Disclaimer:Don't own anything. The quote is by Enzo Montoya.
Author's Note: Supposedly the end of the world. Looks like a gorgeous day from my window.
Went to see The Hobbit twice this past weekend-I'm in love with the soundtrack. It's my current obsession along with Rise of the Guardians which, yeah, I went to see for a third time in theaters because it keeps drawing me back in. Breathtakingly beautiful movie.
I am officially nineteen as of Monday. So far, no difference from eighteen. I did, however, also (finally) get my driver's license. Now there's just the matter of a car...
Happy holidays to whoever's celebrating!
The first book in my brother and I's original alternate history/fantasy series is up on authonomy. I would appreciate it if you guys would head over there, take a look.
authonomy / books / 47917 / sanctum - files - the - dragon - scroll /
For any particular thing, ask, What is it in itself? What is its nature?
-Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
Arthur has a Christmas Eve ritual.
It was both difficult to find Arthur in the crowd and it wasn't. Arthur was remarkable in that he could be surprisingly unremarkable with other people around. But he was sitting in the very last row, snowflakes melting in his hair.
Arthur stared as Eames slipped in to sit beside him. "Eames?" he asked, voice hardly a whisper. "What're you doing here?"
Eames leaned closer so as not to have to raise his voice any more than he needed to. "I got curious."
(He half expects Arthur to close off, to get defensive. He's surprised when he doesn't)
"So you followed me." Eames hummed an affirmative. "…Stalker."
Eames bit down on the violent urge to laugh. "Remember that you love me for it, darling."
"Debatable."
Eames shot him a look that Arthur didn't quite ignore as he turned his attention back to the sermon. The pastor was lively, energy vibrant in the sanctuary. The Lent candles were lit and there was a Christmas tree in the corner, decorated in silver and gold.
It had been a long time since Eames had been in a church, even longer since he'd been in one as Eames. (For Marc Waters is a priest with a stutter who wears thick glasses, but who enjoys his work and when Eames had shown Arthur the alias the first time, Arthur had agreed to help him learn the different days of the Christian calendar) He couldn't ever remember being in one on December the 24th.
The congregation was rising, but he and Arthur didn't stand. Eames had never known all the words to Hark the Herald Angels Sing anyway. He didn't know if Arthur did, but he knew the tune well enough to hum a few bars every now and again.
Eames leaned close again to ask against Arthur's ear, "Why are you here?"
He didn't quite expect an answer. Arthur was strange like that sometimes. But Arthur turned to reply, "…Habit, mostly."
(Eames remembers two silver crosses in a drawer and he can picture the Reynolds family in a church on Christmas Eve, can picture one of the twins wrapping an arm around Mina's shoulders to tuck her closer in an embrace)
"And I like to hear the choir."
(He remembers James not wanting to sleep, wanting to stay awake to see Santa Claus, so Arthur had sat with him on the couch for a while. When Eames had come back from putting Phillipa to bed, Arthur had been humming quietly to James and Eames hardly knew the song, but he knew the chorus. Something about a babe in a manger.)
Eames made a sound of acknowledgment before leaning back into the bench to listen. He'd never been one for attending church, but he wouldn't deny that there was some strange measure of peace here, though he suspected it had more to do with the line of warmth where he and Arthur touched more than anything else.
Arthur doesn't eat corn beef.
They were visiting Emma in Vermont—the second time she'd seen her son in nearly seven years.
("I can't leave it like I did, Eames," Arthur says, staring at his sister's email. "It's not right." Not now that Mina had found Arthur and she would undoubtedly tell their mother and while Arthur is okay with letting them think he's dead too, he can't pretend that he is when they know.
"Then don't," Eames says simply.
Arthur kisses him then, grateful for his understanding)
Mina kissed both Arthur and Eames' cheeks as they came in, glaring a little at Eames when he called her 'sweetheart'.
Eames was the first to notice as soon as Emma brought the pan and the bowl of rice to the table. He saw the way the blood seemed to drain from Arthur's face and the way his posture stiffened back into old military. His sister was the first to comment on it.
"Hey, you okay?"
The smile was forced, but Eames was the only one that could tell the difference when it was Arthur's face and not Cameron's. "Yeah, sorry. Just spaced out for a second."
The corn beef was very good, Eames would admit. Emma was a fantastic cook, but half of his attention was on Arthur and the way he seemed to be eating almost mechanically. (Corn beef was the twins' favorite food. They used to fight for seconds and steal bites off each other's plates. Arthur hasn't had corn beef for nearly seven years and he's only eating it now because he can't make his mother think she has lost both sons) He answered Emma's questions—and there were many. More than six years' worth—and Mina was good at knowing when the conversation was heading to a sensitive topic and she managed to steer it away.
Emma had a certain fragility, Eames thought. A fragility that only concerned her sons. Or, rather, son. She was a strong woman, he had read that off her and, knowing her two living children, he could believe it. But the loss of her oldest child had rattled her and she wasn't entirely stable again. Her eyes never moved far from Arthur, as though afraid he would disappear again.
Mina did it too, but she, at least, had a way to communicate with him if he should run again. (Eames is fairly certain that Arthur won't. Cameron may have been afraid, but Arthur is afraid of very few things and he tends not to run from his fears, but plant his feet and face them down)
As they were leaving—not Mina, though. She tended to stay for the night after their visits—Emma embraced her son tightly before turning to Eames and she told him the same thing she'd been telling him ever since the first visit.
"You take care of him." It wasn't a question, or a suggestion or even an order. It was a statement of fact because Eames couldn't do anything less.
But he tilted a smile at her. "Yes ma'am," he drawled and she gave him an exasperated look, even with a smile tugging at her lips.
-/-/
Eames was awoken by a violent movement from beneath his arm and the sound of retching. As he sat up, eyes adjusting to the darkness, he registered the lack of a warm body beside him and the pieces clicked together.
He crossed to the bathroom, stumbling a little as he got out of bed, the blood rushing to his head from getting up too fast. The lights weren't on in the bathroom, but Eames could make out Arthur's shape by the toilet, could see his skin—too pale—and feel the brown eyes on him. (It's a strange feeling, being at this end. This situation is usually reversed) He knelt down carefully, one hand finding Arthur's shoulder so as to know his placement in the room.
"Darling?" was all he said, simple.
He felt the muscles beneath his hand shift and slide as Arthur used his other hand to rake fingers through his hair. "…I hate corn beef."
(He doesn't need to tell Eames that he sees Arthur James Reynolds in his dreams. He can't tell him that he doesn't know which dreams he prefers, the ones where his brother is beside him, laughing and warm and bright to the point where it aches or the ones where he hears his brother's voice coming from the ruined mess that was his face. The worst part is that sometimes, there's a smile in that voice. "Cameron? You won't leave me here, will you? Twins, remember?" And Arthur remembers what it feels like to burn alive)
Eames shifted so he was sitting cross-legged and tugged Arthur closer. He expected some rebellion; Arthur had never liked accepting help. But the fight was all gone from the point man tonight and Eames couldn't blame him.
"I might throw up on you," Arthur muttered at him. Perhaps not all the fight was gone; there was some vindictiveness in the tone, distant and hardly-there.
"Do you even have anything left in your stomach?" He knew that Arthur hadn't managed to eat very much of the corn beef.
A shrug. "Prob'ly not."
Eames pulled him the little bit of distance between them until Arthur was pressed against his chest. He kissed Arthur's hairline and murmured, "…It's alright to miss him, you know."
A small tension—automatic because Arthur would never get used to the idea of someone knowing his secrets—but no reply. Arthur had thought that he'd moved past it—he hadn't healed really, but he'd moved on—but seeing his mother and his sister together in that house with the smell of the corn beef (He remembers racing home on days when they were having it for dinner, laughing when his brother stumbled and taking shortcuts between the houses) and that old framed quote hanging in the kitchen. All of that had made the memories surge to the forefront of his mind.
He didn't need Eames to tell him that. He knew that he was perfectly justified in missing and still grieving the brother he'd lost nearly seven years ago. But he also knew that if he allowed himself to keep grieving and missing him, that he'd catch himself in the same whirlwind that had been there after the explosion. He'd lose his focus, become too entranced by the dreams again (Like Dom…)
He refused to allow it to happen again.
Arthur doesn't believe in raising his expectations.
It wasn't the first morning that Eames woke up to the scent of Arthur on the sheets and the pillows—but not Arthur himself. Rarely did Eames wake before Arthur was gone. It was a dreary, foggy morning. He stretched sated muscles and limbs, feeling wonderfully lethargic and a little sore.
The hotel room was small, but, Eames thought as he swung his legs from the bed, it was still bigger than the veritable broom closets they'd had to stay in before. The notepad on the bedside table bearing the hotel logo and the plain pen uncapped caught his attention and when he neared, he could read, in Arthur's smooth, if a bit hurried as though he feared he wouldn't get his thoughts on the paper in time, handwriting.
How long will you stay with me? Should I prepare coffee or prepare my life?
Eames recognized the quote, dimly, and he thought that only Arthur would think to use it.
Pulling out his phone, Eames carefully texted his reply.
Arthur doesn't underestimate people.
"Do we have a deal?"
Eames wondered, in some dim and distant part of his mind, what kind of power his daughter had that she'd managed to leave Arthur only one way out. And she knew it. Very few people could back the point man into a corner and those people were his sister and his mother. Even Mal had only been able to do it once or twice.
(It should be a sign, then, what that means for them. That Amara is a strange extension of family, just like Sheral is because Eames has very few doubts that Arthur wouldn't fight to protect her if needs be)
He saw Arthur glance at him, but it didn't register, didn't do a thing to a mind still trying to wrap around the fact that his daughter—an Interpol agent, one of the best damn ones he'd ever seen—was here, at Cobb's house (And oh, Cobb is likely seething inside, keeping an eye on his children) and he couldn't tell if she was here as the agent or as his daughter. Or perhaps as something else altogether.
"Not here," Arthur said. "Come for a walk?"
Amara nodded and her shoulders slouched just a little, enough to seem relaxed (Can't be trusted, the part of his mind that knows her as the agent says. She has excellent command of her body, of her expressions and the messages she sends out. It makes him think that some things are truly genetic because he hadn't been around to teach her)
Arthur, who knew the area better than either of them did because he spent more time here, particularly after Mal's death (Eames remembers, vaguely, a drunken call and he can always picture Arthur in the Cobb's house afterwards, there with two children who don't understand what's happened yet) led them out past suburbia into the warmth of the sun-stained streets and to a small sandwich shop.
They took a table very much in the back and Arthur sat so his back faced the wall and he could see the entire restaurant. An old habit, Eames' mind registered, filing away the details of his posture, one that hadn't gone away in more than ten years. Amara's eyes darted throughout the restaurant, looking for any kind of trick Arthur might be pulling (His mind is a bit calmer now, calm enough that he can find some humor in the fact that these two are perhaps the most paranoid people he's ever met)
Amara wasn't quite ignoring him, Eames noticed. Her attention would flicker back and forth, even though Arthur held the majority of it and even though her eyes never moved. It was an interesting trick. "And my answer?"
"You do have a deal, but you haven't asked anything beyond that."
"Explain to me how the PASIV works."
"None of your government contacts could dig that up for you?"
` "They could," Amara said. "But you use it differently than they do. I've heard about layers of dreaming. It's what the Cobbs were innovators of."
She was only half right. Mal had been the original innovator of it, her and her father. Dom had come in later. But Arthur didn't correct her. Even the government had very little knowledge of how far Miles had gotten in his research before he'd given up the dreams.
"What's your question?"
"The way I understand it, the way it's been explained to me, is that multiple dream levels are unstable."
"They are."
"How do you work around that?"
"A sedative."
Eames saw her filing away notes in her mind, even as she toyed with a straw she had plucked from the container on the table. "How strong?"
"Depends on the layers of dreaming."
"On average, how many layers do you use?"
"Personally or in general?" Eames knew that Arthur would lie to her if she was asking about their personal average. They'd gotten good at going in a little too deep, just enough to still taste the edge of limbo as they died.
"In general."
"Two."
Her nose wrinkled a little in surprise. "Only two?"
"You're underestimating how much can get done in one dream."
She tapped the straw against her chin. "The possibilities are endless, I suppose. Limited only by the imagination."
"And skill," Arthur added. "You can have all the imagination in the world, but if you can't control it when you're down there, it's useless."
Amara hummed in interest. "What kind of sedative? Does it matter?"
"That's a question for a chemist."
"And you're just a lawyer, that's right. My apologies." Her voice sounded like a shark's smile. "But how does a lawyer know so much about dreams?"
"A hobby," Arthur said easily.
"Strange kind of hobby."
"Well, my clients sometimes need it in their defense."
"I'm sure they do. Do you go into dreams?"
"I have before."
"Then can you explain to me about militarized projections?"
Arthur's eyes narrowed at her, even as he felt Eames' attention sharpening in his daughter's direction, protective instincts rearing their heads. "And why would you need to know about something like that?"
An easy smile curled her lips. "It sounded like something I should know about. Our agents could possibly be going into dreams out in the field. I like to be ahead of the game."
"They're going to what?"
Arthur glanced at Eames and Amara just stopped toying with the straw. "Glad you could join us." She didn't use a title on purpose. Even she wasn't entirely certain what she wanted to accomplish on this trip.
"You're going into dreams?"
"I could be. It's not up to me."
"But you wouldn't say no." The daughter Eames remembered had been unfailingly curious and too smart for her own good. He doubted very much that the first had changed since he had proof that the latter hadn't.
("He thinks he's protecting you…")
"I don't know what I'd say. But I do know one thing—that decision is entirely up to me."
"It's dangerous."
"I can handle myself."
(She can't. He knows she can't because she can't possibly know about the dangers of dreamwork. It's not just the dreams. It's the lack of them, the constant walking of the line between sanity and madness, between reality and the dream-world. She can't know that people in this line of work are capable of being so much more vicious, of subtler cruelties than simply guns, although there are more than enough of those. She can't be a part of this, he can't let her)
"Not against dreamwork."
Her eyes flashed—lightning across a stormy sky—and Arthur could have told him that the absolute worst thing to say would have been to tell her 'no'. (It's something completely unplanned and Eames had always been so very good at breaking people's masks. No longer is she the Interpol agent. Now she is simply his daughter, his daughter who is a grown woman and he can't quite finish wrapping his head around that either)
"What makes you think that you get any say in this at all?" she asked. "It's my decision."
"You don't know what you'd be doing." Changing people and not always for the better. Because that was what dreams did. It didn't always have to be as dramatic as inception, but going into people's minds, learning their secrets—it always left a mark.
"Doesn't matter. I'm an independent woman who doesn't need your input."
(She has never gotten the chance to learn that, when backed into a corner, Eames can have a sharper tongue than Arthur and with his knowledge of people, of how they think and why, he knows precisely where to jab the words to make it hurt) "Then why are you here?"
Amara froze. It was for little more than a split second before her composure was back, all clinical and cold agent. "To get information, Mr. Eames.
Arthur cut in because he knew that if this kept going, it wouldn't end well for either side. "Then ask your questions, Ms. Evans." (He knows that her official name is Reed, but the name she prefers is her mother's. And he can tell, somehow, that she is not Amara Reed in something of the same way that Eames is no longer Allen)
"What is it that you two do?" And she was not quite the agent anymore because she wasn't playing the game of not knowing who Arthur was, of the man across from her being her father. "In the dreams."
Arthur looked her up and down, calculating. It was hot in California and she was dressed accordingly. No sundress, but a flowing shirt with almost see-through sleeves, patterned with—and how had Arthur not noticed this before?—paisley in blues and greens and whites with copper detailing along the collar. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, some loose curls hanging around her face. Capris and sandals, not strappy, but with a cloth dragonfly above the toes. She had her badge in her pocket and she hadn't brought a purse.
"Are you wearing a wire?" Arthur asked.
Amara looked almost insulted. "No." And perhaps that was more telling of why she'd come than anything else.