Written for the prompt Inception/Highlander, past-Methos/Arthur & Arthur/Eames, Arthur's subconscious security is headed by Death, and then a follow-up was added about Methos and Arthur's history.
All the pretty visitors came and waved their arms
And cast the shadow of a snake pit on the wall
- Pretty Visitors by Arctic Monkeys
(Pretty Visitors I)
The very few times the team trained in Arthur's head, Eames notices the figure stalking them. Like Arthur, he's whipcord lean – but unlike Arthur, that thinness implies a gaunt, hungry deficiency. He stalks the group like a wild animal during a famine, eyeing their every move for weakness. Eames glances sidelong at Arthur, but the point man seems to give no thought to their ghost. He tries to scare him off by staring firmly but directly at him – I see you, he implies – but the man just stares back, baring his teeth in contempt until Cobb discretely elbows Eames to get him to pay attention to the conversation at hand.
From the way the other projections defer to him, their ghost is Arthur's head of security. Usually, high-ranking projections take the form of someone close or trusted. Eames wants to know where Arthur met such a man, and how he had grown to trust him. When he asks Arthur about his head of security later on, however, Arthur pleads ignorance. Yet the man keeps on appearing, stalking their group with a stare that makes Eames feel like a slab of meat, and Arthur keeps stonewalling him.
It's driving him crazy. Who is this man? Is he a relative, a friend, a past lover? It's hard to tell, because he's hazy and abstract in the way only dream-people can be, so Eames has few details to go on. Despite this, he has to know. The next time they're in Arthur's head, running a scenario, he drops behind the main group and waits. Sure enough, the sound of measured footsteps in combat boots soon comes. Eames stands with his arms crossed, hiding the silenced pistol he's gripping beneath his coat. Arthur's head of security approaches him in slow sauntering strides. "Hello," Eames says amicably. "I've been meaning to talk with you."
The head of security eyes him up and down with a sneer. Who are you, Eames wants to ask. He's prepared to do it. He opens his mouth, forms the first word – and chokes on his own blood, grasping the throwing knife in his chest as he dies. The man squats over his body, watching him die with something akin to affection in his smile and rubbing Eames' blood through his fingertips.
When the team wakes up from the dream eleven minutes after Eames was forcibly ejected, Arthur looks at Eames and scowls. "Stupid," he hisses, and stalks out. Eames ignores the confused looks from the other team members and follows him.
"Arthur!" The point man stops abruptly and swings about, fists clenched. "I know the concept may be strange to you, Mr. Eames, but there are some things best left alone. I respect your privacy; I expect you to do the same." Eames winces at the reminder of the girl that sits in the corner of his subconscious, slowly running fingers over the Braille etching in books. "I'm sorry," he says, "I just… had to know." It's a lame excuse at best, but it's true. He's always been a curious creature at heart. Arthur knows this. He sighs and lets his fists unclench. Eames waits patiently as the point man debates with himself, choosing how much to tell him. He's willing to take any scrap of information Arthur is willing to part with, anything to add to this puzzle of a projection.
"It's someone who doesn't exist anymore," Arthur finally says. "Nothing more than a fading idea shared between two people now, intangible and insignificant." He shoves his hands in his pockets uncharacteristically rough. "That's all you need to know." He walks away again, but this time Eames doesn't follow.
(Pretty Visitors II)
Arthur wakes one night to rapid pounding on his apartment door. Ever-cautious, he palms a small-caliber handgun and a silencer as he pads towards the entryway. It certainly sounds like whoever's out there is desperate, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's true. Arthur leaves the lights off as he navigates the room by memory alone; adjusting the darkness would be one more of hindrance for his guest, waiting in the well-lit building hallway, to overcome should his intentions be sinister.
Arthur stands behind the coat wardrobe reinforced with bulletproof lining, a position carefully chosen to give Arthur a strategic advantage to anyone trying to fire at him from behind the door. The knocking by this time has become less frantic. After a few final defeated thumps, the person on the other side of the door sighs heavily. From the way it carries, Arthur presumes the last thump on the door was his guest's forehead. "Arthur," a man's voice murmurs. "Arthur, let me in." He knows that voice, knows that unique lilt to his English. But he's never known it to sound so defeated. Arthur opens the door.
"Hello, Adam," he says. He's always made a point to keep up with Methos' most current identity, if only to remind the man that his disguises weren't impenetrable. Methos looks back at him, dirty and scraggly like he's been dragged ten miles behind a semi-truck. He laughs. "Is that who I am? I'm not sure any more." Normally he would have pushed past Arthur by now, sniffing out a beer and dirtying his furniture. But normally he wouldn't be questioning his existence, either. So Arthur for what seems like the first time in their relationship opens the door fully, tilting his head in a silent invitation. Methos stumbles in, and Arthur makes sure to lock the door behind him.
"Beer?" Arthur asks, and gets one without waiting for a response. He looks at Methos sitting numbly on the couch and cracks it open for him, placing the frothing bottle between Methos' hands. The Immortal blinks owlishly at it and takes a tentative sip, before bringing it back down into his lap. Arthur pours himself a triple shot of whiskey and manages to finish half of it in small sips before Methos finally starts talking. "Kronos found me." Arthur sets down his glass and leans in.
"He – I was lazy. A decade ago I could name all the Immortals passing by in a fifty mile radius. He found me. And – God. " Methos slurps down half the bottle of beer then giggles. "God is right. Me-God, he-God. He offered me my old life back, Arthur." Arthur had heard a bit about Methos' old life. It was impossible not to when experimenting so closely together with dream sharing. To think that the world had been so close to a resurgence of such terrorism sends shivers down Arthur's spine. He covers it up with another sip of whiskey.
"It was right there, Arthur. And it was so –" Methos chokes on his words and takes a long pull of beer. Arthur goes back to the fridge while he collects himself, grabbing a second bottle and leaving it on the lamp table next to the couch for when Methos finishes the first one. Methos quietly murmurs his thanks as he inspects the label of the first bottle. Arthur settles back into his armchair.
"Kronos is dead now. And I – Death has to be dead too." Methos looks at Arthur hopelessly. "He has to die, because the Horsemen are dead. I have to kill him without killing me." Arthur's eyes drift over to the cabinet holding his PASIV. As much as he wishes he could delude himself, Arthur knows the only reason Methos would confide in him like this. "You know how dangerous it is?" he asks. Methos drains his first beer and reaches for the second. "I wouldn't ask if I had any other option." Arthur looks back towards his cabinet with the PASIV. "No," he says. Methos goes rigid. "Arthur, I have –"
"All the experts know it's a ridiculous idea," he snaps back. It's a proposal whose supporters are misinformed psychologists and morons, neither knowledgeable enough of the nuances and sheer artistry required in dream sharing to make such decrees. "It's my last gamble, Arthur!" The force of Methos' hands strangling the beer bottle is slowly tearing the label off the glass; Arthur stalks across the room and plucks it away from him before he can shatter it and ruin the couch. "I never said we would do nothing," he reminds Methos coldly. He has to remember Methos is the emotionally compromised one here. "There is another way." Methos leaps off of the couch and steps closer towards Arthur. There's naked hope and desperation in his eyes, disturbing in one usually so emotionally compiled – in the one who'd taught Arthur himself the value of such control. "How?" he breathes.
"Transference," Arthur says simply. He expects the following eye roll, the disbelieving retreat back to the couch as Methos tries to reassert his composure. "It's a hell of a lot better than your idea. It'll work if we can go deep enough." It's just as risky, certainly, but more effective. They just need a sedative powerful enough. "I want him gone!" Methos hisses. "Not shuffled around like a last year's Christmas fruitcake."
Arthur narrows his eyes in response and puts as must conviction in his voice as he can. "It'll work, Methos," he says, using the Immortal's true name for emphasis. It's a trick he'd learned years ago. "If we can divide him among us, neither has to bear the full brunt. I'll hardly feel a thing, and it will relieve your burden immensely, without completely destroying your fighting instinct."
"You don't know what it's like," Methos whispers, defeated. He's too weary to put up an argument with the proper emotional conviction. "It's bloodlust of the most terrible kind. Even a little –"
"Can easily be dealt with," Arthur finishes firmly. He purposely ignores his own misgivings and looks Methos directly in the eye, relying on his force of personality to overcome the final resistance. "You forget, I work mostly in the dream world. Any urges I have can easily be taken out on a few projections here and there." Methos uneasily slides his gaze away from Arthur. "I don't like it either, Methos, but what choice do you have? You can't go down that road anymore. Your brothers are dead; it's time to put it to rest for good."
Methos looks down at his hands then back at Arthur. "Alright," he sighs. "How do we begin?"