Disclaimer: I don't own anything!
Author's Note: I've started watching Veronica Mars. I'm not too far into it yet, but I'm loving it. Weevil has the top spot for my favorite.
So yeah, this chapter's loosely based on Tit for Tat, but that's only because Tit for Tat's become my head canon. They're not actually connected.
"We keep moving forward, opening new doors...because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."
-Walter Elias Disney
And One—In Which Appearances Are Almost Always Deceiving
The first time he sees him, he's drugged to sleep on a hospital bed. He's heard rumors about the kid—they hadn't been lying either. The person lying in that bed doesn't look older than nineteen, maybe twenty—but he seriously doubts that that person's some CIA spy. There are some rumors of an accident out in Iraq, but nothing confirmed yet.
He's only here to see a friend of his—the doctor, in fact. Miranda Brooks is dark-haired with large eyes and she's got a spine of steel with a temperament to match and she is very much not available, by the ring on her finger.
"Eames, what're you doing here?" She asks. She's at the foot of the kid's bed, checking his chart.
"I missed the pleasure of your company, sweetheart. What else?"
She gives an unladylike snort. "Right. Trying to get out of the dreamwork today?"
Eames loves the dreamwork, loves the infinite possibilities, loves the brutal honesty of it. He hasn't mentioned to the higher-ups just how good he is at being someone he's not down there; standing out in this kind of military situation means being a lab rat for life.
But the others. The others are why he skips some days. They're too straight-laced, unwilling to try anything dangerous or new in a realm that doesn't even really exist. And sometimes, he wonders why some of them don't bend the world like he and a few others can. It's so simple, but, he supposes, it can't be that simple to everyone. Some days, he just gets bored of the military exercises.
Which has him here, because Miranda is always good company.
"I would never dream of it. What happened to this kid?" He doesn't really want to know—the kid has done nothing to catch his interest—but curiosity is an old, distant friend right now, her silver-painted lips tilted in a bemused smile as she leans on the bed beside the kid's left arm.
"Confidentiality," she reminds him.
"Do I look like I can't keep a secret?" He smiles at her and where most women are charmed, she just gives him a look.
"You look like the kind of man who'd sell out a secret for enough money. Or to save your skin." Miranda is the intelligent type, one who doesn't pull punches. And she is an accurate judge of character.
The first time he hears him speak, it's from across the room. The kid isn't allowed to go under with them yet; they don't know how the somancin will react with whatever drugs are still pumping through that kid's system to fight off infection. Eames has seen the wound, when Miranda works on it. It's raw and red and it's half hidden by his waistband, but it stretches upwards, almost to his solar plexus in some places, and outwards, curling around his ribs. It's a gruesome burn and this is it half-healed. Eames can imagine the circumstances that got the kid here.
He's talking with their chemist, Roberto Gutierrez. The chemist's brilliant, if not always all there, and the military keeps a very close eye on him. After all, if he deserts, he's got enough information on the program to be a real threat.
The chemist is explaining the machine, how it works and how the somancin affects the brain. The kid listens intently and asks a lot of questions, which Roberto seems to welcome. The kid's voice is a little hoarse, likely from disuse, and quiet and his eyes are hollow-sharp. Survivor's eyes.
"What if you need to wake them in an emergency? The drug would still run through their systems and wouldn't allow to wake up, right?"
"How do you wake up from a dream?" Roberto asks. His voice is almost clean of any trace of his Cuban heritage except for the way he rolls his R's.
The kid thinks about it for a moment. "You die, I suppose. Or fall. I don't think I've ever hit the ground in a dream."
Roberto nods in approval. "Exactly."
"But how do you, outside of the dream, wake them if someone bursts in?"
Roberto blinks at him and Eames knows that they haven't thought of this situation. "…Tip them?"
"It could work." But the kid isn't saying all he's thinking, Eames can tell. And Eames wants very much to know what's going on in that head of his.
One of the other dreamers, Christopher, nudges Eames. Eames turns to focus his attention on him, though a piece of it is still with Roberto and the kid. "He was a Marine apparently. Stationed in Iraq. Name's Arthur."
Eames frowns at him. "No last name?"
Chris shakes his head. "No rank either. Kid's like a ghost."
The first time Eames meets him properly, they're in a dream. It's been three months and Miranda has cleared Arthur to work in the dreams with them. It's Arthur's third dream and his first with Eames because they work in rotations.
Eames is on a bridge, watching the officers work with the other dreamers. He'd snuck away in the momentary confusion of arriving in a dream. He hears footsteps and turns automatically.
Arthur has lean muscle on him, but he looks skinnier than he is. He's a bit shorter than Eames, but it's hard to notice when he's nearby because of the way he carries himself. Some kind of confidence or stubbornness or pride—perhaps even training—keeps his shoulders back, spine straight and head held high. In the dream, he's wearing jeans and a generic grey T-shirt, the chain of his dog tags visible just above the collar even though in reality, Eames doesn't think he's ever seen him consciously out of uniform.
"Aren't you supposed to be down there?" Eames asks, nodding at the training exercise.
"Aren't you? Besides, I heard you can do something interesting down here."
Eames feels his eyebrows reach for his hairline. "We're bending reality and you think that's not interesting?"
"Interesting is a relative term." He doesn't sound so hoarse these days, but he's still quiet.
"Not feeling like killing anyone today?" For that is what this training is for, but Eames likes to create more than he likes to destroy. They're supposed to learn how it feels to be shot, to be stabbed, to be able to work through it all. This exercise has left some of the trainees in agony for minutes that stretch on and on, stomach wounds that bleed out too slowly, broken bones that won't heal.
"Not yet, but it's still early." Arthur pushes himself off of the railing he'd been leaning against and turns, shoving his hands in his pockets as he starts to walk away.
"Going anywhere specific?"
Eames can't see Arthur's expression, but he can hear it. "We're in a dream, Mr. Eames. I can go anywhere I like."
Eames turns to see him—it's some kind of compulsion because he's the first of the people in this program to show a different kind of ambition, of adventure—and Arthur is stepping off the bridge into seemingly empty space until the stones of the bridges unfold and move to make his own personal staircase.
The kid is good. Eames hasn't seen that kind of effortlessness in anyone else here. When he tries to follow him down those steps, it takes him five minutes to think that this is an abnormally long staircase for such a short drop to the ground. Then he finds Arthur watching him with some kind of amusement in those survivor's eyes and when Eames looks around, he finds the staircase going in an infinite loop.
(It's utterly fascinating, especially out of the Marine who follows orders like he was born to them and Eames want to know more because curiosity has draped herself over Arthur's shoulders, seductive and sleek and he knows that this is the beginning of something that's going to be a lot of trouble)
"Is there a problem?" Arthur asks and there's no shift in expression or posture, but there's a certain mischief to him that Eames rather likes.
Eames lets himself drop the short distance to the ground, landing solidly on his feet. There is a dividing wall beneath the bridge that hadn't been there before—he can hear shots going off and screams echoing—and Eames slinks towards Arthur, letting Arthur see the change because he'd earned it.
It's a strange sensation, having to refind the measure of a shorter person's steps, of different shoes. It's strange to feel his hair down about his shoulders and feel the curves of a different body as he walks.
Arthur's eyes run up and down—in interest, certainly, but he seems to be more focused on the actual ability of transformation than the curvy blonde currently in front of him. Eames leans forward, very much in Arthur's personal space, breasts pushed up against him and his lips near Arthur's collarbone, one hand on his chest, the other hooking around his waist.
"What do you think, darling?" Eames asks. His voice is alien to him, a higher pitch that vibrates differently in his throat. "Is this interesting enough for you?"
The corner of Arthur's lip curls into a smirk, his eyes cool. "It'll do. And don't call me darling."