Title: O Death
Rating: M
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Eames (?)
Disclaimer: If I owned this would this be considered "fanfiction"? I think not. So no, I don't own anybody, song or characters.
Warning(s): Character deaths, personification of Death, some mild movie spoilers
Summary: Eames never truly remembered having met Arthur before the inception job Cobb hired him for but he went along with it, knowing something was off but not knowing what. He should have stayed with his gut instinct.

O Death / O Death / O Death
Won't you spare me for another day?

The first time Eames notices the figure, he sees it standing out in the rain by Mrs. Cobb's grave and yet even in the rain it remained completely dry. At first he couldn't tell it's gender as he was too far away but as he stepped closer he saw that it was indeed male. It stood about his height and wore an all black suit, complete with a black dress shirt and a blood red tie, as if to give it color. It's short, black hair was slicked away from it's clean shaven, handsome face and the naturally light olive tone to it's skin made the leanness of his features seem more natural than not. It's eyes were dark, as was typical with people of that skin tone. There was no happiness in it's features but there was no sadness either. It had a completely blank expression as it stood over Mal's grave.

He moved closer to speak to it but before he could get any closer than ten feet a pair of huge, black feathered wings spread from its back and with a single flap it got off the ground and disappeared in a flurry of feathers. By the time he got back to the hotel he was staying at, his black suit and white shirt soaked from the rain, he had managed to convince himself that the figure was just a hallucination, brought on by grief. He may not have been the absolute closest friends with Mr. Cobb but Mrs. Cobb had been like a sister to him in many ways. He was taking her death pretty hard, much harder than he had thought previously if he was hallucinating a dark angel standing over her grave in the rain.

Well what is this that I can't see / with ice cold hands
Taking hold of me?

The jobs immediately after her death were more difficult for Eames but manageable. He got through his part of the work without a problem but somehow or another someone on his team always fucked up and he always ended up having to run for his dream life. Sometimes his death was quick and painless but those times were rare. More and more often he had been dealt some kind of fatal blow that took a while to kill him and in that while he endured some of the worst pain he had ever known. He wasn't ashamed to admit to himself that during the worst of it he would often let the tears flow free and pray for the end.

And every time he prayed for death, who else would show up but the figure he had seen in the graveyard that day, still dressed in his immaculate black suit with the blood red tie and with his expression the same blank indifference it had been. Sometimes he figure had its wings. Sometimes it was just a man. Either way he would kneel down beside Eames and reached out with his bare hands, cupping Eames' face with ice cold fingers that felt skeletal every time. It was rare he had the chance to think a full sentence before the figure snapped his neck and he woke up in the real world. Most times he had trouble remembering the details but he always remembered the young man's black suit and blood red tie.

When God is gone / and the Devil takes hold
Who'll have mercy on your soul?

Then came the first time Eames took a job with Cobb after her death, the inception job, and things from that point started to become surreal. He might have met this young man named Arthur before but exactly where and how he didn't quite remember. It was all highly suspicious but he decided to play along for now and let himself pretend that they'd known each other for a long time. He easily fell into his habit of bantering with such a straight-laced fellow just because it was more fun to tease the serious figure than it was to ignore him. He even managed to coax a half smile out of Arthur once in a while.

However he was a forger for a reason and he noticed almost immediately how Arthur seemed to hover around Cobb, keeping an eye on him and a serious face though there was no real show of sympathy or compassion. He didn't touch the extractor unless he had to for the sake of normalcy and even then it was never bare skin. He watched from a corner, even as he did some of the best work Eames had ever seen in such a short (but realistic) period of time and planned out as much as he could for them without stepping on anyone's toes. It didn't take someone of Eames' skill to see that Arthur was the only thing holding Cobb together at this point.

O Death / O Death

During the rehearsals of their dreams, Eames didn't miss the way Arthur and Cobb not only stuck together as much as they could (without arousing suspicion) but that Arthur used only minimal effort to take out the projections that came a little too close to them when they became more hostile. He barely took any time to aim his weapon when it was a gun and he had no qualms with getting blood on his immaculate suits when it was needed. It was only when Mal arrived that the killing machine that was Arthur came close to a stop and that was only because she had an ability to sneak up on him no other projection had. His cries when he was shot in the kneecaps were sounds that continued to echo in Eames' ears long after they had returned to reality. It was a sound that frightened him right down to his core.

"No wealth / no ruin / no silver / no gold
Nothing satisfies me / but your soul."

The actual job had a few more glitches than was absolutely necessary if by "glitches" one meant dangerous as hell omissions of information. Not only was the sedative too strong to wake them up but the mark's mind had been militarized against them. As soon as he heard that if they died in the dream they would fall into limbo, Eames' mind started raging against the clearly suicidal Cobb and his apparent side kick Arthur. This was a death trap, not just for them as regular dreamers but for the mark and tourist as well. Hell Saito had already been shot and he was the one technically paying the bill if and when they got out of the dream.

What really triggered the "danger" signs in the back of Eames' mind was how, even though he raged against their "boss" for not telling them how strong the sedative was, he was far more alright with it after a short rant than the rest of them were. It could have been that he was calmer because he had projections to kill in large numbers and that was soothing to him but somehow Eames doubted that was the case. It was as if he had no qualms with their situation. In a normal situation the forger might have assumed he was a psychopath but there were none of the usual signs. He just didn't seem to care. It was almost like he had planned for things to turn out this way.

O Death

They got through the first level of dreaming with some difficulty but once they got down to the second level, Eames really started to notice discrepancies. While it was true that Arthur preferred to wear suits in dreams, usually his suits were bland and casual business attire. This time, he was dressed in a black three piece number with a white dress shirt and a deep red tie. With his hair slicked back as it was and his face as smooth as a baby's bottom, Eames' memory almost conjured the image of the figure he still remembered seeing standing in the rain over Mol's grave that day. They seemed to meld so perfectly.

Forcing the image away, Eames was able to keep his attention focused on the task at hand, namely getting the mark to accept the idea he had spent an hour trying to plan in the poor bastard's head. He would have felt bad about doing his job if he wasn't so sure that Arthur was doing something far worse to Cobb than he was doing to Fisher. Silently he promised himself that he would get to the bottom of whatever was going on when this damn mission was through. Something wasn't right with Arthur and he'd be damned if he didn't figure out what it was.

"Well I am Death / none can excel
I open the door to / heaven or hell"

When they were in the room with Fisher, preparing to go down to the next level, Eames was unsure if he should trust Arthur to keep a watch on him at this level. Everyone seemed to trust him implicitly and, to be fair, they had no reason not to trust him. But they hadn't seen what he had seen that day out in the rain. They hadn't seen this same figure with wide black wings spread from his lean shoulders, his face blank and his clothes darkest than the deepest night. If Arthur sensed his distrust he said nothing about it. He kept up with their earlier banter, promising to lead the projections on a merry chase. A merry chase indeed.

"Make sure you're back before the kick," he said just as Arthur finished setting up the line in his skin. It was more to show that something was off than any real thought that the point man had forgotten something so simple. The small but playful smile he got in return was all the answer he really needed. "Go to sleep Mister Eames," he was told and before he could protest, he was out cold.

O Death / O Death

The kick to get out of the third level came he had been killed by a heavy slab of cement falling on him from the collapsing building. On the second level, his chest had collapsed when he hit the roof of the elevator far too quickly. When he got to the first level, he swam with Fisher up to the far bank, still in the rain that Yusuf's subconscious had conjured up and listened as Fisher decided for himself that he would be the one to take his father's company apart and start from scratch again. He didn't really listen to the words that were being spoken. His mind was far away, trying to decide of Cobb and Saito had survived or were trapped in Limbo forever.

He glanced across the lake to where Arthur was sitting with Ariadne. A spike of jealousy ran through him and it grew as he watched them disappear. He turned his attention back to Fisher and waited for the music to filter through the dream. It didn't take much longer. He almost didn't hear the gunshots in the distance over the sound of it, let alone allowed it to register before he woke up, once more in the plane.

When it came time to get off the landed plane, Eames waited until Fisher was gone before turning to his friends who were not awake and tested their pulses while Arthur grabbed his carry on bag. None of them had a pulse, or at least one strong enough for him to detect. He raised his voice, calling for help, as Arthur walked passed him without another word. Security came with medical staff but none of the others were able to be revived. Eames was at a complete loss. Somehow he had lost the entire team, other than himself and Arthur, in that mess that was Fisher's mind. What had gone wrong?

"Damn it!" he hissed and grabbed his bag, hurrying through the airport down to the baggage claim to force the bastard to talk. Arthur must have known what was wrong when he left. That was the only explanation he had for why else the point man would have walked away from the situation, even with Eames calling for help. He knew that they were dead. But how did he know?

He found Arthur standing with their bags (just his and Eames') off to the side, reading a small book as if he had been waiting a long time. This just infuriated Eames further and he stormed closer, tearing the book out of the sleeker man's hands. "Just what do you think you're doing?" he hissed, trying not to draw too much attention to themselves as he knew security was bound to start looking for him sooner or later for more questions, "what are you, sir, because for the life of me I don't remember having really met you before this job and I have a fairly clear memory."

The young man who called himself Arthur smiled but it was a cold, frightening thing as he cross his hands over his chest. The suit he was wearing now wasn't the same suit he had worn on the plane. Instead it was a rich, black Armani, perfectly tailored to his body with an equally rich black dress shirt and a blood red tie that was perfectly tied giving him color. "I knew you wouldn't be able to let this go," he said, "and I am glad to know you played the game so well. I suppose you deserve a reward for figuring me out as none of the others did."

The figure pulled Eames closer, by the coat he wore and using one icy, skeletal hand to pull him forward so that the forger's chin rested against his shoulder. All of a sudden, Eames felt very tired and his knees felt weak. "My name is Death," Arthur said to him quietly, the icy hand tightening against his skin, seeming to draw the very warmth from him as his vision started to darken as if a pair of massive black wings were folding around them, "and the end is here."

(A/N: the song is "O Death" by Jen Titus)