Because it's been a while, here's a refresher from last chapter:
"It was a pleasure meeting both of you. You, too, Nash. Ariadne." Cobb held out his hand to each man in turn, and then to the young woman. She ignored it, favoring instead to wrap her arms around him in a tight hug.
"You'll get her back, Cobb. I know you will," she said. He patted her back in thanks, and she stepped back, only to catch Eames in her next hug. "Arthur will be fine. You'll see."
The Brit hugged her back, murmuring, "You take care, pet."
"I will." She tried valiantly to hold back her tears as the two kids rushed forward to give her goodbye hugs, their small arms circling around her as best they could, burying their faces in her shirt.
"Stay safe and come back soon, okay, Miss Ari?" Phillipa pleaded.
"Yeah, come back soon!" James echoed, tiny hands fisted in the hem of her blouse as he stared earnestly up at her.
"Kids…" Cobb began, but Ariadne was already nodding.
"As soon as I can, I promise," she said. "We'll see each other again."
"Okay," Phil consented, finally stepping back and pulling James along with her. "We'll miss you all. So you'd better come back and see us, okay?
"Okay, Mr. Fischer? Mr. Saito? Mr. Nash?"
"Okay, kids," Fischer agreed, a sad smile playing over his mouth. "As soon as we can."
"Yes, we will meet again soon," Saito agreed. "You can count on it."
All Nash said was goodbye, making no promises.
November 25, 2013: 10:26 am, Bonanza, Colorado
"You're sure you have everything you need?" Cobb asked for the thousandth time, and Ariadne laughed.
"Yeah, Cobb, I'm sure we'll be fine. Eames has given us enough ammo to wage our own personal wars, and Yusuf gave us his super-preserved food, so we're all set."
Cobb sighed. "If you're sure…"
"We are," Fischer said, and Eames would be damned if he couldn't see a small smile playing at the corners of the businessman's mouth as well as Ariadne's. "Mark and his family have already called to tell us that they've made it to the plane. I think we're ready to go."
"I don't think you are, actually," Eames said, and beckoned Fischer over with the crook of one finger. "Please excuse us, pet," he intoned to Ariadne. "I promise to return him in one piece."
"Okay, whatever," she said with a grin, shooing her boyfriend away with a little wave and going to talk to the children and Miles and Marie again. "Play nice, boys."
Fischer sighed when Ariadne was out of earshot, adjusting the collar of his shirt and training his eyes on Eames. "So, what exactly was it that you wanted to talk about?"
"When you propose to Ari—"
Fischer made a kind of strangled noise and half-raised a paranoid arm to shush him. "How did you…"
"It was all over your face earlier, when we were talking about your lack of bridal shower experience. But on to my point: When you propose to Ariadne, and if she says yes, than you had better make her deliriously happy for the rest of her life, or you will have me to deal with." He leaned in, backing Fischer into a corner, steel eyes narrowing. "Arthur, too, when he's feeling himself again. And most likely Cobb, and Yusuf, as well. Between the four of us, you will have to contend with the highest concentration of weapons and the knowledge of how to use them in the United States, and Yusuf's massive collection of slow, painful poisons. And there is nowhere you can hide. Do I make myself clear?"
Fischer swallowed, only once, and then nodded. "Perfectly."
Eames grinned and stepped back, eyes melting from gunmetal to relatively friendly winter skies. "Good." He held out his hand, and shook Fischer's. "Then I wish you the best of luck. She's got fire, that one. You'll have to work."
The corners of Fischer's mouth turned up softly at simply the thought of marrying Ariadne, and Eames was sure—somewhere deep down—that they would be happy. And that, more than anything, comforted him.
"You're free to go," Eames dismissed. "You and the rest of them have a plane to catch. I sincerely hope that you find your friends the way you want to. Good luck, with everything."
"You, too," Fischer returned, nodding to Eames before rejoining Ariadne, Saito, and Nash by the door. "Good luck to all of you."
"Time for the diversion, then," Eames said with a forced grin. "Don't worry; we'll make sure we have eyes on both Arthur and Mal before we tell you to go. Ready, Cobb?"
"As much as I'll ever be." He rechecked the magazine of his gun to make sure it was fully loaded, and Eames did the same, both knowing that even if worst came to worst, they would fire no shots. "Let's go."
Eames nodded and led the way out the back door. Almost immediately there was a flash of motion in the corner of his eyes. He signaled to Cobb, who swiftly acknowledged it and turned to cover the right. Eames swept the rest of the yard.
About 30 yards in front of him was Mal. She stood, partially concealed by a tree; dress mangled at the bottom and shoes nowhere to be found. A second later, Arthur materialized beside her, previously white shirt now a matted dark brown, jacket cuffs torn to reveal scraps of his shirt and the pale wrists below.
His eyes flicked from Eames to Cobb and back again, before he lowered himself down and began to creep around the fenced-in perimeter of the yard. Eames sighed, his heart aching, as he watched. But the signal had been given: he could not let Arthur out of the back yard.
"Watch your wife," he said lowly to Cobb, and stepped forward.
The eyes of both infected snapped to him immediately, and Arthur slipped back a step closer to Mal. Almost birdlike, he cocked his head to one side and then another, assessing the situation. And Eames felt his breath stop in his throat, because even so horrifically changed as the man was, Eames could still see Arthur in him.
Dimly, he could hear the sounds of the front door opening and closing, the patter of feet on the path on the other side of the house. By the way Arthur's eyes glanced past Eames and the way Mal's shoulders tensed, he could tell they heard it, too.
Arthur crouched to spring.
"Darling, please," Eames whispered, voice cracking. "Just stay there. I don't want to shoot you." Meaningfully, he raised the gun a little, and much to both his and Cobb's surprise, Arthur froze, and then slowly rose from his crouch.
Warily, he danced the few steps back to Mal and had one of their new silent conversations, before he cocked his head again and just looked at Eames. Mal's eyes kept stealing over to Cobb, and then to the edge of the house just past him.
"Arthur," Eames continued, voice a soothing murmur, "just—just stay there." For a moment, it seemed that Arthur would listen, that he and Mal would stay calmly where they were, recognizing, perhaps, Eames or his voice.
And then both of them sprang into motion.
Maybe they remembered enough to know which of the men was least likely to shoot either of them, or maybe it was just the path of least resistance, but Arthur ran for Eames, and Mal ran for Cobb.
Knowing that they must have to buy at least a few more seconds for their leaving companions, Cobb and Eames both fired shots into the ground, about a yard from the feet of their respective loved ones. Arthur leapt back, snarling, but Mal only paused. Then very deliberately, she took a step.
"Mal, don't make me," Cobb pleaded. "Just stay there."
She took another step.
Cobb raised his gun.
And it was then that Arthur moved. He ran, full tilt, towards the front of the house. Eames's heart stopped cold in his chest as he pivoted on his heel and shot three times.
Twice, at the legs. Once, at the back of the neck.
Arthur jerked and then stumbled, shattered knee giving out under his weight. It would heal soon, Eames knew, but that didn't make watching him fall any easier. It was an image that would never leave him.
And what was worse was the sound Arthur made.
Behind him, Mal was snarling and screeching, and he was pretty sure that Cobb had said something, but Eames only heard Arthur's small gasp of…pain, just before he crumpled to the ground.
A sound Eames had heard him make only once before.
-o-
May 16, 2012: Dhaka, Bangladesh
They are standing, crouched behind cover, and then all of a sudden Arthur is spinning back with the worst expression of surprise on his face. With one soft sound of pain, he stumbles the foot back off the edge of the roof.
"Arthur! Are you all right? Answer me, dammit!" Eames fires another shot and then risks a glance down to the man below him, hanging by one hand from the ledge of the window.
"I'm perfectly fine, Mr. Eames, no need to shout," says Arthur through gritted teeth, though Eames can clearly see the blood seeping into his jacket from his newly acquired bullet hole. It has always been a bad idea to get trapped on a roof, but getting shot off of it now one-ups getting trapped in Eames's books.
"I'll be there to help you in a tick, pet, if you'd just give me one—" He swears, and then ducks back behind his cover to avoid the spread of bullets from the other side of the rooftop.
"Take your time. Don't get shot."
Eames realizes that he might have laughed at that, coming from Arthur, if the situation hadn't been so bad. Arthur has been shot, and is now hanging thirty-seven stories above the Dhaka business district by one hand, and it isn't even his dominant one. He himself is pinned down by at least five other men.
He's pretty sure that they're screwed.
"Well, darling, let me say this at least once: for all the trouble you get me into, I love working with you, and I always have," the conman says with a sincere grin, crouching to reload.
Arthur scoffs, seemingly unconcerned, but Eames can see his fingers slipping. "I suppose it's been a pleasure," he teases back. "Though I'm quite sure this particular situation is your fault."
"Oh, and how is that?" Eames asks, trying to keep Arthur's attention off their impending doom.
"Well, if you would just listen to me—ah." Arthur grits his teeth against a wave of pain from his right shoulder, eyes closing briefly. "If you would listen to me once in a while, we never would have ended up on this rooftop because we'd already be out of town."
His hand slips a little further, and Eames moves to break his cover, to dive over and pull Arthur back up, but Arthur sees this and shakes his head.
"Don't be stupid, James. Even pinned down, you can take these men. With cover. Don't break it now and die on me. I'll get out of this myself."
And Eames doesn't have the heart to ask Arthur how he plans to do that.
He sighs, once, and then smiles up at Eames. "I'm kidding, James. I want you to know that. If I—if my plan doesn't work, if I'm only trusting to crazy hope, then I want you to know that I don't blame you for any of this. I could have left, but I wanted…I wanted to stay with you."
"Arthur, what're you—"
And then Arthur lets go of the ledge.
-o-
Eames lowered his gun and realized that he could still hear Cobb talking. Saying something like, "My God, I can't believe I just shot my own wife."
Eames, thrown, blinked and turned around to find Cobb lowering his own gun, with Mal unconscious on the ground about four feet from the edge of the house
"It's all right, Cobb. Let's just get them inside, okay?"
Arthur was already stirring it seemed, but that could have been Eames's imagination. He didn't want to take any chances, though, and jogged over to the fallen infected. After a moment's hesitation, he removed his belt and stuck it into Arthur's mouth, cinching it tightly behind his head. Even though Arthur was unconscious, having hit his head on a rock when he fell, Eames was taking no chances.
"I'm sorry, Arthur," he murmured to the infected man. "Don't worry, though. Yusuf will have you back to rights, soon." Behind him, Cobb had done the same to Mal, and was now looking over at Eames, silently asking, what now.
"Now we should bring them inside, I think," Eames said, though he was a bit unsure. They hadn't planned on capturing the two so soon, so none of the rooms were particularly outfitted for this kind of thing. "After all, we may never get another chance. We'll just have to tie them up securely, and separate them. We can figure something more permanent out later. Maybe Yusuf can take some blood and analyze it to make safe sedatives or something."
Cobb nodded, confidence returning as he picked up Mal bridal style. He nudged the door open with his foot and stepped in, followed by Eames and the limp Arthur.
"Yusuf!" Cobb called when they were in the kitchen. The chemist quickly stuck his head in, only to pale at what he saw.
"You—you got them! That's…good, I suppose. I guess we need somewhere to put them, yes?"
"It would be appreciated," Eames said, feeling Arthur twitch a little in his arms. "Preferably soon."
"Ah—yes. Please, this way." Yusuf led them down the hallway to two unoccupied bedrooms. The infected were laid down on the beds, and their wrists were bound to the bedposts with reinforced rope.
"Hopefully, that will hold," Eames said, because he couldn't imagine what would happen if it didn't.
"It should," Yusuf said, but he didn't sound very confident. "What are we going to feed them? Hamburger? I have some more frozen…"
"It's the best option. They'll eat it if they get hungry enough," Eames said, sounding confident because it was easy to fake. "I think the best thing for us to do now is tell the others. I need to call Ariadne, even though the poor girl just left."
He sighed and cast a glance back at Arthur over his shoulder before he closed the door, taking in the blood, the small shivers that wracked his frame as he struggled to consciousness, and he decided that it was a good thing that Ariadne had left.
She didn't need to remember Arthur like that.
"So, shall we?" he asked, breaking the silence and gesturing down the hallway after checking both the locks on the doors. The other two men nodded, and they walked silently back the way they had come, hearts heavy.
-ooo-
8:30 pm, Bonanza, Colorado
Phillipa looked over at her father from where she stood by the window, watching the shadows of the trees dance in the wind. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself and said, "I'm glad we got Maman and Uncle Arthur inside. It's too cold outside for them!"
"Me, too," Cobb sighed, trying not to hear the muffled thumps as one or both of the infected fought their bonds in the back bedrooms. "They'll be all right, soon." Hopefully, his mind continued silently.
Phillipa smiled.
"Can I be the flower girl at Uncle Arthur and Uncle Eames's wedding?"
"Huh?" Cobb said, momentarily surprised. "Well, I'm sure they would love to have you." Even though there probably wouldn't be an actual wedding…But it warmed his heart to see her smile brighten even further.
"Oh, but should I ask Uncle Eames when he wakes up, just in case?"
Cobb glanced over his shoulder down the hallway, to where Eames was sleeping in the bedroom next to Arthur's. He said it was so he could monitor what was happening, but Cobb was sure that that wasn't the only reason. He turned back to Phillipa and said, "Maybe you should wait a little while, okay?"
"Okay," she agreed, with a child's deep understanding. "Can…can I go read a story to James? You say I should read more, so…" She shuffled her feet bashfully.
"Of course you can. I think he brought Puddle Pail with him." He watched her grin and bounce off down the other hallway, towards the stairs, and then stood to follow her. When she reached the bedroom she was sharing with her brother, she grabbed the book off the side table and climbed up onto his bed.
"James, come here."
Her brother blinked sleepily, but crawled over anyway. Phillipa pulled him between her legs and snuggled him against her chest, putting her chin on his head and opening the book.
Cobb felt his mouth twitch up at the corners as he moved aside to make room for Miles and Marie in the doorway.
"Well don't stay over there!" Phillipa said. "Come sit!"
The adults did so, settling on the bed next to the two children as Phillipa began to read.
"'One bright morning after a storm, Ernst, a young blue crocodile and his big green brother, Sol, set off for the beach. They skipped through the wet grass and stamped through the mud, drumming on their shiny pails.
"''I'm going to fill my pail with shells,' said Sol, who loved to collect things.
"''I'm going to fill my pail with sand and build a— ''"
"Dom!"
Everyone froze, silence ringing in the echo of Mal's shriek. Cobb was up and off the bed in mere seconds, disappearing out the door after shouting for Miles and Marie to keep the children upstairs.
He met Yusuf at the top of the basement stairs.
"What's going on?" the chemist demanded, but Cobb didn't have an answer for him. Instead, they both headed towards the source of the noise: Mal's room.
Eames was outside the door when they arrived.
"I don't think it's anything serious," the conman said when they appeared beside him. "I think she's only just woken up. Arthur's been up for a while, but all he does is struggle."
He was rumpled, but there were bags under his eyes that suggested that he hadn't been sleeping like he told Cobb he was going to. He looked, in fact, like he hadn't gotten a good night's rest for a month, and Cobb supposed that was probably the case.
"Eames—"
"Don't, Cobb," Eames sighed, shaking his head. "I can't sleep. It's pointless."
"Maybe you shouldn't sleep in the room next to Arthur's," Yusuf suggested gently. "There are other rooms."
"I want to stay close to him," was all the answer Eames had to give.
"Dom!"
"We'd best go in to see what she wants. Maybe she's…hungry," Yusuf said with trepidation.
"It won't hurt to check," Cobb sighed. "Let's go."
The door swung in silently, revealing Mal on the bed, glaring imperiously up at them. The blankets, which Cobb had drawn up over her, were kicked down by her ankles. When she saw them, she bared her teeth and pulled at the ropes binding her wrists.
"Dom," she said again, and this time Eames could have sworn it sounded accusatory.
"I'm so sorry, Mal, but it's for your own good." Cobb rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Are you hungry?"
She just growled at him.
"We'll bring her in some food, anyway," Yusuf assured. "But, uh, are we going to feed her or what? I don't think we can risk untying her."
"Leave it to me," Cobb said. "She's my wife. I'll be right back," he promised her, but she was no longer paying attention. Instead, she had shifted so her ear was angled toward the wall of Arthur's room.
"What do you think she hears?" Cobb asked Eames, who just shook his head.
"I don't know. But I'm going to get some food for Arthur." The conman turned and left the room, and Cobb and Yusuf listened to his footsteps fade down the hallway before turning to each other.
"This is killing him," Yusuf said softly. "I wish I could work faster, but the serum is maturing right now. There's nothing I can do for at least another week."
"He's knows you're doing all you can," Cobb comforted, "but you're right. I don't know how much longer he's going to be able to cope with this. He's always loved Arthur, from the moment they met. I should know. I was there."
"I don't think being this close to the damage is good for him. I think—I think we should have made him go to New York."
Cobb laughed mirthlessly. "How? Drug him? He'd never leave otherwise. And he'd just threaten Saito and Fischer to bring him back the moment he woke up."
"Who would?" Eames asked, returning with two plates of hamburger and two long-handled spoons. "Nash?" But of course, he knew they'd been talking about him. "Oh, definitely. Nash is feisty, and doesn't like to be crossed. Very unpredictable when angry."
He handed one of the plates and one of the spoons to Cobb with a tight and warning smile, and then disappeared into Arthur's room.
"Guess it's good that we didn't then," Yusuf said, somewhat abashed to have been caught so obviously talking behind Eames's back.
"Yeah," Cobb agreed. "I can only imagine what Nash would have done when he got back."
Then he sighed and went in to feed his wife.
-oooxooo-
November 26, 2013
The first full day that Arthur and Mal were in the house seemed far too normal.
There was no screaming.
There were no ropes snapped, no attempts made at escape.
Just a sort of unnerving stillness.
-oooxooo-
November 27, 2013
That night it poured.
Eames watched through the window as the heavens opened and cried for the world that could be seen below. The trees whipped in the wind, and the few leaves that still clung pitifully to the branches were torn away, only to be beaten down to the ground under the constant downpour.
He was restless.
"There are more out there, you know," he said to Cobb, tilting his head slightly to throw his words around the room until they reached the silent man behind him, eyes never leaving the drowning world beyond the glass. "Coming down from the mountains. I can see them moving, sometimes. Sometimes they stop and stare at the house, just looking at us. I'm not sure how much longer we're going to be safe here."
Cobb angled his head to see past the glare of the lamps and watched the dark shapes drift past like so many unanchored ships, dancing and lurching on broken ankles and legs and knees that hadn't yet had the chance to heal. His hand tightened a little on the arm of his chair, nervous. The thought of being attacked had crossed his mind, too, but he hadn't allowed himself to dwell on it. For his children's sake, and his wife's, he had to believe everything would be okay, that their current problems would be fixed before any new ones arose.
Eames stood up.
"Where are you going?" Cobb asked, voice tense, but low so as to not wake the children sleeping on the couch, warm and safe under their blanket of gentle ignorance.
"To open the shades in Arthur's room. He hasn't said a word, or made even a sound since we brought him in. He hasn't even moved, really. But he always loved the rain."
-oooxooo-
November 28, 2013
They say that the sun always shines clearer after a storm. But if that was true, Eames didn't notice.
Arthur had not yet said anything.
Yusuf worked day and night, checking the chemical levels, drawing blood, analyzing this and that…but it was never enough. Not when, after only seventeen days of being infected, Eames had Arthur so close. So close, and looking so human.
His eyes watched Eames coldly whenever he came in, as if he was expecting something…distasteful, but many times Eames had only come to sit in the chair by his bed, or to lean against the wall and watch him, heartbroken.
Eventually, Arthur stopped even looking up.
-oooxooo-
November 30, 2013
"You know, Arthur, I think Fischer's probably going to propose to Ariadne soon. You should have seen the look on his face when I brought it up."
The skin was cool beneath his touch, Arthur's hands still long and slim and smooth even after their stint in the wilderness and the harsh cold.
"Of course, we're going to make him jump through hoops before he even gets close to tying the knot." Eames rubbed his thumb in slow, soothing circles over the skin of Arthur's wrist; over the bite that was still faintly lighter then the rest of his deathly pale skin. "Aren't we, darling?"
Nothing.
-oooxooo-
December 2, 2013
"He's getting worse."
Yusuf glanced up from his microscope, alarmed. "Arthur? Has he stopped eating?" The chemist moved to step back away from the table, practically for the first time in a week. He had almost never left his lab, except sometimes to eat. He even slept down there, in case he woke in the night with a few moments to devote to the cure.
"No," Cobb sighed, shaking his head and descending the last few stairs into Yusuf's basement lab. "It's Eames. I…I think he's driving himself mad."
Yusuf straightened a little further and pulled his glasses off his head to run a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I'd noticed a little of that, too. We need to get him out of Arthur's room."
"Easier said than done," the thief grumbled, sinking into one of the chairs by the table. "He'd sleep in there, if we'd let him. He's hardly ever left in the past three days." Cobb rested his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands. "He talks to Arthur, all the time. Like he's still…Arthur. I didn't think it was bad, at first, but it's chipping away at his defenses. Seeing Arthur like this, I mean."
"…Does Arthur talk back?" Yusuf asked, always studying. Cobb shook his head and leaned back in the chair.
"No. Mal screams and yells, sometimes. Or glares at me in silent rage. But Arthur…Arthur doesn't do anything. Hasn't said a word, barely moves except to eat and go to the bathroom, and then…nothing. Hell, he doesn't even look at Eames anymore. And Eames is going crazy with grief."
Yusuf slid his glasses on and leaned against the edge of the table, eyes downcast with the weight of his sorrow. "I can only imagine what it's like for him. It must be horrible. I…I've never let anyone get that close to me. Never. So to see him go through something like this…"
"It's not easy," Cobb agreed, eyes slipping momentarily shut in pain. "I've managed, because I have the kids, and Miles and Marie. And I try not to spend too much time with her. But Eames doesn't have anything but Arthur. As far as I know, he hasn't had anything but Arthur for the last few years."
"We'll think of something."