A/N: Prompt: last resort
Genre: pre-canon
Word count: 250 words exactly
Title: Are You Alright?
Summary: Captured and cutoff, but at least they were together. Unfortunately, this time? That might not be a good thing.
"Right as rain," Eames said the first time. The second, he'd quipped, "Never better. Except for that one—" but he'd interrupted himself by screaming. Arthur gripped the chair he was handcuffed to harder. He stopped asking for a while.
Intermittent screams faded to silence, and when he couldn't bear it, he asked and got a strained, "Yeah."
They didn't touch Arthur. He looked immaculate, and his hearing was impeccable. So when they started in on Eames again, leaving Arthur to listen to his agony, he knew they'd found out about them.
He picked the lock as fast as he could, then waited. At that point, Eames wasn't answering him in words or grunts, and only the rattle of his breathing told Arthur he hadn't lost Eames yet.
He killed everyone. But when he got to Eames, he realized he was too late. By a long shot.
"Please. Dar—"
There was no way he'd survive getting to an extraction point.
"I can't," Arthur wanted to scream. "I can't!"
"Prom— promised," Eames breathed, his eyes closed. When Arthur's gun touched his temple, Eames gave a ghost of a smile.
He still almost didn't. But a few seconds later he woke up to Eames' worried face amid a sea of annoyed military lab assistants and felt a sting of grateful tears.
Arthur showed Eames a loaded die the next week. "I won't gamble on you. Not ever again."
Eames rolled a poker chip over his knuckles. "Pity. I'd bet on you every time."