tabi_essentially (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tabi_essentially) wrote2011-03-07 07:47 pm
tabi_essentially) wrote2011-03-07 07:47 pm
Plenty Of Good Thieves Ch. 4 and 4B
First I want to say, I see now that I've missed some comments on old posts, even posts in these recent chapters. I'm so sorry about that! Sometimes I don't get all my notifications. I like answering all of these comments and prompts, it bums me out when I've missed some and then it always seems weird of me to answer a week later or so. :) I hope hope everyone understands that. :D
Second: This chapter feels more like an interlude to me. Two parts were necessary to the plot. The entire last section of it though? Total author wish fulfillment. I feel like I just needed to write that, and wish that it was really possible. ^_^ Hope you guys like it though. :)
Now to suggestions. You meanies overwhelmingly suggested something terrible happening to Eames. YAY! :D That will be coming along, down the road.
LOTS of suggestions!
Anonymous suggested:
I hope they stop somewhere in mongolia. Or Irkutsk! The link calls the city the "Paris of Siberia" plus a goggle search tells me that lake Bakial next to it is the deepest lake in the world! Adding to this,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wirrrn says, Russia's (and the world's) largest lake, Lake Baikal- possibly with one of the passenger's remains being scavenged by the large amphipod crustaceans unique to the lake :) YUMMEH. I love this!
scriblix rightly pointed out: if this is the same fic-verse as all your other work, would Eames have a scar from being shot in the head? THANK YOU for clearing up a plot point for me. You have no idea (yet) how inspiring this observation was!
astheytick - Arthur says to Eames "Just wait. Wait for me."
orion_nightbane - people lurking outside their door would be interesting?
twisted_ream there's this huge spider on eames' back and he can't get it off and arthur just laughs
efcia a broken mirror, possibly a small one. I can see the shattered glass, maybe even a small amount of blood on them? This gave me a really cool idea!
quixyjie and twilightthief - wanted Eames smoking a cigar. I will get to that soon. :D
fae_boleyn For some reason I want to see Eames messing up Arthur's hair. I don't care why, I just want to see that.
Anonymous: One having to carry the other.
towel_master One of them thinks they see something dangerous/weird/downright creepy out of the corner of their eye in Ann's bag? Perhaps they see her opening it while on the train.
Anonymous: A line Eames says to Arthur: "You know that's not what I think of you."
negiyou - I would like to read about a litte 'contest' thing, where Arthur claims Eames couldn't steal from him because he is way too watchful. A few tries and then Eames finally manages to steal his wallet or something, which Arthur just realizes when he finds a note in it, saying 'told you so' (I'm not sure if this is going to be exactly like this, but this gave me an idea that I REALLY needed to have! Something like this might show up in the next chapter.
gelbwax - WHAT IF the wind whips the fedora off Arthur's head and into the siberian wasteland. OMFG, horror, right? AND THEN. AND THEN. It comes BACK TO HIM. THE FEDORA COMES BACK. RIGHT WHEN HE NEEDS ITS POWERS OF BADASSERY IT COMES BACK TO HIM.
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. Not in this chapter, but down the road. :D
twilightthief - How about Eames says: "It's always been you." Probably too cheesy. But in the right context, that's giving me some ideas! ^_^
sparrow_hubris - Eames glances up at Arthur from across an empty train car, posture stiff, with a blank or hostile look. He then turns slowly and walks away. Arthur for some reason cannot follow/can't catch him and it scares the crap out of him how empty/possessed?/haunted Eames looked. SO EFFING CREEPY. Not this chapter, but down the road. :D Also: And I'm totally in love with the idea of Arthur having to steal something more difficult than truffles because they need it and Eames' hand is too unstable to steal it himself. Nice!
hazysea - A line for Eames to say to Arthur? "Stay at my level and keep to the shadows.
Onwards!
** ** ** **
The frozen lake gleamed under the weak sun as Arthur stood at the edge. Eames was nowhere around. Arthur stood watching couples and families zoom around on snowmobiles across the surface of the ice. These festivities alarmed him under his own surface; anxiety pulled at him and he didn't know why.
From a great distance, the little girl Michelle waved at him. She wasn't aboard a snowmobile; she just stood at the center of the frozen lake, smiling. He could make out the red dot of her Pokemon keychain at her hip.
"Baikal," said a voice in his ear, "is the deepest lake in the world."
Arthur turned to look, but no one was there. The voice was unisex and accent-less. He still knew it was Dinclusin. Who else spoke when they weren't around? He could feel it, those blue eyes on his back.
The ice cracked. Michelle's face showed a moment of innocent horror, and then the chasm opened beneath her feet and swallowed her. He hands grabbed at the air, at nothing, and then disappeared.
Arthur ran to the center of the lake and dove in after her. The icy water stung his back. Just his back though; the front of him, where his heart thumped against his ribs, felt warm. He kicked his way to the bottom of the lake. It was strangely peaceful down here, with the sun shining through the waves. Dead silence. His back was cold enough to hurt. He swam deeper.
Something brushed his ankle and he realized that he had lost his shoes and socks. He turned (so slow in the water) to see what had touched him. A crustacean the size of his arm aimed sightless eyes at him, running a long antenna up his leg. Its pink, segmented body flexed and then unfurled, revealing pinching little limbs along its underside. Arthur choked back a cry of disgust and wrenched his leg away.
"Those are corpse-eaters," Dinclusin's sexless voice said in his ear. "They scavenge. Follow them and see."
Looking down into the depths, Arthur saw a mass of them: lake-floor crustaceans that looked like big, flesh-colored fleas. Some of them burrowed into the sand. Others writhed and pulsed over something at the center of them.
They were loathsome, but Arthur swam deeper and kicked them away. They scattered, some of them grabbing his skin with their many legs, a few others refusing to be pushed away from their meal. He struggled to pull them away with his hands as dirt and silt from the bottom of the lake floated into a cloud, obscuring his vision. He got to one crustacean that would not budge at all. He pulled and pulled, bracing his feet against whatever purchase the creature had. He had to remove it.
The silt and sand settled back to the lakebed floor, and the sun shone down on what he was tearing the animal from.
Michelle's tiny, naked body was torn to shreds from the waist down. The animal that Arthur was pulling from her had its mouthparts buried into her scalp. Her body rocked in time with the motion, and tendrils of her skin and hair floated rhythmically. Her Pokemon keychain drifted by in front of his face.
Her eyes opened, showing only whites that he sensed were looking at him anyway. Then her mouth opened and one of the corpse-eaters crawled out from between her gums.
"Where's my mama?" she cried. "Please, my mama! Please! Please! I don't want this anymore. Please!"
He'd seen enough of this; too much, in fact. Arthur opened his eyes.
It never took him more than a few seconds to orient himself into the waking world. He was on the train, they had left Kazan, it was morning, and he had fallen asleep in the bottom bed with Eames. He mused that it should have felt stranger than it did, because they so seldom shared a bed, and usually only by necessity.
Eames was already awake. Casually, he used the sheet to dry the tears on Arthur's face. This happened often among dreamers that Arthur was quite used to it. It was more a gesture of practicality and understanding than actual tenderness – although his touch was gentle.
"Didn't think I should wake you, as natural dreams are hard to come by," Eames said.
"Thanks," Arthur said. He'd struggled in the past just to be able to dream normally at all. He'd even take nightmares if he could get them.
His back was pressed up against the cold wall of the train and he pulled the blanket around his back and scooted away. Eames moved aside to give him room.
"Anything important or enlightening?" Eames asked.
"Michelle, dead at the bottom of the lake," Arthur said. "It was one of those dreams where you finally decide it's gotten bad enough and you wake yourself up. One of those, you know, pathos dreams."
"Right," Eames said. "When you feel pity for one of your projections, amplified times a thousand."
"That's the one." He took a deep breath and straightened his legs so that Eames could stretch out beside him. He thought the dream over again, turned it around fearlessly in his head, put parts of it on repeat.
He'd pulled Eames out of lake once, not too long ago. Maybe it had come from that.
A flare of understanding lit the fire in his brain, and he braced himself on one elbow and leaned over Eames. "Turn your head," he ordered.
Eames did so without asking why. His hair was short these days, and it was easy to see the scar cutting through the brown strands, where a bullet had clipped him on the right side. He'd had a bad concussion after that one, nasty whiplash and maybe even...
"Nerve damage," Arthur murmured, running his finger along the scar. "Eames, how's your hand this morning?"
Eames turned back to him, his eyes bright with revelation. He held his right hand up. It was fine, not even a tremor. "You think it could be residual effects from the concussion? But what about you? Your foreign accent syndrome cranked up to eleven? Ah," Eames went on before Arthur could answer. He lifted his hand to Arthur's temple.
The last job had gone badly, extremely badly, and they had both ended up as test-rabbits in someone else's insane experiments. Arthur had found himself on the wrong side of electricity a handful of times during that adventure.
"Perhaps we don't need to look for anything metabolic," Eames said. "It would make sense for lingering symptoms to manifest at any time. But as I haven't had the symptom in the last seven months, and you haven't, I presume, been randomly speaking French..."
"Well I don't know," Arthur said. "Maybe I did. I couldn't feel it when I was speaking in French yesterday, so for all I know, I could have done it."
Eames turned to face him fully. He surprised Arthur by putting a hand over his shoulder and pulling him close, then lying back on the bed. It wasn't as uncomfortable as Arthur used to pretend it was. He just didn't know what had brought it on.
"No one would have been around to tell you if you'd lapsed into a different language," Eames said. "And no one would have been around to tell me if my hand had been shaking without my noticing it."
It confirmed something that Arthur had already suspected over the last three or so years: there was no one else for either of them. He didn't question it or read anything further into it. Every few months was fine. Being alone was fine, too. Not particularly wanting to fuck anyone else these days, that was all right with him. The fact that Eames didn't seem to want to either – also fine. Eames's hand on his back, the shudder and rumble of the train swaying beneath them - maybe a step above fine.
The mystery of what the fuck was happening with them, though, for all that he felt sure that it wasn't any of the horrible scenarios he'd considered the night before... not so fine.
"So we go under together," Eames said. "It's as good as an MRI for sickness, which I'm fairly sure is not the case anyway. And better than any medical procedure for finding what might actually be wrong. I look in your head, you look in mine."
"If we find anything," Arthur said, "we have to get off the train."
"Yes. But if that's the case, we have to find out how it got there, too," Eames said. "And who did it. If it's just some fucked up residue from past meddling, then we forget about Dinclusin and the rest of them."
"I still think it seems likely that something here triggered it," Arthur said. "Same environment, same food, same water, same people around us."
"Makes sense," Eames said.
"Once we're done basically cat-scanning each other, I'm taking Dinclusin under. I'll need your help."
"I've got the compounds," Eames said. "I can get him alone."
Arthur didn't like that part too much. It forced him to admit something that hadn't occurred to him yet: this guy made him legitimately nervous. "That's not even necessary."
"What's your plan?"
"Today's Yekaterinburg," Arthur said. "We can come back to the train early and stake out his room. We don't have to do the entire walking tour today. We can disappear early. You give me your own tour, 'cause I really want to see it. Also, if people see us leaving the train with the rest of the group and meeting up with them at different points of interest, it'll look less suspicious. But we wrap it up quick, come back and do re-con before dinner, and set up a timed-release sedation in his room before he comes back. He's got to be rooming with one of them. That's no problem though; they both get knocked out. I take Dinclusin under for maybe about ten, fifteen minutes at the most. If need be, you go play cards with his little gang for a while. I show up a few minutes later in the lounge, Dinclusin wakes up about five minutes later, duck soup."
"Duck soup," Eames repeated softly. "But first."
"First we go under together. Three layers down."
"Three?" Eames sounded surprised.
"If something is wrong with either of us, that's where it will be most obvious. The brain already knows, but at the top levels, I find it's more willing to lie to protect itself." Arthur stood up. Instead of reaching for the PASIV, he set the light alarm across the door. Then he plugged his phone into a small set of speakers and turned back to Eames. "Three minutes. That'll give us plenty of time in the third level. If someone comes in while we're down there, it trips the alarm on my phone. We hear the ringtone and we shoot ourselves awake."
Eames sat up, now fully awake. "All right. Let's go take a look."
** ** ** **
Chapter 4B – Plant Your Hope With Good Seeds
** ** ** **
Arthur walked the streets of Eames's subconscious. Eames was nowhere to be found, but that was just as well. His projections would speak for him enough, just as Arthur's projections would give away his mind's secrets, the ones that his conscious mind would cover up. Somewhere in his mind, Eames was walking his streets, or going through his rooms.
It was a shared dream; they were both the dreamers.
The construct of Eames's subconscious this time was a pretty, tree-lined path populated by easy-going projections. It looked almost like a jogging path, or maybe hiking. Sun dappled the green grass, and a breeze scented the atmosphere. Arthur tilted his head. The scent was his own aftershave. The fact that Eames was close enough to smell him, and that's what he dreamed of in his deepest layers made him feel warm, almost hot, down here where everything was amplified.
The sky was a vivid blue, too vivid to be real life. This did not seem like a mind that was growing a cancer, but Arthur had to be sure. There was no sense even taking this chance if they weren't going to be thorough.
He stopped one of the projections on the street, a young man in khakis and a fitted tee shirt. Arthur said, "What nice weather today."
"It is," the projection answered in a London accent. "It truly is. Strange, though."
"What's that?" Arthur asked.
The projection looked at the sky. "Well, I swear it was just winter. And then a few days ago, this. High summer, all at once."
"How long did the winter last?" Arthur asked.
"Months, I think." He rested his hand on a trail mile-marker. Seven, it said.
"That's really nice," Arthur said. He couldn't add anything more, for fear of disturbing the structure of the dream or influencing it. He was already influencing it enough with his own emotional reaction, and he didn't want to add anything further. "I'm looking for a secret place," he said. "Any secret place where it's not summer. Can you show me to anywhere that's cold or dark?"
"Why would I want to do that?" the projection asked.
"So that I can open the windows," Arthur told it. "And let the light in."
"Oh. Well in that case." The projection pointed to a tall, grey building that rose against the blue sky. It hadn't been there before. It was marked with a big, dark blue "H" on the front of it. "There's where you want to look for anything important, anything hidden."
It occurred to Arthur that Eames's subconscious was simply telling him where to go to look for his secrets. The hospital was the fear of mortality they had discussed the night before. Likely, it was also any and all of Eames's past experiences with mortality; his own and that of others around him.
"You've got the key in your pocket," the projection told him. And then it jogged away.
Arthur went into the medical building. The air here was chilled, like an air-conditioner was running; something necessary to cool the constant heat that Eames gave off. Orderlies and doctors bustled around. None of them looked exactly urgent, but a few did look worried, or maybe anxious.
Arthur fought down his own anxiety. He must not influence this.
He went up to one of the doctors. This was a generic doctor-archetype in a white lab coat. He wore glasses and had white hair.
"I'm here for the results," Arthur said. It was an open conversation starter.
"Then I'll have to take you to the top floor," the doctor told him.
Without any other shifts in time, they stood inside a glass elevator, that was rising, rising to the top. When the doors opened with an official-sounding "ping", the doctor led the way through a large, sterile, tiled hall.
"I assume you're concerned about victims of the recent quakes," the doctor said. "That's why I brought you to the top."
"Victims?" Arthur asked.
"Months ago there was an explosion that rocked the entire country."
"I remember it."
"People got burned in that explosion. And there have been aftershocks."
"Aftershocks," Arthur said. "So, that means the aftershocks... those are from the explosion? There's nothing else?"
"I've looked everywhere," the doctor said. "I haven't found anything. But would you care to see the results?"
"I would."
The doctor took him into a vast medical room. It was dark save for the backlit x rays lining the walls, and a full body scan x ray on a table in the center, lit from underneath.
"Can you see all the different fault-lines on this map?" the doctor asked.
"I see them," Arthur said. He didn't see a map, he saw an outline of Eames's body. But this was the time to just go with it. He knew what most of those "fault lines" were from, too. Not all, but most.
"I don't see anything growing up from any of those cracks," the doctor said. "There were some burn victims from the explosion. That's about it."
Arthur looked the scan over completely, checking for dark spots, anything that would show up in waking life as pain, as some nagging unrest. As something Eames would know without knowing. He ran his hands over the image, feeling for heat or cold or pain. He saw nothing, felt nothing, and breathed a sigh of relief.
He then pointed to the right hand on the x ray. "What about this, here?"
"That," the doctor said. "Yes, that. It's not something from within the world. What you see happening there is coming from somewhere outside. We're trying to pinpoint what it is. We can't know from in here because it's not from here."
"I understand that," Arthur said, even though he didn't, not quite. There had been some meddling inside Eames's head on their last job, but surely Eames would know this as the cause. "No guesses, though?"
"Something from the outside," the doctor repeated. "Some kind of terrorism. Some kind of punishment."
** ** ** **
Eames opened his eyes to Arthur's deepest layer – or at least as deep as they were willing to go. Arthur was somewhere probably messing about with his projections, wheedling secrets out of them. Not that Eames had many left to share with him. A few, perhaps, maybe ones he'd just never thought to tell.
In Arthur's subconscious, an expanse of blue, warm, glittering water surrounded Eames, a sea of light. He looked down to see that its depths were endless. There was no sea-floor – this still water went on forever, to the other side of the world. For a second, Eames almost panicked. A man could drown here, sucked under, breathless, never to surface. What was he doing so far out here?
But the water supported him and seemed to carry him along. He felt naked. He was naked.
While there was no bottom to this sea, there was a shore. White sand, gleaming like glass, lined the water. Eames swam toward it. Out here in the center of Arthur's depths, there was no one to talk to. Interesting and intimidating as it was, he needed actual information on his body, not his mind or his emotions.
He reached the shore in a few short strokes, and pulled himself onto the warm sand. Sun-bathers and beach-goers all populated this space. They weren't being loud or obnoxious, or making a lot of noise. However, they were all just as nude as he was. Eames reflected briefly on what it meant, that Arthur let him into his waters so far out, and that all of his projections were naked. It gave him a shiver, the feeling of something primal, something he wanted to hold onto and protect. He knew that this intensity would fade once they both woke up. And he was here for a reason.
He went up to one of the projections, a blond woman playing volleyball with no net and no partner.
"Hey handsome," she said. "What is it you're looking for?"
"Something frightening," he said. "Something that doesn't live in the bottom of that warm sea, but elsewhere. Something, anything, that's not supposed to be in this world. Can you show me anything that's not supposed to be here?"
"Not anymore," she said.
"Anymore? Was there something recently?"
"Hmm." She toyed with the volley-ball between tanned hands. Eames wondered at the fact that Arthur's subconscious sentinel was a ditzy, naked beach-bunny.
"It was strange, a while back," she said. "Someone came in speaking French."
Eames's mouth went dry. He had to stop and re-set. The entire beach shuddered and he knew it wasn't movement from the train three levels up. "Define 'came in,'" he said.
"Came in," she said. "To here. Down here."
"A man?" Eames asked. "A woman?"
She said, "Yes. A man. A woman. Neither. It's strange, because some of us speak French anyway. But this person just showed up all the way down here. From the outside. You know?"
"When was this?" he asked. "Was it perhaps a while back? During the time of lightning storms, maybe?
"Nope," she said. "It was, like, more recent than that."
"Well," Eames said. "Well, fuck."
** ** ** **
They met in the middle ground of the third layer, between the tree-lined park and the sea. Arthur got there first and was waiting on a stone bench when he saw Eames making his way towards him. For all the warm, scented dreamscape, he suddenly felt like he was in a doctor's waiting room.
Eames didn't keep him waiting too long. Before he even sat down beside him he said, "You're not sick."
"Neither are you," Arthur said, feeling so glad to tell him that, and to see the relief on Eames's face.
Then Eames sat beside him and dropped a bomb that Arthur hadn't expected. "Your subconscious says a french-speaking person broke in."
Impossible Arthur thought. But since they were dreaming, Eames heard him anyway.
"I'd have thought so, too. But you told me yourself."
"Well, it's not just me who got invaded by whoever. Your subconscious seems to think that some of your symptoms are after-effects of head trauma. But it also suggested that someone from the outside did something to hurt you. 'Punishment,' it said."
Eames turned to face him. "What does that mean?"
Arthur had no answer for that. He stared into a gleaming sunset. "Well, look." He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. "It's not an ideal situation. Obviously someone got to us, right? But this is something that we can chase, shoot and fight. That's what we wanted it to be."
Eames remained silent.
"We wanted something that wasn't a sickness. That's what this seems to be. Someone did something to both of us, on purpose. We can find out what it is now. Then we can undo it."
"This was supposed to be a vacation," Eames said.
Arthur put his hand on Eames's knee. "It can still be. We can see all the things we wanted to see."
"Still. Do wish people'd stop fucking with us."
Arthur hated the forlorn look on his face. "But that's the kind of life we're in," Arthur said. "I'm going to just be glad that it's nothing worse than that. Yes, I know, it still could be. Just because we're not dying doesn't mean we won't end up dead. But..." He looked around at the dreamscape. What a beautiful space his and Eames's collective subconscious had created, and which Eames had scented with Arthur's aftershave, of all things. "But we're alive now," Arthur went on. "And we have a mission. I can deal with missions. Missions are doable."
Eames fell silent again, and for a while, so did Arthur. There was still some time on the countdown; years of dreaming had given him a sense for it.
"While we're down here," Arthur said, "I want to give you something. It's important."
Eames turned to face him, looking a little worn, a little tired. It steeled Arthur's resolve for what he was about to do. He picked up the blue bottle that was sitting next to him on the stone bench. When he held it up to the dying sunlight, blue, grey and white light swirled fluidly within it, glittering. It looked like something out of a fantasy. To Arthur, it was.
"What's that?" Eames asked.
"It's Cure-all." He put it into Eames's hand. "Your body ultimately does everything your brain tells it to. You can tell it to get sick. But more importantly, there are documented cases of people willing themselves better from incurable diseases."
"Some people have very powerful minds," Eames said. He looked wary.
"Some people have powerful ideas," Arthur corrected. He pushed the bottle into Eames's hands and held them together tight. "We're three levels down, so pay attention. If a day comes when you do get sick... if it's some kind of terminal disease? You'll know when it starts. You'll know, and you'll get to the doctor right away and have every test under the sun. Then, you'll have this bottle of Cure-all with you. Your subconscious will drink it every day. You'll think yourself well. It will give you a chance, and you'll beat it. Whatever it is, whenever it is, you'll beat it. You don't have to know why, you just will."
Eames's eyes were wide, but he didn't look away. "You're incepting me."
"I am," Arthur said. "And I'm going to tell you to forget this part when we wake up, too. It works better if you forget. And I'll ask you to keep trusting me as well. I'm sorry, Eames, I really, really am. But I'm not ashamed."
Eames pulled his hands away from Arthur's, but he didn't let go of the bottle. He sat back against the bench and seemed to think this over. When Eames tucked the bottle into his pocket, Arthur let go of the breath he hadn't known he was holding.
"What if the day comes when I want to die?" Eames asked. "If I'm through, I'm alone, if I'm old and tired and I need to die?"
"Then you have my permission," Arthur said.
"Right," Eames said. "Right. Well. In that case." From beside him, he pulled a gun. When Arthur flinched, thinking he was going to end the dream, Eames held it up harmlessly. Arthur saw that it wasn't any normal sort of gun, more like something out of a sci-fi film, with tubes and shining wires looped around it, in green, blue and white. He put it into Arthur's hand.
"And this is?" Arthur said.
"If the day comes that you get sick, this is the gun you'll use to fight it. You'll also know right away and you'll do everything necessary to take care of yourself. When you find out what it is, every day your subconscious will fire this gun at the sickness until it's gone. Unless you are entirely out of hope and you wish to die. Then you have my permission. Consider yourself incepted as well, you prick."
Arthur took the gun, not bothering to hide his smile.
"Oh," Eames added. "And you should also forget about this part when we wake. And continue to trust me as if I hadn't just broken a cardinal rule against your psyche."
"Do you think I'm a bad person for doing this?" Arthur asked.
"You know that's not what I think of you," Eames said.
"Are you angry?"
Eames looked at him for a long moment before threading his fingers through Arthur's hair and kissing him.
** ** ** **
/Wish fulfillment :D
Sweet, a lot of you guys googled Dinclusin. YES! ^_^ Well played! Has anyone googled Ann Dromalius? :D
Okay, so now give me more ideas, because I'm really stuck! This plot is constipated, someone give it some fiber, hehe. ^_^ While I obviously can't use everything everyone suggests without making the plot a tangled mess, once in a while a suggestion comes along that's like BAM, and it fits perfectly.
Images, scenes, lines, general ideas – these are all awesome! Thanks, guys. ^_^
Chapter 5 - There Is A King
Second: This chapter feels more like an interlude to me. Two parts were necessary to the plot. The entire last section of it though? Total author wish fulfillment. I feel like I just needed to write that, and wish that it was really possible. ^_^ Hope you guys like it though. :)
Now to suggestions. You meanies overwhelmingly suggested something terrible happening to Eames. YAY! :D That will be coming along, down the road.
LOTS of suggestions!
Anonymous suggested:
I hope they stop somewhere in mongolia. Or Irkutsk! The link calls the city the "Paris of Siberia" plus a goggle search tells me that lake Bakial next to it is the deepest lake in the world! Adding to this,
wirrrn says, Russia's (and the world's) largest lake, Lake Baikal- possibly with one of the passenger's remains being scavenged by the large amphipod crustaceans unique to the lake :) YUMMEH. I love this!scriblix rightly pointed out: if this is the same fic-verse as all your other work, would Eames have a scar from being shot in the head? THANK YOU for clearing up a plot point for me. You have no idea (yet) how inspiring this observation was!astheytick - Arthur says to Eames "Just wait. Wait for me."orion_nightbane - people lurking outside their door would be interesting?twisted_ream there's this huge spider on eames' back and he can't get it off and arthur just laughs efcia a broken mirror, possibly a small one. I can see the shattered glass, maybe even a small amount of blood on them? This gave me a really cool idea!quixyjie and twilightthief - wanted Eames smoking a cigar. I will get to that soon. :D fae_boleyn For some reason I want to see Eames messing up Arthur's hair. I don't care why, I just want to see that.Anonymous: One having to carry the other.
towel_master One of them thinks they see something dangerous/weird/downright creepy out of the corner of their eye in Ann's bag? Perhaps they see her opening it while on the train.Anonymous: A line Eames says to Arthur: "You know that's not what I think of you."
negiyou - I would like to read about a litte 'contest' thing, where Arthur claims Eames couldn't steal from him because he is way too watchful. A few tries and then Eames finally manages to steal his wallet or something, which Arthur just realizes when he finds a note in it, saying 'told you so' (I'm not sure if this is going to be exactly like this, but this gave me an idea that I REALLY needed to have! Something like this might show up in the next chapter.gelbwax - WHAT IF the wind whips the fedora off Arthur's head and into the siberian wasteland. OMFG, horror, right? AND THEN. AND THEN. It comes BACK TO HIM. THE FEDORA COMES BACK. RIGHT WHEN HE NEEDS ITS POWERS OF BADASSERY IT COMES BACK TO HIM. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. Not in this chapter, but down the road. :D
twilightthief - How about Eames says: "It's always been you." Probably too cheesy. But in the right context, that's giving me some ideas! ^_^sparrow_hubris - Eames glances up at Arthur from across an empty train car, posture stiff, with a blank or hostile look. He then turns slowly and walks away. Arthur for some reason cannot follow/can't catch him and it scares the crap out of him how empty/possessed?/haunted Eames looked. SO EFFING CREEPY. Not this chapter, but down the road. :D Also: And I'm totally in love with the idea of Arthur having to steal something more difficult than truffles because they need it and Eames' hand is too unstable to steal it himself. Nice!hazysea - A line for Eames to say to Arthur? "Stay at my level and keep to the shadows. Onwards!
** ** ** **
The frozen lake gleamed under the weak sun as Arthur stood at the edge. Eames was nowhere around. Arthur stood watching couples and families zoom around on snowmobiles across the surface of the ice. These festivities alarmed him under his own surface; anxiety pulled at him and he didn't know why.
From a great distance, the little girl Michelle waved at him. She wasn't aboard a snowmobile; she just stood at the center of the frozen lake, smiling. He could make out the red dot of her Pokemon keychain at her hip.
"Baikal," said a voice in his ear, "is the deepest lake in the world."
Arthur turned to look, but no one was there. The voice was unisex and accent-less. He still knew it was Dinclusin. Who else spoke when they weren't around? He could feel it, those blue eyes on his back.
The ice cracked. Michelle's face showed a moment of innocent horror, and then the chasm opened beneath her feet and swallowed her. He hands grabbed at the air, at nothing, and then disappeared.
Arthur ran to the center of the lake and dove in after her. The icy water stung his back. Just his back though; the front of him, where his heart thumped against his ribs, felt warm. He kicked his way to the bottom of the lake. It was strangely peaceful down here, with the sun shining through the waves. Dead silence. His back was cold enough to hurt. He swam deeper.
Something brushed his ankle and he realized that he had lost his shoes and socks. He turned (so slow in the water) to see what had touched him. A crustacean the size of his arm aimed sightless eyes at him, running a long antenna up his leg. Its pink, segmented body flexed and then unfurled, revealing pinching little limbs along its underside. Arthur choked back a cry of disgust and wrenched his leg away.
"Those are corpse-eaters," Dinclusin's sexless voice said in his ear. "They scavenge. Follow them and see."
Looking down into the depths, Arthur saw a mass of them: lake-floor crustaceans that looked like big, flesh-colored fleas. Some of them burrowed into the sand. Others writhed and pulsed over something at the center of them.
They were loathsome, but Arthur swam deeper and kicked them away. They scattered, some of them grabbing his skin with their many legs, a few others refusing to be pushed away from their meal. He struggled to pull them away with his hands as dirt and silt from the bottom of the lake floated into a cloud, obscuring his vision. He got to one crustacean that would not budge at all. He pulled and pulled, bracing his feet against whatever purchase the creature had. He had to remove it.
The silt and sand settled back to the lakebed floor, and the sun shone down on what he was tearing the animal from.
Michelle's tiny, naked body was torn to shreds from the waist down. The animal that Arthur was pulling from her had its mouthparts buried into her scalp. Her body rocked in time with the motion, and tendrils of her skin and hair floated rhythmically. Her Pokemon keychain drifted by in front of his face.
Her eyes opened, showing only whites that he sensed were looking at him anyway. Then her mouth opened and one of the corpse-eaters crawled out from between her gums.
"Where's my mama?" she cried. "Please, my mama! Please! Please! I don't want this anymore. Please!"
He'd seen enough of this; too much, in fact. Arthur opened his eyes.
It never took him more than a few seconds to orient himself into the waking world. He was on the train, they had left Kazan, it was morning, and he had fallen asleep in the bottom bed with Eames. He mused that it should have felt stranger than it did, because they so seldom shared a bed, and usually only by necessity.
Eames was already awake. Casually, he used the sheet to dry the tears on Arthur's face. This happened often among dreamers that Arthur was quite used to it. It was more a gesture of practicality and understanding than actual tenderness – although his touch was gentle.
"Didn't think I should wake you, as natural dreams are hard to come by," Eames said.
"Thanks," Arthur said. He'd struggled in the past just to be able to dream normally at all. He'd even take nightmares if he could get them.
His back was pressed up against the cold wall of the train and he pulled the blanket around his back and scooted away. Eames moved aside to give him room.
"Anything important or enlightening?" Eames asked.
"Michelle, dead at the bottom of the lake," Arthur said. "It was one of those dreams where you finally decide it's gotten bad enough and you wake yourself up. One of those, you know, pathos dreams."
"Right," Eames said. "When you feel pity for one of your projections, amplified times a thousand."
"That's the one." He took a deep breath and straightened his legs so that Eames could stretch out beside him. He thought the dream over again, turned it around fearlessly in his head, put parts of it on repeat.
He'd pulled Eames out of lake once, not too long ago. Maybe it had come from that.
A flare of understanding lit the fire in his brain, and he braced himself on one elbow and leaned over Eames. "Turn your head," he ordered.
Eames did so without asking why. His hair was short these days, and it was easy to see the scar cutting through the brown strands, where a bullet had clipped him on the right side. He'd had a bad concussion after that one, nasty whiplash and maybe even...
"Nerve damage," Arthur murmured, running his finger along the scar. "Eames, how's your hand this morning?"
Eames turned back to him, his eyes bright with revelation. He held his right hand up. It was fine, not even a tremor. "You think it could be residual effects from the concussion? But what about you? Your foreign accent syndrome cranked up to eleven? Ah," Eames went on before Arthur could answer. He lifted his hand to Arthur's temple.
The last job had gone badly, extremely badly, and they had both ended up as test-rabbits in someone else's insane experiments. Arthur had found himself on the wrong side of electricity a handful of times during that adventure.
"Perhaps we don't need to look for anything metabolic," Eames said. "It would make sense for lingering symptoms to manifest at any time. But as I haven't had the symptom in the last seven months, and you haven't, I presume, been randomly speaking French..."
"Well I don't know," Arthur said. "Maybe I did. I couldn't feel it when I was speaking in French yesterday, so for all I know, I could have done it."
Eames turned to face him fully. He surprised Arthur by putting a hand over his shoulder and pulling him close, then lying back on the bed. It wasn't as uncomfortable as Arthur used to pretend it was. He just didn't know what had brought it on.
"No one would have been around to tell you if you'd lapsed into a different language," Eames said. "And no one would have been around to tell me if my hand had been shaking without my noticing it."
It confirmed something that Arthur had already suspected over the last three or so years: there was no one else for either of them. He didn't question it or read anything further into it. Every few months was fine. Being alone was fine, too. Not particularly wanting to fuck anyone else these days, that was all right with him. The fact that Eames didn't seem to want to either – also fine. Eames's hand on his back, the shudder and rumble of the train swaying beneath them - maybe a step above fine.
The mystery of what the fuck was happening with them, though, for all that he felt sure that it wasn't any of the horrible scenarios he'd considered the night before... not so fine.
"So we go under together," Eames said. "It's as good as an MRI for sickness, which I'm fairly sure is not the case anyway. And better than any medical procedure for finding what might actually be wrong. I look in your head, you look in mine."
"If we find anything," Arthur said, "we have to get off the train."
"Yes. But if that's the case, we have to find out how it got there, too," Eames said. "And who did it. If it's just some fucked up residue from past meddling, then we forget about Dinclusin and the rest of them."
"I still think it seems likely that something here triggered it," Arthur said. "Same environment, same food, same water, same people around us."
"Makes sense," Eames said.
"Once we're done basically cat-scanning each other, I'm taking Dinclusin under. I'll need your help."
"I've got the compounds," Eames said. "I can get him alone."
Arthur didn't like that part too much. It forced him to admit something that hadn't occurred to him yet: this guy made him legitimately nervous. "That's not even necessary."
"What's your plan?"
"Today's Yekaterinburg," Arthur said. "We can come back to the train early and stake out his room. We don't have to do the entire walking tour today. We can disappear early. You give me your own tour, 'cause I really want to see it. Also, if people see us leaving the train with the rest of the group and meeting up with them at different points of interest, it'll look less suspicious. But we wrap it up quick, come back and do re-con before dinner, and set up a timed-release sedation in his room before he comes back. He's got to be rooming with one of them. That's no problem though; they both get knocked out. I take Dinclusin under for maybe about ten, fifteen minutes at the most. If need be, you go play cards with his little gang for a while. I show up a few minutes later in the lounge, Dinclusin wakes up about five minutes later, duck soup."
"Duck soup," Eames repeated softly. "But first."
"First we go under together. Three layers down."
"Three?" Eames sounded surprised.
"If something is wrong with either of us, that's where it will be most obvious. The brain already knows, but at the top levels, I find it's more willing to lie to protect itself." Arthur stood up. Instead of reaching for the PASIV, he set the light alarm across the door. Then he plugged his phone into a small set of speakers and turned back to Eames. "Three minutes. That'll give us plenty of time in the third level. If someone comes in while we're down there, it trips the alarm on my phone. We hear the ringtone and we shoot ourselves awake."
Eames sat up, now fully awake. "All right. Let's go take a look."
** ** ** **
Chapter 4B – Plant Your Hope With Good Seeds
** ** ** **
Arthur walked the streets of Eames's subconscious. Eames was nowhere to be found, but that was just as well. His projections would speak for him enough, just as Arthur's projections would give away his mind's secrets, the ones that his conscious mind would cover up. Somewhere in his mind, Eames was walking his streets, or going through his rooms.
It was a shared dream; they were both the dreamers.
The construct of Eames's subconscious this time was a pretty, tree-lined path populated by easy-going projections. It looked almost like a jogging path, or maybe hiking. Sun dappled the green grass, and a breeze scented the atmosphere. Arthur tilted his head. The scent was his own aftershave. The fact that Eames was close enough to smell him, and that's what he dreamed of in his deepest layers made him feel warm, almost hot, down here where everything was amplified.
The sky was a vivid blue, too vivid to be real life. This did not seem like a mind that was growing a cancer, but Arthur had to be sure. There was no sense even taking this chance if they weren't going to be thorough.
He stopped one of the projections on the street, a young man in khakis and a fitted tee shirt. Arthur said, "What nice weather today."
"It is," the projection answered in a London accent. "It truly is. Strange, though."
"What's that?" Arthur asked.
The projection looked at the sky. "Well, I swear it was just winter. And then a few days ago, this. High summer, all at once."
"How long did the winter last?" Arthur asked.
"Months, I think." He rested his hand on a trail mile-marker. Seven, it said.
"That's really nice," Arthur said. He couldn't add anything more, for fear of disturbing the structure of the dream or influencing it. He was already influencing it enough with his own emotional reaction, and he didn't want to add anything further. "I'm looking for a secret place," he said. "Any secret place where it's not summer. Can you show me to anywhere that's cold or dark?"
"Why would I want to do that?" the projection asked.
"So that I can open the windows," Arthur told it. "And let the light in."
"Oh. Well in that case." The projection pointed to a tall, grey building that rose against the blue sky. It hadn't been there before. It was marked with a big, dark blue "H" on the front of it. "There's where you want to look for anything important, anything hidden."
It occurred to Arthur that Eames's subconscious was simply telling him where to go to look for his secrets. The hospital was the fear of mortality they had discussed the night before. Likely, it was also any and all of Eames's past experiences with mortality; his own and that of others around him.
"You've got the key in your pocket," the projection told him. And then it jogged away.
Arthur went into the medical building. The air here was chilled, like an air-conditioner was running; something necessary to cool the constant heat that Eames gave off. Orderlies and doctors bustled around. None of them looked exactly urgent, but a few did look worried, or maybe anxious.
Arthur fought down his own anxiety. He must not influence this.
He went up to one of the doctors. This was a generic doctor-archetype in a white lab coat. He wore glasses and had white hair.
"I'm here for the results," Arthur said. It was an open conversation starter.
"Then I'll have to take you to the top floor," the doctor told him.
Without any other shifts in time, they stood inside a glass elevator, that was rising, rising to the top. When the doors opened with an official-sounding "ping", the doctor led the way through a large, sterile, tiled hall.
"I assume you're concerned about victims of the recent quakes," the doctor said. "That's why I brought you to the top."
"Victims?" Arthur asked.
"Months ago there was an explosion that rocked the entire country."
"I remember it."
"People got burned in that explosion. And there have been aftershocks."
"Aftershocks," Arthur said. "So, that means the aftershocks... those are from the explosion? There's nothing else?"
"I've looked everywhere," the doctor said. "I haven't found anything. But would you care to see the results?"
"I would."
The doctor took him into a vast medical room. It was dark save for the backlit x rays lining the walls, and a full body scan x ray on a table in the center, lit from underneath.
"Can you see all the different fault-lines on this map?" the doctor asked.
"I see them," Arthur said. He didn't see a map, he saw an outline of Eames's body. But this was the time to just go with it. He knew what most of those "fault lines" were from, too. Not all, but most.
"I don't see anything growing up from any of those cracks," the doctor said. "There were some burn victims from the explosion. That's about it."
Arthur looked the scan over completely, checking for dark spots, anything that would show up in waking life as pain, as some nagging unrest. As something Eames would know without knowing. He ran his hands over the image, feeling for heat or cold or pain. He saw nothing, felt nothing, and breathed a sigh of relief.
He then pointed to the right hand on the x ray. "What about this, here?"
"That," the doctor said. "Yes, that. It's not something from within the world. What you see happening there is coming from somewhere outside. We're trying to pinpoint what it is. We can't know from in here because it's not from here."
"I understand that," Arthur said, even though he didn't, not quite. There had been some meddling inside Eames's head on their last job, but surely Eames would know this as the cause. "No guesses, though?"
"Something from the outside," the doctor repeated. "Some kind of terrorism. Some kind of punishment."
** ** ** **
Eames opened his eyes to Arthur's deepest layer – or at least as deep as they were willing to go. Arthur was somewhere probably messing about with his projections, wheedling secrets out of them. Not that Eames had many left to share with him. A few, perhaps, maybe ones he'd just never thought to tell.
In Arthur's subconscious, an expanse of blue, warm, glittering water surrounded Eames, a sea of light. He looked down to see that its depths were endless. There was no sea-floor – this still water went on forever, to the other side of the world. For a second, Eames almost panicked. A man could drown here, sucked under, breathless, never to surface. What was he doing so far out here?
But the water supported him and seemed to carry him along. He felt naked. He was naked.
While there was no bottom to this sea, there was a shore. White sand, gleaming like glass, lined the water. Eames swam toward it. Out here in the center of Arthur's depths, there was no one to talk to. Interesting and intimidating as it was, he needed actual information on his body, not his mind or his emotions.
He reached the shore in a few short strokes, and pulled himself onto the warm sand. Sun-bathers and beach-goers all populated this space. They weren't being loud or obnoxious, or making a lot of noise. However, they were all just as nude as he was. Eames reflected briefly on what it meant, that Arthur let him into his waters so far out, and that all of his projections were naked. It gave him a shiver, the feeling of something primal, something he wanted to hold onto and protect. He knew that this intensity would fade once they both woke up. And he was here for a reason.
He went up to one of the projections, a blond woman playing volleyball with no net and no partner.
"Hey handsome," she said. "What is it you're looking for?"
"Something frightening," he said. "Something that doesn't live in the bottom of that warm sea, but elsewhere. Something, anything, that's not supposed to be in this world. Can you show me anything that's not supposed to be here?"
"Not anymore," she said.
"Anymore? Was there something recently?"
"Hmm." She toyed with the volley-ball between tanned hands. Eames wondered at the fact that Arthur's subconscious sentinel was a ditzy, naked beach-bunny.
"It was strange, a while back," she said. "Someone came in speaking French."
Eames's mouth went dry. He had to stop and re-set. The entire beach shuddered and he knew it wasn't movement from the train three levels up. "Define 'came in,'" he said.
"Came in," she said. "To here. Down here."
"A man?" Eames asked. "A woman?"
She said, "Yes. A man. A woman. Neither. It's strange, because some of us speak French anyway. But this person just showed up all the way down here. From the outside. You know?"
"When was this?" he asked. "Was it perhaps a while back? During the time of lightning storms, maybe?
"Nope," she said. "It was, like, more recent than that."
"Well," Eames said. "Well, fuck."
** ** ** **
They met in the middle ground of the third layer, between the tree-lined park and the sea. Arthur got there first and was waiting on a stone bench when he saw Eames making his way towards him. For all the warm, scented dreamscape, he suddenly felt like he was in a doctor's waiting room.
Eames didn't keep him waiting too long. Before he even sat down beside him he said, "You're not sick."
"Neither are you," Arthur said, feeling so glad to tell him that, and to see the relief on Eames's face.
Then Eames sat beside him and dropped a bomb that Arthur hadn't expected. "Your subconscious says a french-speaking person broke in."
Impossible Arthur thought. But since they were dreaming, Eames heard him anyway.
"I'd have thought so, too. But you told me yourself."
"Well, it's not just me who got invaded by whoever. Your subconscious seems to think that some of your symptoms are after-effects of head trauma. But it also suggested that someone from the outside did something to hurt you. 'Punishment,' it said."
Eames turned to face him. "What does that mean?"
Arthur had no answer for that. He stared into a gleaming sunset. "Well, look." He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. "It's not an ideal situation. Obviously someone got to us, right? But this is something that we can chase, shoot and fight. That's what we wanted it to be."
Eames remained silent.
"We wanted something that wasn't a sickness. That's what this seems to be. Someone did something to both of us, on purpose. We can find out what it is now. Then we can undo it."
"This was supposed to be a vacation," Eames said.
Arthur put his hand on Eames's knee. "It can still be. We can see all the things we wanted to see."
"Still. Do wish people'd stop fucking with us."
Arthur hated the forlorn look on his face. "But that's the kind of life we're in," Arthur said. "I'm going to just be glad that it's nothing worse than that. Yes, I know, it still could be. Just because we're not dying doesn't mean we won't end up dead. But..." He looked around at the dreamscape. What a beautiful space his and Eames's collective subconscious had created, and which Eames had scented with Arthur's aftershave, of all things. "But we're alive now," Arthur went on. "And we have a mission. I can deal with missions. Missions are doable."
Eames fell silent again, and for a while, so did Arthur. There was still some time on the countdown; years of dreaming had given him a sense for it.
"While we're down here," Arthur said, "I want to give you something. It's important."
Eames turned to face him, looking a little worn, a little tired. It steeled Arthur's resolve for what he was about to do. He picked up the blue bottle that was sitting next to him on the stone bench. When he held it up to the dying sunlight, blue, grey and white light swirled fluidly within it, glittering. It looked like something out of a fantasy. To Arthur, it was.
"What's that?" Eames asked.
"It's Cure-all." He put it into Eames's hand. "Your body ultimately does everything your brain tells it to. You can tell it to get sick. But more importantly, there are documented cases of people willing themselves better from incurable diseases."
"Some people have very powerful minds," Eames said. He looked wary.
"Some people have powerful ideas," Arthur corrected. He pushed the bottle into Eames's hands and held them together tight. "We're three levels down, so pay attention. If a day comes when you do get sick... if it's some kind of terminal disease? You'll know when it starts. You'll know, and you'll get to the doctor right away and have every test under the sun. Then, you'll have this bottle of Cure-all with you. Your subconscious will drink it every day. You'll think yourself well. It will give you a chance, and you'll beat it. Whatever it is, whenever it is, you'll beat it. You don't have to know why, you just will."
Eames's eyes were wide, but he didn't look away. "You're incepting me."
"I am," Arthur said. "And I'm going to tell you to forget this part when we wake up, too. It works better if you forget. And I'll ask you to keep trusting me as well. I'm sorry, Eames, I really, really am. But I'm not ashamed."
Eames pulled his hands away from Arthur's, but he didn't let go of the bottle. He sat back against the bench and seemed to think this over. When Eames tucked the bottle into his pocket, Arthur let go of the breath he hadn't known he was holding.
"What if the day comes when I want to die?" Eames asked. "If I'm through, I'm alone, if I'm old and tired and I need to die?"
"Then you have my permission," Arthur said.
"Right," Eames said. "Right. Well. In that case." From beside him, he pulled a gun. When Arthur flinched, thinking he was going to end the dream, Eames held it up harmlessly. Arthur saw that it wasn't any normal sort of gun, more like something out of a sci-fi film, with tubes and shining wires looped around it, in green, blue and white. He put it into Arthur's hand.
"And this is?" Arthur said.
"If the day comes that you get sick, this is the gun you'll use to fight it. You'll also know right away and you'll do everything necessary to take care of yourself. When you find out what it is, every day your subconscious will fire this gun at the sickness until it's gone. Unless you are entirely out of hope and you wish to die. Then you have my permission. Consider yourself incepted as well, you prick."
Arthur took the gun, not bothering to hide his smile.
"Oh," Eames added. "And you should also forget about this part when we wake. And continue to trust me as if I hadn't just broken a cardinal rule against your psyche."
"Do you think I'm a bad person for doing this?" Arthur asked.
"You know that's not what I think of you," Eames said.
"Are you angry?"
Eames looked at him for a long moment before threading his fingers through Arthur's hair and kissing him.
** ** ** **
/Wish fulfillment :D
Sweet, a lot of you guys googled Dinclusin. YES! ^_^ Well played! Has anyone googled Ann Dromalius? :D
Okay, so now give me more ideas, because I'm really stuck! This plot is constipated, someone give it some fiber, hehe. ^_^ While I obviously can't use everything everyone suggests without making the plot a tangled mess, once in a while a suggestion comes along that's like BAM, and it fits perfectly.
Images, scenes, lines, general ideas – these are all awesome! Thanks, guys. ^_^
Chapter 5 - There Is A King
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Interesting, excellent fic. Sorry i don't have more, but i'm nursing a monster headache.
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*Or maybe it's INCEPTION. I hear that can give you a headache. ;D
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Goober. :)
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