snowdarkred

Title: An Illustrating Dream
Author:

snowdarkred
Word Count: ~1K
Pairings: Eames/Arthur
Rating/Warnings: teen+, dream violence and some dark themes
Author's Note: I've been trying to fit this in with some of my other Inception fics, but it wants to stand on its own. And I'm not one to argue with muses; it tends to end badly. :D

Summary: They're subdued in minutes, with no backup and no way of killing themselves to escape.

Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you.
Marsha Norman

An Illustrating Dream

Of course, things don't go as planned. One moment, the subject – the mark, as Eames insists on calling him – is sitting quietly at a sunny table in a bustling cafe, leafing through the newspaper and sipping slowly at rooibos tea – the next, the entire job is shot to hell because he spotted Ariadne's reflection in the cafe window. The projections are on the team in a moment, overturning tables and sending sturdy restaurant china flying. Arthur is coolly collected and ruthlessly efficient, as always. He breaks one projection's neck and throws another one through the window, but there are far too many of them, and in the end, they don't stand a chance.

They're subdued in minutes, with no backup and no way of killing themselves to escape.

Eames catches Arthur's eyes and is shaken by the fear in them.

---

“Arthur,” Eames says. It's a prayer spat like a curse, or maybe it's a curse whispered like a prayer. It earns him a punch to the gut, but it's worth it to have Arthur's eyes snap to him, like a honing missile zeroing in. Their gazes lock. “Darling—”

The nearest projection backhands him casually, and it shouldn't be as gratifying as it is to watch Arthur jerk forward and snarl at their captors. Especially since it could easily get him singled out.

Unfortunately, it does.

---

Arthur lets them drag him away. He closes his eyes and feels the dream: the slide of his knees against the concrete floor, the smell of gasoline and rust and smog that permeates the air, the tight fists that grip his arms. He can feel everything, just as if this was happening in the waking world.

He wishes that he could check his totem, even though he already knows that this is a dream. If they kill him (when they kill him) he's going to wake up in a leather arm chair, with a stiff neck and a pounding headache. He'll be fine.

It doesn't make him feel better about what's going to happen before then.

---

Pain is in the mind.

So is sanity.

---

They have all died before, in dreams. Sometimes it's a blessing (right before he sees you, right before they catch you, movemovemove, die); sometimes it's a mistake (you thought the ledge was farther back, oops, die). Sometimes it's at exactly the wrong time (like three seconds to a job well done, just another page of secrets, gun, bang, die). Sometimes it's brutal (a blow to the head, a knife to the stomach, a hand digging into your chest, die screaming); sometimes it's almost beautiful (a gentle drift downwards, hands clasped together, just silence and death). Death in a thousand forms, and all of it fake. It's easy to get used to dying when you know that you're going to wake up on the other end.

Now it doesn't matter that it's all in his head (Arthur's head, Eames's head, their head), Eames just wants it to stopstopstop. Choked gasps are escaping from Arthur's throat, pained whines that egg their clearly deranged mark on.

It doesn't stop quick enough.

---

Eames is not quite sure how he breaks out of the projections' hold; he's there, and then he's not. He's being held still and forced to watch as they cut his Arthur open, again and again while the brave, bloody fool tries not to make a sound, and then he's across the warehouse (why is it always a warehouse?) with someone else's gun in hand. He doesn't shoot the projections, though he wants too, and he doesn't shoot the mark—though he definitely wants to. He shoots Arthur, and as the light fades from his lover's eyes, Arthur looks at him as if that's the kindest thing anyone's ever done for him.

It makes Eames furious, every bit of it. They have minutes in dream-time before Arthur gives them the kick, and the job is shot to hell anyway. So Eames vents his fury in action: he maims and kills and screams at these bastards for reducing Arthur once again to something that is hurt. Eames remembers how he met Arthur; he can't forget it. He can't forget the sterile white rooms and military uniforms and endless stream of politicians who came to gawk at their lucky find. He remembers all of it, and he sees their faces in these projections and the mark's cruelty.

Ariadne is silent during all of this, clever girl, and she just watches with those big curious eyes, as if something is being made clear to her with every shot Eames fires.

When the kick comes, Eames closes his eyes and lets the gun drop to the bloody floor. The dream falls apart rapidly, and all the colors blur together into a kaleidoscope of red and gray. The world drops away, and they wake up.

---

The first thing Eames sees when he opens his eyes is Arthur. He's whole, of course, physically unmarked. Because that's how it works in the extraction business: Everyone's scars are on the inside, until they wear and tear their way to the surface and unravel reality.

---

Later, after they've dumped the mark down a convenient hole and left him there to rot, he pretends not to see Ariadne pull Arthur aside. She whispers to him, glancing occasionally back and forth between Arthur and Eames. She's not subtle at all, which, really, has she ever been? The girl is a freight train in her own right, ramming through the hapless psyches of her companions. At the end of her little speech, Arthur smiles at her, gently, and tells her something that everyone else in the business already knows.

Of course Eames would tear people apart to protect Arthur. It's what he does.