Glitch - 5
Jan. 22nd, 2011 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tabi_essentiallyI am so, so sorry for the wait between the last chapter and this one. But the good news is, my big test is over and I don't have to study anymore. ^_^
Thank you all so much for your patience, both with this fic and with the comments that I've as yet not been able to answer. You guys mean so much to me! :D
I was going to go on from here and write more before posting, but then I realized that if I were reading something, I'd rather read an potentially shorter update than wait a day and read a super long one. I hope that's all right!
Now where were we? Oh, I remember.
** ** ** **
It was 3:45 AM when Arthur heard someone at the door. He cracked his eyes open and looked over Eames's shoulder. The sound was nothing more than the shuffle of feet, which might have been someone passing by if not for the way the shadow lingered under the space between the door and the floor.
Arthur came fully awake, instantly alert. He looked from the door to Eames, pushing him away and sitting up. The chill and emptiness from where Eames had been lying over him braced his nerves.
This was his element. This, he could do in his sleep. Had done in his sleep.
Arthur gestured toward the door and Eames nodded in acknowledgment. Arthur pressed a finger to his lips and patted his side, where the holster for his gun usually stayed. It wasn't there now. He made a questioning gesture that he knew Eames instantly understood.
Do you have your gun with you?
Eames nodded and tilted his chin toward where he had left his coat.
Good.
Arthur pointed toward it and then toward the door. He was utterly silent as he slipped off the couch and crossed the room to turn the lights off. He left the television on though. He watched from the corner as Eames made his way across the room and grabbed his gun as quietly as he could.
A knock came at the door, startling them both. Arthur looked over to Eames, narrowing his eyes, curious. Break-ins didn't tend to knock, but it wasn't unheard of. He knew better than to check the peep-hole and risk a bullet to the head, and instead ducked down as he passed the door. He signaled Eames over to the left side of the door, where it opened, and he placed himself behind it. He then held up three fingers.
On three.
Eames pressed back against the wall. Arthur reached across the door and quietly unlocked it. He felt calm, awake, and for the first time in weeks, sure that he was all right. Then he silently slid the latch across. The knock came again, a little louder.
Arthur dropped into a crouch and counted down with his fingers. On three, he opened the door, effectively shielding himself behind it. While Eames, armed, waited in the shadow across from him.
From the light in the hallway, a tall figure emerged into Arthur's apartment.
"Arthur?" a familiar voice asked. But what was familiarity to him? He only remembered one person.
He waited until the silhouette was all the way in before shutting the door behind him and springing into action. He had the man's arm pinned behind his back and his face pressed against the door in the next breath. Eames had the gun to the man's temple.
"Jesus, fuck, christ, Arthur!" the man spit out, trying to shake himself free.
Arthur just pressed him harder against the door, twisting his arm up higher. Lots of people knew his name, apparently.
"Arthur, it's Cobb," Eames said, lowering his gun and grabbing his wrist. "Let him go; it's all right."
Cobb, I had to call him. Cobb, my boss. He took a quick breath. Oddly enough, the man he was pinning smelled familiar, and that was what made him let up. He wasn't used to relying on such a vague sense.
Arthur did as he was told without further question and backed off, hands raised but still wary. He needed to see his face. Cobb turned to face them in the near-dark, rattled and breathless.
"What the hell?" he said. His flustered voice was also familiar.
Eames turned the lights back on and breathed a sigh of relief. Arthur took it as his cue that he could lower his defense a little. Then he took a look at Cobb. Dark blond hair, blue eyes, frazzled. Someone's father. Mal's husband.
"Cobb, what are you doing here?" Eames asked.
"I came for... because I heard... Arthur, on the news." He finally looked at Arthur, took in the whole of him, like a scanner that caught every detail. "So it's true," he said. "You, uhh, you did lose your memory?"
Arthur just nodded.
"Well. You look like shit."
Another nod. He could only imagine how much worse he looked since the last time he'd checked a mirror.
Eames looked from one to the other and breathed out heavily and stretched, as if trying to ease the ache and adrenaline out of his muscles. "We were going to call you anyway, though at a more reasonable hour."
"I took the red-eye," Cobb said, still watching Arthur, as if he was the one who had lost his memory and not the other way around. "And then I just came right over."
"Well, that's just fine," Eames said. "Let's have a seat and straighten this out. I'll make tea, shall I?"
Finally, Cobb turned to Eames. For a second he seemed about to question his presence, then instantly thought better of it. "Yeah, thanks," Cobb finally said. He went past Arthur, into the kitchen. After a moment of staring, and trying to fit this person into his past, Arthur followed him.
"How much do you know, or remember?" Cobb said to Arthur, forgoing any other pleasantries. He pulled out a chair and sat down, putting a PASIV on the floor beside him, and a small bag on the other side.
Arthur wondered just how long he was staying, then he decided that it didn't matter, if there was any chance he could help. "Not a lot," he said. "My address. Eames. You, a little. Mal. If you're going to ask me how it happened, I couldn't tell you the details."
Eames opened and closed cupboards, searching around for cups and for tea. Arthur wished he knew where they were, or if he even had tea. He watched Eames for a moment or two, in the silence. Finally Eames took down a box of tea, decaf. There was no teapot that he could see, so he had to settle for a regular pot.
"Arthur was attacked and shot with ketamine first," Eames supplied, when Arthur had been silent for too long. "Or perhaps after they did whatever they did to him. No one is sure. Found in a train car, half frozen."
"That part was on the news," Cobb said. "The ketamine wasn't. That can interfere with various compounds, though I've never heard of amnesia being a complication. Still, it's not off the table. Go on."
Briefly, Eames recounted to Cobb the details of how and where Arthur had been found, and his stay at the hospital. Arthur listened with interest, feeling as if the story were about someone else. He watched Eames as he leaned against the counter, tapping his fingers against it as he spoke. He watched his eyes, which looked very light in the brightness of the kitchen. A kind of sea-grey, he thought. Pretty. Eames looked tired, as tired as he felt. It made Arthur wonder why he was standing there in this strange kitchen in the first place. What was Eames giving up to help him? And why? He drifted away for a second on a memory of earlier that night. Not the sex, and not Eames lying on top of him and refusing him sex. Instead, the memory was of Eames's hand on his ankle, firm and familiar.
The his mind flashed to Eames standing on a bridge over an icy stream, or river. He tried to shake his head clear.
"I thought it a bad idea to have put him in a news story," Eames was saying. "Wish they hadn't. I found him through my own means. But whoever came after him now knows that he's still alive."
"That might have been the idea, leaving him alive," Cobb said. He turned to Arthur. "If they incepted you, they want you to do something."
"I thought so too, at first," Eames said. "But this doesn't act like an inception. Or if it is, it's a pointless and cruel one." Making do with what he had, he poured hot water from the pot and into three mugs with teabags in them. "They don't seem to want anything from him other than to render him unable to sleep."
Cobb looked up at him, and then at Arthur, surprised, concerned, and interested. He cared about Arthur, clearly, or he wouldn't be here. But this interested him intellectually, too. Arthur felt some danger in him, as if his drive for knowledge was deep and demanding, perhaps too much so. Cobb was like Icarus, maybe. At least that's where Arthur's mind went. He didn't question it too much.
While Arthur sat quietly waiting for his tea to cool, Eames spared no details in describing the nightmares, or night terrors, that were plaguing him. Again Arthur listened with a detached interest. Up until Eames said, "When he woke, he said it was like an error. No, not an error. A glitch of some kind..."
"It's a glitch," Arthur said, finally catching up with the conversation. The word triggered every memory of every dream he'd had since. The idea of it filled his brain, awake. He didn't have enough words to describe it. "That's what it is. It's something blue, a glitch, it's inside my head, the places where my brain is supposed to sleep, and it doesn't want me to, it's a physical thing, something I can feel and it's telling me something, that's the strangest part, I can't explain it but I don't think it's supposed to be telling me these things, I think it's doing something on its own and I can't control it, I know I'm not supposed to, but it's growing, it keeps spreading its fingers like it's picking through my brain, but it's also putting something there, and I can't sleep, I can't sleep and I'm so fucking exhausted."
Cobb reached across the table and gripped Arthur's arm, getting his attention.
Arthur finally looked up at him. He saw the history between them in his eyes. It rattled something free in his mind. "Where are the kids?" he asked.
Cobb smiled. "With their grandmere. That's what took me so long getting here, Arthur."
"Why did you come?" You fought for your children. Why would you leave them for me?
Cobb gripped his arm tighter. "Not once after Mal killed herself did you leave my side, Arthur. You could have run. You could have blamed me, or you could have just saved your own ass. At any time, you could have told me 'no' and gone on your way. You knew how much trouble I was in, and you went into it with me. I never had to ask you for anything. You just did it. I know I made a lot of mistakes." Here he glanced up at Eames, as if acknowledging something among the three of them. Arthur couldn't remember what. "But I'd never make the mistake of abandoning you when I found out you were in trouble."
Arthur smiled, as much as he could manage.
"Especially when I think I can help you," Cobb said.
This, however, made Arthur wary. Help seemed so far off, more like an idea than a reality. "Go on."
"You said a word before; you both did. 'Glitch.' You told me what it looked like and a little of what it felt like. But what did you mean? And where did you hear that word?"
"I think it was something I heard someone say. But when I dream about it, that's what I call it. There was a machine. That's all I know."
Cobb was nodding. "I teach a class," he said. "I doubt you remember that about me right now, but that's what I'm doing, and working with sleep therapy. I still hear news from underground, whether I want to or not. Arthur, I'm going to say a name to you. Tell me if it jars anything."
"Okay," Arthur said, skeptical.
"Francis Allen."
Mr. Allen, my team, my fucking team... Arthur leapt up so quickly he almost threw his chair out from under him. Eames caught it before it could clatter to the floor. Arthur ignored it and started pacing the floor, fueled by the determination to remember. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He'd left something undone, something important.
"Is he alive?" he asked, even though he couldn't even put a face to the name.
"I think so," Cobb said. "I just heard that some man was in a coma, from dreaming. That was the name attached to him, that's the last I heard."
"Fuck," Arthur swore. "Yes, I know the name. I think we worked together. I think. I feel like I was supposed to have his back."
"Well, he made it out alive. A woman brought him in, name of Alice May Franco."
"Alice May," Arthur repeated. Red hair. Small. 'Help me damn you help me.'
Eames frowned. "I'd heard something like this before leaving London to come search in earnest for Arthur. Not the names, but... Go on, Cobb."
"Alice May had an interesting story to tell the people who met her. She said she'd been on a job that had gone to shit. She said Mr. Allen was her architect, and she couldn't locate her extractor."
"She didn't mention a point man," Eames offered. "But then, no one ever does. If you're doing something illegal, you never mention that you had a point man. It's a dead giveaway. No offense, Arthur." Arthur nodded, because he didn't know what he was supposed to not take offense to. "I heard the story, just that the architect had gone into a coma. I thought he'd just fallen off the edge and got himself stuck in limbo."
"That's what I thought at first, too," Cobb said. "Then I started hearing rumors. You hear more rumors at a university than you do working underground, let me tell you. Criminals know how to keep quiet, but kids talk. Usually there's something to it, too."
"So what did they say?" Arthur said.
"That Alice May and Frank Allen had fallen victim to some new kind of illegal technology. I saw a few hand-made signs tacked onto bulletin boards. 'Beware of the glitch' or something like that. I thought that part was bullshit. Then I saw you on the news. It was national, Arthur. And you looked beat-up as hell. It wasn't your most flattering picture."
"I don't even remember them taking my picture," Arthur said. He sat back down in his chair and dropped his head into his hand. "Fuck."
"So," Eames said, "then there are two things we need to accomplish. Search for Arthur's memory, and undo whatever was done to him. We could search out this technology and probably find who's behind it, but probably not quickly enough to help. I think Arthur could do it on his own, but this can't be accomplished awake. Nor, apparently, through natural sleep."
"I know," Arthur said.
"Cobb," Eames said, "what are the risks of Arthur using the PASIV? And what if I go under with him?"
"No," was Arthur's immediate reaction. He thought for a second, and backtracked. "I mean, no to you going under with me."
"I agree," Cobb said. "It does seem to be, if not contagious, than something in the dream that communicates with minds connected to it. And can infect those minds. Yeah, I guess contagious is really the only way to put it." He turned to Arthur, holding his attention with vivid blue eyes. "I could extract it from you, Arthur. With enough time, and if I knew where to look. For that, you'd have to remember where it was hidden. I'd have to go under with you."
Arthur looked at this man who he supposed was one of his working partners – a man he was supposed to trust. Who he felt like he did trust, in a way. He also remembered that he had children, even if he couldn't remember their names, or the circumstances surrounding them.
"Look at me," Arthur said. "Do you really want your kids to see you like this? Because this is how you'll end up. Even if you could do it, who would extract it from you afterwards? We don't need that kind of cycle."
The three of them sat silent in the kitchen while the seconds ticked by.
"Give me that device, then," Arthur finally said. "I'll look for it myself."
"Will you know what to do?" Eames asked. The concern in his voice was thinly masked under a layer of professional curiosity that Arthur almost remembered.
"I guess we'll see."
"You won't be able to wake without a kick, or the timer running out," Eames said. "If you don't remember how to lucid dream and wake yourself, you'll be trapped."
"Wake myself?"
"You'd have to die in the dream," Cobb said.
Images came to Arthur then: shooting himself in the head, plunging off of buildings, going out in fiery explosions. The images jolted him. Did he really do those kinds of things? Arthur rubbed his eyes tiredly.
"You know what, let's just do this. All right?"
Cobb stood up. He squeezed Arthur's shoulder as he walked to the other side of him with the device. "Where do you want to..." he began.
Arthur had already pulled his chair away from the table and was rolling up his sleeve. The pattern of chairs in a semi-circle seemed natural and familiar. That struck him as odd: surely they must have done this in a bed, or somewhere safe. Yet he felt confident that he wasn't supposed to move from here.
"I'm going to start with three minutes," Cobb said.
"That won't be nearly enough time," Arthur answered.
"It's longer in the dreams." Cobb didn't look at him when he said this. "And in case anything goes wrong or you can't do it, or you forget how to wake yourself once you're under, it's better to start small."
Suddenly, Eames got out of his chair and came to crouch down next to him. He looked exhausted and worried, and like he very badly wanted to say something.
"What?" Arthur said. "Say it now, before I go under."
"I'm having second thoughts about you using the PASIV," Eames said, in a rush of breath.
Arthur's nerves jumped. "But I can't think of anything else to do. Nothing else has worked."
"I know," Eames said. "I just. Hmm. How to say this? I have reservations about you not being able to wake yourself."
He's got a bad feeling about it, Arthur read into this, but didn't need to put into words. And he's probably right.
"It's only three minutes," Arthur said. "I managed that much when they gave me drugs in the hospital."
At his other side, Cobb was firmly holding his wrist. "Let me know, Arthur. Don't do it if you're not ready."
"I don't have much of a choice. Go on."
If Cobb glanced at Eames for what may have been permission to proceed, and if Eames turned away, Arthur ignored the both of them. He felt the slide of the cannula into his vein—familiar, almost soothing—and then saw Cobb lean down and press a button inside his device.
Arthur dropped down into his own misfiring mind.
** ** ** **
As soon as Arthur arranged his chair as if he knew what he was getting into, Eames changed his mind, suddenly. Or maybe his mind changed him. All he knew was what his gut feeling was telling him, which was, No, bad idea, this is going to get worse. He struggled only for a moment with the decision to voice this opinion, and then it was out in the open. He couldn't not say it. He had been pushing Arthur to try the PASIV since finding him, and now he wanted to push him away from it.
But Arthur was determined, and he was also correct: there didn't seem to be any other options. And likely, none would present themselves before Arthur was an incoherent wreck while he was awake. Eames had seen that once before, and thank you very much, that was enough. More than anything, he hated to see dreamwalkers struggle with their work.
Cobb set up the PASIV and in seconds, Arthur's body went limp in the chair. Eames had to admit, it was the most peaceful he'd seen him look since finding him in the hospital. He felt to his core that this was a kind of calm before a storm. He could almost feel it in the air, like electricity. He swore he could almost see it and smell it, too: bright blue, the scent of ozone. He didn't know why that was.
Cobb knelt down to adjust the time on the PASIV. Eames stood over Arthur's chair, feeling like some kind of sentinel to his sleep. Privately, he curled a lock of Arthur's hair behind his ear. He stopped himself at stroking his fingers down over his closed eyes, though.
Cobb was sitting back on his heels, watching him. Not so private after all, then.
Don't, Eames wanted to say. Whatever you're thinking, don't say it.
But Cobb always had something to say. "How many times has Arthur saved your life?" he asked.
Not the question or comment that Eames had expected. The confusion must have shown on his face.
"I'm asking seriously," Cobb said. "And I'm not implying anything other than that. I'm asking because Arthur saved my life on at least two occasions. I mean literally saved, as in I would have died in the real world if he hadn't been there. So I'm asking you the same thing. How many times would you have actually died, if Arthur hadn't been there to save you?"
Eames, still standing beside Arthur in his chair, gave it some thought. He recounted their many adventures together, if one could call them that. And he supposed that one could, in their line of work. Many times they'd been in a bad situation, and often Arthur found a clever way out of it. But times in which he would have died?
"Yeah, two," he finally came up with. "There were two times in which I would have been dead, without a chance for rescue, if Arthur hadn't acted. And in both cases, he acted rashly and with no thought for his own safety. But he still succeeded."
"Right," Cobb said. "And how many times did you save his life? Same kind of situation, he would have died if you hadn't intervened."
Eames pursed his lips as he thought this one through, too. Once when they had first met and begun working with each other, he may have saved Arthur from a heavy-handed corporation. Or Arthur may have eventually saved himself, though that didn't seem likely. Another time he had pulled Arthur from the grave – though again, Arthur may also have eventually pulled himself from it. Still, in either case, Arthur might have died without him. It was harder to judge if he'd actually saved Arthur than it was to figure out when Arthur had saved him. He knew the limits of his own strength and resources. He could never know Arthur's.
Still.
"Two, I think," he finally said. "We're neck in neck, I guess."
Cobb smiled and took the seat opposite Arthur. He smiled vaguely, almost fond. "Then why don't you two just stay together?"
Before Eames could shoot back the defensive retort about that being both personal and ridiculous, Cobb held up a hand and continued.
"I'm just asking out of a practical mindset. You're not a liability to each other. You work off each other really well. And you're both too independent to, you know, lose yourselves in each other. The way Mal and I did." He looked down at the floor. As usual, grief did not suit him. It weighed him down, made him look less the inspired genius he honestly was, and more like the lost soul, caged by guilt, that Eames remembered from a few years ago. "It just seems like it would work out if you two actually stayed together. I mean, you were the first one to find Arthur, and you didn't even see him on the news. You just searched for him. Am I right?"
Arthur briefly interrupted them by licking his lips in his sleep and frowning vaguely as his head turned to the side. Unusual behavior for someone using the PASIV – unusual enough that it got Cobb striding over to him to check him over. He pressed two fingers to Arthur's neck.
"Pulse is a little quick," he said. "He does feel a little warm. One more minute."
Eames felt a vague tug of alarm somewhere under his ribs. But Cobb didn't look too worried, as if he'd seen this before or had expected it. He had, after all, worked with Arthur for a longer time, and more often than Eames had.
Which brought him back to Cobb's question.
"It's just not how we do things, Arthur and I," Eames said. "The whole staying together thing. We move around too much. It's fine the way it is. Arthur knows that if he needs something, I'll get there. And I know the same of him, when it's dire, when we're not being frivolous. What we do works. It's worked for years. No reason to change it now."
Cobb, still nodding, began, "I just think--"
He never got to finish his thought.
With a hissing, sharp sound, Arthur stiffened in the chair, his eyelids fluttering rapidly. Cobb and Eames both reached for him. Before either could lay a hand on him, Arthur pitched out of the chair and landed, bone-jarringly hard, on the marble floor of his kitchen.
"Christ," Cobb said.
They both got to their knees to help him up, but Arthur wasn't getting up. He wasn't even awake.
He lay on the floor, limbs twitching and spasming, his eyes rolled back into his head.
"Fuck, fuck," Cobb said. He ripped the cannula from Arthur's wrist.
His panic fueled Eames's panic and he tried to grab Arthur, to stop his spasming, calling "Arthur, Arthur," and knowing that Arthur couldn't hear him. He grabbed his wrist, his arm, cradled the side of his face, and shit, he wasn't 'a little warm,' he was burning.
"It's okay, it's okay," Cobb was saying, as he efficiently turned Arthur onto his side.
"It's not okay, this is not normal," Eames said, raising his voice to a shout. He felt sick, like he might be the next one on the floor. He pulled Arthur's head into his lap so he wouldn't harm himself.
"It's okay," Cobb said, "he's breathing, give him a minute." Cobb went to the freezer and scooped out a handful of ice. He wrapped it in a hand-towel and pressed it to the back of Arthur's neck. Then he placed Eames's hand over it to keep it in place.
"Breathing is not enough, Cobb, he's burning up."
"Eames." Cobb's voice was sharp and clear as metal. "Calm down. You're not helping him if you're panicking."
He was right, god damn him. Eames cradled Arthur's head in his lap and managed to breathe. His hands were shaking as he held onto the ice, and to Arthur's shoulder. His heart felt like a grenade in his chest.
Slowly, Arthur stilled on the floor between them, panting, his eyes still open and staring.
"He should be awake," Cobb said. His voice was soft, dead calm. He pressed his cold hand to Arthur's forehead.
Panic threatened to resurface; Eames fought it down. He listened to Arthur's breathing, unsteady, ragged, but present.
"He's off the PASIV and he practically gave himself the kick," Cobb said. He leaned over Arthur and pulled back his eyelid, checking for a response. There wasn't one.
Arthur was radiating heat from under his clothes. The ice that he was pressing to his neck was starting to melt onto Eames's pants. Arthur didn't seem likely to come around any time soon. His open eyes saw nothing as they darted back and forth. Eames placed his hand against Arthur's neck and felt his racing pulse. His blood pressure was through the roof. It only took a second to decide. Really there was no decision.
"Right, hand me that," he said, indicating the PASIV.
Cobb did as he was asked without question. Eames unraveled a second cannula. "Go on, put him back under."
"It is contagious," Cobb said. "That – that part is true. And we don't know what just happened to him down there, or if putting him under again will..."
"He's going to die," Eames said. Once the words were out of his mouth, he felt the truth in them.
"I'm not telling you not to do this," Cobb said. "I could probably find it quicker, whatever is going on in his head."
"You probably could," Eames said. "But you've got kids to look after. I'm not trying to be brave or act the hero. I don't have children; I've got Arthur. And anyway, this is for me to do." He took hold of Arthur's other wrist, the one that wasn't bleeding from Cobb ripping the needle out the first time. He looked back to Cobb as he slipped the needle back in. "You know that, right? You get it?"
"Yeah, I get it," Cobb said. "But listen, it's been a few minutes and we don't know what happened to him down there. Just, I don't know, do what you do and be careful. Eames, you're probably going to go through the same cycle. I'm giving you five minutes, tops. If you start to..." He waved his hand over Arthur, as if indicating everything that had finally caught up with him. "I'm pulling you both out. I don't care if it's only a few seconds."
On the floor between them, Arthur went entirely still. His eyes slipped closed.
Eames jabbed the cannula into his own wrist and said, "Hurry up."
He wasn't even lying down yet when Cobb pressed the button.
** ** ** **
NEXT PART
Thank you all so much for your patience, both with this fic and with the comments that I've as yet not been able to answer. You guys mean so much to me! :D
I was going to go on from here and write more before posting, but then I realized that if I were reading something, I'd rather read an potentially shorter update than wait a day and read a super long one. I hope that's all right!
Now where were we? Oh, I remember.
** ** ** **
It was 3:45 AM when Arthur heard someone at the door. He cracked his eyes open and looked over Eames's shoulder. The sound was nothing more than the shuffle of feet, which might have been someone passing by if not for the way the shadow lingered under the space between the door and the floor.
Arthur came fully awake, instantly alert. He looked from the door to Eames, pushing him away and sitting up. The chill and emptiness from where Eames had been lying over him braced his nerves.
This was his element. This, he could do in his sleep. Had done in his sleep.
Arthur gestured toward the door and Eames nodded in acknowledgment. Arthur pressed a finger to his lips and patted his side, where the holster for his gun usually stayed. It wasn't there now. He made a questioning gesture that he knew Eames instantly understood.
Do you have your gun with you?
Eames nodded and tilted his chin toward where he had left his coat.
Good.
Arthur pointed toward it and then toward the door. He was utterly silent as he slipped off the couch and crossed the room to turn the lights off. He left the television on though. He watched from the corner as Eames made his way across the room and grabbed his gun as quietly as he could.
A knock came at the door, startling them both. Arthur looked over to Eames, narrowing his eyes, curious. Break-ins didn't tend to knock, but it wasn't unheard of. He knew better than to check the peep-hole and risk a bullet to the head, and instead ducked down as he passed the door. He signaled Eames over to the left side of the door, where it opened, and he placed himself behind it. He then held up three fingers.
On three.
Eames pressed back against the wall. Arthur reached across the door and quietly unlocked it. He felt calm, awake, and for the first time in weeks, sure that he was all right. Then he silently slid the latch across. The knock came again, a little louder.
Arthur dropped into a crouch and counted down with his fingers. On three, he opened the door, effectively shielding himself behind it. While Eames, armed, waited in the shadow across from him.
From the light in the hallway, a tall figure emerged into Arthur's apartment.
"Arthur?" a familiar voice asked. But what was familiarity to him? He only remembered one person.
He waited until the silhouette was all the way in before shutting the door behind him and springing into action. He had the man's arm pinned behind his back and his face pressed against the door in the next breath. Eames had the gun to the man's temple.
"Jesus, fuck, christ, Arthur!" the man spit out, trying to shake himself free.
Arthur just pressed him harder against the door, twisting his arm up higher. Lots of people knew his name, apparently.
"Arthur, it's Cobb," Eames said, lowering his gun and grabbing his wrist. "Let him go; it's all right."
Cobb, I had to call him. Cobb, my boss. He took a quick breath. Oddly enough, the man he was pinning smelled familiar, and that was what made him let up. He wasn't used to relying on such a vague sense.
Arthur did as he was told without further question and backed off, hands raised but still wary. He needed to see his face. Cobb turned to face them in the near-dark, rattled and breathless.
"What the hell?" he said. His flustered voice was also familiar.
Eames turned the lights back on and breathed a sigh of relief. Arthur took it as his cue that he could lower his defense a little. Then he took a look at Cobb. Dark blond hair, blue eyes, frazzled. Someone's father. Mal's husband.
"Cobb, what are you doing here?" Eames asked.
"I came for... because I heard... Arthur, on the news." He finally looked at Arthur, took in the whole of him, like a scanner that caught every detail. "So it's true," he said. "You, uhh, you did lose your memory?"
Arthur just nodded.
"Well. You look like shit."
Another nod. He could only imagine how much worse he looked since the last time he'd checked a mirror.
Eames looked from one to the other and breathed out heavily and stretched, as if trying to ease the ache and adrenaline out of his muscles. "We were going to call you anyway, though at a more reasonable hour."
"I took the red-eye," Cobb said, still watching Arthur, as if he was the one who had lost his memory and not the other way around. "And then I just came right over."
"Well, that's just fine," Eames said. "Let's have a seat and straighten this out. I'll make tea, shall I?"
Finally, Cobb turned to Eames. For a second he seemed about to question his presence, then instantly thought better of it. "Yeah, thanks," Cobb finally said. He went past Arthur, into the kitchen. After a moment of staring, and trying to fit this person into his past, Arthur followed him.
"How much do you know, or remember?" Cobb said to Arthur, forgoing any other pleasantries. He pulled out a chair and sat down, putting a PASIV on the floor beside him, and a small bag on the other side.
Arthur wondered just how long he was staying, then he decided that it didn't matter, if there was any chance he could help. "Not a lot," he said. "My address. Eames. You, a little. Mal. If you're going to ask me how it happened, I couldn't tell you the details."
Eames opened and closed cupboards, searching around for cups and for tea. Arthur wished he knew where they were, or if he even had tea. He watched Eames for a moment or two, in the silence. Finally Eames took down a box of tea, decaf. There was no teapot that he could see, so he had to settle for a regular pot.
"Arthur was attacked and shot with ketamine first," Eames supplied, when Arthur had been silent for too long. "Or perhaps after they did whatever they did to him. No one is sure. Found in a train car, half frozen."
"That part was on the news," Cobb said. "The ketamine wasn't. That can interfere with various compounds, though I've never heard of amnesia being a complication. Still, it's not off the table. Go on."
Briefly, Eames recounted to Cobb the details of how and where Arthur had been found, and his stay at the hospital. Arthur listened with interest, feeling as if the story were about someone else. He watched Eames as he leaned against the counter, tapping his fingers against it as he spoke. He watched his eyes, which looked very light in the brightness of the kitchen. A kind of sea-grey, he thought. Pretty. Eames looked tired, as tired as he felt. It made Arthur wonder why he was standing there in this strange kitchen in the first place. What was Eames giving up to help him? And why? He drifted away for a second on a memory of earlier that night. Not the sex, and not Eames lying on top of him and refusing him sex. Instead, the memory was of Eames's hand on his ankle, firm and familiar.
The his mind flashed to Eames standing on a bridge over an icy stream, or river. He tried to shake his head clear.
"I thought it a bad idea to have put him in a news story," Eames was saying. "Wish they hadn't. I found him through my own means. But whoever came after him now knows that he's still alive."
"That might have been the idea, leaving him alive," Cobb said. He turned to Arthur. "If they incepted you, they want you to do something."
"I thought so too, at first," Eames said. "But this doesn't act like an inception. Or if it is, it's a pointless and cruel one." Making do with what he had, he poured hot water from the pot and into three mugs with teabags in them. "They don't seem to want anything from him other than to render him unable to sleep."
Cobb looked up at him, and then at Arthur, surprised, concerned, and interested. He cared about Arthur, clearly, or he wouldn't be here. But this interested him intellectually, too. Arthur felt some danger in him, as if his drive for knowledge was deep and demanding, perhaps too much so. Cobb was like Icarus, maybe. At least that's where Arthur's mind went. He didn't question it too much.
While Arthur sat quietly waiting for his tea to cool, Eames spared no details in describing the nightmares, or night terrors, that were plaguing him. Again Arthur listened with a detached interest. Up until Eames said, "When he woke, he said it was like an error. No, not an error. A glitch of some kind..."
"It's a glitch," Arthur said, finally catching up with the conversation. The word triggered every memory of every dream he'd had since. The idea of it filled his brain, awake. He didn't have enough words to describe it. "That's what it is. It's something blue, a glitch, it's inside my head, the places where my brain is supposed to sleep, and it doesn't want me to, it's a physical thing, something I can feel and it's telling me something, that's the strangest part, I can't explain it but I don't think it's supposed to be telling me these things, I think it's doing something on its own and I can't control it, I know I'm not supposed to, but it's growing, it keeps spreading its fingers like it's picking through my brain, but it's also putting something there, and I can't sleep, I can't sleep and I'm so fucking exhausted."
Cobb reached across the table and gripped Arthur's arm, getting his attention.
Arthur finally looked up at him. He saw the history between them in his eyes. It rattled something free in his mind. "Where are the kids?" he asked.
Cobb smiled. "With their grandmere. That's what took me so long getting here, Arthur."
"Why did you come?" You fought for your children. Why would you leave them for me?
Cobb gripped his arm tighter. "Not once after Mal killed herself did you leave my side, Arthur. You could have run. You could have blamed me, or you could have just saved your own ass. At any time, you could have told me 'no' and gone on your way. You knew how much trouble I was in, and you went into it with me. I never had to ask you for anything. You just did it. I know I made a lot of mistakes." Here he glanced up at Eames, as if acknowledging something among the three of them. Arthur couldn't remember what. "But I'd never make the mistake of abandoning you when I found out you were in trouble."
Arthur smiled, as much as he could manage.
"Especially when I think I can help you," Cobb said.
This, however, made Arthur wary. Help seemed so far off, more like an idea than a reality. "Go on."
"You said a word before; you both did. 'Glitch.' You told me what it looked like and a little of what it felt like. But what did you mean? And where did you hear that word?"
"I think it was something I heard someone say. But when I dream about it, that's what I call it. There was a machine. That's all I know."
Cobb was nodding. "I teach a class," he said. "I doubt you remember that about me right now, but that's what I'm doing, and working with sleep therapy. I still hear news from underground, whether I want to or not. Arthur, I'm going to say a name to you. Tell me if it jars anything."
"Okay," Arthur said, skeptical.
"Francis Allen."
Mr. Allen, my team, my fucking team... Arthur leapt up so quickly he almost threw his chair out from under him. Eames caught it before it could clatter to the floor. Arthur ignored it and started pacing the floor, fueled by the determination to remember. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He'd left something undone, something important.
"Is he alive?" he asked, even though he couldn't even put a face to the name.
"I think so," Cobb said. "I just heard that some man was in a coma, from dreaming. That was the name attached to him, that's the last I heard."
"Fuck," Arthur swore. "Yes, I know the name. I think we worked together. I think. I feel like I was supposed to have his back."
"Well, he made it out alive. A woman brought him in, name of Alice May Franco."
"Alice May," Arthur repeated. Red hair. Small. 'Help me damn you help me.'
Eames frowned. "I'd heard something like this before leaving London to come search in earnest for Arthur. Not the names, but... Go on, Cobb."
"Alice May had an interesting story to tell the people who met her. She said she'd been on a job that had gone to shit. She said Mr. Allen was her architect, and she couldn't locate her extractor."
"She didn't mention a point man," Eames offered. "But then, no one ever does. If you're doing something illegal, you never mention that you had a point man. It's a dead giveaway. No offense, Arthur." Arthur nodded, because he didn't know what he was supposed to not take offense to. "I heard the story, just that the architect had gone into a coma. I thought he'd just fallen off the edge and got himself stuck in limbo."
"That's what I thought at first, too," Cobb said. "Then I started hearing rumors. You hear more rumors at a university than you do working underground, let me tell you. Criminals know how to keep quiet, but kids talk. Usually there's something to it, too."
"So what did they say?" Arthur said.
"That Alice May and Frank Allen had fallen victim to some new kind of illegal technology. I saw a few hand-made signs tacked onto bulletin boards. 'Beware of the glitch' or something like that. I thought that part was bullshit. Then I saw you on the news. It was national, Arthur. And you looked beat-up as hell. It wasn't your most flattering picture."
"I don't even remember them taking my picture," Arthur said. He sat back down in his chair and dropped his head into his hand. "Fuck."
"So," Eames said, "then there are two things we need to accomplish. Search for Arthur's memory, and undo whatever was done to him. We could search out this technology and probably find who's behind it, but probably not quickly enough to help. I think Arthur could do it on his own, but this can't be accomplished awake. Nor, apparently, through natural sleep."
"I know," Arthur said.
"Cobb," Eames said, "what are the risks of Arthur using the PASIV? And what if I go under with him?"
"No," was Arthur's immediate reaction. He thought for a second, and backtracked. "I mean, no to you going under with me."
"I agree," Cobb said. "It does seem to be, if not contagious, than something in the dream that communicates with minds connected to it. And can infect those minds. Yeah, I guess contagious is really the only way to put it." He turned to Arthur, holding his attention with vivid blue eyes. "I could extract it from you, Arthur. With enough time, and if I knew where to look. For that, you'd have to remember where it was hidden. I'd have to go under with you."
Arthur looked at this man who he supposed was one of his working partners – a man he was supposed to trust. Who he felt like he did trust, in a way. He also remembered that he had children, even if he couldn't remember their names, or the circumstances surrounding them.
"Look at me," Arthur said. "Do you really want your kids to see you like this? Because this is how you'll end up. Even if you could do it, who would extract it from you afterwards? We don't need that kind of cycle."
The three of them sat silent in the kitchen while the seconds ticked by.
"Give me that device, then," Arthur finally said. "I'll look for it myself."
"Will you know what to do?" Eames asked. The concern in his voice was thinly masked under a layer of professional curiosity that Arthur almost remembered.
"I guess we'll see."
"You won't be able to wake without a kick, or the timer running out," Eames said. "If you don't remember how to lucid dream and wake yourself, you'll be trapped."
"Wake myself?"
"You'd have to die in the dream," Cobb said.
Images came to Arthur then: shooting himself in the head, plunging off of buildings, going out in fiery explosions. The images jolted him. Did he really do those kinds of things? Arthur rubbed his eyes tiredly.
"You know what, let's just do this. All right?"
Cobb stood up. He squeezed Arthur's shoulder as he walked to the other side of him with the device. "Where do you want to..." he began.
Arthur had already pulled his chair away from the table and was rolling up his sleeve. The pattern of chairs in a semi-circle seemed natural and familiar. That struck him as odd: surely they must have done this in a bed, or somewhere safe. Yet he felt confident that he wasn't supposed to move from here.
"I'm going to start with three minutes," Cobb said.
"That won't be nearly enough time," Arthur answered.
"It's longer in the dreams." Cobb didn't look at him when he said this. "And in case anything goes wrong or you can't do it, or you forget how to wake yourself once you're under, it's better to start small."
Suddenly, Eames got out of his chair and came to crouch down next to him. He looked exhausted and worried, and like he very badly wanted to say something.
"What?" Arthur said. "Say it now, before I go under."
"I'm having second thoughts about you using the PASIV," Eames said, in a rush of breath.
Arthur's nerves jumped. "But I can't think of anything else to do. Nothing else has worked."
"I know," Eames said. "I just. Hmm. How to say this? I have reservations about you not being able to wake yourself."
He's got a bad feeling about it, Arthur read into this, but didn't need to put into words. And he's probably right.
"It's only three minutes," Arthur said. "I managed that much when they gave me drugs in the hospital."
At his other side, Cobb was firmly holding his wrist. "Let me know, Arthur. Don't do it if you're not ready."
"I don't have much of a choice. Go on."
If Cobb glanced at Eames for what may have been permission to proceed, and if Eames turned away, Arthur ignored the both of them. He felt the slide of the cannula into his vein—familiar, almost soothing—and then saw Cobb lean down and press a button inside his device.
Arthur dropped down into his own misfiring mind.
** ** ** **
As soon as Arthur arranged his chair as if he knew what he was getting into, Eames changed his mind, suddenly. Or maybe his mind changed him. All he knew was what his gut feeling was telling him, which was, No, bad idea, this is going to get worse. He struggled only for a moment with the decision to voice this opinion, and then it was out in the open. He couldn't not say it. He had been pushing Arthur to try the PASIV since finding him, and now he wanted to push him away from it.
But Arthur was determined, and he was also correct: there didn't seem to be any other options. And likely, none would present themselves before Arthur was an incoherent wreck while he was awake. Eames had seen that once before, and thank you very much, that was enough. More than anything, he hated to see dreamwalkers struggle with their work.
Cobb set up the PASIV and in seconds, Arthur's body went limp in the chair. Eames had to admit, it was the most peaceful he'd seen him look since finding him in the hospital. He felt to his core that this was a kind of calm before a storm. He could almost feel it in the air, like electricity. He swore he could almost see it and smell it, too: bright blue, the scent of ozone. He didn't know why that was.
Cobb knelt down to adjust the time on the PASIV. Eames stood over Arthur's chair, feeling like some kind of sentinel to his sleep. Privately, he curled a lock of Arthur's hair behind his ear. He stopped himself at stroking his fingers down over his closed eyes, though.
Cobb was sitting back on his heels, watching him. Not so private after all, then.
Don't, Eames wanted to say. Whatever you're thinking, don't say it.
But Cobb always had something to say. "How many times has Arthur saved your life?" he asked.
Not the question or comment that Eames had expected. The confusion must have shown on his face.
"I'm asking seriously," Cobb said. "And I'm not implying anything other than that. I'm asking because Arthur saved my life on at least two occasions. I mean literally saved, as in I would have died in the real world if he hadn't been there. So I'm asking you the same thing. How many times would you have actually died, if Arthur hadn't been there to save you?"
Eames, still standing beside Arthur in his chair, gave it some thought. He recounted their many adventures together, if one could call them that. And he supposed that one could, in their line of work. Many times they'd been in a bad situation, and often Arthur found a clever way out of it. But times in which he would have died?
"Yeah, two," he finally came up with. "There were two times in which I would have been dead, without a chance for rescue, if Arthur hadn't acted. And in both cases, he acted rashly and with no thought for his own safety. But he still succeeded."
"Right," Cobb said. "And how many times did you save his life? Same kind of situation, he would have died if you hadn't intervened."
Eames pursed his lips as he thought this one through, too. Once when they had first met and begun working with each other, he may have saved Arthur from a heavy-handed corporation. Or Arthur may have eventually saved himself, though that didn't seem likely. Another time he had pulled Arthur from the grave – though again, Arthur may also have eventually pulled himself from it. Still, in either case, Arthur might have died without him. It was harder to judge if he'd actually saved Arthur than it was to figure out when Arthur had saved him. He knew the limits of his own strength and resources. He could never know Arthur's.
Still.
"Two, I think," he finally said. "We're neck in neck, I guess."
Cobb smiled and took the seat opposite Arthur. He smiled vaguely, almost fond. "Then why don't you two just stay together?"
Before Eames could shoot back the defensive retort about that being both personal and ridiculous, Cobb held up a hand and continued.
"I'm just asking out of a practical mindset. You're not a liability to each other. You work off each other really well. And you're both too independent to, you know, lose yourselves in each other. The way Mal and I did." He looked down at the floor. As usual, grief did not suit him. It weighed him down, made him look less the inspired genius he honestly was, and more like the lost soul, caged by guilt, that Eames remembered from a few years ago. "It just seems like it would work out if you two actually stayed together. I mean, you were the first one to find Arthur, and you didn't even see him on the news. You just searched for him. Am I right?"
Arthur briefly interrupted them by licking his lips in his sleep and frowning vaguely as his head turned to the side. Unusual behavior for someone using the PASIV – unusual enough that it got Cobb striding over to him to check him over. He pressed two fingers to Arthur's neck.
"Pulse is a little quick," he said. "He does feel a little warm. One more minute."
Eames felt a vague tug of alarm somewhere under his ribs. But Cobb didn't look too worried, as if he'd seen this before or had expected it. He had, after all, worked with Arthur for a longer time, and more often than Eames had.
Which brought him back to Cobb's question.
"It's just not how we do things, Arthur and I," Eames said. "The whole staying together thing. We move around too much. It's fine the way it is. Arthur knows that if he needs something, I'll get there. And I know the same of him, when it's dire, when we're not being frivolous. What we do works. It's worked for years. No reason to change it now."
Cobb, still nodding, began, "I just think--"
He never got to finish his thought.
With a hissing, sharp sound, Arthur stiffened in the chair, his eyelids fluttering rapidly. Cobb and Eames both reached for him. Before either could lay a hand on him, Arthur pitched out of the chair and landed, bone-jarringly hard, on the marble floor of his kitchen.
"Christ," Cobb said.
They both got to their knees to help him up, but Arthur wasn't getting up. He wasn't even awake.
He lay on the floor, limbs twitching and spasming, his eyes rolled back into his head.
"Fuck, fuck," Cobb said. He ripped the cannula from Arthur's wrist.
His panic fueled Eames's panic and he tried to grab Arthur, to stop his spasming, calling "Arthur, Arthur," and knowing that Arthur couldn't hear him. He grabbed his wrist, his arm, cradled the side of his face, and shit, he wasn't 'a little warm,' he was burning.
"It's okay, it's okay," Cobb was saying, as he efficiently turned Arthur onto his side.
"It's not okay, this is not normal," Eames said, raising his voice to a shout. He felt sick, like he might be the next one on the floor. He pulled Arthur's head into his lap so he wouldn't harm himself.
"It's okay," Cobb said, "he's breathing, give him a minute." Cobb went to the freezer and scooped out a handful of ice. He wrapped it in a hand-towel and pressed it to the back of Arthur's neck. Then he placed Eames's hand over it to keep it in place.
"Breathing is not enough, Cobb, he's burning up."
"Eames." Cobb's voice was sharp and clear as metal. "Calm down. You're not helping him if you're panicking."
He was right, god damn him. Eames cradled Arthur's head in his lap and managed to breathe. His hands were shaking as he held onto the ice, and to Arthur's shoulder. His heart felt like a grenade in his chest.
Slowly, Arthur stilled on the floor between them, panting, his eyes still open and staring.
"He should be awake," Cobb said. His voice was soft, dead calm. He pressed his cold hand to Arthur's forehead.
Panic threatened to resurface; Eames fought it down. He listened to Arthur's breathing, unsteady, ragged, but present.
"He's off the PASIV and he practically gave himself the kick," Cobb said. He leaned over Arthur and pulled back his eyelid, checking for a response. There wasn't one.
Arthur was radiating heat from under his clothes. The ice that he was pressing to his neck was starting to melt onto Eames's pants. Arthur didn't seem likely to come around any time soon. His open eyes saw nothing as they darted back and forth. Eames placed his hand against Arthur's neck and felt his racing pulse. His blood pressure was through the roof. It only took a second to decide. Really there was no decision.
"Right, hand me that," he said, indicating the PASIV.
Cobb did as he was asked without question. Eames unraveled a second cannula. "Go on, put him back under."
"It is contagious," Cobb said. "That – that part is true. And we don't know what just happened to him down there, or if putting him under again will..."
"He's going to die," Eames said. Once the words were out of his mouth, he felt the truth in them.
"I'm not telling you not to do this," Cobb said. "I could probably find it quicker, whatever is going on in his head."
"You probably could," Eames said. "But you've got kids to look after. I'm not trying to be brave or act the hero. I don't have children; I've got Arthur. And anyway, this is for me to do." He took hold of Arthur's other wrist, the one that wasn't bleeding from Cobb ripping the needle out the first time. He looked back to Cobb as he slipped the needle back in. "You know that, right? You get it?"
"Yeah, I get it," Cobb said. "But listen, it's been a few minutes and we don't know what happened to him down there. Just, I don't know, do what you do and be careful. Eames, you're probably going to go through the same cycle. I'm giving you five minutes, tops. If you start to..." He waved his hand over Arthur, as if indicating everything that had finally caught up with him. "I'm pulling you both out. I don't care if it's only a few seconds."
On the floor between them, Arthur went entirely still. His eyes slipped closed.
Eames jabbed the cannula into his own wrist and said, "Hurry up."
He wasn't even lying down yet when Cobb pressed the button.
** ** ** **
NEXT PART
