur agreed. He turned to face Yusuf, took Yusuf's hand. Flipped it so the palm was facing up, watched a drop of blood bead at the center. "There," Arthur said.
Eames looked over Arthur's shoulder, watched the pinprick tip of a briar thorn work its way out of Yusuf's palm. "Lovely," he said.
"You can keep us hidden us for a few seconds more?" Arthur asked Eames.
"Yes," Eames said, then said to Yusuf, "Does it hurt?"
"You ask that every time," Arthur glanced up at Yusuf's face, the sweat breaking across the man's brow. "You're fine, aren't you?"
"Yes, I will be. As long as you don't let go," Yusuf replied.
"Such talented hands," Eames said.
"Shh," Arthur said firmly, soothing. He felt his way down the nerves in Yusuf’s hand, their branching paths. It still feels like a revelation after all this time: how easy it can be, sometimes, to put aside pain.
****
Arthur had known Eames long before they had been introduced by Izanami, but it was only afterwards that they became something like friends.
Izanami travels. She’s wiser in the ways of worlds, but some of that leads to pretension, which Arthur can't blame her for but is amused by anyway.
"You say amused when what you really mean is annoyed," Eames noted.
"Keep your armchair analysis to a minimum. It'd be polite to at least pretend discretion."
"Why shutter my insights when there's so much more fun to be had by parading them?"
"It is ostentatious," Izanami says.
"As is using the word 'ostentatious'," Eames said. He quirked his eyebrow, touching thoughtfully at his lower lip.
Arthur refused to smile. “Back to business, if there aren’t any objections," he said. "Izanami, what can we do to help you?"
"There are benefits to a world revealed by magic rather than science," Izanami began, and it was all Arthur could do to keep from rolling his eyes.
"Gatekeepers and bridge-builders," Eames had said later, after Izanami was gone. "Whether it's a rainbow or ice or a beam from the moon, they walk from here to an impossible there and think they're gods."
"It's a pretty impressive power," Arthur said, fiddling with the cuff of his shirt. He frowned at the missing cuff link, wondering whether he'd lost it, or had entirely forgotten to put one in this morning. The latter would be a slip.
Eames scoffed, snapped his fingers: a gleaming gold pin appearing in the space between his thumb and knuckle, which he then handed to Arthur. "Oh, you love the mole sauce at that restaurant?" he said, adopting a voice. "I suppose it's fine, I just really can't be impressed with anything outside of Mexico since the time I backpacked across Central America."
"It's hardly the same," Arthur said, unable to stop a quiet laugh. He put on the cuff link, nodded his thanks.
"It's exactly the same," Eames said, stretching, the bottom button of his shirt now conspicuously missing, exposing a slice of taut belly. Eames noticed the direction of Arthur’s gaze, raised an eyebrow. "I can't create something from nothing, you know."
Arthur looked away, occupied himself with confirming he had his runes in his pockets, the weight of the die. "Except for flirtations."
"No," Eames said. "Not even that."
****
Eames will tell his own stories sometimes.
“Once,” he’d said, “there was a man who walked the Pacific coast, where the river meets ocean. So virile was he that one glance from him could get a woman pregnant.”
“Hmm,” Arthur had said. He’d heard this tale before. He’d forgotten where.
“It sounds more dazzling than it is.”
“Does it sound very dazzling?” Arthur wondered.
“Well, of course it all depends on context, but virility can be admired in certain circles. Lustiness recognized. It’s when it begins to descend into licentiousness that most everyone will scoff.”
“These all seem like grades of the same thing.”
“Ah,” Eames said. “But it’s the gradations that are so important.”
Arthur had looked up at him, only just catching up to the sudden seriousness of Eames’ tone. Eames, who was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. “You have a strange way of trying to impress.”
“That isn’t what I’m trying to do,” Eames said.
“Then what?” Arthur waited, then shrugged. “I’ve heard this story before by the way. It’s a good call to repeat it. When your material is this good...” He whistled.
Eames smiled, sat back in his chair, the fabric of his pants stretched tight across his thighs. “I can introduce a few new details, if that’s what you’re hinting at, Arthur.”
Arthur ignored him, returning to his papers.
Eames sighed. “Anyway,” he said. “The people chased him away, kept him far from their villages for his keen reproductive powers.” He scratched across his chest, his big hand, the chewed tips. His nails glowed a bit, buffed and polished nearer the nail beds.
“Fuck,” Arthur had said with feeling, “the vulnerability behind your mask. How true after all, that every blessing can be a curse.”
“Now, Arthur. These are the little lonelinesses that come with everything that makes us unique,” Eames said, and slapped his thighs, came to his feet.
*****
Arthur grew up with six sisters, all of them older but one. He learned from his kind of family how to stand out quickly; already put in the open by the fact of the dick between his legs, Arthur figured he should take the start given to him and put as much distance between himself and his tall, laughing sisters as he could.
Not in a cruel way, Arthur wants to be clear about that. He loves his sisters. It’s just that five older siblings means that there are so many already-beaten paths ahead of you, and Arthur had always liked to do his own clear-cutting. There is a satisfaction to be had in shaping the world.
He fell into dream-walking later, after setting himself apart became an obsolete and foreign pursuit. There was potential in the calling. So many different ways to sleep, whether they be apples or lake water, brambles or a ghost ship crew’s liquor. Arthur was canny, not cautious, and he learned what he could from the people he worked with and kept moving, always an eye on the prize.
The second time he met Eames, Eames looked at him and said, “For fuck’s sake, hold still,” and Arthur, all the vibration went out of him.
Careful, Arthur remembers thinking.
****
Arthur uses a prism that he’d filched from Izanami that last time she’d been orating. He finds a good, cleared-out space in the city. Not the transit-meadow, mostly because it’ll be so trafficked, and Arthur doesn’t feel like sharing his road with someone who happens to be going in the same general direction he is.
He holds the prism up to the sun, watches it catch, then flicks it to the ground, like a lit match he wants to keep from burning his fingers. It bows up, seven colors springing into the air, and Arthur steps up and on, walks.
Izanami falls into step with him halfway to his destination. “Thief,” she says accusingly. “You might have asked.”
“Asking’s so pedestrian.” Arthur shrugs. “You can have it back after this.”
She nods.
They walk in silence for a bit. Bows aren’t Arthur’s preferred method of travel, but there’s something fine about them when you have one to yourself. The black sky below his feet.
Izanami walks like she’s been burdened, her hands clasped behind her back, her head bent forward, looking at the ground a few steps ahead. She’s tall, though, and once in a while, her arm will brush Arthur’s shoulder, and he’ll note the tone of the muscle, estimate her reach.
Arthur only realizes he’s reached his destination when he stumbles onto asphalt, hard on his soles. He turns to Izanami. “Thanks for walking with me,” he says.
“Don’t steal from me again,” she says.
“It’s beneath me, anyway.”
She nods. “You aren’t bad company,” she says. She straightens up, stretches a bit, then cocks her head, as if she’d heard her name. “I should go.”
“Don’t your feet ever get tired?” Arthur asks.
Izanami already has her back to him. “What does it matter? I only go where I want to go.” She turns again for a second, tosses a piece of glass towards Arthur. “Here,” she says. “This one you can keep.”
“That’s nice.” He’s surprised.
“Out of the goodness of my heart. Because you didn’t ask.”
“I didn’t ask for the other one either,” Arthur points out, then: “I mean, thank you.”
****
Arthur has sex with Eames after the second job they pull for Izanami together. Mostly because he isn’t able to talk himself out of it. When he told Eames that, Eames said, “Flattering.”
“I can’t tell you to feel flattered or not,” Arthur said. “But it was intended as a compliment. I talk myself out of fucking almost everyone I meet.”
Eames reflected. “You know, in your own way you’ve learned to live alone as thoroughly as I have.”
“And you were worried we didn’t share any common ground.”
Eames raised up onto one elbow in bed, blinking blearily. “The life looks worse on you. I bring a a charm and noble-bearing to it.”
“You bring an accent to it.” Arthur busied himself with his tie.
Eames fell back onto his pillow. “It’s a good thing I’m much less discriminate in choosing partners than you are. Otherwise it would have taken an act of god to get the two of us into bed.”
Arthur came over, braced a hand on Eames’ chest and bent down to kiss him. “Now who’s the flatterer,” he asked.
****
Eames took Arthur out to lunch the day after. They were still working a job: extracting a true name, or something else like that. Arthur forgets the details -- he packs his head full with every new job, and wipes the slate clean after.
Lunch, they went to some Burmese restaurant that was bustling, full of people who didn’t work by choice and through privilege, grabbed two seats at the bar. They chatted and it was easier than Arthur had expected.
Later, Eames told him that he takes everyone he works with out to lunch alone. He likes to know who he’s joining hands with. “And besides, everyone surprises you a little.”
“What surprised you about me?” Arthur asked.
“What an embarrassing question.”
“Fuck it,” Arthur said. “I want to know.”
Eames laughed. “You talked more than I thought you would. You were practically conversational. I didn’t expect that.”
“And what were you correct in expecting?”
“That you’d want to talk about trivial things. Health policy, the pros and cons of freelancing, my shoes. Your last date.”
Arthur curled his lip. “I sound terrible.”
“Don’t you, though?” Eames said, in full agreement. He waved both his hands in Arthur’s direction. “And yet, paradoxically.”
****
Eames wanders often, going from here to there, usually on foot. He likes to traverse terrains. From what Arthur hears, sometimes Eames will stumble upon someone he likes, and they’ll go to bed, and then Eames will trick them into giving something up before moving on. A good breakfast, sometimes; virginity, others. Rings.
The egregiousness varies with some rhyme, some reason.
Eventually, Eames will wend his way back to Arthur’s bed. He’ll greet Arthur with a kiss, and then pull away and sigh. Arthur will watch his shoulders loosen.
“You again,” Arthur will say.
“It sounds very fond when you say it like that,” Eames will say.
Then Arthur will say, “It’s not meant to,” and kiss him again. Eames has nice lips, and it doesn’t bother Arthur as much as it should, that they’re beginning to feel familiar.
****
This is strange.
Eames is lying in bed, naked and above the sheets. Just airing everything out. Arthur is sharpening a halberd. It’s more ornamental than anything, but it’s nice to keep an edge on those types of things. Remind them of their true intention.
Eames had braced a foot on Arthur’s back, and Arthur when he finishes with the stone, leans away from the pressure, slides the halberd under the bed where it’ll be out of the way until he’ll go to hang it again, and falls back onto one arm, slaps at Eames’ dick.
“Christ,” Eames says. “Careful.”
Arthur says, “I don’t need to be careful with you. I’ve heard the stories.”
“Stories of what.”
“The wool you pull over people’s eyes. Your impervious nature.”
“Go on,” Eames says, his lips curved up. “What else do you hear about me?”
“That your lies lead to harm, but enough times bear out into kindness. What a line you walk,” Arthur says, looking up at him and laughing. He stretches his throat up and croons out a low howl.
Eames slips his fingers into Arthur’s hair. “And what if I began to tilt to one direction? What if I wanted to be more admirable than not?”
Arthur looks away, rests his forehead against Eames’ thigh. His hand on Eames’ opposite knee.
“What if I want to be all good, and not at all evil?” Eames asks, his voice a little louder, lilting.
“It’s not in your nature,” Arthur points out.
“Why isn’t it?”
Arthur sits up, then, feeling tugged just a bit from his sockets. “It isn’t.”
“You seem scared that it might be.” His eyes assessing.
Arthur stands, stretches. He reaches for the halberd under his bed, his head in the blue dark, his arm outstretched and searching for steel.
“I could tell a story of you, too,” Eames says.
****
Arthur dreams of Cobb, which is very far out of the ordinary. It’s been a long while since he’s heard from him. They’re in a nondescript field, broad expanses of ankle-high grass, a breeze skittering across the blades, sending them rustling. No one but the two of them for miles.
Arthur closes his eyes, and opens them, puts the two of them in the middle of a restaurant that Cobb used to like to frequent in Westwood, packs it full of patrons. Projections at the ready in the case that this Cobb isn’t one Arthur had conjured up.
“Good, Arthur,” Cobb says, approvingly.
Arthur shrugs, smiles at the waitress who’s appeared at their table and asks for a glass of water. He looks at Cobb, the way he leans forward onto his forearms, his big hands clasped together. He’s handsome. It always takes seeing him to remind Arthur of that. Arthur lets the silence grow.
“Arthur,” Cobb finally says. “We should talk.”
“Okay,” Arthur says. He takes off his coat, drapes it over the empty seat next to him. “Let’s talk.”
And then it’s Cobb’s turn to fall silent. He’s busying his fingers with something, toying with it under the shadow of his palm.
“Jesus, this is ominous.” Arthur rolls up his sleeves. The dream is odd, but he’s spent at least a few weirder nights with his cryptic-as-fuck subconscious.
Cobb nods at Arthur’s bared forearms, watches as Arthur loosens his tie. “Are you getting ready to throw a punch.”
Arthur smiles, lets it shrink slow over his teeth. Cobb is still hiding something in his hand. “No,” he says. “Well. I don’t intend to yet, but it never hurts to be prepared.”
Cobb shakes his head at that, but he smiles, too, then leans back in his seat, relaxing, and it’s then that Arthur extends his arm, claps one hand over Cobb’s, which is lying face-down on the table.
“What’s that you’re playing with, Dom?” he asks, then turns Cobb’s hand over, sees the top.
Arthur’s projections turn to look as one, and the waitress comes striding over, a steaming carafe of coffee in hand. Arthur waits for her to reach them, to smash it against this intruder’s head.
Instead, she flips Arthur’s mug over, fills it with coffee to the brim. “Cream?” she asks. “Sugar’s on the table.”
Arthur’s grip on Cobb loosens in surprise. “No, thank you.”
She nods, touches Arthur’s sleeve, then walks away. Chatter breaks out across the room again.
Arthur sighs, lets his head fall back a bit, weigh heavy on his neck. “I hate dreaming naturally.” He straightens, drags a hand across his face, sips at the coffee. “There’s too much uncertainty. I like to know what to expect.”
He pulls his coat off the seat next to him, looks it over, piece-by-piece. Finds a gap where the arm is pulling loose from the torso of it, and frowns. He digs into his pocket and finds the sewing kit he keeps there amongst his other runes, pulls out a needle and thread.
Cobb’s keeping quiet, and Arthur can still feel the brief wash of adrenaline that had come with the concern that this was an extraction. That suspicion hasn’t entirely left, but it’s of a low enough grade that Arthur would like to continue sleeping, dream or no. He’d been tired this evening.
He repairs the tear in his coat. There's always been something calming about the pull of thread, of putting an error to rights.
He hears Cobb order for the both of them, but when the food arrives and Arthur looks up, Cobb is gone.
****
In the morning, Arthur wakes up the sound of someone yelling outside of his window.
“Get out of the fucking street,” she shouts. “You can’t play in the street, how many times have I told you?” And kids laugh, laugh, laughing.
Arthur looks at both palms, traces the smoothness there, the lack of any ache left behind by a thorn.
Eames comes out from the adjoining bathroom, a billow of steam with him. He’s rubbing a towel against his hair, tosses it aside, and then sits at Arthur’s hip, running a hand along his beard. “Should I trim this?” he asks.
Arthur reaches up and tugs at it hard.
“Steady on,” Eames says. “Hands.” He grips Arthur’s wrist, presses it against Arthur’s stomach, then leans down to kiss him. “Did the racket wake you?” he asks.
Arthur kisses Eames back. Thorns aren’t the only way to get into another’s dream, he reminds himself. It wouldn’t hurt, really, to be guarded.
****
Arthur has become a kind of waystop for people who can’t see an actual healer for this reason or another. He hadn’t intended it, and it’s often actively an inconvenience, but there are upsides: Arthur likes gathering favors to call in.
When he’s not on a job, he doesn’t bother trying to hide, and the broken arms, the burnshot, petrified and fleshtorn are a steady stream.
In the afternoons, when Eames comes to Arthur’s for shelter from a high sun, he watches, and Arthur introduces him as “a disciple who came to study at my feet. What they don’t tell you about hero-worship is how humbling it can be.”
Eames just grins like a dope, then clasps his hands behind his back and looks over Arthur’s shoulder, very serious.
Arthur likes treating bones best. He counts, “1,” wrenches an arm back into place with a grunt, then finishes, “2, 3.”
“My god,” Eames says. “You’re not exactly Florence Nightingale.”
“Sometimes the body requires an application of force,” Arthur says. He sighs and falls back against the wall, gloved hands at his sides.
Eames shakes his head. He moves in front of Arthur, his eyes steady. He reaches up and puts a stray lock of hair back into place. “Interesting,” he says.
Arthur smiles.
Eames cocks his head toward the man behind them. “This one fainted,” he says, dry.
****
Arthur keeps dreaming of Cobb. He makes a call.
“I never knew you felt that way about me,” Cobb says, his visage hazy in the pool.
“I don’t.”
“How naked do I get in these dreams?”
Arthur grimaces. “Not at all naked. My subconscious shows me at least that mercy.”
“So it’s strictly a romance,” Cobb muses. “Do I sweep you off your feet? Are there flowers and jewelry and gifts of deadly weapons?”
“The restoration of your humor isn’t as welcome a development as you might think.”
Cobb laughs quietly. “Arthur,” he says. “It’s nice of you to call. I’m fine.”
“For now,” Arthur says, and then regrets the import.
“Then if I won’t be fine in the near future, I’ll have been well-warned.”
“In my dreams you’re obsessive about your totem. Again. That fucking spinning.”
“Okay, Arthur.”
Arthur fights the instinct to rattle the calm in Cobb’s tone. He sets his jaw, nods to himself. “Okay.”
Cobb sighs, and Arthur watches him rustle idly through a book. “We agreed, Arthur. Silence means that things are fine, or that we’re beyond each other’s help.”
“Yes.” Arthur touched at the small sewing kit in his lapel pocket, imagined the glint of his needles.
“I hope that you won’t hear from me in a long time. I hope I won’t hear from you.” And then nothing but empty water, clear straight down to the bone-white bowl.
****
Eames is a fucking nightmare. He cheats at cards, which is painfully ridiculous, and does it down on the waterfront to be as much of a cliché as possible.
Eames comes walking into Arthur’s apartment, throws a jacket onto Arthur’s couch. He nods at Arthur, says, “Hello, sweetness,” then makes his way to the kitchen, rummages through the refrigerator.
He reappears with an apple and knife in hand, leans against the counter. Arthur narrows his eyes. “You look like you’re expecting someone.”
“Not at all. What’ve you mixed yourself up in today?”
Arthur stands. “Are you--”
He’s interrupted by the crashing of three men through his door, and Arthur swings around, grabs the heavy-bottomed tumbler he’d been drinking from and hurls it at the head of one of the men rushing Eames.
Eames catches a fist to the stomach, doubles over, then slams a knife into his attacker’s thigh.
The man Arthur beaned is on the ground, and Arthur steps hard on his kidney and then on his neck. He looks up for the third, but Eames has him by the nape and is smashing his head against Arthur’s counter top.
“Don’t get blood all over my fucking apartment,” Arthur says, slightly winded.
Eames drops the man, raises both hands.
“You’re a fucking nightmare,” Arthur says then.
****
They fight about it. “Don’t you think it’s too fucking easy for you to cheat at cards?”
Eames’s smile is as thin as one on that mouth gets. He pulls a card from what seems like nowhere, makes it flicker, from club to heart, and back again. “Just because something is easy doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.” He’s fucking sparkling. “Haven’t we earned a drink, you and I?”
“So why didn’t you lose these assholes instead of leading them back here?” Arthur demands. He’s down to his undershirt, holds a knife wound on one of the goons’ stomach closed, concentrating, and watches it knit together slowly.
“They were a long time angry. They would have found me sometime.” He’s found tumblers, unbroken ones, holds one out to Arthur. “Why delay?”
“Jesus, I don’t want a fucking drink, alright?” Arthur knocks his hand away. “You didn’t even try to slip them, did you?”
Eames wipes a spot of blood from his jaw with his arm. “Your place could do with some redecorating.” He points. “Only just a splash of red, and the whole flat is transformed.”
****
Arthur is dreaming again. He’s impatient with it, and switches the setting: hamlet, to island, to fortress, to stream. He’s sitting with Cobb, and the world keeps changing around them.
“Why do you think you keep dreaming of me?” Cobb asks.
Arthur lies back in the grass. There are a half-dozen reasons not to do it when he’s awake. He’s almost never wearing clothes he can afford to get a stain on. It appears child-like in the extreme. More.
“You’re going to make yourself motion sick,” Cobb says.
“Do you want to hear a story?” Arthur asks. He watches the shifting sky as it clicks from view to view. “Once, there was a man named Dominick. He was one half of a whole. When things were good between him and his other half, they were perfect. When they were bad, it was cataclysmic.”
Clouds stream overhead, a backlit, glowing white.
“And when the day came that he disagreed with her about something fundamental, they split down the middle. She disappeared. All that was left was his shadow.” He looked down at Cobb’s back, the spread of it. “You used to be a two-headed god. Was I supposed to watch your back forever?”
Cobb’s head lowers. “Do you always tell the story like that?”
“It’s a cautionary tale,” Arthur says, and he looks back up at the sky. Like this, he can pretend he’s alone here, waiting to wake up.
“Then tell me your mythology. It’s only fair.”
Arthur laughs. “Mine’s a cautionary tale, too.”
****
Eames looks like he’s still sleeping when Arthur wakes up. His broad chest rising and falling under Arthur’s sheets. Arthur forgets how long he’s had this place. He forgets where he bought this bed they’re in.
Eames seems peaceful, but then he wakes up with a gasp, eyes flying open. Arthur rears back, carefully holds himself out of the way until Eames settles.
“Bad dream?” Arthur asks.
Eames sits up, rubs at his eyes. “A good one. Left too soon.” He smirks in a way that reminds Arthur of those times when Eames is performing for someone, the composed jocularity.
“Liar.”
“Call me that every time and you may be right one in two.”
Arthur shakes his head, gets out of bed, goes to his closet. He fingers the jackets hanging there, the fine weave.
“Wear something adorable for me today,” Eames says from bed.
Arthur goes to the doorway. He looks at Eames disheveled. “You’ve been here for a longer time than usual,” he says.
Eames laughs. “Are you worried that I’m missing out on trouble to be had?”
“No,” Arthur says, feeling very serious. “I don’t worry about that.”
****
He speaks with Yusuf. “I can’t put a finger on what’s making me so damn prickly.”
Yusuf nods. “It’s more difficult to share a dream with someone if one isn’t in proximity. But not impossible.” He crosses his arms. “And you don’t know what an intruder may be after?”
“Does it matter?”
“Easier to protect one thing than everything.”
Arthur feels himself smile. “I disagree.”
“Ha,” Yusuf says. “Very terrifying, Arthur.” There’s the sound of a cat, and Yusuf looks down, murmuring.
“I--” Arthur begins. “You wouldn’t sell me out, would you, Yusuf?”
Yusuf turns back to Arthur. “I would ask a very high price,” he says coolly.
****
Arthur has concerns, and he feels justified in them. Hasn’t Eames always been known to lie? Aren’t all his kindnesses easy for him, giving away things that were never his to begin with?
“I steal from the rich to give to the poor.” Eames is very and deliberately casual.
“I don’t mean to question your character.” Arthur sighs. “I don’t want to.”
They’re talking quietly, in the lobby of Arthur’s building. Eames looks out of place in a such an everyday setting. He has, as Mal had said so admiringly once, a distinctiveness, no matter the context.
Arthur is standing very straight. He has his hands in his pockets, drawn up to his full height. He had made independent inquiries, of course. Had checked up on people who thought of themselves as his enemies, sought out word.
“Arthur,” Eames says. “Out with it. What do you want to ask me?”
“My dreams. I might have mentioned; the ones with Cobb.” Arthur keeps his tone clipped. “Something isn’t right about them.”
“Okay,” Eames says.
“Have you heard anything?” Arthur licks his dry lips. “Is someone running a job on me?”
This smile grows on Eames’ face. He scratches at one eyebrow with his thumb, exhales through his nose. “No one’s come skulking around, no.”
“Are you?”
Eames laughs at that. “Bald,” he says. “I like the look on you.” He shakes his head. “No, darling, I’m not.”
Arthur nods, feels a little knot in his back squeeze tighter, strangely. “I’d understand if you were upset that I asked.”
Eames mulls over that. He lets his fingers brush Arthur’s wrist. “Better to have been asked than to deal with your wondering.”
Arthur smiles, jerky but sincere. “It’s the clockwork in my brain.” Raises a finger. “Tick, tick, tick.”
“Yes, well.” Eames leans in, presses a firm kiss to Arthur’s cheek. “I’m going to bed somewhere else tonight.”
“You don’t have to do that.” Arthur pulls back, looks Eames in the eye.
Eames laughs again, this quieted rumble. “Yes, but it’ll make the both of us feel better. For tonight at least, you’ll be blissfully alone.”
Arthur nods his assent, and the knot in his back slackens, a genuine bit of relief.
Eames walks away, nearly to the door, before he doubles back. “What is it, exactly?” he asks. “The dreams. Why so sure they aren’t the product of your subconscious?”
“They might be.” Arthur stays tight-lipped. “Who knows.”
“Right.” Eames hums thoughtfully. “Alright, then.”
Arthur lets his posture slump a bit. His hands are cold. “This went better than I was expecting. Can I tell you that?” He laughs.
Eames smiles back at him. “Yes, you can tell me.”
****
He has a dream that night, too.
He’s training. San Shou kickboxing in an abandoned plaza. The buildings remind him of Lyon. It could be disquieting, how silent and emptied the city’s been, but Arthur concentrates on his form, his technique, his bare feet gripping the stone underneath.
He works himself to exhaustion, to the point where it’s difficult to think. He has to stop, catch his breath as he tries to remember the next sequence. He steps into a resting stance, centers, pushes into a Tai Chi form.
“Step through. Good. Keep your upper body relaxed, light. Your torso should float over the movement in your lower body. Good. Raise the right leg. And hold this position.”
Arthur holds, looking forward. Arms bent, hands at the ready. He breathes freely, feels the sweat slipping down his forehead.
A hand at his back. “Straighten up here. Let the tension bleed from the shoulders. Your foot planted, all your weight traveling down into the ground.”
It’s Cobb’s fucking voice. Of course it is.
Cobb comes around, stands a comfortable distance from Arthur, looks on with his arms crossed in front of him. “Could anybody move you?” he asks.
Arthur drops his leg. He rests his hands on his hips, breathing hard. “Cobb doesn’t know the first fucking thing about Tai Chi.”
“It seems a very mysterious art,” Cobb says, amused.
“Fuck off. What would be the point if it wasn’t practical?”
“You should really stretch before these sessions,” Cobb says. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
****
Eames stays away for another day, then another. That grows into a week, and Arthur begins to figure that Eames has finally set to wandering again. They have interludes, Arthur reminds himself. It’s what works best for them, and anyway, Arthur can’t be distracted.
He’s grateful, he supposes. He requires focus, this close to the finish line. There’s a job that he’s been running for far too long, with a deadline fast approaching.
****
Arthur wakes up in his empty bed, and brushes his teeth quickly, pulls on a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt. He’s out the door within ten minutes, running the path that he used to take, sometimes, with Eames. He lets his feet feel fleet.
There’s a trail that maws open at the side of the sidewalk, after a mile or so, and Arthur turns. He forgot to bring a water bottle, but there’s a fountain here, which will serve.
Eames is standing there, wiping the back of his mouth with his hand. “Look at you,” he says.
Arthur doesn’t expect to feel pleased at the sight of him, can’t stop the smile that bleeds onto his face.
“You look flushed,” Eames says.
“It’s hot.”
Eames dips a hand into the water flowing out the mouth of some stone creature. He flicks droplets at Arthur, and Arthur watches them glitter as they leave Eames’ hand. A tiny snowfall. “Cool down, then,” Eames says, and then he smiles, too.
****
He and Eames run together for another hour, and at the tail end of the trail, they slow to a walk. The sun had come early, with a gentle and drying heat. “It was strange that first night away,” Eames says.
“Lonely?” Arthur asks with a laugh.
“Hm,” Eames says. He lets his hand graze Arthur’s, then catches it, his thumb against Arthur’s palm. “It was strange,” he says again.
Arthur’s thrown. “Did something happen while you were traveling, before you showed up at my door?” Arthur asks. “Are you--fuck. I don’t know. Are you healthy?”
“Maybe I’ve changed,” Eames says. He lets go of Arthur’s hand, bounces a bit on his feet. “But I wouldn’t trust it.” He turns Arthur a bit, kisses him briefly. “I’ve got an appointment to keep. See you.”
****
It makes Arthur glad that Eames has been so near, and anxious that Eames has been here so long.
This is Arthur at his most honest. You could press a finger to his skin, and lift, but you’d wait a long time for the blood to run back in, restoring paled skin back to its full flush. He carries those marks.
****
There’s someone at Arthur’s door when he comes home. Arthur sees the stranger from down the hallway and repositions his key -- metal between his knuckles.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Arthur?”
Arthur nods.
“I came to ask you in person. Call your guy off. There’s not a dreamer in town who’s heard about a job on you.”
Arthur relaxes. “This guy,” he says. “He shaped like a Brit?”
The man nods, then barrels along. “I’d ask you to take a look at my fingers, but you don’t seem in the mood.” He looks hopeful anyway.
There’s an unbidden ease beginning in Arthur’s chest. “Let me see.”
The stranger extends his arm, and Arthur takes a look at the index finger, the way it hangs. He grips it, then shoves it up firmly, hears the clack of bone. “Jesus Christ,” the man grits out.
“This will knit,” Arthur says, feeling very charitable, “if you hold still.”
****
Arthur calls Eames. The water churns for only a few seconds, then goes still and murky. It’s dark, silted through. “Hello?” Arthur squints.
“Arthur, fuck, hold on. I haven’t changed the water in god knows how long. Can you see anything at all?”
“No.”
“Shit. Can I get you back? I can run the sink in a minute.”
Arthur shakes his head. “It’s fine, don’t bother. I was only calling to remind you that many nights more than the one have passed.”
“Are you giving me permission to return to your home?”
Arthur flexes his toes inside his shoes. “Basically.”
“I would have come back anyway. I’ve run up quite a bill here at the hotel.”
“I’m not lending you money.”
“Just a penny or two. I can promise you won’t miss it.”
Arthur snorts. “We can talk,” he says neutrally.
“What a nice answer.” There is a settling in Eames’ tone. “I have my own money, you know.”
“Yes, I know.” Arthur touches the surface of the water, lets the tips of his fingers break that translucent skin.
“Did you dream last night?” Eames asks.
Arthur pauses. He flicks his fingers up out of the water, watches the arc of droplets. They fly up, then are drawn back to his hand, drip down his wrist, and return, restored, to the body of water below. “I don’t know why they shake me up so much,” he says, sidestepping a direct answer. “I guess didn’t think I could dream such pedestrian dreams.”
“What a blow to your conception of self as stunning enigma.”
“Thank you, I appreciate your condolences,” Arthur says, very sincerely, and smiles when Eames laughs.
****
Arthur takes a walk that night. He hadn’t been able to sleep very well, a rare thing these nights. There’s something almost novel about it. Eames was a stone beside him, and Arthur slipped out of bed, downstairs, then out into the street.
There’s a wind blowing, and Arthur hadn’t bothered to put a coat on. He blows on his hands, quick, then tosses the prism out, hurries onto the bow.
He’s only a little while alone. Footsteps behind him, and then Izanami, again, at his side.
“Jesus,” Arthur says. “Did you put a bell on me?”
“I watch for good companions. I walk very much.” Izanami, her head bowed, looks at Arthur, something nearly friendly in her face.
“I didn’t realize I’d count as a good companion.”
Izanami nods. “The lonely make do.”
Arthur grins. He looks down at the road like Izanami does. Watches his bare feet press, from heel to toe. “What would happen?” he asks. “If I stepped off the bow? All this black space around. Would I fall?”
“Are you curious enough to find out?”
“Not today,” Arthur says. “Have you ever been?”
“Yes, once,” and she ends the sentence with finality. She lets out a short breath, rolls her shoulders back. “So,” she says. “I hear Eames has recently waged a war on your behalf.”
Arthur laughs. “Did you hear that from Eames? Maybe a skirmish, at best, and that’s if I’m being generous.”
“You have trouble,” Izanami says.
“I’m having dreams of Cobb,” Arthur says, still laughing. “That’s a kind of trouble, I guess.”
“Hm.” Her pace slows. “You know I have a husband.”
“I’d heard.”
She looks accepting of that. “What else have you heard?”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“The end. Let’s skip all the quiet in the middle.”
Arthur hesitates. “It’s only what I’ve heard,” then, at Izanami’s eyebrow, he continues, “You had a husband. He died. I’m sorry, by the way.”
She nods. “Thank you.”
Arthur lets his back bow. “He died, and you mourned him. Driven to madness by your grief, you traveled a hidden road and sought him out in the world below. Down, many levels. And you found him.”
“A joyous moment.”
“If only the story ended there,” Arthur tried to bring some levity to it. “Do you want me to keep going?”
“Yes, let’s finish. I found my most loved,” she prompts.
“Most loved.” Arthur’s sure step doesn’t falter. “Such was the depth of your love, and so dark was the world below, that your husband appeared unchanged to you. Even his reluctance to leave with you, to follow you into the bright light of day, you thought was...”
Izanami laughs here. “Based on unfounded fears? An entrenched stubborness? I don’t know. Nothing that mattered.”
“So you convinced him.”
“Yes.” She gets taller with every step.
“You told him that you would lead the way. He made you promise that you wouldn’t look back. But as you rose higher, and higher, and finally saw, there, the break of day, the possibility of relief and restoration so close at hand...” Arthur trails off again. “I don’t blame you, you know. I might have looked back, too.” Izanami doesn’t respond, and Arthur sighs, steps into the story again. “You looked back.”
“And he was monstrous.” Her voice thick.
Arthur shifts his gaze a respectful half-turn away from her. Avoiding his peripheral vision. “A corpse rotting. Without teeth; his flesh draped over his bones. Maggots.”
“I threw him from the road.”
“You struggled, and while locked together, he begged you to allow him to return.” Arthur licks his lips, his throat dry. “But then, yes, you threw him from the road.”
“There’s more, of course. But that is usually where they end the story.” Izanami pauses. “You told it well. You have a talent.”
“Thanks,” Arthur says. A mood had come and sat on his shoulders, and Arthur shakes to get it off.
“I don’t know your story at all.”
Arthur shrugs. “By design.”
“Your secrecy could provoke curiosity.”
Arthur smiles, rueful. “Yeah, well. I try to pretend I don’t have secrets.”
“That sounds difficult to work.”
“It’s been effective this long.” Arthur stretches, suddenly, his arms in front of him, cracking the bones in his fingers. “Do you ache? I think I asked you this before. I could give you my hands.”
Izanami looks taken aback. “I appreciate the offer. I’m fine.”
“It’s not a big deal. You did give me a prism.”
She smiles. “Are we exchanging kindnesses now? Will this make us even?”
“Close enough.” Arthur taps her pocket with his knuckles, hears the clatter of glass. “Though I started at a deficit.”
“Ah,” she turns, leads Arthur the way they came, back to home. “We will make that even, too, one day, I’d imagine.”
****
Eames is still asleep when Arthur gets in again. Arthur slips into bed as subtly as he’s able, but he can see Eames come awake, the roundness of movement under the thin skin of his eyelids.
Eames’ eyes don’t open, but he shifts more fully onto his back, takes in a deep breath, then lets it out noisily. “Where’d you get to?”
“You look almost innocent when you sleep. Did you know?” Arthur tugs at the sheet wrapped under Eames, then makes himself comfortable, lets a hand come up to slide into the short hair above Eames’ ear.
“Hmm,” Eames says. “My most cunning disguise.”
“News of your exploits as my sentry has traveled far and wide.” His hand sliding down, a thumb on Eames’ jawline.
“Sentry feels a bit demeaning, doesn’t it?”
Arthur touches Eames’ eyebrow. Drags a finger across the arch of one. “How long are you going to be staying?” he asks.
Eames opens his eyes. “It sounds like there’s an answer you want to hear.”
“There is.”
“Am I supposed to guess it?”
Arthur leans in, kisses him. Pulls away, then kisses him again, a hand on Eames’ neck.
Eames’ eyes are closed again. He stays close, and Arthur mimics his longer breathing patterns. “Let’s say it together, then,” Eames says. “On the count of three.”
Arthur waits for Eames to count, waits for Eames to inhale -- his chest curving, waiting to be filled with breath.
****
Arthur is in his closet. There’s a panel in the back. Behind it is a safe, inside of which there are things that hold at least a little value. And at the back of the safe is a hidden panel, and behind that is another safe, set deep into the wall.
In front of it all, Arthur’s jackets, hidden in plain sight. He’d made these, learned to tailor during a long stint overseas. He picks up skills easily when they’re important for him to know, and the construction of fabric spoke easily to his natural talents.
Arthur touches one of the empty arms, searches for any loose threads, the panel at his feet set aside for now.
He’s not sure what it is, exactly, that makes him realize that Eames is behind him. Arthur lets his hand fall to his side. He picks up the panel, replaces it over the exposed safe, smooths his hands over the edges so that they’ll disappear. He tries not to hurry.
He turns. “Jesus Christ,” he says, inflating his voice with surprise. “How long have you been there?”
Eames takes up most of the doorway. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“There’s a touch I’m losing,” Arthur says. He shakes his head. “That you could sneak up on me.”
“If you’re planning to remain easily surprised, here’s a tip.” Eames broadens his stance, lowers his center of gravity, hands out. “You’ve got to plant your weight. Catch the brunt of the blow low.”
Arthur steps toward him, then slams out with his foot, a side kick that Eames easily meets, But Arthur follows with a cross, his left arm a whip, stopping just short of lashing Eames’ temple.
“Good,” Eames says.
****
“There’s something of Mal in Izanami’s story, isn’t there?” Cobb asks.
They’re strolling through a preserve, the dusk the texture of chalk. Behemoth shadows against the horizon, moving in herds. Mammoths, elephants, rhinoceroses. “I don’t know,” Arthur says. “There’s a little of both of you.”
“We borrow, we borrow,” Cobb says. “Have you heard the ending I’ve heard?”
Arthur watches the herds grow nearer. Their raising and lowering heads. Their thundering.
“Though they were still struggling, it was clear that Izanami would take the upper hand.” This version of Cobb raises his voice, almost chanting it. “How her husband raged, then, when he was close to being overcome. But she only laughed, filled with disgust at his decay, and hot with victory.”
The glint of tusks and horns. Weapons to fall upon, to look down to find yourself pierced by, through and through.
“He screamed that he would bring destruction, a hundred times over, because of her treachery. But Izanami laughed again, and promised that she would restore and bless everyone he harmed, and their children besides, until the last day.” A pause. “Does ending it here make the story better or worse, do you think?”
“She made a decent vow.”
“Out of spite.”
Arthur shrugs. “Who cares?”
“Oh, Arthur,” in Mal’s voice, but maybe it’s always been Mal in this dream, the many dreams before. The way she used to burn bright on the other side of Cobb, lighting him up. It could have been her.
The animals are nearer. The sky smoked by dying embers. It’s hard to hear anything above the sound of stampede.
“You don’t think that she was taunting him?” Mal raises her voice above the din. “Isn’t there cruelty in what she says to him, when he is on the brink of losing her, torn to fury by the thought of being without her?”
“Maybe a little of that,” he says. “But there's also a pledge that her days would always in part be a reaction to him, that every day she would think of him, until the last day.” He knows a promise when he hears one. Knows, too, how they endure.
“What a generous interpretation.” Mal puts out a hand, and when the first of the elephants arrive, she catches it by the tusk, lifted into the air and lands astride the animal’s head.
“If I had been him--”
Mal shakes her head, cups her ear.
Arthur shouts. “If I had been him, I would’ve been comforted, I think. I could have been patient.”
“Really?” A shout back. “I wouldn’t have trusted it.” Thunder, and then the elephant rears, and the silhouette on its back goes broad at the shoulders, very and dearly familiar.
“You this whole time,” Arthur says, drowned out by the bellow, the din.
****
Arthur doesn’t run. He wakes up in a bed empty of Eames, he puts on some underwear, then walks to his closet. There, in the back, the space where his jackets used to hang stands empty. Framing the untouched panel in front of his decoy safe.
Eames might as well have left a note. Did you think you could fool me. That my eye wouldn’t find what you value most.
‘Should have known,’ says the voice in Arthur’s head. ‘Should have known, should have known.’
****
He has an idea of where Eames might be, and the prism will take him there quickly. If he runs. Arthur dresses, runes in his pocket, reminds himself of where he could lay his hands on a person’s body. He can break what he can put together.
He finds an alley, just wide enough to accommodate, throws the prism down, feels shocked for the first time, when it shatters.
****
He makes his way to Yusuf.
“No, I had no idea,” says Yusuf.
“No, I didn’t help him,” says Yusuf.
“Would you hit me if I said I was sorry,” says Yusuf.
“Yes, Arthur, there could be an explanation,” says Yusuf. “Should you hold your breath?”
****
Arthur finds a coin in his bag of runes, put where he couldn’t help but find it. Silver amidst dull stones that will go shatteringly, destructively glowing with a word.
There’s a coyote’s smiling face on one side. Empty space on the other. Arthur throws it into the air, flips it over and over.
It lands on heads. Heads. Heads again.
****
Cobb calls. He’s pacing. “I heard about your predicament.”
“How?” Arthur answers evenly, ignoring the throbbing behind his eyes.
“I don’t know. People talk.”
His stomach rolls.
“Are you okay?” Cobb finally comes to a stop. “You don’t look well.”
Arthur laughs grimly. “Humiliation doesn’t agree with me, I guess.”
“I think I contained the rumors.”
“How unexpectedly useful of you.”
“Don’t be a jackass, Arthur.”
Arthur sighs. He unclenches his jaw.
‘Yusuf says you’ve been morose. He thinks eventually you’ll bore yourself to death painting the world as nothing but blighted landscapes and merciless edges.”
“Colorful,” Arthur says.
“After all this time, we might finally have stepped into sync. Humorless at the core.” Cobb’s crossed one arm over his chest, gestures at Arthur with the other.
Arthur keeps his lips zipped.
“The fact that that didn’t make you stumble back in horror is really fucking troubling me,” Cobb says.
“You’re not humorless,” Arthur says, accusing.
****
Arthur insists that Cobb retire to his usual attitude of benign neglect towards Arthur.
Yusuf tells him over dinner, “He was upset you didn’t call him. He said that you’d agreed that silence would mean you were fine or beyond help.”
Arthur raises an eyebrow.
“You aren’t fine,” Yusuf says. He pushes his bowl away.
Arthur brings a spoon to his lips, swallows a mouthful of soup.
“You aren’t beyond help either.”
“Yusuf,” Arthur says, voice bright and full. He leans back in his chair, palms flat on the table. “You look so angry.”
****
Arthur can’t sleep much these nights. He lies in bed and sprawls across it, thinking only, ‘Stupid, how could I have been so fucking stupid.’
At least he’s learned this once before: how to let shame stoke ambition. To let it make you better.
He can’t sleep. Before on those nights, he would walk, seven colors beneath him.
Robbed of that, too.
****
Arthur goes to an island town. The weather very balmy. It’s the kind of atmosphere that urges you to melt, just a little, and at the edges.
He used to live in a place like this. He knows it isn’t possible, but he can’t help but wonder if Eames knew that, somehow.
This was where Eames resurfaced, as near as Arthur can pinpoint. The night he arrives, he walks into a beach bar, well-positioned tourist bait, with straw fringe glued to its roof, a paper lantern at the door.
Arthur feels almost relaxed. He’s determined to find Eames, and thinks he can do it in time. He tries to keep from counting the days excessively. He allows himself to do it once, when he wakes up, to remind himself of his very long-awaited deadline.
Arthur takes a long pull from his mixed drink, scans the crowd as he puts the back of his hand to his mouth, the wet of alcohol on his lips. The mix is decent, the people friendly. There’s an asshole a few tables away wearing a suit jacket over board shorts, which Arthur is initially amused by, and then, upon closer examination --
Arthur feels possessed by a rage, the way it starts as a seed in his chest, shakes itself out until it’s rooting into his limbs. He would embarrass himself, strip himself of dignity, to mete out punishment.
He finishes his drink.
After that, he goes to the man, taps his shoulder. “Excuse me,” Arthur says. He puts an apologetic smile on his face as the guy turns. “Can I ask you where you got this jacket?”
“This?” The guy looks over his shoulder at his friends, then back to Arthur. “I bought it from a guy who was selling them from the back of his car this morning. It’s not bad, right?”
“No, you didn’t.”
The guy narrows his eyes at him. “Look, get off my back.”
Arthur reaches around him, takes the kid’s beer and sips it, puts it back on the table. “Where’d you get the jacket.”
“Jesus. I don’t know. It was hanging in the coat closet here. I figured someone forgot it, what was the harm?”
“It’s mine.” Arthur smiles. The guy meets and holds his gaze for a few seconds, which Arthur gives him credit for, then shrugs out of the jacket, holds it out to Arthur.
“You’re a fucking psycho, you know that?”
Arthur knows. He takes the jacket, keeps himself from looking at it until he’s outside.
On the beach, there in the sand, he runs his hands over it, searching for any trace of a flaw, of any break. He concentrates too hard, and the fibers start to stretch, breathing under his hands, brambles sticking to his skin, little points of red dotting his fingertips like so many burning stars.
He forces himself to let go, to drop the jacket at his feet. He puts his hands on his hips, staring out at the ocean rolled out to the horizon, then seizes, ripping the shoes off his feet, throwing them as hard as he can.
Fury, that he had protected his secret for so long only to find his hopes scattered across the world like so much trash. His face hot with it, and he feels small in the face of his terrible anger, so little equipped to satisfy it.
****
“Do you want to hear something funny?” he’d said to Eames once. “I can put bones back together, force a heart to beat, other fucking amazing things, but this?” He lifts his arm, exposing the soft, thin skin over his tricep, how it’d been split like so much tissue paper. He puts a hand to it, only hisses, the wound refusing to close. “I’ll have to get stitched.”
“Arthur,” Eames had said. “We’ll need to work on your delivery.” He got up, put his hand high on Arthur’s side, let the pads of his fingers press in, staking a casual claim. “No matter. Break, and I’ll put you to rights.”
That had been longer ago. Not during the most recent time they had spent together. Arthur doesn’t think Eames saw him as a mark then.
Here’s another thing he thinks about: that he’s never heard stories of Eames giving back something he had stolen.
Arthur won’t beg at first, but he will if he has to. He knows that about himself now.
****
Arthur goes home wearing the jacket. It’s not the relief he thought it would be, having one back. If anything, he wants to crawl out of his skin, loosed from his body to fly around the world again, seeking his quarry from up high.
He’s walking home. He needs new shoes. He hadn’t taken care of these, and the leather is abraded, scuffs clawed into the once-gleaming surfaces.
His ears prick up -- this strange gap sensed behind him. He turns around and sees the bow touch down, the void spinning out behind it.
It’s Eames walking toward him. His arms are full of the jackets Arthur had made.
He holds them out. “You should take these,” he says. “So that I don’t drop them when you hit me.”
Arthur is upset that he doesn’t have his runes tucked away on his person. Still, he knows where he could put his hands on Eames, which nerves he could pluck away at. He takes the jackets from Eames. He runs his hands across the bundle, his eyes never wavering from this man in front of him.
Eames puts his hands in his pockets. He looks immaculate. “I--” He clears his throat. “I thought it would be charming, to have them waiting for you in all the places I thought you might look for me. I should have thought to keep them safer. That git in Kingston wasn’t supposed to--” He coughs. “Anyway. Bad idea.”
“You thought it would be charming.”
Eames grimaces. He takes one hand from his pocket, drags it across his forehead, and Arthur narrows his eyes, catches the trembling in Eames’ wrist. “I did say it was a bad idea.”
He tries to smile, and Arthur, suddenly, feels immensely wearied. Only now feeling the heavy weight of the fury on his back. He wants to want to cry. He thinks there might be catharsis in it.
“I imagine you have some words for me.”
Arthur tries to snatch a good place to begin from his thoughts. “I promised Yusuf I would have a joke ready, for when I finally tracked you down. He thought it was very important that I open with a joke.” Arthur smiles thinly. “Knock knock.”
Eames eyes him warily, doesn’t answer.
Arthur sighs. “I guess--” Arthur stoops to put the jackets down at his feet. He counts them quickly, then stands again. “I guess I want to know how I gave myself away. I’ve had prowlers in my dreams before. It’d be helpful to know where I fucked up.”
Eames shakes his head, opens his mouth to say something, and Arthur, he feels a real alarm. A bone-deep fear that he’ll be refused this, and then where will he be? Wearing armor with a break somewhere he can’t find.
There must be something in his face of it.
Eames’ protest is delivered stillborn. When he speaks again, he sounds resigned. “I had the distinct advantage of being welcome in your life. When you were awake. And even when you were sleeping; your subconscious was tolerant of me.”
Arthur laughs.
“You were very well-defended in your dreams. I thought it might be easier to get you talking. I pushed hard, and was maybe unsubtle.” Eames looks rueful there. “But it worked to my advantage, that you were knocked off-kilter. You checked your defenses.” He meets Arthur’s eyes then. “You went to your closet every time you woke up.”
“The safe didn’t distract you?”
Eames smiles then. “That was a lovely touch, actually. It should have occupied me, but--” He shrugs. “I don’t know. It never really seemed to be the capture of your interest. And by that point I’d become quite expert at gauging your interest.”
Arthur nods. He picks up his jackets, straightens up slowly. He takes care not to stumble. “Okay. Thank you, Mr. Eames.”
“You’re welcome.” Eames takes a step forward. “Don’t you--do you want to know why I stole from you?”
Arthur grins, a wonderful stretch on his face. “What does it matter why? I know that you did it.”
Eames’ voice ravels tighter. “I didn’t think you would be so civil.”
Arthur searches Eames’ face. He wishes he could read it, drag a line with his finger to mark his place as he spoke aloud the volumes written across Eames’ brow, his eyes and mouth, working in concert. “Like you said, you stole from me. But you returned what you stole, and I think--you seem sorry, at least.”
“I am.” Eames steps closer.
“So. Good.” Arthur makes himself smile again. “Let’s not--” He lets his eyes close for a second. “I don’t really want to do the whole fireworks thing. I’m really tired.” He blows out a sigh, hates, briefly, the quaver in it.
“Arthur,” Eames says, and maybe his face is saying something, something important, but really, who can tell, when it speaks in such a foreign tongue? It was Arthur, after all, who had been mistranslating all along.
****
Arthur, at home, unfolds each jacket, places it on a hanger and then back on the rack in his closet. In front of the safe he leaves exposed now.
He feels unburdened, the way he thought he might, but hollow, too. Like he’d just heard a sad song, and it’s rattling inside of him.
The last jacket is heavier. Arthur reaches inside the pocket and finds a prism. When he holds it up to the exposed bulb of the lamp beside him, it casts rainbows like tabs of color.
He decides to get it over with. Rip the band-aid off. Taking some fucking skin with it, if you have to.
****
Arthur walks, one foot in red, the other in yellow. He sees Eames and Izanami, a pair in the distance, there at the vertex. They’re arguing, Eames’ arms spread wide.
As he nears, Izanami catches sight of him, nods over Eames’ shoulder at him. Eames turns around, then steps back, shoves his hands into his pockets. “You came,” he says.
“You came quickly,” Izanami says.
“I didn’t want to drag this out.” Arthur pulls carefully at one earlobe, looking from Izanami to Eames, back again. “I was curious, anyway. How involved you might have been in this.” He looks at Izanami.
“I should make myself plain,” she says. “I asked Eames to find out what you were hiding. I had some suspicions, and when they turned out to be right -- well, I hired him to take your work from you. I had my reasons, but Eames has told me that they wouldn’t matter much to you. Would they? Should I share them with you?”
Arthur keeps his face placid, currents churning far from the surface, in his depths. “No.”
A brisk flash of emotion on her face, and then she speaks again. “No. That’s fair.” She straightens, drawn up to her full height. “Eames and I have negotiated a new deal.”
“A new deal?” Arthur looks between the two of them.
“She’s a difficult customer to satisfy,” Eames says, nearly drawling it. He seems fine. The same Eames he’s always been. Arthur’s teeth clench.
“He failed to deliver what was promised.” She folds her hands together in front of her. “Eames has agreed to our redefined contract on the condition that you give your approval.”
“Why mine?”
“I require that he remain in proximity to you for the time being.”
“Why?” Arthur looks to Eames, but Eames is observing his nails.
“I have reasons, but you didn’t want to hear them, remember?” She cocks her head. “Well?”
Arthur doesn’t hesitate. “No.”
“Very well,” Izanami says. She turns to Eames. “We’ll negotiate again.”
Arthur blinks at her back, a little thrown by her pace. He turns, too, and is walking away when Eames says his name.
Eames is close to him now. “I’m sorry that she asked that of you. I was against it from the first. Do you believe me?”
Arthur laughs. “Why would you lie?” Eames’ lips tighten at that. Arthur pulls a coin from his pocket, his thumb on the coyote’s laughing face. “This is yours. I wanted to give it back.”
Eames ignores him. “I wouldn’t force my company on you now.” He says it like it’s half-joke, his whole self collected.
“You should take it.” Arthur holds the coin out.
“I didn’t tell you that I was sorry, unprompted the last time. And I am. I thought I might be a little sorry as I was skulking away, but it was...” He laughs, the smatter of charm he wears so naturally glinting. “Worse than I thought.”
“Your coin,” Arthur says. He pushes it at Eames.
“Fuck, please!” Eames says, and Arthur blinks at the voice from Eames’ mouth, the drop of the urbanity from it. He’s hoarse. “Arthur, please, will you keep it.” Eames’ coolness a slipping mask. “If you would keep it, I’d be--will you keep it.”
Arthur shrugs, too numb to force it upon Eames now. He closes his hand around the coin.
****
Arthur walked away, back down the bow. At the bottom of it, where it sinks into the asphalt, he takes one last look back. He won’t travel this road again.
Eames is there, a little distance away. He raises a hand.
“Do I have to watch for you now, Mr. Eames?” Arthur asks.
“No. Only I remembered something you’d want to know.” Eames covers the distance between them, stands at the mouth of the bow as Arthur steps back, feet on solid ground. “You asked me before how you gave yourself away, but I forgot to tell you this bit.” He licks his lips. “In the first dream, do you remember? You pulled a sewing kit from under the table to repair the coat you were wearing.”
“That was my tell?”
Eames shrugs. “People dream of things to come unbidden. You always had the needle and thread.”
“Thank you.” Another piece of his defenses restored.
Eames nods at him carefully, then sighs. “I wish you would hit me.”
“I don’t think it would be the solution you think it’d be.”
Eames studies him. “I think you’ll need help. Your lovely jackets, whatever they’re for--you haven’t finished that job yet, have you?”
“How do you know it’s a job?”
Eames smiles, a quirk of his lips. “I know a long con when I see one.”
****
Arthur has six sisters, and a great need.
****
Arthur abandons his lease.
“It will be a long time before I come back,” Arthur tells Eames. “And I won’t come back here.”
Eames glances over at Arthur, and Arthur tries to still his jittering knee. He looks around the apartment, at the many boxes littering the hardwood floors, the emptied rooms reduced to space. “Will you miss this place? I think I will.”
“Eames,” Arthur says. He drops his head into his hands. “Will you go away for a second?”
“Of course,” Eames says, and he puts his hands in his pockets, wanders away into another room.
Arthur, relieved, catches his breath.
****
Anyway, there’s a new thing that Arthur has learned. That Eames could be biddable.
****
They don’t have to travel far at first -- up to the north of California, where the forests are thick with old, silent trees. Redwoods like columns, foundation roots for the world they carry high above this one. Yusuf comes with them; he’s useful here.
They turn off the path, and Yusuf clears a new one for them. The undergrowth retreating the way the briar does when Yusuf wakes from sleeping.
“Handy that,” Eames says. The sun is going down overhead, and Eames borrows the shadows elongating, turns them into his own brand of light.
It’s faster, working with the two of them. They had made a good team before, and they make a good one now, too. That hasn’t changed.
They come across fallen trees, their trunks so wide they tower above the three of them. Arthur throws a rope, braces his feet on the sloughing bark, climbs up, then watches Yusuf and Eames come up after him. At the top, the three of them look out, the pillared forest ahead of them, the coolness outside of Eames’ warmth.
“How much longer?” Yusuf asks mournfully.
“Cheer up,” says Eames.
“What does it say about my nature,” Yusuf asks, “that I find your best behavior so irritating?”
“Good news!” Eames grins, wolfish. “We’re kin souls.”
“You don’t have to play sweet for me, Eames,” Arthur says. He drops from the top of the tree, hard, cushioned by the pine and leaves.
****
Eames has never made it so easy for Arthur to ignore him before. At nights, when they make camp, Eames will set off without a word, and Arthur never wonders where he goes.
Tonight, Yusuf asks him for the umpteenth time, “What are we doing out here?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“There isn’t a single comforting thing in that statement.”
Arthur digs in his pack for something to eat, idly reaches out to pat Yusuf’s arm. “You shouldn’t ask questions you don’t want my answers to.”
Yusuf grumbles. He opens his mouth, challenging. “I think it’s a stupid idea, to bring Eames into it, whatever it is.”
“You’re here to keep an eye on him.”
“And will he leave when I do? I can’t traipse around the world with you. It was all I could do to make the time for this excursion.”
Arthur pulls out two rolls, throws one to Yusuf. “I told you Mendocino is lovely this time of year.”
“Yes,” Yusuf says, holding his roll up distastefully. “And the amenities are remarkable.”
Arthur sighs. “I thought you would be happy that I wasn’t nursing my anger.”
“I’m a complicated man.”
“What purpose would it serve.” Arthur finishes the roll in three precise bites, makes himself chew, then swallow.
“Eames is a necrotic tooth. The lack of pain a sign of death at the root. Pull, before the poison.”
“You’re very judgmental for a man who would sell me out for the right price.”
Yusuf meets Arthur’s gaze, unperturbed. “What can I say. I hate to see in others what I know is in me.”
Arthur smiles. He raises a hand, wiggling fingers. “You forget, the power I hold.”
****
You can’t call it a clearing, really. It’s this tight ring of trees, younger redwoods, sprouted up from the same bed of roots in the ground, and Arthur and the rest squeeze inside of it, one by one.
Arthur isn’t sure how, exactly, this will go. The sun is rising, maybe, somewhere above the canopy above them. Soon, the light will filter down, only the greenest of it making it to where they’re standing.
“What are we waiting for?” Yusuf asks. “I worry now that you brought Eames out here to serve as human sacrifice. I worry for myself, too, but I’m comforted in knowing that you would probably rather gut Eames.”
Arthur looks up: these trees, their living branches. They shift, they rustle. Then, finally, a shadow detaches from them, floats lazily down, closer, until its form comes into view: a raven, as big as a child. It perches on a limb just above Arthur’s head.
“Is it going to grant us wishes?” he hears Yusuf mutter.
Arthur pulls a jacket from his backpack. His hands are shaking. There are still so many things that could go wrong.
“Once,” Arthur says. His voice catches, an ingrained instinct to recoil from the next fact, to keep it swallowed. He spits, “I had five sisters. They were tall and strong. They had laughter like the thunder. I loved them, and while they were still young, I cursed them.”
The raven, it lights upon the ground and fixes an eye upon Arthur. From the corner of his eye,, Arthur can see Eames take a predatory step forward, but Arthur outpaces him, he drapes the jacket over the bird. “I’m full of regret,” he says.
There’s a soft, stretching shimmer. For a moment it reminds him of Eames, the shift and change. Then the brambles of Arthur’s jacket burst into fruit and thorn, and fall away as quickly, leaving his oldest sister there.
Arthur hurries to put his coat over her. He drops to his knees, a roar in his ears, his chest split open: grateful, grateful to the core. He touches her face, her tangled hair.
Agnes opens her eyes. She looks wild, the light of recognition in her stare faint. “When he was twelve,” she says, “I taught my brother how to sew. I took his hands in one of mine, because they were small and I could. I showed him how to hold the sides of my wound together. I told him, ‘You won’t want to hesitate. Be sure, and get it over with as quickly as possible.’ And then I smiled at him while he pierced my side. I grit my teeth.”
“Masha’allah,” says Yusuf.
****
He spends as long a time as he can with his sister. When night falls, she sleeps almost immediately. It’s been a long day, but Arthur remains next to her, taking comfort in her presence.
Eames is there, too, standing beside him.
“Do you want to sit?” Arthur asks, then shifts over to make some room when Eames does.
“You know,” Eames begins. “I would never have guessed this.”
Arthur has to smile at that. “How could you have?”
“I had a few outlandish theories. I might have gotten closer if I’d known you had family somewhere in the world.”
“My silence about them was a prerequisite to bringing them back.” Arthur shrugs. “Otherwise, you know me. My loose lips would have sunken ships.”
Eames snorts, shaking his head, then says, more soberly, “I wouldn’t have come so close to ruining your chance at this, if I had known what was at stake.”
“You already apologized.” Arthur shifts away from him.
“Yes.” Eames nods. “That’s true. Anyway.” He leans back, shifting his weight onto his planted hands. “I don’t think I’m a fan of your sad and haunted backstory.”
“No?”
“It makes you disturbingly human.”
Arthur laughs. He reaches to pull a blanket up higher over Agnes, and something in the action feels striking: her strong shoulders, the crease between her brows as she dream. He looks over at Eames, and that feels like the first time in a long time, too: Eames’ profile almost new to him. “It makes you feel guiltier, doesn’t it?” He feels a sudden rush of amusement at the seriousness in Eames’ face. “I had all this fucking shit in my life, and there you were adding to it.”
Eames startles, takes a sideways glance at Arthur, laughs, and it’s careful only at first. “No, Arthur, please don’t hide your delight at this turn.”
Arthur looks away from Eames and again at his sister, still smiling. “And Yusuf thought you and I would never laugh together again.”
“Could it be that everything can be made new?” Eames asks, and his voice is full of wonder.
****
That last thing Eames said, it stays on Arthur’s mind.
He’d met a storyteller in Portland once, who’d seemed mediocre as fuck. She’d looked young, though, and reminded him, a little, of his youngest sister. She was telling tales in a coffee shop, almost completely ignored, background noise as people worked, sat with friends.
Arthur went over to her, when she finished her set. “You were fine,” he told her.
She laughed. “Um, great. Thanks. No need to bowl me over with compliments.”
Arthur smiled. “We all find our callings.”
She went serious then, annoyance in her brow. “I’m pretty sure this is mine. Thanks, man,” and turned to leave.
Arthur sighed. “Wait, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to -- I was presumptuous.”
She turned back to him warily. “Look, you seem fine,” she lilted over the last word, “but I have a girlfriend.”
Arthur laughed. “Sorry, I’m coming off like an asshole. That’s not what I’m -- I’m not available either.” He paused. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I’m an idiot about storytelling. I never understood the point of the career.” He grimaced at the words escaping his mouth. “I’m shocked you’re not finding me charming,” he said, joking.
She rolled her eyes, but there was a reluctant kindness in her face. “It’s an act of creation,” she said, explaining. “Not just the stories I spin on a stage, but the stories we tell about each other, and ourselves, every day.” She stopped. “I don’t know.”
Arthur was only half-engaged, and he must have shown it on his face.
“You should care,” she said, beginning again, a ribbon of strength in her voice. “People will build images of you with what they think about you. If you can’t tell a story, they’ll make you speak with a voice that isn’t yours, with histories they imagine.”
“So?”
She lifted the strap of a messenger bag over her neck, got ready to go. “You know the story of Pygmalion and Galatea? The statue that came to life?” She waited for Arthur’s nod, then continued. “She was stone for so long, letting him spin long stories of her, of what their life could be together. And when he prayed for stone to become flesh, she was praying, too. For a voice.” She paused. “He was kissing her when she came to life, but she was saying her name.”
Arthur frowned. “I think it’s supposed to be a love story.”
She laughed, hopped off the stage. “How did I tell it?” she asked, then tilted her head. “What’s your name anyway?”
Arthur smiled smoothly, prepared to lie.
****
It’s not that he’s beginning to feel like a real boy, or anything ridiculous like that. There are just--fewer parts of his life that have to lie behind stone.
“Jesus,” he says. “You make things new twelve times a day.” He nods at the canteen Eames is carrying, filled to the brim with water that Eames had poured into it from a fistful of sand.
“I need a little bit to hold onto. I can’t create something from nothing.” Eames stops under the desert sun, wiping the sweat from his brow. “I think I told you that once, already.”
“Arthur,” Agnes says. She shouts, from far ahead of them. A heat rising from the sand, obscuring his vision of her, making her flicker and wax. “We’re getting closer.”
****
It’s night by the time they reach the spires, the desert plunged into darkness: thrown into the depths with a weight tied to its feet. Arthur can’t sleep. He walks to the base of a spire, puts his hand on it. He can feel a phantom warmth, the rocky outcropping resembling nothing more than a finger.
There’s a god here, under this sand and buried alive. His hand pushing outward, his fingers breaking the surface. One day, he’ll dig himself out.
There’s a coldness in me, Arthur thinks.
“What are you thinking?” Agnes asks from behind him.
Arthur turns around. He takes the sight of her in, shakes his head. “You’re so fucking tall. I’m pissed as fuck that I’m not tall.”
“You’re of average height.”
“That response to this particular insecurity is about as comforting as it’s ever been.”
She smiles. “I’m happy after all this time to make you feel better.”
There’s something in the wording of it that makes Arthur wince.
“You know,” she says. “One day, I look forward to seeing you look at me without any guilt in your face at all.”
“Do you really?”
“It’s a terrible burden for me,” she says, her tone joking. “Your pinched, sad face.” She comes close, kisses his cheek. “My Arthur. Will it bring my years back to me, your misery?”
****
Later, when the sky is graying, a wind beating like a sheet snapping over the desert, Arthur takes a stance, follows through the motions of a tai-chi form. He closes his eyes, feels his breath come in and out, a circular motion.
Halfway through the technique, he feels a presence. There’s a familiar weight to it, and Arthur, he inhales, he roots his feet, he exhales. Maintaining the rhythm of it, trying very hard not to think of the dream where Eames had corrected his form while wearing Cobb’s face.
It takes him another fifteen minutes, maybe, to finish the technique, and he pushes the awareness of company to the back of his mind.
Unmoved , he thinks.
He withdraws to rest, then opens his eyes, ready, now, to engage, only to be surprised to find that there’s nobody there.
****
An owl flies in with the sun, her taloned feet, that threatening beak.
“Once,” Arthur says. “I had five sisters, with laughter like the thunder, and a sixth on the way. They warned us of her; that she would be the end of us -- that if she lived, there would be pain and loss on the horizon. When my sisters refused to help me kill her, we fled.”
His second sister, draped in feathers. Agnes drops to their sister’s side, holds her hands.
Tavia swallows, her voice graveled, “I had a brother,” she says. “And when he said he wanted to kill her, our baby sister, I laughed at him. And later, when she had grown, when she had come to find us, he hid her from us, afraid for her life.”
Arthur he bends down, kisses her cheek. “What can I say.” He smiles at her. “Fickle.”
“We’re the same,” she says. She touches his face. “Blind to where our hearts will set.”
He’s missed her very much. Maybe most. “What can I say,” and he turns, hiding his tears from her.
****
They had had this conversation, the night following. Tavia, still at home in the night; she stood at the mouth of the cave they had taken shelter in, staring out at curves, the belly and hips of sand.
“The triplets will be waiting for you,” she said. She rolled her eyes. “Good luck.”
Arthur grimaced. “I wish you would come with me. They loved you best.”
She laughed at him. “They loved you, too.”
“They tolerated me.”
“Don’t disparage being tolerated.” She tsked. “It can be its own, precious sort of love.”
“You really won’t come?”
“You have Agnes, and Eames. And I have a life to catch up with.”
Arthur crossed his arms, leaned against the rock at his side.
“Who is Eames to you, exactly? He doesn’t seem the most trustworthy of people.”
Arthur shrugged one shoulder. “Agnes seems to like him.”
“Agnes is willfully bad judge of character. I think she hopes to take in bad seeds so that she can beat respect into them when they turn on her.”
“Eames isn’t a bad seed. Well.” Arthur hummed. “He isn’t malicious, anyway.”
“Oh, good. ‘Not malicious’.” Tavia turned to face him, her hands behind her back. “That’s exceedingly comforting.”
Arthur laughed. “I have a hard time believing people would judge me virtuous upon first sight.” He faced her, too, standing tall. “What do you see when you look at me now?”
She narrowed her eyes, then sighed. “How much the world has changed. You’re looking older, Arthur.”
“Sometimes I forget to moisturize.”
She laughed, came close to touch at the wrinkles at the corner of his left eye. “You ignored my advice, didn’t you?” She dropped her hand. “I told you not to put your life in stasis, too.”
“I didn’t,” he insisted. “I just--I had an order I followed. First, to restore all of you. Everything else, after. I can shape the rest of my life later, still.”
Tavia fell back against the cave wall again, smiling. “It’s nice to know that some things in this world have remained the same. You,” she said, “still so foolish to think that you’ll never run out of time.”
****
Eames has been occupying Agnes, which Arthur is grateful for, sometimes.
Agnes is wilder at heart than Arthur is, and when they spar, Arthur gets caught up in the fucking messiness of her technique, in the way she’ll throw her weight too far to one side and leave herself open for too strong a counterattack. He’ll wait and wait, absorbing blow after blow from her, his body curling, his hands up and around his face until she lunges, her knee wobbling almost imperceptibly, and then Arthur will lash out with a roundhouse and knock her flat on her ass.
It leaves her angry, and Arthur with purpling bruises.
When she fights with Eames, they dance, Eames weaving back and forth, drawing back, making her chase him. He’ll jab, measuring the distance, swing a cross at her when she’s within arm’s reach.
He’s good. Relaxed, sweat matting his hair to his forehead, and Agnes opens up, the fury she takes out on Arthur growing into a measured discipline.
This is an Agnes that Arthur recognizes: stalking prey.
****
In Montreal, Arthur walks down avenues, takes in the glint of glass, the buildings that soar into the sky and seek a ceiling to brush up against.
They’d all separated when they’d entered the city, eager for solitude, or different company. But when Arthur walks into a bar and sees Eames there, he moves forward on instinct, takes the open seat next to Eames.
“Hello, darling,” Eames says. He’s had a few drinks -- his eyes shining with them. He licks his lower lip, and Arthur can’t help the reflexive way his stomach drops.
Arthur catches the bartender’s eye, orders a beer.
“It’s a lovely vest you’ve got on.”
“Thank you,” Arthur says dryly. It’s strange to feel embarrassed about the vest; nothing in Eames’ compliment should be taken as an indictment of Arthur’s vanities, and yet.
“I’ve upset you.”
“No,” Arthur says. “I’m upsetting myself. You’ve been...” Arthur searches for the right words. “You’ve been kind to my sister. And helpful to me.”
“Cheers.” Eames raises his glass at Arthur, takes a drink.
Arthur barrels forward, hurdling his inhibitions. “This is going to sound conceited as fuck,” Arthur says, “But I hope you’re not jumping through hoops for me. You don’t need to work off a debt you owe me. You can go.”
“You should let me stay. It would be good of you.” Eames finishes his drink, voice rough, his syllables rubbing up against each other. “I’ve never seen so many colors of you, Arthur. Your silences were so legion.” He smiles. “I used to think that knowing just one of your secrets would be satisfying.”
Arthur stares down at the bar.
The stories Eames has heard of him now. Collected, filed away in that mind of his.
There’s a question Arthur had wanted to ask of Eames. He’d wanted to be drunk to do it, but fuck that. “Why did you come back?” Arthur turns to Eames. “After you’d finished your job on me. Why bring what you’d stolen back?”
Eames rolls his cup between his palms. He glances over at Arthur carefully. “It’s funny, isn’t it?” He clears his throat. “You know what I think about repeatedly? How much a story can shift.” He nods at Arthur. “When you tell Izanami’s story, it’s full of devotion. That isn’t the way I tell it. And if you ask her to tell it herself, she won’t. ‘I don’t like the current ending,’ she’ll say.”
Arthur takes Eames’ cocktail napkin, slowly begins to fold it, occupying his hands.
“I respect that she says that. It’s a fascinating transformation, really: how much a story can change depending on where you choose to end it.” Eames moves one hand closer to Arthur’s on the bar. “I thought that it was the possibility of simply being another cautionary tale for you that had me panicking.”
“But it wasn’t.” Arthur presses a crease.
“No,” Eames says. “It just seemed there were so many chapters ahead of me. Enough to grind me down, if empty of you.”
Arthur takes Eames hand, holds it, palm up. He puts the crane he had folded in the middle of it, his every action deliberate, built upon the precise awareness of Eames, who’s been drinking, who owns a persuasive tongue. “It’s a pretty abstract reason.”
Eames laughs. “Maybe it was simpler then. Maybe it had become a habit when I wasn’t looking.” His smile is fond. “Coming back to you, who claimed never to miss me.”
Arthur wishes he could look away from Eames’ gaze. Wishes he wasn’t such a fucking sucker for a dare.
****
There’s a knock on his hotel room door, their last night in Montreal. When Arthur opens it, Agnes moves past him, falls back onto his bed.
“I don’t like that you let Tavia go,” she says. “You should have asked me. I would have had an opinion.”
Arthur closes the door, stands at the foot of the bed, hands in his pockets. “If you’d wanted her to stay that badly, you should have told her.”
Agnes contemplates it, frowns. “Ugh,” she says. “No.”
Arthur laughs, and she smiles, too. He pulls a chair from its place at a desk, sits near her.
There’s a clock that ticks very loudly in the room. A hum of noise from the radiator. A full, and living soundscape.
“What did we used to talk about?” Agnes wonders.
“Our sisters,” Arthur says. “Mostly.”
“Tavia is terrible.” Agnes sucks at her teeth.
Arthur looks down at his hands, smiles. He cracks his knuckles.
Agnes sits up, glares at him. “You’re awful at this. You should agree that she’s terrible, and bring up some long ago grudge you’ve been tenderly stroking, and then I’ll help you come up with a plan to enact a profound justice.”
Arthur’s smile broadens. He meets her gaze. “It’s just been a long time,” he says. “I’m out of practice.”
“Of engaging in a conversation?” She studies him. “Well, faster, put your hands up,” she says. “We have sisters more to get to.”
“I love you, you know,” he says. It comes out of him, the product of courage.
“Arthur,” she says, poised for action. Her hair a curling mess. “Don’t startle me like that.”
****
Arthur wakes up the next morning, with only a hazy recollection of how he’d fallen asleep. One minute talking to Agnes, the next--
He drags himself out. The sun hasn’t risen yet, and there are heavy clouds anyway, signs of a storm. He walks into a coffee shop, asks for an espresso, turns to see Eames and Agnes sharing a table.
Eames nods at him, signals at the empty seat with his head.
Arthur walks over, sits. He’s very aware of the emptiness of his stomach. “What are you two talking about?”
Agnes looks wide awake. “I’m trying to drag stories of you out of Eames. He’s digustingly close-mouthed on the subject.”
Eames raises an eyebrow, takes a long sip of his coffee. “I’ve told you a little.”
“Yes, but nothing interesting enough to retell.” She leans forward, towards Eames, “I’d offer you a fair exchange -- and I have many stories of Arthur to bargain away.”
“Are you sure you want to play that game?” Arthur asks her. He taps his fingers on the table, meeting Agnes’ eyes.
Eames smiles, cool. “Arthur has never really trusted me with any of his stories. It might be best to cut our losses.”
Agnes laughs, then, that roll of mirth. She stands, shrugging, and squeezes Arthur’s shoulder, then goes to the counter, moving from one thing to the next just that easily.
“I’m surprised at your self-censorship,” Arthur says, turning his attention to Eames. “Aren’t your insights crestfallen that they aren’t on parade?”
Eames leans back in his seat, lets out a long breath. “I’m not really a morning person.”
Arthur looks closer. “You’re hungover,” he observes.
Eames looks annoyed at that. It’s a surprise. “You’ve turned me into a miser,” Eames says. “Hoarding what I can of you.”
Arthur fights the urge to snap back. “What do I say to that?”
Eames drinks the dregs from his cup, leaves it empty. He stares past Arthur. “You could offer me your condolences.”
They sit in a silence, and Arthur look around the room; Agnes must have slipped out somewhere during their conversation, no longer at the counter, speaking with the baristas.
Eames sighs heavily. “I’m terrible company right now.”
Arthur glances at him, gauging. “I’d forgotten what you were like when you aren’t groveling,” he tries.
Eames laughs. “I’ve never been made so keenly aware of the power of a tactic I thought I knew well.” He meets Arthur’s eyes, warming. “How magnetic, the withholding of approval.”
“I’m not toying with you.”
“No.” Eames licks his lips. “I do know that.” He says it quietly.
****
Cobb gets in touch again.
“Yusuf is too indiscriminate with his news of you,” is the first thing he says. “I think it’s a mistake to work with Eames on this,” is the second thing.
Arthur files away the first observation, responds to the second. “Eames is useful. He’s got a particular skill set.”
Cobb narrows his eyes. “Is that really what it is?”
“What else would it be?” Arthur asks.
“You’re going to let him off the hook.” Cobb frowns. “You’re already doing it.”
Arthur sighs. “You’re being obnoxious as fuck right now, you know that?”
“I’m impressed that he could spin you. How’d he explain it all away?”
“He didn’t.” Arthur ran both hands through his hair, raking his scalp. “I don’t know. How much more could I have expected him to bet on me? As a mark, I’m a sure thing, as someone to, to give a fuck about?” Arthur laughs. “I’m hard to know.”
Cobb stares at him for a little while, then crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re being too easy on him.”
“It’s--. Honestly, it’s hard for some reason. To be really unkind to him.” He blows out a breath, nervous, then jokes, “Is empathy that bad a look on me?”
“I’m not a fan.”
Arthur laughs again. “Well. I’ve been warned then.” He takes in Cobb’s tenseness, strangely reassured by it. “Have you ever noticed,” he asks, “that we’re never in the same state of mind at the same time? The tenser you get the, the calmer I feel, and vice versa.”
“Shut up.”
Arthur smiles, feeling almost fond. “How are you?” he asks. “Have you adjusted to life without Mal?”
Cobb sighs, unfolding his arms. He rubs one hand across his mouth. “Some days I’m glad that memory fades,” he finally says. “Others I’m not.” He says it simply.
****
Arthur has developed a tic: he tosses the heavy coin Eames had given him.
I will restore the rest of my sisters. Heads.
There is a crossroads ahead, closer than I’d thought. Heads.
I could be forgiving. Heads.
He should decide, really, what heads signifies. But he likes the game.
****
At the harbor, Arthur stands next to Agnes as three pelicans fly in, low over the water. Eames is sitting on top of a pile behind them.
Arthur doesn’t feel the same sort of anxiousness; today it feels ritual.
The birds bob in the river, and Arthur and Agnes get onto their bellies, put three jackets over their wings, watching the brambles soak up water and go dark with it.
“Once,” he says. “I had six sisters. Five with thunder in their voices, and the sixth clever and curious.”
The birds dive, and when they surface again, it’s as his sisters, their teeth chattering.
“The youngest turned us into birds: her five sisters, her brother,” Emeline says. Her brow furrows, lost in thought. “Accidentally, I know, but honestly I forget how. Did she ever tell us?”
“Just as honestly, that part of the story is boring as fuck,” Eleanor says. She shrugs. “We all ended up as birds.”
Edith wipes at the water beading on her face. “And the next part is that she found out that she had to stay silent for seven years, sewing us shirts of starwort.”
“It went pretty well until she met up with a man who wanted to marry her,” Emeline says. “A piece of sisterly advice, delivered with some disbelief that it has to be made clear at all: if a guy falls in love with you while you can’t speak, there is likely trouble to be had.”
“She was accused of being a witch. She couldn’t defend herself.” Eleanor shrugs. “She ended up on a pyre. This is a pretty exciting part, and I would tell it with more color if I wasn’t freezing.”
Edith laughs. “We flew in from the east, six swans, and she threw the shirts up into the air, watched as they settled onto our backs. We tumbled to earth, human again.”
“Except for you,” Emeline says to Arthur.
“She didn’t have time to finish. Who knows why. Seven years seems like long enough.” Eleanor is shivering. “Your shirt was missing a sleeve.”
“There you were,” Edith says. “All of us whole, and you one-winged. Our hobbled brother.”
They fall silent.
“What an interesting retelling,” Agnes says.
Arthur frowns.
Eleanor rolls her eyes. “Don’t look so put out, Arthur. The ritual doesn’t have to feel so funereal, though I know where your tastes run.” She lifts her arms to Arthur, and he pulls her up onto the pier. He nods thankfully to Eames, who brings them a towel, and wraps the terry around her.
Agnes has helped Emeline up, and Arthur puts his hands out for Edith.
She’s dragged the jacket off his shoulders, spread out the sodden cloth in front of her. She looks up at him, eyes dancing. “The fact that you went so far as to make each of us a tailored jacket is uniquely hilarious to me,” she says.
“The teasing I didn’t miss,” he replies.
“You may not have missed it, but let me tell you now.” She splashes at him. “Your self-importance has grown wild without it.”
****
“Triplets,” Eames says, very casually.
“Yes?” Arthur raises an eyebrow.
“Oh, nothing. It’s nothing.” Eames draws a thumb across his eyebrow. “It just makes one curious is all.”
“Here’s what I admire about you,” Arthur says. “That when confronted with something new or unfamiliar, one of your earlier thoughts is, ‘Maybe if I stick my dick in it.’”
“Don’t be perverse, Arthur,” Eames says, chiding. “I was only wondering about the typical things. How they all fit in one womb, for one.”
Arthur snorts.
“You’re very nearly done, aren’t you?” Eames says. “By my count, that’s five sisters.”
“One more to go.” Arthur lets a smile twitch on his mouth. He’s torn between the relief of being so close, the anxiety of still having something so unsecured.
“What will you do after?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.” He rubs at his throat. “Tavia was of the opinion that I’ve been misspending the precious moments of my life.”
“She loved being an owl,” Eames says. “The hooting, the mice. It was a bone-deep thrill.”
Arthur laughs. “It’s not that. It’s--. She’d told me not to make a quest of it. She’s always been concerned about my singular focus.”
“There is a very intimidating mystique surrounding it.”
“But she does make me wonder about some things.” He looks at Eames, the broadness of him. The inscrutability of his face. “Did I really waste so much of my time?”
Eames laughs, and then the laughter fades away, leaving only shades of itself in Eames’ face. He brings up a hand to Arthur’s face. The calloused pads of his fingers alighting on Arthur’s cheek. “I think you would be surprised,” he says, “at how much you’ve built without knowing.”
Then:
“What are you searching for, when you look at me like that?” Eames’ voice hushed and grave.
****
He isn’t surprised when Edith, Eleanor and Emeline decide to go a separate way, but is when Agnes tells him she won’t be accompanying him either.
“We’ll check in on each other,” she says. “I’m sure you’ll hear stories of my exploits.”
“I’m sad you’re going,” Arthur says. He tries to say it stoically.
She smiles fondly. “If I thought you would collapse without me, I would stay. But you won’t be alone, will you?” She nods at Eames over Arthur’s shoulder then returns her attention to Arthur. “Thank you, by the way. Have any of us said that yet? For coming to find us.”
Arthur grimaces. “I’m an asshole. I kept you waiting for longer than I’d wanted.”
“I heard of some of the obstacles that came your way.” She glances again at Eames. She bends down to hug Arthur close. “How lucky we are then,” she says. “For you and your tenacious heart.”
Arthur knows this gift now when he sees it. How generous it is to say, ‘Look. Here is a thing valuable in you.’
****
Arthur is tempted to get really fucking drunk. Just rage. He could get into a bar fight, break a few bones.
He’s run out of ways to forestall what feels inevitable, when Eames shows up at his door. “What are you doing here?” Arthur demands.
Eames is dressed to work out, a long-sleeved tee, boxing shorts. “I thought you might want to spar,” he says.
Arthur clenches his jaw.
“You’re very tense,” Eames says. “Rather rabbity, in truth. It’s dear.” He blinks lazily.
Arthur bites his tongue, nods. “Let’s go.”
The hotel gym is small, but empty, and they find some dusty mats stacked high in a corner. They go a few times; Eames circles, and Arthur unleashes a few flurries, growing frustrated as Eames lets himself be pushed, leaching the strength from Arthur’s attacks.
Arthur throws up his hands, steps back from Eames. “Don’t fucking slip me.”
“Are you asking me to go easy on you?” Eames asks, the disbelief mild but genuine.
Arthur breathes hard. “I want you to be an opponent, not a target.”
Eames’ eyes darken. He doesn’t smile, but he comes at Arthur, and there’s a--a joy to the fight. Arthur doesn’t know how to describe it any other way.
****
They finish after an hour. It’s about what they can sustain at that level of exertion. Eames is unwrapping his knuckles. He makes a quick noise in the back of his throat, then looks at Arthur where he’s stretching against the wall.
“You’ll have a bruise on that shin,” Eames says.
“It’s not bad,” Arthur says. He feels the muscles in his thighs strain, lengthening. He glances at Eames’ hands. “Do you want me to--?” Arthur rubs his palms against each other.
Eames lets the tape fall to the floor. He puts his hands on his hips, staring at Arthur.
“What?” Arthur asks.
Eames opens his mouth, closes it. He rubs thoughtfully at the stubble on his neck.
Arthur goes back to stretching, an old twitch in his back unsnarling.
“It must be good to have your sisters restored. To know that they’re out in the world, and able to come back to you.”
Arthur sits up. He moves, putting his back to the wall, leaning against it. He lets his head hang.
“You seem happy,” Eames says. There’s such an evenness to it, a part of the message lacking. It could be said with such a variety of intentions.
Arthur looks up, and Eames, he looks very satisfied, very warm. His hands hanging at his sides, full of ease, and Arthur, of all people, knows how much Eames mirrors people without thinking, a habit in him, to find the things beautiful, essential in someone.
How could this love have lasted, Arthur wonders. He can feel it wound tight around his heart, the thinned strings.
****
“This last one will be the hardest,” Arthur says.
“A weak attempt at scaring me from this commitment,” Eames says.
Arthur shakes his head. “It’s just that I don’t quite know how to get to her. She’s hidden pretty deep.” He hesitates. “I think Izanami could help. Would she?”
“Yes.”
“Would it come with strings?”
Eames shrugs. “More tolerable ones than you might imagine.”
****
The rainbow springs up -- it’s been a long time, and Arthur feels okay to say that he’d loved this way of travel. How you could walk from here to there, cushioned amongst stars, summoning a safe kind of dark.
He’d forgotten how imposing Izanami could be. The three of them walk together in silence for a while.
It’s Izanami who speaks first. “It’s strange -- I know mine was a bigger deception than your theft, but, still, I didn’t think I would feel such a debt. I thought I would feel better about where we stand.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Arthur says.
“Hold on now,” Eames says. “Don’t give away your bargaining position so lightly.”
She ignores him. “I liked you too much,” she says to Arthur. “What’s a little trickery between friends?”
Arthur laughs. “No wonder you found Eames.”
“Drawn together by our shared charisma.” Eames smirks, a twist of his lips.
“Was that what brought us together?” Izanami asks him. She smiles, then says to Arthur, “I’m jealous of you, you know. That you’ve found a way to restore your sisters. I want to know so much about it. I’ve found my curiosity about it is insatiable.”
Arthur looks to Eames. “I’m surprised you haven’t said anything to her.”
“Where would I have found the time?” Eames shrugs. Then, when Arthur’s gaze doesn’t lift, he sighs. “I keep your secrets,” he says, lightly.
“How things have grown,” Izanami says. She says it almost warmly, but there’s a tension in her voice, an undercurrent stretched tight.
She doesn’t ask about Arthur’s sisters again, but she wants to, Arthur can see that. He should have understood earlier; that she had been searching, still, for a way to restore something that had been lost. To bring him back from his own kind of metamorphosis.
She and Arthur had often walked the same road.
Arthur matches his steps to hers. He wants to say something kind. “My sisters showed me more mercy than I thought they would, after all that time.”
She laughs, seizes Arthur’s hand. “I --.” She is cool, and strong, and Arthur realizes suddenly, how much she reminds him of Tavia, how they wear self-assurance like it’s something that’s been hard-earned. “Do you really think,” she asks, “that Saito might have felt comforted? That he might be patient, even after all this time?”
“I don’t know. If I were in his position, I think that I could have been,” Arthur says again. He isn’t sure how much that’ll matter to her.
“Sorry,” Eames says. He puts a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “The bow will touch down soon, and if Izanami was right, we won’t have much time before the fog will push it back. Look hasty.”
Arthur holds onto Izanami’s hand for a second longer, his palms warming and he can feel all the bones she’s broken, the healed-over places.
“The person I am has drifted over all this time, despite my best efforts.” She is shining down upon him. “I’m so afraid of what will happen after I restore him.” She lets him go. “What if he finds a stranger’s heart, where his wife’s once was?”
Eames ahead of him. “Arthur, run!” he shouts.
Arthur, he flies.
****
Eames had always told his own stories.
This is what Arthur can’t forget:
The two of them thrown awake by their deaths while pulling a job, hidden under the briars that had grown up around them.
Arthur had woken up with an angry laugh, adrenaline jittering in his fingers. He reached for Eames, made a fist in his shirt.
“You’re a fucking gambling man,” Arthur said to him.
“It’s not a gamble if you know how the chips will fall.” Eames pressed a hand to Arthur’s back, kissed him hard. “Breathe,” he said.
Arthur fought the rush, willed his heart to calm. He pressed his forehead to Eames’ chest, moving with the the ebb and flow of him. “Fuck,” Arthur said. “I wish I knew what to fucking expect from you.”
“I know.” Eames turned away from Arthur, laid flat on his back. “Why do you think I tell you so many stories?”
Arthur got up on one elbow, looking down at Eames. “I never thought about it.”
Eames smiled wearily. He was looking up, beyond Arthur. “This is a good reminder for me,” he said, “that what I would want if I were you, and what you actually want are different things.”
Arthur narrowed his eyes. “Are you--I can’t tell how serious you’re being right now.”
Eames flicked a gaze at Arthur quick. He pulled a heavy coin from his pocket, spun it between his fingers. “Let’s play a game,” he said. “Heads, I love you; tails, you lose.”
He went to throw the coin, and Arthur, without knowing why, gripped his wrist, stopping him.
“Heads, I love you,” Eames said. Unadorned, and staring past Arthur.
Arthur laid down next to him. “What are you looking at?” he asked, and turned his face to see the briars retreating, windows of sky exposed: here, there. Thorns falling away in the face of that unconquered expanse.
****
He’s feeling pretty sure of himself, standing now in the fog on the side of this volcano. Arthur has to laugh, because of course that’s where his youngest sister would choose to return, of course this is where he would stop and turn to Eames, and feel a cataclysm coming.
“Hey,” he says. “Do you want to hear something?”
Eames faces him. His lips chapped, the skin over his cheeks red, flaking a little.
“Honestly,” Arthur says, “I didn’t care about the wing. It was weird as fuck, and I could see the kind of shit that might come my way, but I would have adjusted.” Arthur laughs. “I adjust; have you noticed?”
Eames looks confused. “Arthur, what are you doing?”
“No, shut up -- I want to tell you. Will you let me? I think it’s important that I tell it to you, this last part.”
Eames takes an aborted step forward. He nods.
Arthur feels a wave of relief, barrels into the story again. It pours out of him. “My sister hated that I had the wing. I thought it was a smaller kind of hate, like it reminded her that she hadn’t quite been able to finish the job cleanly. She’s finicky like that. She’s got this sweet face, but when she comes up against something she can’t do, she doubles down.” Arthur holds his smile sharp-edge up.
Eames, stays quiet, his unreadable face.
“Anyway, I woke up one morning with two arms restored, but no sisters. A miracle and curse. I thought, for a little while, that maybe she tricked the rest of them into making the trade for me, but it makes more sense, now, that she had persuaded them into going along with her. I’m sure she started with ‘If it were you’.” Arthur pauses. “Tavia said she swore up and down that I would be so much quicker. A year; two maybe.”
There’s a fear in him, suddenly, crawling up his edges, and Arthur, he shakes it off, takes two steps forward, outrunning it. He lets it chase him out onto the precipice.
He pulls an eyelash from Eames’ face, brushes at the water from the fog beading on Eames’ brows. “I knew for a long time, all the steps I would take. I thought I could never be swayed.” Arthur drops his hands. “Anyway. That’s it,” he says. He can feel the blood in his veins, the rush of its turn from blue to red upon exposure. “All my beginnings.”
Eames is staring at him hard, his brow furrowed.
Arthur bucks under the gaze. “What are you thinking?”
Eames laughs shakily. “I don’t know, too many things.”
He puts a hand on Arthur’s back, pushes the hood of Arthur’s coat back off of Arthur’s face.
“I’m thinking--How incredible it is that you can put your hands on something and make it new.” Eames shakes his head. “How, if I were anyone else, I would be telling you what a terrible idea it was to forgive me.”
And then he kisses Arthur, his mouth warm, a hand on Arthur’s hip, his fingers cold where they find the gaps and lie against Arthur’s skin.
He stays close. “I’m thinking how glad I am to know you. Every part of me, glad.”
Arthur kisses him again. They’re standing on a volcano. Once the sky filled with ash here, and the oceans steamed, and Eames pulls away from Arthur, breathing heavy, their foreheads touching--a world that had expired under their feet.
Let me tell you a story, Arthur thinks. This is fertile ground.
He hears a bird, calling in the distance.
The end.