Chapter 25:

She'd known Eames was curious about her from the beginning. He looked at her for a few seconds longer than his comparative baseline, he touched her – fingertips on bare skin, a hand pressed briefly between her shoulder blades as she walked through a doorway – more frequently than he did others, and his mouth always seemed to tilt up when he spoke to her, as if he were trying to fight down a smile.

Yet he wasn't as warm as Arthur. He could play at cheerful and genial and he had most people fooled into thinking he was friendly, but Ana could hear the bite in his tone often enough, see the irritation that simmered just beneath his expressions. Within their first few interactions, she already knew he only pretended to be a gambler to feign a weakness, he acted as if he were easily distracted even when he was intensely focused, and his accent could swerve into different locations or social status depending on who he was speaking to and what he wanted from them.

But what made him truly dangerous was how good he was at altering himself to match any situation. A forger, down to his bones.

He could become someone she wanted.

###

"Why did you take this job if it makes you so unhappy?"

Eames raised his head from the sheaf of notes, blinking. She'd caught him off guard as he sat at the desk, and his face looked oddly vulnerable for a breath of time. But the glimpse was only for a moment. In a blink, he grinned crookedly and sat up, once again becoming the handsome, carefree rogue.

"I often feel as if we're already in the middle of a conversation, so please forgive my request for you to begin at the beginning."

Ana felt her cheeks heat up and Eames seemed to back down. It was such a rare thing but they were alone at the moment. Eames was often quieter, seemed more gentle when it was only the two of them in the same space.

Ana wasn't sure if she could trust the man and his ever-changing expressions. How often had she witnessed him practicing the smallest shifts in his face?

"Hey now, none of that. I mean how did you come to that conclusion?"

"I'm sorry, Eames," she said sincerely. "I was just going to ask you to come out to dinner with all of us but it's obvious you don't really want the company right now."

"Oh, it's obvious?" The sarcasm lacked bite, intended for teasing rather than a scalpel's edge.

He gestured to the seat next to him and she sat down, wary but wanting to put him at ease with her. Arthur told her Eames was the best forger in the business, perhaps even the first – she wanted to make sure she didn't jeopardize their working relationship by being… Well, her.

"You're tense, you've been tense." She pulled at the bottom of her skirt. She didn't often wear dresses to the office so it was nice to be able to wear them now, but being around Eames made her awkward. He made her feel like the knobby-kneed girl she'd been once. "You're troubled by the man you're forging… He reminds you of someone. Of a situation."

Ana thought about the way he fidgeted with his watch more often, how he'd look down at it throughout the day even when his phone or another clock was in front of him. The way he rubbed his lips with his fingertips whenever he looked down at the target's dossier.

"And I'm sure you already know who and what," he said, deceptively light.

Ana wanted to lie but Eames' gaze was too intense to look away from so she only nodded.

"You could… You could go. I could tell Arthur you had to leave for an emergency. We both know he'd believe me; you wouldn't suffer any sort of consequence."

Eames's mouth tilted up but his eyes remained fixed on her face. "What gave me away?"

Ana looked him up and down, from his shined wingtips to his trousers, to his pressed button-up and then down to his arms and wrists. "Everything about you. But if I had to point at one thing – your watch."

This took him clearly by surprise and his lips parted with a small breath. He gathered himself quickly but he covered his watch with his other hand, as if protecting it from her view. It seemed like an unplanned motion but with Eames, Ana was never really sure when the gestures were real.

Regardless, she averted her eyes and after a moment, stood up.

"No one else has noticed," she said quietly. Eames looked away and she felt guilt twist into knots inside her chest. She shouldn't have said anything; should have just invited him to dinner and ignored the impulse to dig deeper. "It's only me. I was worried about you. You really can go, Eames, you don't have to stay."

He turned back to her and again, his expression seemed open and truly genuine. "I appreciate your concern. And I know Arthur would take you at your word, but I do plan on finishing what I started here. It'll be good for me, don't you think? Something to build character. My father would be so proud."

Ana bit back her words and pressed her lips together, nodding before turning to leave.

"But darling, I haven't yet answered your first question, have I?"

She turned around, confused, as Eames regarded her with a little grin. She studied his face carefully, trying to detect any sort of anger or condescension but came up with only a depth of fondness that she felt was entirely unearned.

They'd shared a few meals together, a few moments over a drink before getting back to work, but she didn't think those were enough to spark whatever sort of affection he seemed to harbor. Of course, it could always just be pure physical attraction but Ana could tell he put far less effort into those kinds of pursuits in general.

All in all, the way he looked at her made her nervous.

"My first question?"

"Why did I take this job if it makes me feel badly?"

She sighed. "I shouldn't have asked, Eames, I know I can be–"

"I took this job willingly and eagerly," he said slowly, as if he wanted to make sure she heard every word, "because I knew you were going to be a part of it."

She couldn't look away from him.

###

"It was easy to get lost in him. He made it easy. He knew exactly the world to build for you, but you never really trusted in it."

Ana came back to the map room with a gasp. She lifted her hands and, like the last time, stumbled backwards but caught herself before she could accidentally topple a stack of books.

She'd been surrounded by Eames – by her thoughts about him, the moments she'd had with him, his scent, his touch, his voice… She rubbed her eyes, feeling the scratch of bandages over her raw-feeling skin.

"He loved me," Ana muttered. She blinked and looked up at the Remnant, who'd suddenly appeared sitting cross-legged on a chair a few feet away from her. "He was curious about me. And then threatened. And then…"

"And then he chose our brother to get half his head blown off right before our eyes. But you haven't gotten to that part yet, have you?"

"Where the hell have you been?" Ana snapped, clenching her jaw and glaring at her own face. "Are Arthur and Eames okay? Where are they?"

The Remnant shrugged, looking as if it had never left the room at all. "Oh, they're fine. A little banged up – Gideon came close to getting them a couple of times but they're quicker in dreams than we are."

Ana felt her heart skip a beat. "We can't let Arthur get hurt, okay? You have to leave him alone, he cannot get hurt!"

The Remnant rolled its eyes and sat back, shaking its head. "I can't make Gideon do anything. He's part of our militarization now; we can't control that kind of projection."

It crossed its arms. "And he'll come after you too – kicking you out is a form of protection. The sooner you wake up, the less chance anyone will have of messing with our mind. It's why you're in here and not out there."

"Well, why don't you bring Arthur and Eames in here if it's so safe?"

"Because they have things they need to do first and you will only get in the way. They're already distracted by us, and you're not even there." The Remnant uncrossed its arms and gestured to the topography Ana had been involved in and raised an eyebrow. "Besides, you seemed pretty caught up in Eames, no?"

I wish I'd shut up already.

Without responding, Ana walked to the rolled-up map she'd dipped in the lake and to her shock, it was only damp, no longer soaking wet.

It worked!

Now she knew things didn't stay static in the map room. She had impact in here, at least.

Feeling buoyed, she moved as quickly as she dared to the corners where she'd left her strands of hair, letting out a pleased exclamation when she noticed one of them was on the floor to the left of the book it had been on.

"I'm going to get out of here," Ana said, turning to where the Remnant sat, watching her. "You can't keep me here."

"I never said I could," the Remnant said. "But you are more of a threat outside this room than you are in it. If you're so worried about Arthur getting knocked down to Limbo before he's ready, then maybe you'd actually listen to us before running off into the ether. You barely know how to function in a dream, think about the havoc you could wreak in your own mind."

That was enough to make Ana pause. She could find a way out now, she was sure of it. If there was enough movement of air in the room, that meant there was a path outside that was letting it in.

But…

"Arthur will be using a version with a strong sedative. You do understand the risk associated with this undertaking."

But.

Ana could find no reason to lie to herself. She never had before, even when it hurt the most. Even if she was acting as her own obstacle, knowing herself, she'd just use plain and simple logic to contain her impulses.

And Arthur. I'd use him against myself.

She pressed her lips together, curling her hands into fists, feeling some of the scabs stretch and pull.

"Finally! You get it now," the Remnant said, watching her face closely. It tilted its head to the side, letting its braid fall from one shoulder. "You walk out of this room alone and Gideon will point a gun at your head and take you out of the dream. How you wake up will be anyone's guess."

"You mean you don't know?"

"I don't think anyone knows. What we did was an incredible act of grief and stupidity. It was unprecedented. We didn't care about the consequences."

The Remnant sat up straight and put its feet on the floor. There was no more artifice in its expression, no more teasing or pretending in its manner.

"Do you understand this?" the Remnant said. "She didn't care if we woke up as two or three or four different people, as long as we accomplished what she set out to do. She didn't care if we woke up in agony every day for the rest of our lives. Because she wouldn't have to bear it anymore."

"What was her goal then? My goal… What did I want to do? What did I want to do to Arthur and Eames?" Ana stepped forward, holding out her hands in confusion. "That was never really clear to me, despite all the pages I wrote from before… Matthew's words… I couldn't understand why we needed them down here. There was a purpose, and it wasn't just to torture them. I know it."

"That's one of the things she took with her. But the answer is in how angry we were. How much that hatred consumed us." The Remnant leaned forward and its lips attempted to form a smile as it pointed towards the tables that held her memories of Eames and Arthur. "The answer is all there. You just have to find it."

"Why are you doing this? Helping me. Aren't you supposed to play some role? Weren't you created to… To get in the way?"

"All up to interpretation. Whose way exactly am I meant to obstruct?"

"You didn't answer my question. Why are you doing this?"

The Remnant's face grew still again and Ana froze, seeing all emotion stripped away from her own face. There was only a blank, watchful stare – as flat and vacant as a doll's eyes.

My eyes.

My face.

This is what I could become.

Or maybe she was looking at what she had already become. An empty, lifeless thing pretending to be a person.

The Remnant said, "All I've seen of our memories is tedium and pain. There was nothing worth keeping in what she left behind. And I could wake up and have to experience that? I'd rather not. Better to remain sleeping, dreaming here.

So figure this out, Ana. Don't let us wake up in fragments."

###

They stepped into a neighborhood.

Eames glanced over his shoulder at the depository, past the large doors they had just walked through and caught Arthur's expression at the new world before them.

"You know this place then?" Eames said, looking back around. It was evening and all was still and quiet. A gentle breeze played with the trees lining the streets and some of the houses had lights within, though no sound could be heard. It looked like the stereotypical suburban neighborhood, with classic-looking single-family detached houses and clean, mowed lawns and a few cars parked in driveways. Pleasant and charming and picture perfect.

And it's all flat, lacking dimension or life.

He felt, deep down, that they would find no one behind the doors or walls of any of the homes. There was an odd emptiness surrounding them as he studied the houses, just as he felt there had been in the room before. A still, waiting feeling that permeated the air and made him wary and on edge.

"Of course Arthur knows this place," Matt said, pointing past Eames towards a dark blue and white house with gray trim. "That's his childhood home."

Eames raised an eyebrow and looked at Arthur.

He wasn't sure what he felt at that moment – not quite jealousy but certainly a sense of unfairness that Ana had built something only connected to Arthur in the dream.

"She created your home as one of her symbols?"

"No," Arthur said in a low voice. Eames noted that his shoulders were tense and he was staring at another house across the street. It was red-bricked and white, a modern version of a farmhouse-style home. On the lawn were two children's bikes – one pink and another black, laying crookedly on their sides on the grass. "She created her home. We all grew up here."

"So you really did know each other as children." Ana had always been careful whenever she talked about Arthur and their relationship, as if she needed to protect him and not the other way around. Eames had known they'd been familiar with each other for years and he'd always suspected a childhood bond but not this young. Not this close.

Arthur nodded, his face grim and stern. He pointed at the house he'd been staring at. "The Tremont twins lived there. We always called them that – the two of them instead of just one or the other. It was always the two of them."

"This is the sanctuary then," Eames said, studying its facade. "Her family home is her safest place."

"Or a shrine. A place to put dead things."

Eames knew Ana had lost both parents. She didn't talk about them much, only the rare passing comment in private moments when they'd been together, but Eames could easily sense the toll the loss of them had taken on her. The hurt, that grief, had remained surface-level for Ana.

And then losing Matthew…

"We sold it," Matt said. "After they were gone, there was no point in keeping it. The last time we were in this house, it felt like a mausoleum, as if nothing living had ever been there. It was the death of our life as a complete family. The new owners were planning to paint it so it doesn't even look like this anymore."

Eames shivered, feeling deeply unnerved. Those were Ana's thoughts, her feelings and words coming from her dead brother. In truth, they were surrounded by death.

"I'm sorry," Arthur said quietly, still looking at the house. "Your mom and then your dad… You both must have been so… I wanted to be there but–"

"But you weren't." Matt's face looked carved out of stone. "She always wondered if I believed you wanted to come. She didn't think I did so she never asked. There were some things she knew but didn't want confirmed."

The sound of a child laughing in the distance suddenly broke the building tension and Eames' head snapped to the side. "Did you hear that?"

"Yes, I did and I can sense it," Matt said, moving closer to them. He gave Arthur a sharp, angry look. "It's one of yours and it's coming."

"Then we better go where she wants us to," Arthur said, his voice becoming stronger and his manner more decisive. Eames watched him straighten then walk towards the front door like a man about to step in front of a firing squad.

Eames began to follow him when he noticed Matt remain unmoving, standing still to the side like a sentinel.

"Aren't you coming?" Eames asked. Matt stared at him and shook his head.

"I can't. I'm not allowed."

Eames frowned and glanced over at Arthur, who stood at the front door, arm outreached to open it. The leaves on the trees rustled and Eames felt a distinct chill run through him. The sky looked darker now and the child's laugh once again rang out, high and sweet and disturbing.

"Well, you can't just stay out there," Eames insisted. "Not when one of Arthur's ghosts is running around, laughing like that. Can't you try to–"

"You don't understand," Matt cut him off. "I'm not allowed because I'm already there, inside."

Eames opened his mouth and then shut it, realizing…

A place to put dead things.

Matt stared at Eames. "You're wasting time now."

Eames turned around and hurried towards Ana's home.

###