snowdarkred

Title: and when we wake from everything and nothing
Author:

snowdarkred
Word Count: 500
Pairings: Eames/Arthur
Rating/Warnings: PG, post-limbo-ness, touch deprivation, angst, second person
Author's Note: I wrote this after being ~inspired by

gyzym 's Inspiration meme on her journal - more specifically, by this photo, which is so completely heartrendingly beautiful, I can't even describe it. I in no way did it justice. I don't think anyone could. My thanks to the anon who posted it.

Summary: Arthur wakes up from the nothingness, and Eames refuses to ever let him go again.

and when we wake from everything and nothing

You don't want to close your eyes. You don't want to close your eyes and see the darkness that is not just darkness, the nothingness that will drown you with its fullness, its horror. You shake and shake, but you cannot stop, for stillness would mean that you have no fight left to live with. The tears are flowing now, in a way that they haven't in years; maybe they were only years in your head, illusions woven by the chaos of raw undesigned limbo.

You shake and cry, but you can't wash away the fear.

There are hands, gentle, but you flinch anyway, because everything is hard on this raw edge of reality. The colors are too bright; they hurt your eyes, but you can't close them, can't close them, can't. You can't face the nothing.

"Oh, darling," you hear a voice say, and it's loud and horrible and familiar and welcoming. It's an empty apartment after three weeks gone, with the milk gone off and no one around to dust. It's a deserted bed that has no warmth left, a bowl left carelessly in the sink with the spoon tilted crookedly to the side, a jacket with frayed hems that never leaves the closet. You turn blindly toward that voice, for while it hurts your ears, it would – and has – hurt so much worse not to hear it curl around your name. "Arthur."

Gentle hands full of steely resolve; a voice that echoes of a time long, long ago, a time that you can't quite remember. A smile, a laugh, a curse, a name.

Eames.

"Th-there wasn't — You weren't — I can't — Oh god," you stutter, and you can't seem to stop. Words you never spoke because there was no one around to speak to tumble from your lips, and you think that there should be pain from disuse, but there isn't. Because it was all a matter of hours, and yet, years. Decades. "You were, I thought, no. No. The sky was, it was. Nothing. There wasn't anybody. Eames. There wasn't, there wasn't anyone. Where did they all go?"

"Shh," Eames whispers, and then he takes you in his arms, gently, so goddamn, beautifully gently, and he holds you. He holds you like that's the only place he ever wants you to be, like you could drop him three levels down and he would still hold on, still grip you to him like he was the one who was lost for all those years.

Maybe he was. Maybe he is.

"Shh, Arthur," he says, softly, resting his cheek against your sweat-damp hair. He wipes at your tears with his free hand; the salt stings against the redness of your eyes. "You're awake now. You're awake, and I'm here. I'm right here."

He doesn't say that it was just a dream, and you're grateful, because you both know it is never just a dream. He doesn't let go, and you don't close your eyes.