Disclaimer:I don't own anything!
Author's Note: Happy holidays to anyone celebrating and, in case I don't get the next chapter up by then, good luck to everyone in 2012!
-/-/-
The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.
~Aristotle
-/-/-
Arthur's favorite book is about a boy who never grew up.
"Unka Artie! Read us a story!" Phillipa pleaded, all big blue eyes in a child's chubby face. She adored her uncle.
"Story!" James repeated, still young enough that he couldn't quite string his words into sentences.
Arthur smiled indulgingly at them. (This, Eames thinks, is the Arthur he likes best. The one that was easy smiles and warm embraces and he tries not to be jealous that this Arthur is reserved almost entirely for James-and-Phillipa.) He was slouched rather comfortably on the couch, sleeves rolled up his forearms and vest unbuttoned. He'd left his shoes by the door and the warmth of the room was making his hair curl.
"Which one would you like me to read?"
Phillipa dashed away and they heard a small racket as she dug through their collection of books. Dom chuckled as he took a seat on the opposite end of the couch from Arthur, a glass of eggnog in hand. Eames was making himself some spiced tea—he'd have liked some more eggnog himself, but he still had to drive back to the hotel—and Mal was settled in an armchair by the tree, her hair swept up off her neck into a bun.
The book in Phillipa's hands when she came back was a swampy green with darker green vines inked along the spine to curl around the title. Arthur took the book and allowed Phillipa to settle herself against his shoulder, James in his mother's lap. "Peter Pan?"
"Yeah. Have you read it before, Unka Artie?"
"Lots of times. It's actually one of my favorites." He told her, pulling a pair of glasses out of the inside pocket of his vest and settling them on his nose just so before opening to the first page. "All children grow up," he read. Arthur really did have a nice voice, Eames thought, quiet, but with a steady cadence. "Except one…"
-/-/-
"Peter Pan?" Eames asked, pulling a box of cigarette out, offering one to Arthur.
"Don't look so surprised, Mr. Eames." Arthur pulled out a lighter reflexively, lighting Eames' cigarette as well as his own.
"It's not what I pictured from you."
"Yes, because dream thieves must always fit into our boxes, mustn't we?" He smirked at him.
"A fair point."
They were silent for a long time, sitting out on the doorstep—Dom never allowed them to smoke inside—and enjoying the sight of snow on the ground and the cold that nipped at their faces. Arthur hadn't had a Christmas like this since before he and his brother left to join the Marines. Then again, he hadn't really been home since then.
Eames was the first to break the silence, as he was often wont to. "Why?"
"A bit of specificity would be appreciated."
"Why do you like a story about a boy who never grows up so much?" Eames raked an eye over his companion. "You seem like just the opposite. Twenty—what, two? Three?"
"Twenty-five in February."
Eames ignored the fact that Arthur was probably lying, about the month at least. "Twenty-four and dressing like you're some wealthy CEO."
Arthur exhaled some smoke slowly, giving himself time to think about his answer. "...My brother and I used to do all those things in that book. We'd play cowboys and Indians in the schoolyard, we'd pretend to be pirates before bed..." Eames wondered if Arthur was entirely aware of the fond smile on his lips. "He used to tell me that, one day, we'd go to the beach and we'd find a mermaid and she would fall madly in love with him and take him away down below the ocean to live with her."
("Don't worry, I'll come back for you." Arthur's green eyes are earnest and familiar, the first eyes that Cameron can ever remember. "And we'll live down there forever as kings of the ocean!")
"I take it he was the real dreamer out of the two you then?"
The smile faded from Arthur's face. "I suppose you could say that." He dropped the cigarette and put it out with the toe of his shoe. "What about your favorite book?"
He'd expected the question. Arthur was a man of balance, after all. Information exchanged for more information. "Mine?" Eames thought about it. "The Great Gatsby."
"Interesting."
"You're the one that said we don't all fit into boxes."
"Why?"
"No specificity from you, darling?"
Arthur rolled his eyes. "Why The Great Gatsby?"
"I don't know if the thought ever occurred to you, darling, but the dashing gentleman that sits beside you wasn't raised in high society."
"Really?" The younger man drawled. "I never would have thought."
"I suppose I saw myself in Gatsby. Or rather, what I wanted to be."
"A bootlegger?" Arthur was giving him the chance to avoid the explanation, which was more than the forger had given him. But Arthur had given him an explanation and therefore, Eames owed him one as well.
"A person who made themselves different from what they were born as."
"And always pining for someone they can't have?"
Eames glanced sideways at Arthur. "No. I'm far too old for that sort of thing."
Arthur snorted and pushed himself to his feet. "That's because you still miss your typewriter. And I suppose that pining is more like Dom's thing, before he and Mal got together. It was kind of pathetic."
Eames chuckled. "True. Ah, I do believe I forgot," Arthur turned back, hand on the doorknob. "Happy Christmas, darling."
"Merry Christmas, Mr. Eames."
Arthur has a sister too.
"…I know you."
Dom, Mal, Eames and Arthur all turned at the voice. The young woman was tall, all slender lines and lean curves, long hair tucked up messily in a bun with a few pencils. She was carrying a water-stained notebook and a textbook under one arm. The Aerosmith shirt she wore was several sizes too big and worn thin—a favorite shirt then, or a very old one—and her jeans were pale blue with too many washes.
Her hazel eyes narrowed at Arthur before they widened and she dropped the books she was carrying to stride right up to him, utterly fearless and eyes blazing. Arthur's head cracked to the side with the force of her slap.
"You son of a whoring bitch."
Dom and Mal sensed that they should perhaps step back, but Mal was the one to actually tug at her husband's hand. Very few people knew Arthur's face outside of the dream business—and there were only a handful in the business that knew it too—so clearly this was personal. Dom tried to get Eames to join them, but Eames waved him away.
Arthur put a hand to his cheek, staring at the young woman. "...Wilhelmina?"
She glared at him. "Don't call me that. It's Mina. And don't," Mina punctuated the word by poking Arthur in the chest. "Give me that look like you don't know what you did. You left us back home, A, and B, you didn't even come for the funeral. We haven't seen you in almost six years. No card, no email saying, 'Hey, I'm not dead, just to let you know'."
Seeing as, for the first time, Arthur seemed almost at a loss for words, Eames stepped in. "To be fair, sweetheart, it wouldn't have been very easy, you see—"
Mina rounded on him and, in her anger, Eames could most certainly see the resemblance. Her brow furrowed in that same spot and her eyes blazed with the same fire. "And you, don't make excuses for him. He's an adult, he can make them for himself since, clearly, he can decide not to tell us he's alive by himself." She'd been about to turn back to Arthur, but she looked at Eames almost as in afterthought. "Oh, and don't call me 'sweetheart'."
Mina was absolutely Arthur's sister.
"Mina, will you give me a chance to explain at least?" Arthur asked quietly.
She looked about to refuse, but seemed to think better of it. "You can buy me lunch."
-/-/-
Eames was the one to wait up for Arthur in the warehouse where they were currently working. "Quite a girl, your sister."
Arthur glanced up before setting his suit jacket on the back of his chair and starting to make himself a cup of coffee. "Yeah, I suppose."
"You didn't recognize her, did you?"
Arthur's movements only hesitated for a moment before he continued. "…No, I didn't."
"She would've been, what, seventeen, when you left? Eighteen, at the most?"
"Fourteen, actually. She's graduating from the University of Verona this year."
"Graduating? At twenty?"
"Mm." Arthur tilted a strange smile at him. "She graduated early from high school."
"I can see that." Eames paused, pondering which direction to take this conversation. He decided on the easier path. He would have plenty of time to question Arthur on how smart, exactly, his family was later. "What is she studying?"
"Restoration."
Eames smiled. "I didn't think her for the classics."
Arthur poured his mug of coffee and went to sit at his desk. "The Aerosmith shirt didn't give it away?"
"You consider them classic rock?"
"You don't?"
"…That shirt was yours, wasn't it?" The loose fit, the way that the shoulder seams, for her, ended halfway down her upper arms...it fit.
Arthur paused in his writing—he probably intended to work through the night to make up for the work he'd missed today, Eames thought. "…My brother's and mine, yes."
"You shared clothes?"
One of Arthur's shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug. "What siblings don't?"
Eames left after that, sensing that Arthur needed time with his thoughts. But he grinned at Dom and Mal's confused expressions when he began playing Aerosmith the next day while they worked, particularly when Arthur didn't complain about it.
Eames never wants to see Arthur go cold again.
Arthur had two kinds of anger, Eames had decided. The hot anger was the kind the forger brought out almost on a daily basis when they were together. The kind where Arthur snapped and snarled at him, where they argued back and forth on little things; the kind that made Arthur's shoulders tense and his lips flatten into a thin line.
The other anger has been dubbed as the cold anger by Eames. He's been fortunate not to have had to see it very often. When Eames could still dream, it had been the subject of his nightmares once or twice (Those nightmares turned into a very different kind of dream not long afterwards, but that was an entirely different issue).
As the name suggested, at those times, Arthur froze. He wasn't Cameron Reynolds who took his dead twin brother's name anymore. Wasn't Uncle Arthur who read to his godchildren and hoisted them onto his shoulders. Wasn't Arthur with his meticulous nature and tailored suits. At those times, all those people vanished and only the Point Man was left.
(Before he sees Arthur go cold, Eames never realizes that Arthur has as many personas as he does.)
Arthur's expressions fade away, all warmth draining from hazel eyes. His body goes slack in the way a snake's does, with that underlying threat of violence just waiting beneath the surface. Everything is measured, precise, nothing done without reason.
The first time that Eames saw the Point Man was a year after Mal had gotten the three of them together to make their own strange, ragtag team. And someone had gotten the brilliant idea to get the information they wanted about the extraction from Mal, who, as the woman, was naturally seen as the weak link. Eames had smiled grimly when Arthur had first called him. They'd have their hands full with the woman that Eames affectionately called Hellcat.
He met Arthur outside the building that the point man had tracked them to. He looked too polished for what they were about to do, too neat. Black gloves encased his hands (Artist hands, long-fingered and slender) and for someone with whom Mal was very practically family—her father often insisted on having Arthur over for family dinners—he was far too calm.
"Think they're still alive?" Eames asked. He could feel his gun pressing lightly against the small of his back, hidden by his least favorite tweed jacket. He could afford to get this one bloody at least.
"If they are, they won't be soon enough." Arthur's voice was Eames' first clue that something was very much wrong. It was too silky, too dangerously soft.
"Up and away."
Arthur was a rather direct person. He didn't like to beat around the bush. Because of that, Eames expected Arthur to simply break down the door. Instead, Arthur quickly and easily picked the lock and stepped inside.
The men inside—Russian, naturally—whirled and Eames caught his first glimpse of Mal. She was tied to the chair and her face was bruised and bloody, one eye swollen shut. But, at the very least, the Russians were sporting some rather nasty bruises themselves and—had she bitten one of them? Eames felt the anger swell in him at her condition, but let Arthur take the lead because that was what point men did.
"Gentlemen." Arthur greeted in that silky voice, holding out his hand like it was any other day.
They ignored his hand. "You are here for the girl, yes?"
"Well, I'm not here for the company, that's for certain. Shall we just get on with it then? You let her go and we all go home better off."
"The American is insane." One of them, the shorter, balding one, said. "Why should we give her up to you? She is worth more."
"Than your lives?" Arthur asked blandly. "Then again, I suppose they weren't worth much to anyone really. I bet your mothers gave you away as soon as she saw you."
Eames remembered frowning at that, thinking that it didn't sound like Arthur. But the Russians had immediately started for him.
None of them saw the Point Man move. One, who Eames had seen pull a knife and was already reaching for his gun to deal with him, was left with a snapped wrist and the other had that same knife held to his throat.
"That was your one chance to get out of here alive, by the way." The Point man smiled then, gentle and coldly sweet. It made a shiver go down Eames' spine. The knife flashed and the man was soon gurgling his life out on the bad carpet. Before Eames could take the cue to shoot the other one, Arthur beat him to it. One bullet to the head, clean, precise and cold.
At that moment, Eames knew that there was no line Arthur wouldn't cross to keep his people safe.
Eames' only question about the gun was 'where had he been keeping it?' There hadn't been the faintest outline on the back of Arthur's suit jacket or waistband or even along his thigh in case he got to it through his pocket. A front cross draw would have been too obvious and Arthur didn't often wear shoulder holsters.
Eames crossed the room to Mal. "Can you hear me?"
Mal blinked her good eye at him and Eames wondered if he could convince Arthur to bring the Russians back to life so they could kill them more slowly. Violence towards women was the one thing Eames hated with a passion. "Eames."
"Hello, Cat. Did you give them hell while we were gone?" He set to work cutting her free of the ropes around her wrists and ankles.
"Would I ever do anything less?" As soon as she was free, Mal looked up at the Point Man who was staging the room. "What's the story, Arthur?"
It was like magic. At Mal's voice, the Point Man melted away and Arthur was back. Granted, it was the Arthur who was methodical and always did the job, but at least there was human emotion on him.
"These two got in an argument over something. It got violent."
"Simple, to the point. I like it." Mal stood, wobbling slightly on her feet. She caught Arthur's arm as he walked by her, still staging believable damage to the furniture and walls. "Are you alright?"
"I should be asking you that."
"I'm fine, honestly. It looks worse than it is. Now, your turn to answer."
"Same answer." Arthur glanced out the window, forever feeling eyes on him, regardless of whether they were actually there or not. "Let's get out of here."
-/-/-
Eames was the one to patch Mal up. Not because Arthur couldn't or didn't want to, but because Mal had shooed him out the door, telling him to clear his head and that he could fuss at her later.
As Eames gently pressed ice against the left side of her face, which was the more battered side, she asked, "Did he frighten you?"
Eames glanced up at her. "Arthur?"
"Who else?"
"No." He surprised himself with his honesty. At first, he'd been a little uneasy, not sure what had happened to the man that had somehow become a friend, but there'd never been any fear. Perhaps it was because he knew that all that subtle violence that rippled beneath Arthur's skin had never—and most likely would never be—directed at him. In the real world at least. In the dream, Arthur sometimes gave into his urges and shot Eames.
"He gets a little overprotective sometimes."
Eames found himself chuckling as she brought up a hand to hold the ice pack. He wet a cloth and gently dabbed at her split lip. "Only a little?"
"He gets very protective of women."
"You can take care of yourself. He saw to that personally." Arthur had taught her self-defense and he would have taught it to Eames as well if he hadn't seen the forger in the Army training.
"Yes, but, sometimes, I think he was raised to be that boy who comes to girls' rescues."
"A regular knight in shining armor."
Mal smiled at him and kissed his cheek. "And with his loyal squire in tow."
Arthur is a light sleeper.
Eames frowned at the lock he was picking. Trust Arthur to get the most damned difficult one to open. He froze as he felt the lock turn, not by his own hands, and the door swing open. He glanced up.
Arthur stood there, one hand on the doorknob, the other in his pocket. The ROTC shirt he wore was loose on his thin frame and old enough to have a few holes. His hair was mussed from sleep—and what a rare sight that was—and the dark blue sweatpants rode a little low on slim hips.
The point man arched an eyebrow. "Mr. Eames...is there a reason you're breaking into my apartment at," Arthur looked back into the apartment, craning his neck to see the clock on the microwave. "Two thirty-seven in the morning?"
"Would you believe it was to surprise you, darling? And is that a pistol that you're holding in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
"No original material from you? I'm disappointed." Arthur raked an eye over the forger. "Who's after your head this time?"
Eames straightened up, slipping his lock-picking tools back into his pocket. "The usual. Multi-million companies, a few people I've annoyed one too many times." He slid past Arthur into the apartment.
It was Arthur's 'real' apartment, as Eames had dubbed it. These days, only he and Dom knew where it was. The furniture was all clean lines and smooth, dark wood. But, at the same, time, it wasn't imposing. The books on the shelves were well-worn and without a real method of organization—unlike Eames, who liked to organize his books by topic.
(Arthur grins the first time he sees Eames' collection, very much twenty-three years old. "And you accuse me of having OCD."
"You do. My organizational habits extend only to my books and my kitchen.")
The coffee table had stacks of books on it, bookmarks poking out of them, some with tassels, others simple folded pieces of paper or Post-It's and a few with playing cards. His more recent reads, Eames thought.
A blanket was folded over the back of the couch—soft-looking and a smooth red color, like a good wine. Arthur's movie collection had its own bookshelf beside the TV. And quite a few of them were still on VHS.
("I would've thought you one to keep up with the times." Eames says the first time.
Arthur shrugs a little. "This is cheaper."
Eames has come to the conclusion that Arthur must not have had a whole lot of money growing up. Even now, with all the money that he's earned at his disposal, Arthur doesn't often indulge. Clothes and wine are his main indulgences. And books, naturally.)
"Are you hurt?" Arthur asked, closing his door and locking it in an automatic motion. When he slipped his hand from his pocket, there was indeed a pistol in it. Eames wasn't surprised; Arthur would have assumed the worst when he heard someone breaking in.
"No. I thought to come here before that happened this time, actually. Save you some trouble."
"Astounding. You can think things through."
"Did my lock-picking wake you from your beauty sleep, darling?" Eames used to think that Arthur had an alarm for that sort of thing, but in truth, it really was just Arthur's sharp hearing and his old military habits of refusing to sleep deeply.
"Yes, and if you don't mind, I'll be getting back to it. You know where the pillows and things are." It was a sign of how far Arthur-and-Eames had come that Arthur allowed the forger more or less free reign in his apartment.
"How late were you up working last night?" Eames called before the door to Arthur's bedroom closed.
"I got to bed a few hours ago." And while the point man was perfectly capable of functioning on very little sleep, he didn't like to.
"Good night then, darling. Or, good morning, I suppose."
Eames could picture Arthur rolling his eyes. "I'll see you in the morning, Mr. Eames."
