My Yesterdays In Front of Me

[fae_boleyn]

Title: My Yesterdays In Front Of Me
Fandom: Inception
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Summary: Arthur had a good reason for walking out on Eames, really, he did. But he can't ever tell him, because how could he explain the things he sees, the things he knows, when all it'll do is make him sound crazy?
Warning: Limbo!fic at the end.
Author's Note: This is my fic for i_reversebang , paired with petitecamomille 's fanart. Also, thanks go out to ombrefolle  for a last-minute beta job. *hugs her* :D

 

And again I see

My yesterdays in front of me,
Unfolding like a mystery,
You're changing all

That is and used to be...

 

On a prayer, in a song,
I hear your voice

And it keeps me hanging on
Ahhhh, raining down, against the wind
I'm reaching out

Till we reach the circle's end,
When you come back to me again – When You Come Back To Me Again, Garth Brooks

 

 

That was too close, is all Arthur can think. He and Eames are alive, yes, and the only injuries are minor – the worst is that Eames got a bullet graze along his left calf, but it's little more than a scratch. And yet.

 

Arthur can't forget seeing Eames stumble, can't forget how for a second he was horribly, painfully sure that it was more serious, that Eames was seriously or even fatally hurt. Arthur can't forget that if Eames had died, it wouldn't be the first time. And like always, it would be Arthur's fault. Even with Eames here and fine, asleep against Arthur's side, his warm weight does nothing to comfort Arthur, or chase his fears away. Because it wasn't this time, but what about next time? Or the time after that?

 

How could he have been so selfish, so foolish? Arthur knows things Eames doesn't, things that no one else knows, and because of it he's always known they were a bad idea. Not because the feelings aren't real; Arthur loves Eames more than anything and he knows Eames feels the same about him. That's never been the problem. The problem is that this has all happened before, the two of them, and it always ends the same way. It ends with Eames dead because Arthur can't save him. The names aren't always the same, of course, nor the faces, but they are. Their eyes, and what lies behind them. Not the mind, exactly, but...

 

Well. Arthur doesn't like the melodramatic connotations of the word “soul”, but he does like accuracy, and soul is certainly accurate.

 

It always ends the same. But Arthur never knew better before. Now he does, and he'd told himself that meant he could change it, could make sure Eames doesn't die because of him. It's just that he'd hoped he could do that and still be with Eames. But after tonight, he no longer thinks so. After tonight, Arthur knows that as long as he's with Eames, Eames won't be safe.

 

If he were watching this from the outside, Arthur would be quick to see the irrationality of his own thoughts, and to convince himself of it. But he's not, and he believes what he's thinking, because he always has, really. He's the reason Eames always dies, and he can't let it happen again. Even if that means he has to lose Eames as a part of his life. Because it doesn't matter; that can't hurt as much as being the reason Eames dies, again.

 

~ ~ ~

 

 

Arthur Casey is eleven years old when it finally occurs to him to ask about it. He used to think that the threads of light he sees connecting people are normal, but he's finally old enough to notice that other people's gazes don't follow the connections the way his do, which must mean that other people don't see what he sees.

 

So Arthur asks his father. It's always just been him and Dad; he doesn't remember his mother, she's a name on a marble gravestone to him. And Dad looks at him oddly, then calls his grandmother, his mother's mother. Three days later, Arthur finds himself on a train from Portland to his grandmother's small town, alone. It's not the first time; Gran and Dad don't like each other much so as soon as Arthur could be trusted on the train alone Dad stopped driving him down one weekend a month.

 

Dad says to tell his grandmother about the light-threads, so he does. His grandmother's not like his friends' grandmas, he's noticed. Her hair is dark gray, caught in a long braid, and she always wears long, flowing dresses. He's never really thought of Gran as “old” the way grandmas are, but when he tells her what he sees, for a moment that's exactly what she looks like.

 

Then her face clears and she's his Gran again, putting her arm around his shoulders and leading him to the swing on the back porch. Arthur's feet still don't touch the ground when he sits there, and he stares down at them, hanging above the ground, for what feels like a long time before Gran explains.

 

“My family – your mother's family and yours – is a little... unusual, Artie. There's something different about us, that we can't quite explain, but we know it to be true. We have gifts. They're like magic, though not quite the same. We can't do spells or the other things you read about in books, but we know things.”

 

She paused, taking a deep breath, and then continued. “That's what happened to your mother, which is why your father doesn't like to talk about this. Your mother used to get these feelings, these urges to make something happen or stop it from happening. One of those times... She got in the way of a gun.”

 

Arthur doesn't know what to say about that, so he only says, “What do the strands mean? And why don't I have any?”

 

Gran sighs, stroking Arthur's floppy hair comfortingly. “My grandfather could see the same thing as you, dear one. The strands are... connections between people, between their souls. You see, these lives that we're living now aren't our only ones. Our souls have lived before, and will again. The connections made between people during those lives are what you see. The different colors have different meanings; I don't know them all but my grandfather left a journal in case someone else in the family inherited his gift. I'll give it to you, help you understand.”

 

“But, if I don't have the strands, then does that mean that I'm, that my soul, is new or something?” Arthur asks, puzzled.

 

“No. Grandfather thought that it was a balance. If you knew all your connections to people just by looking, it would be a sort of cheat for you in living your life. So you can't see it. But he said he had feelings about people, he would just know that he was tied to them, but it wouldn't always be clear how.” She got up and went inside, soon coming back with an old, leather-bound book.

 

“Here, Arthur. This will tell you much more than I can.”

 

His great-grandfather's journal taught Arthur everything he needed to know about how to deal with his gift, even how to occasionally “turn off” his sight and relax his eyes. It wasn't until he did that for the first time that he realized how much stress constantly seeing those lines and trying to track them without others noticing actually caused his eyes.

 

The journal taught him about the colors and what they meant. Blue meant friends, allies, or family in prior lives. Black was an enemy, green someone you'd known and could be more to, but had only been acquaintances with so far. And red... Red was for lovers. At eleven, Arthur didn't really understand that part. What made more sense to him was the shading, how the darker the color, the stronger the connection; in the case of green, the darker it was, the more likely it was that those people would eventually be more to each other.

 

There was a warning in the journal too. This connection to past lives would, to some extent, affect Arthur's own memory. Once he hit puberty, he found out, he would start dreaming. He knew that already from books in the library, that he'd start having the kind of dreams that made him embarrassed to think about. But these were different. These would be memories of the lives he lived before, and would make the instinctive knowledge of those he'd known before all the stronger.

 

And there was one more thing. “The old cliché is true. The eyes are the windows to the soul, and they never change, no matter how many lives one lives.”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Arthur gets into the Air Force Academy, majoring in computer science. He focuses on what they call information assurance; cryptography and information warfare, that kind of thing. Arthur can't help but notice that everything they're learning to prevent enemies – or hackers just looking for a challenge – from breaking in could easily be turned the other way. It's possible that he notices it because he is a hacker himself. He hasn't done anything seriously illegal, and he's never been caught, but he likes a challenge.

 

Part of him really, really wants to try breaking into some of the databases he learns about. His fingers almost itch with the desire, but he holds back. He wants a career in the military, not to risk being thrown in prison for God knows how long. So he doesn't. He does, however, plan how he would do it. Designing a strategy is almost as fun as carrying it out, and it's enough for him. At least for the moment.

 

He gets involved in sports – indoor and outdoor track, swimming, even fencing – but all of them are solitary. He doesn't mind being a team player, and sometimes he'll join some of his fellow cadets in a pick-up game of basketball, but he prefers sports where you're part of a team but it's your own performance that decides how you do. In his senior year he also joins the rifle team. After all, he spends as much time as possible on the shooting range, having found it to be quite the stress reliever. He may as well put it to good use.

 

Arthur's not sure if it's because of his power or if he'd be like this regardless, but he's always been a bit of a loner. He's not antisocial; he talks to people, and he even has a few people he'd call friends, but none of them know him that well. He doesn't find it easy to open up, especially when he feels guilty about knowing so much about the people around him that they themselves can't know. So he is on the sidelines more often than not. He doesn't mind; it gives him a chance to observe the world around him and pick up on things. (He probably shouldn't have taken that sociology class when he needed an elective. It's had an adverse effect on him. But it was that or a chemistry class, and the last time he took one of those, things blew up. When they weren't supposed to.) People are interesting, and he likes watching them.

 

He knows he's likely bound to work in intelligence, and he's not only fine with that, he's genuinely thrilled. It's the type of job that seems tailor-made for someone like him, he thinks. At least he does until the day he shows up for combat training to find that they're not working outside but instead in one of the classrooms. Even though people think pilots only when they think of the Air Force, cadets are taught to fight and use weaponry just like any other branch of the service. They use simulators for flight lessons, but not combat. And if that silver briefcase is a simulator, Arthur will be shocked.

 

It's not, of course. It's so much more. Dreams are more real than even the best of sims, and some of the ones Arthur's been put through are good – he'd originally dreamed of being a fighter pilot, but his lack of perfect eyesight prevents that. He doesn't mind that they're fighting more brutally than ever, he doesn't even care as much as he should that he wakes up because one of his fellow cadets, a guy who lives across the hall from him, shoved a knife into his gut. He doesn't care because it's thrilling, almost magical. Real, but not.

 

And there's something else. Arthur's control over his ability is not perfect. Inside, it feels like he's holding something too tightly, forcing it not to work. And that control slips, because it is uncomfortable and because he can function perfectly well with strands of light surrounding the world around him. He's used to it, after all. His control always slips during combat, it has to because all his focus needs to be in the moment. He feels that part of him let go, but...

 

There's nothing. In dreams, Arthur is just like everyone else. No glowing webs tying people around him together, no lingering sense that the girl he sits next to in Cryptography was close to him once, long before, in a world of silks and velvets and damasks where the wrong word cost you your head and where Arthur's pretty sure he was a woman who did lose her head. None of that. He is normal for the first fucking time in his life, and there is no way he's giving that up.

 

He goes into intelligence all right. But it's not the kind he thought he'd be doing.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Using the PASIV to question suspected terrorists is just on the right side of the Geneva Convention, mostly because international law isn't entirely caught up on the latest scientific breakthroughs yet. But Arthur is convinced that it's better than some of the things they'd be doing otherwise, after 9/11.

 

He's not too thrilled when, after over a year of mostly doing solo work, he's assigned a partner from the British SAS. OK, sure, the Brits are their allies in the war on terror – even if a part of him that can remember dying at the hands of a redcoat in 1777 can't quite grasp that idea – but Arthur does not want a partner of any nationality.

 

Mal's bad enough. Oh, don't get him wrong, he likes Mal, she's a sweetheart, and she and her husband Dom (who's even more aggravating without the redeeming qualities) are perfect for each other, as evidenced by the red strand of light that burns so brightly between them. He knows Mal, remembers her warm dark eyes in a different face, the year they sent Marie Antoinette to the guillotine. A terrible year, but not so much for him, since he met her. He can't remember what her name was then, the dreams he has don't mention it, but he knows he loved her.

 

Not that it matters much. He and Mal are the occasional kind, whose paths cross in different ways. Sometimes lovers, more often friends, and he doesn't mind as long as she's around. He just wishes she wasn't so worried about the moral implications of what they do, so determined to experiment on herself and Dom, who would follow her anywhere. Which, in the end, is why Arthur suspects that Mal and Dom come together far more often than he and Mal do. Because there are places he wouldn't follow her to. Places he wouldn't follow anyone he's met in this life to, although he dreams of a pair of smoky gray eyes that he knows he'd do anything for.

 

Which makes it a problem, the first time he sees those eyes in this reality. Because they belong to Lieutenant Patrick Eames, the partner he doesn't want. But at least they do most of their work in dreams, where Arthur isn't haunted by feelings, even though the knowledge is something he can't ever get rid of. It doesn't help that Eames is careless, casual, and flirts like he breathes, only he never means any of it. Arthur, with the sharp eyes of someone who prefers to observe from the sidelines, can see how Eames leaves people believing they've got the measure of him when they've not so much as glimpsed the surface. And he admits to himself that even if Eames' eyes weren't what they are, if he wasn't tossing and turning at night thanks to memories that won't quite now they've begun, he'd be fascinated.

 

The eyes don't help.

 

But for Arthur, what's worst of all are the damn dreams. Unlike most, Somnacin hasn't stolen his ability to dream naturally, at least not completely. Arthur's lost the normal dreams, the meaningless things that his subconscious mind used to be able to invent. But the memory-dreams are, if anything, sharper. Which really isn't fair.

 

And the things he remembers makes him hate the fact that Eames is his partner. Because... Because before he died at that long-past battle, all those years and lives ago, he'd stood and watched as one of his fellows stabbed a redcoat with a bayonet. A redcoat he knew far, far too well, his best friend growing up in Jamestown, whose only crime was to be a Tory. And Arthur – or Daniel – knows that's enough, but when it's his best friend, the person he'd always been so close to that it was a physical pain to be on the other side of a battlefield...

 

That's why the other redcoat was able to take him down, because he was so horrified at his own refusal to save the person he only just understood he loved. And Arthur knows, it's not the last time he will refuse to do so, or simply fail. So having Eames as his partner, now... Well. At least they only deal in dreams, where death really is cheap, because it's no more real than anything else they do.

 

Somehow, it's not very convincing, even though the only one he's trying to persuade is himself.

 

~ ~ ~

 

They never see it coming, the experiments. But when Emma Harper comes to Arthur with her eyes wide and horrified, so unlike her usual self, he knows something's wrong. And so he sits her down and makes her look at him, makes her speak calmly and explain the situation. What he hears makes his blood run cold. That bastard Thomas, the guy in charge of their operation, has been fucking around with members of the team. Emma's just gotten out of a nightmare trap – literally – that he stuck her in. It's enough to make Arthur want to kill the bastard.

 

Of course, that's when Eames shows up and demands to know what's going on. So Arthur explains, in a clipped, no-nonsense voice, and finds himself having to restrain the Brit from killing their C.O. Since they're leaving tonight, that would be a very bad idea.

 

And they are leaving. Arthur won't stay in a job like this for one more second, and Eames agrees. The fact that they take one of the PASIVs with them is just the best way of metaphorically flipping the military off that they can think of without killing anyone.

 

Going into corporate espionage is Eames' idea, inspired by the father he admits he was trying to avoid being like. There's a wry twist to his lips when he explains it. “You can't avoid fate, apparently.”

 

Arthur can feel his face go blank, and Eames frowns at him. “Something wrong there, Arthur?”

 

“No, not a thing,” he lies through his teeth.

 

He and Eames make a pretty good team, which makes a terrible sort of sense. After all, it's hardly the first time they've met. But Arthur tries to forget that. He tries to ignore the way they come to almost be able to read each other's minds, how they leave the people they work with in the dust unless they consciously slow themselves down. Mostly, he tries to ignore the fact that he's never been happier, that it feels right to have Eames such a huge part of his life.

 

They're celebrating one night after a job in Japan, somewhere between tipsy and drunk, when Arthur looks up at Eames – he's sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed, while Eames is in a chair – and he knows things are going to change. It's the way Eames is watching him, it's too intense, too... “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks, and is proud of how his voice is entirely steady, without a quaver or a slur.

 

Eames shrugs. “I like you best like this, a little taken apart,” he admits.

 

“Oh,” Arthur says.

 

“Oh indeed,” Eames murmurs, almost to himself. And then he's up and out of the chair, pulling Arthur to his feet, and kissing him hard.

 

“Wh- Where did this come from?” Arthur says, pulling back even though he wants to melt into the kiss, because he knows how it goes and he refuses to start this again.

 

“Don't know, can't we just go with it?” Eames asks. “I don't know why, but you... Something about you, Arthur, for God's sake just stop fighting me. You don't want me, say it and this ends. But I think you'd be lying.”

 

Arthur tries to say no. Really, he does. It's for both their sakes. He tries, but he can't. Until the day he runs.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Eames can't deny that part of the appeal for the Fischer job is working with Arthur again. Even though he'd much prefer to hate the bastard for breaking off everything between them and then working with the Cobbs instead, he can't quite manage it. Besides that, he wants a reason. Arthur claimed, at the time, that he'd just been having fun but decided to cut his losses before things got serious. “Messy,” had been his exact description.

 

And it had been a great performance, Eames is willing to give him that. But he's used that scenario enough times himself, sometimes meaning it and sometimes running away because he's spooked, so he knows the difference. Arthur was spooked. Eames just can't figure out why. Though if he was hoping for answers based on Arthur's behavior he is out of luck. Arthur is as unreadable as ever, if not worse.

 

“Eames, I am impressed.”

 

“Your condescension, as always, is much appreciated, Arthur, thank you.”

 

“'Might'? We're gonna have to do a little better than 'might'.”

 

“Thank you for your contribution, Arthur.”

 

“Forgive me for wanting a little specificity, Eames.”

 

Is that what it's come to, then? Sure, snark had always been a key factor in their relationship, but this, there's nothing much to this. No fun, no hidden affection, just defensiveness. Eames is sick of not knowing, he wants answers.

 

When he gets them, it's completely by chance. While they're all at the Paris airport, waiting to board their flight to Sydney, a book slips from Arthur's carry-on. Eames, sees it and goes to grab it. If nothing else, it'll be an excuse to corner Arthur later. And Eames knows very well how to turn brief encounters into something more. He is going to get answers from Arthur if it kills them both.

 

But when he picks up the book he sees that it isn't a book, but a journal. Patrick Eames has never been one to respect privacy, especially not when it comes to Arthur, not now. Luckily, their seats on the plane are spread out, and Arthur is not in Eames' line of sight. So Eames isn't worried about getting caught.

 

The things he reads are unbelievable, and he's tempted to scoff at Michael Harper's recollections, because clearly he was a crazy old man. But then the handwriting changes from Michael's scrawl to Arthur's familiar, spiky letters. And it doesn't seem funny, or crazy anymore, not when some of the dreams Arthur describes, the “memories of past lives”, sound familiar, like old dreams. Eames had almost lost the ability to dream naturally before he and Arthur became lovers, but he still dreams from time to time.

 

When he was with Arthur, he had the strangest dreams.

 

For ourselves, Michael wrote, we don't see threads. We have feelings, though, and we have dreams. I'm told that when we spend too much time around those who feature in our dreams, they start to dream the same way.

 

Arthur wrote about dream-memories that sound a lot like dreams Eames had when they were together.

 

It still seems crazy, and yet... And yet Eames can remember times he swore Arthur's eyes were tracking something in empty air, something in his vision that no one else could see. This explains why Arthur would leave, some nonsense about thinking that their being together will mean Eames is going to die, so clearly it's important.

 

He'll ask Arthur once the Fischer job is over, and he won't give the other man a chance to not answer, he decides.

 

He doesn't expect what happens on the second level.

 

~ ~ ~

 

The gunshot comes just when Arthur thinks he's safe, wiring the elevator with explosives, his unconscious teammates inside. Someone shoots from above down into the shaft, clearly having forced a higher set of doors open He doesn't scream this time, breath forced from his lungs in a choked gasp instead. Chest wound, missed his heart, but...

 

Arthur fires at the projection automatically, a headshot and there's no enemies left, and he closes his eyes, forcing himself to keep going. He finishes the wiring and basically swims – it's the closest approximation for the sort of movement he has to do – back into the elevator, gripping the remote tightly in the same hand he has to use to steer himself because the other is pressed to his wound. Once inside, he starts the music for Eames, letting himself look at the man for one second while he does so.

 

“Security's gonna run you down hard.”

 

“And I will lead them on a merry chase.”

 

Arthur had seen the concern hidden behind the deceptively mild comment. He and Eames... He's always known that someday, a reckoning would come, because Eames is not the sort to let things rest. And Arthur shouldn't be thinking about that now, but really, there's nothing left for him at this point except waiting, waiting for the right moment to press the button, and his vision is starting to blur, darkness gathering at the corners of his eyes. So anything he can think of to keep him grounded, anything to help him hang on besides his white-knuckled grip on the railing, is welcome.

 

He thinks of Dom, of Philippa and James calling him Uncle Arthur and why he's stayed with the half-crazy shell of his best friend all this time. For those kids, who lost their mother and needed someone to keep an eye on their father until he could come back to them. He thinks about Ariadne, about the way she teased him for that kiss on the way up to 528, and how he said nothing except to ask if she would have liked it better had he been their chemist. He wants to see Dom reunited with his kids, would like to watch Ariadne and Yusuf move into each other's orbits properly.

 

And Eames. God, Eames. There are so many things he could think of, if he's thinking about Eames. The faint white scars where tattoos used to be, and the single one on his hip that's still there. A heavy, accented voice whispering in Arthur's ear, stubble scratching his skin. The cocky smirk belied by the fondness in smoke-gray eyes. He wishes he hadn't had to leave him, wishes he could tell him why.

 

He can still remember the first time (this first time) in Kyoto, half-drunk on sake, his mind swimming now the way it was that night. This time it's from blood loss rather than alcohol, and it's all Arthur can do, all his strength expended in pushing that button, his eyes slipping shut and his body falling sideways even as he does. The last thing he sees isn't the elevator wall but the memory of those gray eyes, their depths where he'd like to be falling, rather than into the unforgiving blackness.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Eames is only awake on the second level for a handful of seconds, just long enough to register the too-familiar copper tang of blood in the air, but there's no time to make any sense of that before he is opening his eyes again, to water this time, and has to focus on getting himself out of there before he drowns. He can't look over at the team while he's still playing Browning, though he wants to – he's sure of Yusuf and Saito, relatively sure of Cobb and Ariadne, but Arthur, he has no way to be sure Arthur's all right and he has a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. But he knows not to break character, not now, and he plays Browning to the hilt until he doesn't have to, and then he makes a break for it, for the safe house Ariadne and Yusuf had designed.

 

He knows something is wrong the second he gets there, Ariadne and Yusuf talking quietly but without any of that quiet ease that was starting to spring up between them, and while Ariadne looks uncomfortable when she sees him, Yusuf looks downright scared, like there's something he knows that Eames isn't going to like. And he knows. He knows, and for a second he can't even breathe.

 

“Cobb said when you got here he'd be upstairs,” Ariadne says, and from the tone of her voice she's read Yusuf's expression as well, and knows that things are worse than she'd thought. Eames says nothing, just goes upstairs, and if Yusuf's face hadn't already told him he wasn't going to like what Cobb has to say, the look in the man's eyes confirms it. Cobb looks like a man who got exactly what he wants, except the price was higher than he'd expected.

 

“Eames, I... It's Arthur, he... They must have gotten to him, on the second level.”

 

Eames would say he knows this already, except he can't say anything at all. It's like there's ice coating his skin, and white noise in his head, he can't even... And then he's got Cobb against the wall, hands fisted in the other man's collar. “This is your fault! You didn't tell us the goddamn risks and now Arthur's in fucking limbo because of you!” he snarls, his face mere inches from Cobb. The extractor doesn't flinch, just stares at him.

 

“I know that, you think I'm not upset over this? Arthur's my friend, and the last time I checked, you didn't care that much for him one way or the other.”

 

Eames shoves Cobb away, turning his back on the American and clenching his hands so tight he can feel his nails break the skin of his palms. He spins back around, glaring at Cobb, eyes like storm clouds. “All you cared about was getting home, and to hell with the rest of us,” he says coldly, and then storms out. Ariadne is outside, looking at him with wide eyes.

 

“We brought him back with us,” she says shakily, pointing to a closed door at the end of the hall. “I think we... We tried, we thought maybe there was something we could do, but Cobb said the only thing we could do was to go after him. He won't, because of his kids, and I said I'd do it, but he wouldn't let me try.”

 

Of course Ariadne would say that, she had been perfectly willing to plunge into limbo to look for Fischer, a complete stranger, much less Arthur. He knows they're friends. He wonders for a minute why she and Cobb didn't find Arthur in limbo, but then, if he managed to set off the kick, he must have died and fallen there at the same time as the two of them were being kicked out.

 

Wordlessly, Eames walks down the hallway, wondering why he's doing this to himself. But he does it anyway, pushes the door open and then closes it behind him before making himself look at the too-still form on the bed. Arthur's eyes are closed, his hair drying loose and curling slightly. Eames sits next to him, just looking, that numbness starting to recede. What's left behind is a terrible hollow feeling, and all Eames can think about is that this was supposed to be a new start. He was supposed to be able to talk to Arthur, to convince him that whatever he believes about a past so long gone it can't even matter, they can do this.

 

And now Arthur's gone. It would be funny in a dark humor sort of way if this wasn't real, if it was just a story. But it isn't.

 

“Cobb said the only thing we could do was to go after him.”

 

It's crazy, and Eames knows it. But there's a gun at his side, and he could do it. Arthur would do it for him, he's sure of that. Hell, Arthur would probably do it for Cobb too, and the fact that Cobb won't do it for him – kids or not – is another mark against the extractor in Eames' mind. But then, Cobb's not the one in love with Arthur, Eames is. In spite of everything.

 

But he doesn't have time to think about that right now, when every minute here is God knows how long for Arthur. There's no question what he's going to do now. He puts the gun to his temple and pulls the trigger.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Eames finds himself washed up on a deserted beach, crumbling buildings all around. It's chillingly empty, and he stands up quickly, looking around. “Arthur?”

 

There's no answer when he calls, so Eames starts walking, going past ruined building after ruined building. Slowly, though, the crumbling skyscrapers and smaller dwellings become more spaced out, and then fade entirely, the paved road under Eames' feet becoming cracked and broken before turning first to dirt and then to slightly muddy grass. By this time, the buildings are gone completely, and all around him is just empty land.

 

He only half-recognizes the field he finds himself standing on, green grass under his feet, morning fog not quite gone. He thinks there might be a town in the distance but he's not sure, unable to see clearly through the fog. Eames is surprised, because he wouldn't have expected Limbo to look like this. But then, this is Arthur's Limbo, so maybe that's why.

 

Less surprising is his red uniform, the old British Army uniform. So he's a redcoat now, apparently. It makes sense, though, when he remembers. From what Arthur wrote in that journal, from the vague images from Eames' own dreams, this is some kind of twisted reenactment of their first selves. “First selves” is how Arthur puts it, the first time the two of them met, as... James, apparently, was Eames' name then, and Arthur's was Daniel, or so Arthur's journal said.

 

He can't see Arthur, so he tries calling for him, and when he gets no answer, he calls him by Daniel's name.

 

“Don't call me that!” Arthur's in a brown uniform, but despite the old-fashioned clothes he's still Arthur, like some blend of past and present. Which tells Eames that physically, he's still himself as well. He'd thought so, but if he was James would that have actually felt different? He doesn't know.

 

“I wasn't sure what you'd answer to,” he admits, keeping his eyes on Arthur even when the other man looks away.

 

“You shouldn't be here,” Arthur says, addressing the mud and grass at his feet.

 

“The hell I shouldn't! What, did you think I was just going to leave you down here, hmm?” Eames crosses the distance between them in a few long strides, grabbing Arthur roughly by the upper arms. “Damn it, look at me! I had that journal, the one from your... great-great grandfather, isn't it? I read it, and... God, I don't know if I believe it or not but I don't care.”

 

Arthur stares at him. “You can't... How... How can you say that? Here, all those years ago, you died and I just stood there and watched, and it keeps on happening! It's always my fault and it's going to happen again. I can't allow that.”

 

Eames takes a deep breath so he won't shout again. “You aren't the only one who has a say in this, Arthur. It's my life that you think is on the line here, so it fits that I should have some rights in all of this.”

 

“You do, but it's just, I couldn't tell you, how could I? Hell, you read that journal and you still don't really believe it. And it doesn't matter, because I was right anyway. You followed me down here, why did you do that?”

 

“The same reason you ran off, apparently. I love you, you idiot, what was I supposed to do, let you die?”

 

“Yes! Better than you being dragged along with me.”

 

“It doesn't work like that, Arthur. Besides, if the Cobbs made it out, we can.”

 

“Oh, yeah, and lose track of reality like Mal.”

 

“Cobb knows what's real, so I'm thinking whatever went wrong with Mal is more than that. And that's not even the point. The point is that I wasn't going to just leave you. How is it any worse if you're the one who dies and I'm left behind? I don't get any of this, really, I haven't had the time to think about it, but for fuck's sake, Arthur, how is your solution any better?”

 

Arthur blinks, opens his mouth to speak, and then closes it again. Finally he says, “I just can't watch you die again. It's too much already, Patrick, don't you get that?”

 

Eames thinks about Arthur's still form on the bed in the safe house, and thinks he might have some idea. “So don't. Promise to stick around, and I promise not to die on you, how about that?”

 

Arthur shakes his head. “You can't promise that.”

 

“No one can promise anything, really. There's no guarantees in life, Arthur. But we can do this, I'm sure of that. Just try, instead of giving up. That's all.”

 

Eames takes Arthur's silence as assent, before putting a bullet through the other man's head. He has to shut his eyes when he does, and he shoots himself a second later, eyes opening slowly on the airplane. Right, so he made it back...

 

He doesn't think about the caution he should be exercising, just straightens in his seat, eyes seeking out Arthur's. And Arthur's stirring as well, a little more slowly than Eames but waking up. And when their eyes meet Eames knows he's won, that they're going to have that chance to try.

 

That's what he was looking for, what he suspects he's always been looking for.