Thank you to thecornergirl for her fabulous beta. This was an awesome story to write with her =)
A stupid mistake. A stupid mistake was the reason why Eames was dragging one hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight over his shoulder, at a full clip through an alley.
"Come on, Ariadne!" he screamed back, not slowing down so she could catch up. He heard gunshots ping off the brick a few inches behind him and threw himself around the corner, Ariadne sliding past him a second later.
They tumbled into the waiting car, Arthur tossed crudely across the backseat. Ariadne crumpled behind the passenger seat, covering her head, as Eames landed on top of Arthur's legs, slamming the door.
"Go, go!"
Yusuf tore away, bullets raining down around them, smashing the window and ricocheting off the frame.
"What happened?" Yusuf cried, turning the corner and flooring it. "Where's Cobb?"
Eames and Ariadne said nothing, exchanging pained glances that told Yusuf everything; Cobb was dead. He'd taken a bullet to the neck and bled out before they could do anything.
Ariadne climbed into the front and buckled her seatbelt, turning back to look at Eames, who was currently stemming the flow of blood gushing from Arthur's abdomen.
"He needs a doctor," Eames said, his mouth barely moving, eyebrows knitted together in pain.
"So do you."
"Should we go to a hospital?" Yusuf asked, his voice high with panic. This wasn't like the inception; the gunshot wounds and bullets were all too real. Eames shook his head no.
"We need to get as far away from here as possible, but Arthur doesn't have long, twenty minutes maybe."
"Is your jaw broken?" Yusuf asked, the car jumping as he sped over train tracks. Eames nodded shortly, wiping the blood of his hands and pushing down on Arthur's wound with his palm again, shrugging one arm out of his jacket.
"Ariadne, rip this sleeve off, I need something to cover it with." Ariadne obliged, working her fingers into a tiny tear in the seam and yanking it apart. She handed the tweed to him, folded in half, and turned back to face the front, her face ashen. "Arthur? Arthur, can you hear me?"
Arthur said nothing, his eyes rolling, a tiny bubble of blood appearing at the corner of his mouth. Eames sighed, readjusting his charge so that Arthur's legs were in his lap instead of under him.
Five minutes later, Yusuf spun the car into an abandoned warehouse, slamming the door and locking it behind them while Eames and Ariadne dragged Arthur out onto the ground. It was eerily familiar but, this time, the threat of death was greater than a lifetime in limbo.
"He's a bit peaky, no?" Eames asked, pulling Arthur's shirt out of his waistband and wiping the blood off of his stomach. "This isn't good. It's broken through his diaphragm."
"What do we do?" Ariadne asked, wrapping her arms around her waist and rocking back and forth on her heels. "He needs to go to the hospital. Eames, he needs a doctor."
"It won't matter," Eames replied, shifting on his knees. Ariadne looked at Yusuf and back at Eames, mouthing wordlessly.
"So we just watch him die? That's our plan?"
Eames took a few controlled breaths, fighting the nausea rolling through him. It was surreal, all of it. His mind jumped from Cobb's open eyes, unfocused and clouded, to the blood blossoming still from Arthur's stomach, to Ariadne huddled in the corner, looking nothing short of terrified. Arthur's blood was on his hands; he might as well have pulled the trigger and that was enough to send him begging for confession.
He took a knee, resting the arm that was cradling his jaw on his thigh. Eames patted Arthur's chest, avoiding eye contact (not that Arthur could have maintained it if he wanted to) and staring a hole into the wall. The pain from his mouth was shooting down his neck and radiating into his shoulder.
"Quite the mess, eh?" Eames mumbled, to who he wasn't sure. Arthur managed a grunt, coughing slightly.
"Is he in pain?" Yusuf asked. Eames shrugged.
"Probably, he's been shot."
Yusuf raised his eyebrows as his phone began to ring. "You seem unconcerned."
"He knew it would end like this."
Eames had seen it in Arthur's eyes the second they'd arrived in the dream; he knew he'd been deceived. Arthur had pulled a gun and fired an awakening shot immediately.
Yusuf excused himself to answer his phone, leaving Eames sitting alone with Arthur. Arthur's eyes had closed and his breathing was labored, blood streaming down his stomach and slipping away under his waistband.
"We attracted attention," Yusuf said, shoving his phone back in his pocket. "Peter says the entire police department is looking for us, we have to go now."
Eames nodded, standing and moving towards the car. Ariadne couldn't keep her surprise and disgust off her face.
"We're just going to leave him here?"
"You heard Yusuf," Eames replied, sweat beginning to line his brow. Between the pain bursting from his jaw and the triple digit heat, he didn't know for how much longer he'd be vertical. "We have to go."
"This is insane," Ariadne cried, throwing her hands up. "We are not leaving him here, he needs a doctor. You need a doctor! Eames!"
"If we go to the hospital it will be only a matter of minutes before we're found," Eames
"If we leave him here, he'll be dead before we come back," Ariadne bit back, kneeling next to Arthur and wiping his stomach again. Eames sighed.
"We're not coming back."
Ariadne's head snapped up, her eyes meeting with Eames', and she looked sick. He knew she understood that he was suggesting that they leave their friend there to die, to save themselves, since he was going to die anyway. She began to shake her head.
"Eames, no. I can't, I won't-"
"Come on, dear."
He watched Ariadne back away from Arthur slowly, her face drained of color, and climb into the car next to him. Tears finally spilled down her cheeks as Yusuf pulled out of the warehouse, her fingers entwined with Eames' s.
Two hours passed before Yusuf pulled into the driveway of a small house overlooking the bay, and turned the engine off, saying nothing. He climbed out of the car and Ariadne followed him, leaving Eames alone.
Minutes turned into hours, the throbbing in his jaw subsiding finally as the sun slipped away below the horizon.
Numbers tripped and stumbled through his mind, lost and found almost simultaneously. Seventeen jobs, two kids, more deaths than he could count. Eames wasn't the best at math, but he knew that the two he had added today was too many. Seventeen, two, infinity, and it was all too much.
He cried in the car, his first tears in ten years, and he couldn't even summon up a proper sob because of his damn jaw. Instead, he licked the salt at the corner his lips and stared out across the silky bay.
When inky darkness had completely enveloped him, Eames got out of the car and started to walk, looking for lost. If Eames knew anything, it was that a gun fired in nothingness hits nothing.
Arthur died.