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fae_boleynTitle: Back To The Beginning
Fandom: Inception, mild/moderate Whoniverse
Pairings: Arthur/Eames, pre-Ariadne/Arthur/Eames
Rating: R, for language and implied sexuality
Story Summary: "You think you know a story, but you only know how it ends. To get to the heart of the story, you need to go back to the beginning." (The Tudors, Opening Narration). We all have stories. Who we were, what we've been through, defines who we are.
Chapter Summary: Arthur's always been on his own, never truly having anyone to rely on but himself. Pulled into a world he could have never imagined, he starts running and he never stops. He has his duties, his responsibilities, but is that what he really wants? And if he can have what he wants, will he be brave enough to take it?
Don't breathe too deep
Don't think all day
Dive into work
Drive the other way
That drip of hurt
That pint of shame
Goes away
Just play the game...
So I own not a notion
I escape and ape content
I don't own emotion, I rent...
Dying in America
At the end of the millennium
We're dying in America
To come into our own... – What You Own, RENT
Arthur knows his father isn't a bad man. He can be a really great Dad when he's not drinking that stuff that looks nasty and tastes nastier – he sipped it once when Mom was at work and Dad was sleeping, and just the one sip made his stomach hurt. But Dad drinks a lot. Mom says it's because he's sad; he lost his job at the Navy Yard and he can't find another one. Arthur's not entirely sure why not working is a bad thing, since he'd love to not have to go to school and Mom always tells him that school is a kid's work, but it's apparently true.
Dad's not bad, but when he drinks too much of his favorite drinks – beer and vodka and scotch, though at eight years old Arthur doesn't care much about the names of the stuff – he's scary. He yells and throws things, or sometimes he cries, and then he falls asleep and snores really loudly. Arthur's old enough to know that his dad is drunk when he gets like this, but he's not quite old enough to understand why his father gets like this so often. He just knows that this is when he and his mother talk quietly in Hebrew, and try to leave Dad alone.
He has a bad feeling that Dad's been drinking when he and Mom get in the car, but Mom doesn't say anything so he can't. “Jacob, stop driving so fast,” his mother says when they're halfway home, and he knows Mom's picked up on the fact that something's wrong, but Dad just ignores her. Actually, Arthur thinks they might be going even faster now.
He's too scared even to scream when the car goes into a spin and then slams right into another car. There's a loud crack and his arm suddenly hurts really badly, then he's jerked back and his head slams into the side of the car. The last thing Arthur remembers before everything goes black is seeing yet another car flying into them.
He wakes up in the hospital, white walls and white sheets, and they tell him that his mother is dead and his father is in jail. He doesn't have any other family – he had an Uncle Brian who worked for the government, but he died last year – so after the doctor and the nurses another stranger comes to see him. Ms. Johnson tells him that he's going into foster care, and all Arthur knows is that he's going to spend the next ten years until he can live on his own being raised by strangers. Ms. Johnson tries to make it sound nice, but it's not and she can't fool him.
~ ~ ~
Arthur's favorite thing about going to Central High School is that it's not a neighborhood school. You have to be accepted to go there, even though it's public. That means that no matter where he lives in the city, he gets to stay at the same school. He's switched schools enough times during the eight years of foster care to know that it sucks. At least his school stays the same now, though this is the second home he's lived in since starting there.
The Feldmans are all right. They're Jewish, which is nice, though they're a lot more observant than his family ever was. They love that he can speak Hebrew, and encourage him to learn more about the faith. It's kind of annoying, but it's well meant and he's learned to appreciate that. It's more than he's gotten in some of the places he's lived.
It's not like his life's been a horror story, or anything like that. There hasn't been any abuse, or neglect, or rape, or any of the crap he's sure some people would imagine. Nothing like that. It's just... He doesn't belong with the families he lives with, and they don't usually go out of their way to make him feel otherwise. The Feldmans are better than most, but they want to make him into what they see him as, some kind of replacement for their son, with whom they've had a nasty falling-out. Arthur's not sure what's behind that, though from some of the things they stop themselves from saying, he suspects that Isaac was gay, and his parents, being from a different generation, couldn't take it.
It's nothing new. Arthur's used to pretending to be someone he isn't, it's what most of the families he's lived with want from him. From what other foster kids he knows have said, this chameleon thing's par for the course in their lives too. I'll be whatever you want me to be, just keep me. Don't make me have to start all over again. For some people it probably works. For him, it never has; he never manages to figure out exactly what people want from him, so he never lasts long.
Arthur keeps trying because it's the easiest way to survive this world, but it doesn't mean he has to like it. He's already decided, once he's eighteen – eighteen and out, he only has two more years before his life is his own – he's never going to pretend to be what he's not again. He's not entirely sure who he is yet, but he's working on it. He has an old guitar he bought from a pawn shop last month, and he's got a lead role in the spring musical. Music's great, and he's also getting into computer stuff. Mr. Feldman seems convinced that's never going anywhere, but Arthur thinks he's wrong, and he's trying to learn whatever he can about computers. Music and computers make sense, and he likes that.
His life doesn't make sense, but maybe if he sticks with things that do, it will one day. It's something to be getting on with, anyway. Arthur thinks that's all he can ask for right now.
~ ~ ~
He joins the Marine Corps when he gets out of high school, because if nothing else, the military will pay for college. They don't care about his love for music, so he pushes that down, not getting rid of it but not broadcasting it either. He learns to be a good soldier, and his computer skills are useful for the military as well. It's a decent life, and Arthur likes it. As long as you do what you're told, get your duties done, you have a place here. Semper fi isn't just fancy words, it means something. It's the first time Arthur's felt like he fits somewhere since his mother died, and it's a good feeling. But he knows it will only last as long as he can be the soldier they need him to be.
There's no reason to question it when his XO orders him to report, not until he arrives at the man's office and finds himself face to face with a leggy redhead in a black skirt suit. “Levine, this is Special Agent Alexandra Shepard,” the XO tells him. Then, to his shock, the older man walks out, leaving Arthur alone with the woman.
“Agent Shepard,” he says evenly, not sure what this is about. She's got to be with NCIS, there's no reason any other agency would be bothering with a PFC, right? Dark green eyes are studying him, and he feels just a little uncomfortable. What the hell does she want?
“Arthur, isn't it? Call me Alex, please, Agent Shepard could just as easily be my sister and since she's the NCIS one in the family, that's kind of weird just now.”
“You're not NCIS?”
“No, I'm not. I actually work for DESI. Have you ever heard of it?”
Arthur hasn't, and he tells her as much. She nods, and doesn't seem too surprised. “Well, we're always looking for new recruits, and you came up on our radar. So I'm here to gi- offer you a job.”
“'Offer'? Does that mean I have a choice?” The change of wording was just a little too obvious, and Arthur's suspicions are immediately raised. The wry smile he gets in response to his question doesn't make him feel any better, either.
“No, you really don't.”
He meets her eyes and sees just a hint of sympathy there, and Arthur wonders if Alexandra Shepard was in his place once, standing across from an agent in a neatly pressed suit with steady, measuring eyes, being pushed into something she'd never thought of. Maybe this is normal for DESI, whatever the fuck DESI is or does. He wants to be angry, wants to hate her for making him be something he's not, again, except he doesn't know that's what she's doing. Who says he has to change to be one of them? However he caught their interest, it was by being himself, by using the skills that define him. So this could be considered a natural progression. Maybe he can be OK with that.
~ ~ ~
Department of Extraterrestrial and Supernatural Investigation. When Alex first told him, Arthur thought she was kidding. Six months later, he knows better. He knows better after being sent on his first assignment with an agent who's only been at the agency for a couple of years herself – yet another redhead, he's beginning to wonder if someone in DESI's recruitment office has a kink for red-haired women. Paula Ravenwood is a fucking telepath and claims to be a witch, and now that he's seen her vanish in a swirl of bright blue lights and reappear across the room, he thinks she might be telling him the truth. Ravenwood also has the weirdest eyes he's ever seen, some kind of amber-gold that he'd think were contacts if this wasn't DESI. And here, he's coming to realize, the simple and logical explanations are usually dead wrong.
They take down a rogue agent turned serial killer in Seville, and Arthur loves it. There's something about the investigation, about gathering the information and putting it together, about the challenge of finding this guy and taking him down that's just thrilling. He's always liked to know things, always liked collecting the most random of facts, but this is different. This is fact-finding with a purpose, it's disciplined, careful, and it suits him. And there's the thrill of the hunt too. Can't disregard that.
Despite the job with Paula, Alex is his real partner. She's a training partner, officially, but he doesn't work with her much even though she's supposed to be showing him the ropes. He asks why and she laughs, making some offhand comment about a new project. And then one day they're sitting across from each other in her office, and she pulls out a gun and shoots him in the head.
He jerks awake in a lounge chair, looking around wildly to see Alex sitting up in an identical chair next to him, calmly pulling an IV needle from her arm. He looks down to see a matching one in his own arm, and looks back at her, eyes wild. “What the fuck?”
Alex frowns. “Sorry about the dramatics, I was played the same way and I know it works, so... Anyway, that was your first experience in lucid dreamshare. Insane, isn't it?”
“Wait a minute. We were having the same dream?”
“Yep.”
“I... What is this, Alex?” Except he thinks he already knows.
“It's my new program. They're putting me in charge of Dreamscape, and we're going to be figuring out every possible thing that can be done with this.”
Yeah, it's what he'd suspected. “And where do I come in?”
“You'll be working on the project with me, of course. We'll be moving out to the place set up in L.A. two weeks from today.”
Arthur's not sure what to say, and as it turns out, this is another one of those 'offers' that really aren't, which doesn't surprise him at all. What does surprise him is how much he likes it. Dreams have to be built, attention to detail is imperative if you don't want your subjects to know it's a dream. He doesn't have any special flair for architecture, but details he can do. It's just him, Alex, and an older, semi-retired agent, Miles, working on this. Miles is the architect, and Arthur's the one who finds out what design would be best. Because they're testing on unsuspecting agents, and Arthur's job is to learn them inside out beforehand, to find out the best way to get the information that they want.
Dreamshare has two useful applications, Alex says. One is intel, it's a whole new way to interrogate. The other is training. You can get injured, even die in a dream, experience it like it's really happening, and then wake up good as new. It's ideal, better than any simulators they've ever tried. They're mostly working out the kinks for intel right now, since the training aspects are simpler.
It's not long before Miles brings in two more people. What shocks Arthur and Alex both is that they're not agents, but civilians. Mal is Miles' daughter, she's a chemist and he wants her to work on designing new sedative compounds for them. The other is Mal's husband, Dom, another architect. It doesn't make sense, not when they have Miles, but it turns out that Miles is finally retiring completely. As much as any DESI agent ever can, anyway; Miles will be required, when he goes back to teaching, to give the names of “promising” students to a DESI recruitment officer. But he is leaving, which is why he got Hasling to agree to let Dom and Mal join. Civilian consultants are all but unheard of at DESI, but it works, somehow.
Dom's amazing, even better than Miles was, and Mal's compounds are always a surprise. Sometimes they're not very pleasant, but there are worse things, and Arthur can always remind himself it's not real. Most of the time, anyway, but it feels sometimes like the lines are starting to blur. They all feel it, and it becomes a question of how to be sure that this world is the real one.
Mal's the one who solves it, with an idea for something called a totem. A small, nondescript object with properties only you know, that would be different in a dream. He doesn't know what Dom or Mal choose as totems, but Alex has a ring that he knows is hers. He doesn't know what about it signals her, but then again that's the whole point.
For himself, Arthur's not sure what he wants to use as his totem until he's walking from the bus stop to his apartment one day and he happens to see a red die on the ground. He picks it up, considering, and then smiles. It's not hard to weight the clear red cube so that it always rolls to six, and now he has his totem. He likes the idea of it, the illusion of chance when really there's only one outcome. Arthur doesn't like to leave things to chance, so it seems appropriate.
They add another agent around this point, a woman named Julianna Sinclair, who prefers to be called Jules. She gives Arthur a funny look when they meet, and asks if he's related to a Brian Hartford. That was his mother's brother, and he tells her so. She laughs, and says he was her father, and apparently a DESI agent like them. He died doing it, and she never met him. Arthur's not sure what to say to that, this is the first time he's been around anyone with a blood tie to him in almost sixteen years.
He and Jules never really get along. It's not that they dislike each other, more that they don't know how to handle each other. Arthur has the odd feeling they could have been close, extremely so, in another life, another universe, but even if that's true it's not the case here. Still, they deal, and they all work together, more or less seamlessly, developing this project into something viable.
~ ~ ~
Five months in, and it's time for the 'Three Hs' to look things over. The nickname refers to the three higher-ups who need to be impressed before this thing's official. James Hasling is DESI's director, a former Army colonel with steel-gray hair and cold blue eyes. Yvonne Hartman is the blonde, icily beautiful director of Torchwood. Torchwood is basically DESI: Great Britain, or so Arthur's been told. The third 'H' is Jack Harkness, head of Torchwood Three. It's not clear why both Hartman and Harkness need to agree to Dreamscape at first, until Arthur manages to find out that Harkness is also the assistant director of Torchwood. Anything happens to Hartman, he's in charge.
Arthur wonders what will become of Torchwood if that happens. It's not that Harkness is an idiot or anything; honestly, he's probably been the one to most easily grasp what they're doing here. But he's... He swaggers around in a 1940s greatcoat, and he flirts with everything that moves. Including Arthur.
“I did not know they were making them this gorgeous at DESI,” Harkness says when they first meet. “Captain Jack Harkness.” He holds out a hand, and Arthur just raises an eyebrow.
“Don't like to shake hands?” Harkness says after a moment of silence, dropping his hand.
“I'm pretty sure your comment was just this side of being considered sexual harassment, sir, so you can understand why I might not want to shake your hand.”
“Ouch, the boy has bite. I was just admiring the way you fill out that suit, Agent...?”
“Levine, and you're skating ever closer to the line, Captain.”
“Come on, Agent Levine, I'm harmless.”
Arthur bites back a laugh at that one. He's heard stories of Jack Harkness, and the man is anything but harmless. He's legendary even at DESI, and the worst of it, he's actually the type of man who most appeals to Arthur. He doesn't seem to have a type when it comes to women, but every man Arthur's ever had even a passing interest in was the same type as Harkness. Cocky, flirty, there's something about the attitude that just flat does it for Arthur. But he's not about to have a one-night stand with a superior, though he's sure Harkness would take the offer and not use it against him later. But it's beyond unprofessional to even consider it.
“Harkness, stop trying to pick up Arthur, you'll embarrass all of us when if backfires spectacularly,” Alex says, walking down the hallway.
“Relax, Shepard, I'm not going to steal your right-hand man,” Harkness says with a smirk. As if you could, Arthur thinks.
A week later, Dreamscape is cleared for full operation. The team has an impromptu party, and later Dom and Mal will say they're pretty sure Philippa was conceived that night. Alex will laugh about that when she hears it, Jules will roll her eyes, and Arthur will point out that he really could have gone the rest of his life without ever knowing that.
~ ~ ~
The first wave of personnel are more DESI agents and a group of Torchwood agents. The original five get to work immediately on training them, first in the basics of dreaming and then in the more specialized areas. Jules they call an extractor; she's a first rate interrogator in the real world, and damn good at finding secrets in dreams. Dom is the architect of course, and Mal is still their chemist. Alex and Arthur are a little less obvious. They started out calling Arthur the recon guy, but he didn't like that label. Point man sounds better, and so that's how he refers to himself.
As for Alex, there was an interesting day where they were under and she was thinking about her sister. Rather fixedly, as it happened, and all she said later was that she was trying to figure out what she would do if she were her sister, who was having some kind of personal problem. This had a side effect – it wasn't exact, but Alex looked a hell of a lot like Jenny Shepard instead of Alex Shepard. She can do it on command now, and she can be anyone, not just her sister. They call it forging, and Arthur's not sure if it's the most fascinating thing he's ever seen or the scariest.
They test the newcomers to see where their strengths lie, and it's kind of annoying that Arthur only finds two other people who have the head for details that a point man needs. Or a point woman, since the DESI agent is a woman named Liv Morgan. The Torchwood agent is called Ianto Jones, and what's a little creepy is that he and Arthur are rather similar. They even dress alike. Ianto's friend Ashley, who is one of Mal's people, affectionately nicknames them the suit boys.
In fact, Arthur sometimes thinks Ashley's adopted him. She's a cheerful, slightly madcap scientist who's dating another one of the Torchwood agents, an ex-SAS architect named Daniel Moran, and Arthur likes her immediately. It's hard not to like Ashley, with her caustic humor and her bright smiles and the way she throws herself into her work with such energy. And she doesn't let Arthur continue with his semi-antisocial tendencies, always dragging him over to sit with her, Daniel, and Ianto at lunch, talking him into going out with them after hours. He's the only DESI agent who spends more time with Torchwood people than his own fellows, and he finds that he doesn't mind.
It's the second wave that makes things interesting. Soldiers now, from all four branches of the U.S. military, but always from some kind of special ops. And then there's the British SAS guys. Daniel gets nervous when they first arrive, because he's worried that he might know some of them. He doesn't, as it turns out, at least not really. There's one guy named Becker that he met when they were both in training, but they barely knew each other and Becker doesn't react at all when he sees Daniel.
Arthur finds a few more point men among the soldiers, but it soon doesn't matter. Alex gets the bright idea to start cross-training, so that people can switch jobs as required. Arthur turns out to be decent at extracting, and he has a flair for paradoxical architecture. Oddly enough, he's not nearly as good with normal architecture, though his work is passable.
It's forging which proves impossible. Alex has figured out two kinds of forging; basic and advanced. Basic is what she's trying to teach everyone. It's changing things about yourself; eye color, hair color, height, that sort of thing. Everyone is usually able to manage the basic forging; it's just altering little bits of you, after all. Some people can't hold it unless they concentrate only on that, which makes it less than useless for them, but they can make it happen.
Everyone, that is, except Arthur. Alex knows this already, but she insists on trying one more time, sending him under with one of the soldier groups. She's there too, of course, in a room of mirrors, each of them standing in front of one. She walks between the men, offering advice and compliments. She laughs at one of the SAS guys, who got the idea in about two seconds flat. Arthur glances over to see that the man in question has gone from wearing a black t-shirt and green military-issue pants to a biker's leather. His short haircut's now a blue mohawk, and he has piercings everywhere.
“A bit dramatic, don't you think?” Alex asks.
“Well, that's the point, love,” he says carelessly. Alex raises an eyebrow at the endearment, but says nothing. She does, however, come over to Arthur a few minutes later.
“Still nothing?”
Most of the soldiers are gone by now, having killed themselves and woken up after achieving the goals set by Alex. He knows she's filed away the best of them to see who might be able to handle the more advanced shit. He certainly won't, he thinks sardonically, frowning at his uncooperative reflection. He can't even make his hair go from the slicked-back look he'd adopted as soon as his high and tight had grown out to the floppy mess his hair is every morning before the gel hits it, or change the suit he wears like the uniforms he used to have into the jeans and button-downs he wears at home.
“Christ, Arthur, do you have no imagination at all? It's not that hard, just change yourself a little. Like a chameleon.”
Click. And there it is. Chameleon. The one thing he said he'd never be again. “I can't do it, Alex.”
“Sure you can. Everyone else has managed to change something about their looks.”
“But I can't.”
“Arthur...”
“I don't want to. I have absolutely no interest in being anything except myself. It won't work because I don't want it.”
Alex looks like she wants to say something, but turns around instead, to where mohawk-guy is standing, normal again. He's the only other one left, and Alex glares at him. “Did you need something, Lieutenant Eames?”
“No, not a thing,” Lieutenant Eames says, amused gray eyes flicking to meet Arthur's in the mirror for a moment before he shoots himself in the head to wake up. Arthur's not sure why Eames took that moment to look at him, or why he cares about the reason at all.
Link to the next section: fae-boleyn.livejournal.com/10371.html
