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tabi_essentiallyThis chapter actually fills an old prompt. :)
Previous chapters:
Prologue Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, part 5 , Part 6, Part 7.
** ** **
In his mind, Eames is back on the train with Arthur, sharing his iPod with him. Rachmaninoff. Arthur's hand tapping out the rhythm, air-conducting. How the tension had bled out of him once the music played. "I never really heard this before..." Briefly, he thinks of their time in the hotel room ("I'm fairly plain...") but it's really the train ride that sticks with him the most.
Soon, he guesses, he'll get around to thinking about his Mum and Dad, and his childhood. First loves. Getting involved in the dream business. Forging. All the other stuff that one is supposed to reflect upon when it looks like the end is quite fucking nigh. But not yet. For now, it's just Arthur on the train.
The pain seems to belong to someone else, which isn't so bad, although hazily he suspects it's because he's losing consciousness. The more that happens, the more the rope cuts into his neck. And the more it cuts into his neck, the more tenuous is his grasp on consciousness. He's aware of the cycle. Even the blood dripping down his back doesn't seem to be his own.
His captors discuss him in neutral tones, blithely wondering what time it is, how long until they should start again. A while back, he'd fought them, bloodied a few as well. A well-timed head-butt, a kick to the ribs when he'd still had enough balance not to strangle himself. Later, he'd attempted engaging them in conversation; a great tactic, usually, to deal with torturers. Get them to see you as a person. In Eames's case, under the best of circumstances, he can often get people to see him as any person he wants to be, even awake. This, however, isn't the best of circumstances. They had ignored him, with ice around the edges. These are no amateurs.
Ice, he wishes he hadn't thought of the ice. The cold is the worst; he feels numb all over; muscles stretched tight and turned to stone.
A loud blast of noise rouses him from his semi-coherent musings. Shattering glass in the distance, the two tormentors rising, shouting. And more shattering glass. Endless shattering glass.
Eames turns his head as far as he is able toward the window (he's grown tired of looking at it; it offers him no hope of escape that he can see,) and then he knows he's hallucinating, because he can see Arthur across the way. Arthur, standing somehow among shards of glass, wind whipping his hair into disarray. He disappears momentarily, but Eames's two captors seem real enough, and they both take off running down the stairs, calling, "backup, backup" while he stares out the window with the fire escape.
He'd seen Arthur. He knows he had. Just for a moment.
Reality twists on him when he sees him yet again. Arthur, standing on a ledge of broken glass. Arthur, backing up, going blurry in the distance (Eames's eyesight is usually pretty good; but without enough blood to his brain, he can't see into the distance for shit.)
And then, with great relief, he realizes that he's dreaming. They've only tortured him in dreams. Maybe his real body is fine, hooked up somewhere and waiting for him. He can remember how he got here (taser, being dragged inside and strung up,) but this can't be real.
This can't be real.
Because Arthur is flying toward him.
That's just it; it's a dream and Arthur is fucking with gravity and is flying toward him.
It doesn't explain why he's not feeling the effects of the strange gravity, unless this is just his projection of Arthur.
But it also doesn't explain why he drops out of sight at the last second.
** ** **
Arthur rarely wakes up disoriented, but the first thing he does on seeing Cobb is reach for his totem. He only has to feel around on it to assure himself that he's awake. He sits up.
Cobb surprises him utterly by sweeping him into a one-armed embrace. He hasn't been demonstrative like this since before Mal died, and the gesture has Arthur reaching for the totem yet again, just to make sure.
"You all right?" Cobb asks.
Arthur looks down at himself. His shirt has been removed, his arm cleaned, and the shirt put back on. It's not buttoned all the way up. He looks around the room next.
Ariadne is sitting up on the bed, Cobb's jacket around her shoulders ("I feel warm," he remembers her saying.) Joshua is sitting on the bed, awake now, eyeing them all warily, his knees pulled up to his chest. Kelly is still under. Yusuf is giving some kind of victorious half-grin.
All Arthur can come up with is, "What?" and thinks maybe he's lost enough blood to feel light-headed.
"I found Kelly's voicemail threat to Cobb on his cell phone," Yusuf says. "As Cobb was already on his way, I just directed him to the room."
"How did you even get past the guards?" Arthur asks Cobb.
"I was on the guest list, just like you," Cobb says. "And Joshua let me in."
Ariadne scoots over next to Arthur and says, "Dom's got Eames's location and the code to get this thing off my neck. We can go."
"Where's Eames?" Arthur asks Cobb. He thinks his eyes must look too wide, because they feel like they are.
"Not far," Cobb says. "Also, judging by what I saw in there, we don't have a hell of a lot of time to get there. Ariadne. Let's get you free."
Arthur stands up and finishes buttoning his shirt, then grabs his jacket off the back of a chair. It's still bloody. Ariadne turns to Cobb, and his fingers carefully tap at the lights in a pattern he's already memorized. Cobb's the best at remembering what another person's mind told him; still, the entire room holds its breath as he does this. The device beeps twice, then clicks as all the lights light up at once. With a sound like the freeing of a clasp, it opens up around her neck and comes free.
Arthur breathes out deeply, as does everyone else. Ariadne bites her knuckle to stifle a small cry, then throws her arms around Cobb's neck. For a moment he freezes, and then pats her clumsily.
"We have to get Eames," Cobb says. "I just haven't figured out how to get past the guards yet. When the PASIV's timer runs out, Kelly will follow us. But before he does, he'll probably order the hit on Eames."
"I can keep him under," Joshua says, his voice small from the corner of the bed where he's made himself very tiny.
"No," Cobb says. "He's your father."
"Fuck him," Joshua answers. "Do you even know what he wanted to do to me?"
"I know," Cobb says. "Still. No. We need to find another..."
"Hand me that device," Arthur says, indicating the metal neck-ring in Cobb's hands.
Cobb hands it over without question.
"How many buttons can I press?"
"You can program it up to thirteen." Cobb gives Ariadne a gentle look. "He had all thirteen on you. If you'd touched it, you would have had sixty seconds to finish the code."
She nods, her face pale, lips bloodless.
"Can everyone leave the room for a minute?" Arthur asks.
"Well, not really, Arthur," Yusuf says, jerking his head toward the door. "Cameras out there, you know. Guards, possibly? You were under for ten minutes. They're going to get suspicious."
"Not if I'm with you," Joshua says.
"Just for a minute," Arthur says. They're all watching him carefully, he knows. Cobb witnessed his unbridled anger in the dream, and probably thinks he's going to do something stupid. Cobb should know better.
"We don't have a minute," Cobb says.
"We'll have even less if he has us shot on our way out," Arthur insists. He glances meaningfully toward Joshua, then back to Cobb. "Let me take care of it. I'll be quick. Hurry up and get out."
"Come on," Ariadne says, urging Cobb along. She holds a hand out to Joshua, who ignores her and brushes by, his head down. Yusuf follows.
Once they're all gone, Arthur checks Kelly for any more hidden weapons. Then he wakes him. If Cobb had known he was going to wake him, he would have fought harder to talk him out of it.
Kelly comes awake groggily, but focuses when he sees Arthur standing over him with the detonator.
"I guess you want me to tell you where your partner is," Kelly says, sitting up.
"Stand up and turn around."
Kelly hesitates, sees the look in Arthur's eyes (blank, he imagines,) and does as he's told. Arthur places the detonator around Kelly's neck.
"He's in the next building over."
"I know where he is, Mr. Kelly. Everything's been taken out of your head already. I don't need you to tell me anything. I have all your secrets; I know what you are, what you like to do, who you like to do it to."
"I'm not like you," Kelly says, his voice a hiss, his composure breaking.
"I agree. You're nothing like me." Arthur clicks the detonator closed. "If I were a religious man I'd thank every fucking god there was that we're not alike. You don't specifically want men, or women, or even really anyone in particular. You're just a predator." Arthur presses the series of colored buttons in a precise pattern, thirteen times. Red, blue, blue, green, yellow, green, red, red, blue, blue, green, yellow, green. Ariadne had called it Simon Sez. Arthur had liked that game as a child.
"I guess you'll have to leave the Towers sometime," he says. "When they come for you. I'll leave it to the professionals to get this off you." He shoves Kelly forward, and Kelly stumbles and falls face-down on the bed.
Instead of getting up, he turns his head and looks over his shoulder at Arthur.
"What are you going to do? Kick me? Spit on me?"
Arthur frowns in distaste. "Jesus. What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"There's one more thing I want to show you, Arthur. If you'll open the blinds of my window, please."
"Oh, fuck off." As if he would be stupid enough to expose his position to Kelly's men on the street.
"It's a part of my show," Kelly goes on, as if he hadn't heard him. "It's my big screen TV. My home theater. I can relax on my bed and watch it all. What I have my people do to them. I let my boy watch from here. I hoped it would make him stronger. You can see, too."
The tone of Kelly's voice makes Arthur's neck prickle, and his palms feel cold.
"I wonder how much longer your partner has," Kelly goes on. "I had him strung up and whipped, like they'd do in the old days. When there were certain things you could do to people. But today's technology adds an edge to that, too. Tasers. I like those. I like electricity. It's hard to keep standing under those conditions. And I didn't exactly string him up by the arms, either."
Arthur thinks of the wire garrotte around Ariadne's neck in the dream. About the detonator he'd put around her. He grips his gun and goes to the window, unable to help himself. He's sure as hell not going to throw the blinds open, but he does part them a crack and look out.
An alleyway below them is bordered on all four sides with high-rises. And across from Kelly's suite, maybe fifteen feet away, is another building, one with wide windows.
It takes him only a second to get the entire picture: Eames with a garrotte around his neck, struggling to remain standing in a pool of his own blood. Two men lounging around on chairs in the loft with him, awaiting their boss's order to continue, or to end him.
"Every ten minutes," Kelly says, "they do a little more. Next time they shock him, it'll probably be the last. Think you'll get there in time?"
Arthur throws the blinds open, pulling them to either side of the expansive room. No. He doesn't think he'll get there in time. Not if he has to fight his way down the stairs, and fight his way into the warehouse across the way. Not even armed to the teeth. It would take him ten minutes alone just to get down stairs, and he doesn't know how long ago the last time was. He could have five minutes. Three. Or none.
He glances at Kelly, who is still lying on the bed. Arthur knows he isn't bluffing.
It's fifteen feet across to the warehouse, with a fire escape outside of the loft where they're holding Eames. His mind calculates time, distance, divides by the number of thugs he imagines guarding the place, and what he'll need to take them all out at once and clear his wake so they don't chase him.
He's going to need more firepower than he has. And there's only one explosive within his reach.
"One way or another," Arthur says to Kelly, "you really have fucked with me for the last time."
He goes back to Kelly on the bed and yanks him up by the detonating collar. He quickly taps in the color code--red, blue, blue, green, yellow, green, red, red, blue, blue, green, yellow, green—and releases Kelly from it. He closes the ring again, resetting it, and programs three colors: red, blue, green. Easy enough.
Then he smashes the metal ring into Kelly's teeth, destroying that perfect, bleached veneer, leaving his mouth a bloody smear. Kelly falls back making guttural noises, blood dripping from the fingers he's clamping over his broken teeth.
He won't be giving any orders for a while, Arthur thinks. Not ones that anyone would understand.
Satisfied--for now--he doesn't give it too much thought when he fires the gun he'd nabbed from the thugs at Kelly's windows. One, two, three – he takes out each pane of glass and they fall shattering to the alley below. The wind from outside whips into the room, scattering papers, knocking the blinds aside.
The door behind him flies open, and Cobb is the first one into the room, his Beretta drawn, his other arm held out in front of Yusuf, Ariadna and Joshua behind him.
Also behind Cobb are a few more of Kelly's guards, and Cobb hasn't seen them yet. Arthur takes aim, yells "DOWN!" Cobb has worked with him long enough to get everyone out of his line of fire. Arthur shoots the guards, then turns back to the window.
He's definitely got the attention of the men in the loft with Eames. He sees them run downstairs for backup.
"Close that door and lock it," Arthur tells Cobb.
"I got it," Joshua says. "I'll keep them out."
"Good." Arthur takes off his jacket. The less drag, the better.
"Arthur," Cobb says, "please." His voice is quiet, even in the wind tunnel that the room has become. "Please."
Arthur thinks of Mal, and for a moment, he feels awful for what he's about to do. But he also sees no other clear choice.
Ariadne catches on, and she runs to him, gripping his arm. "Arthur," she says. Her voice is clipped, as if she's holding down panic with reason. "Arthur, listen to me, okay? You're, you're awake. This is not a dream. You can't. You can't do this. It's not a dream."
"I know," he says. And strangely, he feels absolutely no fear. He feels empty, cold inside, and still, like a frozen lake.
A snippet of a melody catches in his head. He doesn't know where it came from or why it's playing now. It's the one Eames had played for him on the train. He hears it so perfectly--calming him, draining him of adrenaline—that he very nearly hums it aloud. Even his arm stops hurting.
"Arthur, no," Ariadne says, as he takes a few long paces backwards away from the window.
He takes another look at Cobb, whose face is tight, pale, lips pressed together. Cobb turns away.
Arthur lines himself up with the fire escape. Fifteen feet from the ledge; he's a good judge of distance. The wind is hitting him from the right; he gives himself about a foot of drag.
Then he runs, long, hard strides like when he'd done track in school or had outrun the shitheads who always wanted to fuck with his life. Glass crunches underneath his shoes as he nears the ledge. He grips the detonator; he can't afford to drop it.
And then he launches off, hits the air, throwing his arms up and out. It's nothing like in dreams. In two seconds' time, the wind whips him to the left, stings his watering eyes. He feels himself dropping from three storeys up. The fire escape is just within reach.
He hits it hard, grabs it with his bad arm, and feels a sudden ice cold sensation on his fingertips. Bashes his forehead on the metal of the ladder. His icy fingers, wet with blood, start to slip.
The calm starts to slip.
Consciousness starts to slip.
** ** **
NEXT PART
Previous chapters:
Prologue Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, part 5 , Part 6, Part 7.
** ** **
In his mind, Eames is back on the train with Arthur, sharing his iPod with him. Rachmaninoff. Arthur's hand tapping out the rhythm, air-conducting. How the tension had bled out of him once the music played. "I never really heard this before..." Briefly, he thinks of their time in the hotel room ("I'm fairly plain...") but it's really the train ride that sticks with him the most.
Soon, he guesses, he'll get around to thinking about his Mum and Dad, and his childhood. First loves. Getting involved in the dream business. Forging. All the other stuff that one is supposed to reflect upon when it looks like the end is quite fucking nigh. But not yet. For now, it's just Arthur on the train.
The pain seems to belong to someone else, which isn't so bad, although hazily he suspects it's because he's losing consciousness. The more that happens, the more the rope cuts into his neck. And the more it cuts into his neck, the more tenuous is his grasp on consciousness. He's aware of the cycle. Even the blood dripping down his back doesn't seem to be his own.
His captors discuss him in neutral tones, blithely wondering what time it is, how long until they should start again. A while back, he'd fought them, bloodied a few as well. A well-timed head-butt, a kick to the ribs when he'd still had enough balance not to strangle himself. Later, he'd attempted engaging them in conversation; a great tactic, usually, to deal with torturers. Get them to see you as a person. In Eames's case, under the best of circumstances, he can often get people to see him as any person he wants to be, even awake. This, however, isn't the best of circumstances. They had ignored him, with ice around the edges. These are no amateurs.
Ice, he wishes he hadn't thought of the ice. The cold is the worst; he feels numb all over; muscles stretched tight and turned to stone.
A loud blast of noise rouses him from his semi-coherent musings. Shattering glass in the distance, the two tormentors rising, shouting. And more shattering glass. Endless shattering glass.
Eames turns his head as far as he is able toward the window (he's grown tired of looking at it; it offers him no hope of escape that he can see,) and then he knows he's hallucinating, because he can see Arthur across the way. Arthur, standing somehow among shards of glass, wind whipping his hair into disarray. He disappears momentarily, but Eames's two captors seem real enough, and they both take off running down the stairs, calling, "backup, backup" while he stares out the window with the fire escape.
He'd seen Arthur. He knows he had. Just for a moment.
Reality twists on him when he sees him yet again. Arthur, standing on a ledge of broken glass. Arthur, backing up, going blurry in the distance (Eames's eyesight is usually pretty good; but without enough blood to his brain, he can't see into the distance for shit.)
And then, with great relief, he realizes that he's dreaming. They've only tortured him in dreams. Maybe his real body is fine, hooked up somewhere and waiting for him. He can remember how he got here (taser, being dragged inside and strung up,) but this can't be real.
This can't be real.
Because Arthur is flying toward him.
That's just it; it's a dream and Arthur is fucking with gravity and is flying toward him.
It doesn't explain why he's not feeling the effects of the strange gravity, unless this is just his projection of Arthur.
But it also doesn't explain why he drops out of sight at the last second.
** ** **
Arthur rarely wakes up disoriented, but the first thing he does on seeing Cobb is reach for his totem. He only has to feel around on it to assure himself that he's awake. He sits up.
Cobb surprises him utterly by sweeping him into a one-armed embrace. He hasn't been demonstrative like this since before Mal died, and the gesture has Arthur reaching for the totem yet again, just to make sure.
"You all right?" Cobb asks.
Arthur looks down at himself. His shirt has been removed, his arm cleaned, and the shirt put back on. It's not buttoned all the way up. He looks around the room next.
Ariadne is sitting up on the bed, Cobb's jacket around her shoulders ("I feel warm," he remembers her saying.) Joshua is sitting on the bed, awake now, eyeing them all warily, his knees pulled up to his chest. Kelly is still under. Yusuf is giving some kind of victorious half-grin.
All Arthur can come up with is, "What?" and thinks maybe he's lost enough blood to feel light-headed.
"I found Kelly's voicemail threat to Cobb on his cell phone," Yusuf says. "As Cobb was already on his way, I just directed him to the room."
"How did you even get past the guards?" Arthur asks Cobb.
"I was on the guest list, just like you," Cobb says. "And Joshua let me in."
Ariadne scoots over next to Arthur and says, "Dom's got Eames's location and the code to get this thing off my neck. We can go."
"Where's Eames?" Arthur asks Cobb. He thinks his eyes must look too wide, because they feel like they are.
"Not far," Cobb says. "Also, judging by what I saw in there, we don't have a hell of a lot of time to get there. Ariadne. Let's get you free."
Arthur stands up and finishes buttoning his shirt, then grabs his jacket off the back of a chair. It's still bloody. Ariadne turns to Cobb, and his fingers carefully tap at the lights in a pattern he's already memorized. Cobb's the best at remembering what another person's mind told him; still, the entire room holds its breath as he does this. The device beeps twice, then clicks as all the lights light up at once. With a sound like the freeing of a clasp, it opens up around her neck and comes free.
Arthur breathes out deeply, as does everyone else. Ariadne bites her knuckle to stifle a small cry, then throws her arms around Cobb's neck. For a moment he freezes, and then pats her clumsily.
"We have to get Eames," Cobb says. "I just haven't figured out how to get past the guards yet. When the PASIV's timer runs out, Kelly will follow us. But before he does, he'll probably order the hit on Eames."
"I can keep him under," Joshua says, his voice small from the corner of the bed where he's made himself very tiny.
"No," Cobb says. "He's your father."
"Fuck him," Joshua answers. "Do you even know what he wanted to do to me?"
"I know," Cobb says. "Still. No. We need to find another..."
"Hand me that device," Arthur says, indicating the metal neck-ring in Cobb's hands.
Cobb hands it over without question.
"How many buttons can I press?"
"You can program it up to thirteen." Cobb gives Ariadne a gentle look. "He had all thirteen on you. If you'd touched it, you would have had sixty seconds to finish the code."
She nods, her face pale, lips bloodless.
"Can everyone leave the room for a minute?" Arthur asks.
"Well, not really, Arthur," Yusuf says, jerking his head toward the door. "Cameras out there, you know. Guards, possibly? You were under for ten minutes. They're going to get suspicious."
"Not if I'm with you," Joshua says.
"Just for a minute," Arthur says. They're all watching him carefully, he knows. Cobb witnessed his unbridled anger in the dream, and probably thinks he's going to do something stupid. Cobb should know better.
"We don't have a minute," Cobb says.
"We'll have even less if he has us shot on our way out," Arthur insists. He glances meaningfully toward Joshua, then back to Cobb. "Let me take care of it. I'll be quick. Hurry up and get out."
"Come on," Ariadne says, urging Cobb along. She holds a hand out to Joshua, who ignores her and brushes by, his head down. Yusuf follows.
Once they're all gone, Arthur checks Kelly for any more hidden weapons. Then he wakes him. If Cobb had known he was going to wake him, he would have fought harder to talk him out of it.
Kelly comes awake groggily, but focuses when he sees Arthur standing over him with the detonator.
"I guess you want me to tell you where your partner is," Kelly says, sitting up.
"Stand up and turn around."
Kelly hesitates, sees the look in Arthur's eyes (blank, he imagines,) and does as he's told. Arthur places the detonator around Kelly's neck.
"He's in the next building over."
"I know where he is, Mr. Kelly. Everything's been taken out of your head already. I don't need you to tell me anything. I have all your secrets; I know what you are, what you like to do, who you like to do it to."
"I'm not like you," Kelly says, his voice a hiss, his composure breaking.
"I agree. You're nothing like me." Arthur clicks the detonator closed. "If I were a religious man I'd thank every fucking god there was that we're not alike. You don't specifically want men, or women, or even really anyone in particular. You're just a predator." Arthur presses the series of colored buttons in a precise pattern, thirteen times. Red, blue, blue, green, yellow, green, red, red, blue, blue, green, yellow, green. Ariadne had called it Simon Sez. Arthur had liked that game as a child.
"I guess you'll have to leave the Towers sometime," he says. "When they come for you. I'll leave it to the professionals to get this off you." He shoves Kelly forward, and Kelly stumbles and falls face-down on the bed.
Instead of getting up, he turns his head and looks over his shoulder at Arthur.
"What are you going to do? Kick me? Spit on me?"
Arthur frowns in distaste. "Jesus. What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"There's one more thing I want to show you, Arthur. If you'll open the blinds of my window, please."
"Oh, fuck off." As if he would be stupid enough to expose his position to Kelly's men on the street.
"It's a part of my show," Kelly goes on, as if he hadn't heard him. "It's my big screen TV. My home theater. I can relax on my bed and watch it all. What I have my people do to them. I let my boy watch from here. I hoped it would make him stronger. You can see, too."
The tone of Kelly's voice makes Arthur's neck prickle, and his palms feel cold.
"I wonder how much longer your partner has," Kelly goes on. "I had him strung up and whipped, like they'd do in the old days. When there were certain things you could do to people. But today's technology adds an edge to that, too. Tasers. I like those. I like electricity. It's hard to keep standing under those conditions. And I didn't exactly string him up by the arms, either."
Arthur thinks of the wire garrotte around Ariadne's neck in the dream. About the detonator he'd put around her. He grips his gun and goes to the window, unable to help himself. He's sure as hell not going to throw the blinds open, but he does part them a crack and look out.
An alleyway below them is bordered on all four sides with high-rises. And across from Kelly's suite, maybe fifteen feet away, is another building, one with wide windows.
It takes him only a second to get the entire picture: Eames with a garrotte around his neck, struggling to remain standing in a pool of his own blood. Two men lounging around on chairs in the loft with him, awaiting their boss's order to continue, or to end him.
"Every ten minutes," Kelly says, "they do a little more. Next time they shock him, it'll probably be the last. Think you'll get there in time?"
Arthur throws the blinds open, pulling them to either side of the expansive room. No. He doesn't think he'll get there in time. Not if he has to fight his way down the stairs, and fight his way into the warehouse across the way. Not even armed to the teeth. It would take him ten minutes alone just to get down stairs, and he doesn't know how long ago the last time was. He could have five minutes. Three. Or none.
He glances at Kelly, who is still lying on the bed. Arthur knows he isn't bluffing.
It's fifteen feet across to the warehouse, with a fire escape outside of the loft where they're holding Eames. His mind calculates time, distance, divides by the number of thugs he imagines guarding the place, and what he'll need to take them all out at once and clear his wake so they don't chase him.
He's going to need more firepower than he has. And there's only one explosive within his reach.
"One way or another," Arthur says to Kelly, "you really have fucked with me for the last time."
He goes back to Kelly on the bed and yanks him up by the detonating collar. He quickly taps in the color code--red, blue, blue, green, yellow, green, red, red, blue, blue, green, yellow, green—and releases Kelly from it. He closes the ring again, resetting it, and programs three colors: red, blue, green. Easy enough.
Then he smashes the metal ring into Kelly's teeth, destroying that perfect, bleached veneer, leaving his mouth a bloody smear. Kelly falls back making guttural noises, blood dripping from the fingers he's clamping over his broken teeth.
He won't be giving any orders for a while, Arthur thinks. Not ones that anyone would understand.
Satisfied--for now--he doesn't give it too much thought when he fires the gun he'd nabbed from the thugs at Kelly's windows. One, two, three – he takes out each pane of glass and they fall shattering to the alley below. The wind from outside whips into the room, scattering papers, knocking the blinds aside.
The door behind him flies open, and Cobb is the first one into the room, his Beretta drawn, his other arm held out in front of Yusuf, Ariadna and Joshua behind him.
Also behind Cobb are a few more of Kelly's guards, and Cobb hasn't seen them yet. Arthur takes aim, yells "DOWN!" Cobb has worked with him long enough to get everyone out of his line of fire. Arthur shoots the guards, then turns back to the window.
He's definitely got the attention of the men in the loft with Eames. He sees them run downstairs for backup.
"Close that door and lock it," Arthur tells Cobb.
"I got it," Joshua says. "I'll keep them out."
"Good." Arthur takes off his jacket. The less drag, the better.
"Arthur," Cobb says, "please." His voice is quiet, even in the wind tunnel that the room has become. "Please."
Arthur thinks of Mal, and for a moment, he feels awful for what he's about to do. But he also sees no other clear choice.
Ariadne catches on, and she runs to him, gripping his arm. "Arthur," she says. Her voice is clipped, as if she's holding down panic with reason. "Arthur, listen to me, okay? You're, you're awake. This is not a dream. You can't. You can't do this. It's not a dream."
"I know," he says. And strangely, he feels absolutely no fear. He feels empty, cold inside, and still, like a frozen lake.
A snippet of a melody catches in his head. He doesn't know where it came from or why it's playing now. It's the one Eames had played for him on the train. He hears it so perfectly--calming him, draining him of adrenaline—that he very nearly hums it aloud. Even his arm stops hurting.
"Arthur, no," Ariadne says, as he takes a few long paces backwards away from the window.
He takes another look at Cobb, whose face is tight, pale, lips pressed together. Cobb turns away.
Arthur lines himself up with the fire escape. Fifteen feet from the ledge; he's a good judge of distance. The wind is hitting him from the right; he gives himself about a foot of drag.
Then he runs, long, hard strides like when he'd done track in school or had outrun the shitheads who always wanted to fuck with his life. Glass crunches underneath his shoes as he nears the ledge. He grips the detonator; he can't afford to drop it.
And then he launches off, hits the air, throwing his arms up and out. It's nothing like in dreams. In two seconds' time, the wind whips him to the left, stings his watering eyes. He feels himself dropping from three storeys up. The fire escape is just within reach.
He hits it hard, grabs it with his bad arm, and feels a sudden ice cold sensation on his fingertips. Bashes his forehead on the metal of the ladder. His icy fingers, wet with blood, start to slip.
The calm starts to slip.
Consciousness starts to slip.
** ** **
NEXT PART
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2010-12-04 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-05 01:21 am (UTC)Thank you!
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Date: 2010-12-04 06:10 am (UTC)Arthur, standing somehow among shards of glass, wind whipping his hair into disarray
Vengeful juggernaut Arthur for the win.
Love the bit with Kelly and the Simon Says You Go Boom Now collar. I'm expecting it to be used as a cock-ring or suppository before too long :)
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Date: 2010-12-05 01:23 am (UTC)Arthur has a practical need for that device actually. ^_^
Thanks for commenting, I love your comments!
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Date: 2010-12-04 06:12 am (UTC)YOU CAN"T JUST
WHAT WHAT WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
I LOVE EVERYONE SO MUCH.... ARTHUR FLYING TO HIS EAMES, GOD, I JUST....
FUCKING BAMF.
I NEEEEEED MOOOOOOOOREEEEEEEEEE
And Cobb made me cry, of all things. Poor Cobb. :(
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Date: 2010-12-05 01:23 am (UTC)I'm so glad you like this! Thank you so much. I'll try to get the enxt chapter up tomorrow. :D
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Date: 2010-12-04 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-05 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-04 09:31 am (UTC)Bloody fantastic as always :D
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Date: 2010-12-05 01:24 am (UTC)Thank you very much. ^_^
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Date: 2010-12-04 10:18 am (UTC)God, Arthur is a BAMF. In urban dictionary, it should have a picture of Arthur next to it. I love that image Eames sees of Arthur "standing somehow among shards of glass, wind whipping his hair into disarray." Really, Eames can't be blamed for thinking he's dreaming, that's how much of a BAMF Arthur is.
I also think it's completely appropriate that Kelly is just a predator, that he doesn't want only men or women. Which makes him even more of a disturbing character.
And Eamesssss! Oh, Eames! He's just...he needs...I want them to go back to the train and the Rachmaninoff and their smiling at each other.
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Date: 2010-12-05 01:25 am (UTC)Poor Eames. He needs love. :)
Thanks a ton!
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Date: 2010-12-04 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-05 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-04 04:22 pm (UTC)*hyperventilating here*
hoan you stop here!
you cruel cruel person >-<
buuut I love the chapter
*my inception day today:D*
*special edition pack came today :D*
*just had to tell someone*
*goes now and leaves lots of love*
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Date: 2010-12-05 01:28 am (UTC)I'll try to have the next chapter tomorrow night, hopefully. Thanks so much, as always!
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Date: 2010-12-04 09:46 pm (UTC)Damn, woman, that has awesome!! You HAVE to update as soon as possible, 'coz I'm dying here for the next chapter.
(Also, I hope that this turned out just like you wanted it.)
Now, if you excuse me, I need to go and kill myself because the fucking hangover isn't doing a very well job at it and I think it will need help after all. I mean, I really would prefer my own death to be quickly and as painless as possible and I know I'll die of this in the end, so the best thing is to speed up the process.
Take care!
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Date: 2010-12-05 01:29 am (UTC)More tomorrow, hopefully! And thank you! ^_^
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Date: 2010-12-04 10:06 pm (UTC)Your Arthur always gets the best badass lines in any fic. I love it! Continue soon please, I am on tenterhooks here!!
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Date: 2010-12-05 01:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-04 11:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-05 01:30 am (UTC)Thank you so much! It means a lot to me!
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Date: 2010-12-05 07:42 am (UTC)Love it, as usual. Update soon!
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Date: 2010-12-06 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-05 02:50 pm (UTC)This just gets more and more fantastic with every part, and every cliffhanger gets steeper and steeper! I can only think of a couple other stories that had me this antsy and impatient to know what happens next. Phenomenal job! :D
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Date: 2010-12-06 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-05 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-06 01:16 am (UTC)Thank you! ^_^
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Date: 2010-12-06 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-06 06:59 pm (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2010-12-18 10:21 am (UTC)LOVING THIS SO MUCH!!!
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Date: 2010-12-23 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-31 12:55 am (UTC)Btw, Cobb & Ariadne's reactions were spot-on.
Ok, so almost losing consciousness isn't good in the least, but it's Arthur, so surely he won't give up due to a lil' thing like a concussion, right? Right?! Especially since he's not in the best position to recover from such injuries.
*Rushes off to read some more*.
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Date: 2011-01-03 05:41 am (UTC)BAMF!ARTHUR!
Oh, you write him so well! -fangirls-
EDIT:
THIS!
Ariadne catches on, and she runs to him, gripping his arm. "Arthur," she says. Her voice is clipped, as if she's holding down panic with reason. "Arthur, listen to me, okay? You're, you're awake. This is not a dream. You can't. You can't do this. It's not a dream."
"I know," he says. And strangely, he feels absolutely no fear. He feels empty, cold inside, and still, like a frozen lake.
I will forever live with THIS in my head whenever I think of Arthur from now...
"I know"
provides access
Date: 2011-01-18 10:35 am (UTC)