A/N: Oops. Posted this up on my LiveJournal account a few days ago, and then promptly forgot to post it on here. My bad, guys. So sorry.

Please don't forget to review!

Alive

000

Part II

000

[before]

It takes Arthur three minutes to throw himself into the path of a car, the rough jolt like a kick from the base of his spine and then he's up, he's awake, he's in London again.

Cobb is still next to him, eyes closed, face smoothed over and flat. Still dreaming, then, Arthur thinks, and then he looks across and the place where Eames should be is empty and the girl in fishnets is nowhere to be seen.

"Bastard," Arthur says, and it feels good. "Bloody bastard."

He grabs the back of Cobb's chair and wrenches and then Cobb is jerking awake and gasping, eyes indignant and snapping up to Arthur's face, and Cobb gets out, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"He's a forger," Arthur says to him, then, "I'm sorry."

"He's what?"

"It didn't show up in the research. He probably already knew we'd check up on him."

"But we had him," Cobb says, and the light bulb above them is still blinking, Cobb's face sliding in and out of the light, eyes narrowed like they are whenever things start to collapse. "We had him, we went down to the second level and – you were there, we were three doors away from the vault and then you gave me the kick, two days early."

"That wasn't me down there."

"I saw you, it was – "

"He's a forger, Cobb," and that's when Cobb swears and stands up, reading between the lines, the job with no description of the mark and everything seeming just a little too easy, Eames taking the drink with a smile and no questions, eyes fixed on Arthur across the bar.

Cobb scrubs a hand up through his hair and Arthur gives him a moment, then says, "We should get out."

"Yeah. Cairo is sounding pretty good right now."

Cairo is good, all blanketing heat and haze, the dust that makes its way through everything and Cobb keeps a Beretta in his jacket always, Arthur saying we should probably split up, and Cobb agreeing, but neither of them doing anything about it. They change motel rooms every second night, running from something and they don't know what, Cobb asking one night from his place on the couch why, what did he even get out of all this, and Arthur saying nothing at all to that, thinks of Eames with his long fingers tracing the Glock and saying everyone is after something, my dear.

000

No-one comes chasing after them.

This is surprising, Arthur so used to the zing of bullets over his head, the sudden shatter of glass and the pelting down alleyways, always running, the thud of his feet on the ground, his heart pounding tattoos into the underside of his ribs.

No-one comes and it's two weeks later when Cobb says I'm heading to Costa Rica, no explanation, just need to get out of here and Arthur says right, okay, not a problem at all. There's a bullet-sized bruise on Cobb's right bicep and Arthur thinks that Mal must be getting worse. Arthur sees him to the airport though, Cobb with a duffel holding all that he owns, and Cobb doesn't thank him but Arthur understands.

"Be careful," Arthur tells him at the departure lounge.

"You too."

They don't go beyond that, Cobb keeping his eyes always angled down, as if he's faintly ashamed of something.

Arthur nods and heads for the taxi rank and on the ride back to the cramped motel a dust storm blows in from somewhere in the West, turns everything dry and deep yellow-brown, and when Arthur looks out of the taxi window he can only see outlines and nothing distinct.

000

[after]

Darling slips in the next day, unintentionally, Eames passing him an apple over breakfast and saying here you are, darling, you know what they say.

Arthur doesn't notice until he's bitten into the apple, and then Eames says I'm sorry, I didn't mean that.

"Mean what?" Arthur says, after he's swallowed his bite.

"Darling. I didn't mean to call you darling just then."

"I don't mind."

"You don't?"

"No."

Something gives in Eames' smile. "Well, you said that, not me. I only hope you won't grow to regret giving your permission so readily once I start shamelessly abusing my privilege, darling."

"When have you not shamelessly abused your privileges, Eames?" Arthur says, and then his throat clogs up. "No, wait, I didn't mean that, I don't know why I said – "

"I don't mind."

Arthur stares, and they finish their breakfast in silence, the snap of the apple beneath Arthur's teeth. When they're done they go out into the broad sunlight, bursts of white coming off the glass of faraway buildings and Arthur thinking of the glare of a lighthouse he once knew, warning of dangerous rocks ahead, and that night a lighthouse appears on one of the closest cliffs and Eames looks up at it from their edge of the beach, surprised, says I don't remember that being there yesterday.

000

[before]

Eames is waiting for him at the motel room.

Eames is waiting and the moment Arthur comes in Eames says, "Hullo, love," and Arthur's gun is out in an instant.

"Eames," Arthur says, tongue forming the word, the name, and flicks the safety off. "Eames."

"Arthur."

There's no nervousness in the line of Eames' back, silk shirt opened to two or three buttons down in the heat, gray eyes amused, too patient, like in the room Arthur had once lived in as a child with the bullets ripping through the windows and floor and Arthur still cuffed to his four-poster bed.

"You waited until Cobb was gone," Arthur says and Eames grins at him.

"Well, yes, naturally."

"Did you set up our job, with yourself as the mark?"

"Not entirely." Eames tips his head a little, then says pointedly, "What about something to drink, darling?"

Arthur cocks his handgun in response. "Unfortunately I don't keep liquor in these rooms, Mr Eames."

"No culture and no imagination," Eames sighs and Arthur's finger is itching there on the trigger, one jerk too soon and that smile would be gone, wiped clean. "Always said the American education system was flawed. Well, it's a good thing then that I'm always well-prepared, isn't it?"

Arthur fires a shot at the floor in warning to that and Eames' hand pauses en route to his jacket pocket.

"Best be careful, love," and Eames suddenly has his eyes very steady, though he doesn't try the manoeuvre again.

"I'm always very careful. Hands where I can see them, if you please."

Eames obeys. "There's no need to be so hostile, sweetheart. There's nothing in my pocket but a bottle of Johnny Walker, and that's only dangerous if you drink the whole thing by yourself."

"I won't make the mistake of underestimating you again."

"The greatest compliment is to be underestimated, which is why I'm here with a proposal for you."

"I don't do business with people of your type."

"That explains why your clientele is so limited, then," Eames says, dart-smile spreading over his face, and Arthur exercises great self-restraint to prevent his finger from squeezing the trigger.

"The extent of my clientele has nothing to do with you."

"Your clientele wants both of us dead, Arthur dear, so I think it has something to do with me."

Arthur shifts but his gun stays level and still and he says, "In that case, I'd be doing them a favour if I shot you. Perhaps it'll be enough for me to bargain with."

Eames makes a face that says well, you do have a point there.

"I suppose that might be enough to save you. It won't be enough to save Cobb though, you see, and he lands in San José in, what, ten hours? Such a pity. I was almost starting to like the man, even if his wife did try very hard to kill me in second level."

That hits something, a subtle twitch in Arthur's chest at Cobb, it won't be enough to save Cobb, and Arthur's eyes narrow over the barrel of the gun. "Explain."

"It's rather difficult to explain with a gun pointed at one's head, my dear."

"Very well," Arthur says, points the gun at his throat instead. "Better now?"

Eames laughs at that, the gray of his eyes lighting up in the dusty glow through the windowpanes, says, "Not really, sweetheart. But good try, nonetheless."

000

[after]

It can't be, Eames says when they're at the foot of the lighthouse, old-fashioned red-and-white stripes all across it, the paint seeming shiny and perfectly new. It can't be that we're the only ones here.

Arthur runs his hand across the concrete and thinks bridge, thinks train passing over it, and some spot on his side just above his left hip twinges slightly as if pricked by a needle-point.

"I haven't seen anyone here except you," Arthur says. "We just – it seems we just washed up here."

"But we must have washed up from somewhere, darling," Eames tells him, looking back over a shoulder, the tips of his shoes barely a metre away from the ledge.

"Perhaps there was an accident."

"You mean a plane crash, love?"

"I don't know what I mean."

Eames gives a soft little hum at that and tilts backwards on his heels. He's still wearing that jacket from weeks ago, hole in the back and in the shirt underneath, and when he moves Arthur can see the round bruise that peeks out from the silk and the pinstriped wool like a spill of purple ink. Arthur thinks that a bullet could have made that hole, though it couldn't have ever made that bruise. The strangeness of it tugs at him endlessly.

"You should get a new suit," Arthur says to Eames later, when they're standing together on the platform of the lighthouse and looking out and across the surging waves.

"Whatever for?"

"There's a hole in it. Haven't you noticed that yet?"

Eames hasn't and Arthur has to point it out, fingertips on the small of Eames' back and sliding up to ghost the rim of the bruise. The feel of Eames' skin is smooth and Arthur takes his hand away very quickly, starting as if he's just been burnt, and below them the water pounds down on the rock like a heartbeat.

"You're a hypocrite then," Eames says at last. "You've a hole in your shirt as well, my dear."

"I would mend it, if I had a sewing kit."

"Of all the things in this world that we do not have, Arthur, you want a blasted sewing kit."

"Well, I can't possibly wish for a tailor, can I?"

Eames looks at him and says, finally, "No, I suppose not."

But that night there's a suit on Eames' bed and a sewing kit on Arthur's bedside table, and they don't ask, don't question anything, put it down to the inexplicable way their world works. The morning comes and they sit on the platform again, lean their backs against the metal railing, and the holes are gone from both of their suits but the bruises still linger and don't seem to fade.

000

[before]

Eames has a tongue that's remarkably silver and Arthur can't remember why he put his gun down, Glock resting on its side at Arthur's elbow and Eames says we'll need a new layout, my dear, and Arthur says why did you double-cross them at all.

"I didn't double-cross them," Eames says to that, very smoothly, legs crossed and haphazard-looking in his chair. "I adapted to circumstances and could not complete my job."

"But you could've. You had Cobb alone on first level."

"I also had you alone on first level."

"Yes, you did," Arthur says and doesn't understand what he hears.

Eames shrugs, says details, love, just details, and Arthur says I always read the fine print before I sign contracts, Eames shrugging again, casual roll of broad shoulders, says it's no contract and besides we don't have time for this now, just nine hours, bullet-holes patterning themselves into arrival halls and Cobb in an air vent in Amsterdam saying it's alright, don't panic on Arthur's first job.

"The only thing," Eames tells him, like it's a pearl of wisdom that Arthur doesn't bloody well know already, "we can do is find something they want more than our three buried corpses."

"Don't know what I'd want more than your buried corpse," Arthur says, and he means it.

Eames' lips quirk a little.

"Yes, darling. You've made yourself clear on that front."

000

Eames is hiding something, and when Arthur says you know I don't trust you Eames grins with a look that says ten different things and yet means not a single one of them, tells Arthur well that makes two of us, love.

They go under to give themselves time to make plans and in the dream Eames is slippery, mercurial, like a fish Arthur's trying to catch with bare hands. Arthur spends the hours poring over a sketchbook and Eames stands in front of a mirror, and once Arthur looks up from his work and meets his own eyes from across the room, his own face, his own way of holding his jaw. Eames smiles at him and Arthur sees his own lips curve, and Eames has managed to even get that flawlessly, the cool and collected way Arthur smiles because Arthur's been trained that way for so long, and Arthur snaps at him shortly, don't do that, cut it out, and Eames melts back to Eames with a certain glow in his eye that says that he's learnt something, says that he's won.

"You fascinate me, darling," Eames tells him eventually, four hours in and Arthur with the primitive layout done, just working out all of the finer details that Eames keeps insisting is unnecessary.

"Why? Are you unaccustomed to efficiency?"

"I'm unaccustomed to your degree of loyalty."

Arthur stops, ballpoint pen balanced perfectly in one hand. "I'm not surprised, considering my experience with you so far."

"Does Cobb reciprocate your unfaltering dedication to him, I wonder?"

"That has no relevance to the job at hand, Mr Eames."

"It has plenty of relevance." Eames shoves Arthur's papers to one side; Arthur glares and snatches his sketchbook back. "You don't know me, darling, you make it quite clear you don't like me, yet you trust – "

"I've already said, I don't trust you."

"And yet here you are, in a dream with me."

"I was in a dream with you last time as well," and Arthur pauses, then adds, "unfortunately."

"But this time you're willing."

"No, I'm not, if you really must know."

Eames takes the hint, drops the subject at once like it's scalded him. "Where's the safe, sweetheart? You're a terrible architect. You're so neat that I can't tell at all what you've drawn."

It's a lighthouse and Arthur doesn't bother telling him so, doesn't bother even when they're back in Cairo and doesn't bother even when they're at the very foot of it, concrete stripes and Eames tipping back on his heels with his face twisted up to see through all that sun, shadow stretching out lean like a pencil-jot, saying hmm, not bad, not bad at all, giant monolith of red and perfect white like a sundial pointing out the sky.

"Not bad," Eames says. "I'm rather impressed. Especially since you've no imagination at all."

Arthur spits a retort that he doesn't remember, and Cobb is saying somewhere in Mexico that you shouldn't use memories, never use memories, and Arthur thinks up an excuse about not enough time and thinks nothing at all about his sister and the house which crumbled its way into soot, Arthur aged seven at the top of a lighthouse dreaming of boats and of monsters under the sea, seeing too late the bright orange dot on the hill-side, same place where his house's roof used to be.

Eames is the first ever to see this lighthouse and Arthur doesn't realise until it's over and done.

000

[after]

They move.

Arthur has bursts of this feeling, sitting upright on his hotel bed and fingers scrambling for the light, not that he's slept anyway, not that either of them have slept. Whenever it happens Arthur goes across the hall and Eames is there like he always is, that worn poker chip flipping through his fingers, suited shoulders gone silvery-grey by the moon.

"Again?" Eames says each time without fail, and Arthur doesn't need to say yes.

They move.

Hotel rooms seem to build themselves, tall glass and steel girders, wherever they go. Arthur thinks that this place is a labyrinth of places, equally anonymous and equally lost, like the walls of a maze that's been partially knocked down. Arthur thinks that there must be some centre to it, something there in the middle that they're meant to strive for, and Eames shrugs whenever Arthur brings it up and says darling, don't ask me, I don't have a clue.

So they move. Arthur doesn't know why it's important to move, to keep running, only knows that it happens, they do. In the distance the lighthouse is gleaming and white and they run in their own way, taking it slow.

000

[before]

Eames is simultaneously one of the best and one of the worst Arthur has ever worked with.

Eames is slanted eyes and carelessness, but careless without an ounce of effort and easy, like when everything falls into place it's just luck and not purpose, not hours of planning. They pick their way through the tangle of streets and Eames whistles, scuffs at the road with his feet.

Arthur can't tolerate carelessness.

They lose five hours on the trip to Bucharest and two and a half to locating their mark and when they finally go under Arthur wants to run, as if he can tread the seconds underneath his feet and leave them somewhere far behind. Eames says slow down, love, we've got twenty hours and you don't want to attract undue attention to yourself, do you?

Arthur glares at him, reloading his Glock in the side-street and says you're wearing that ridiculous shirt of yours and you're worried about attracting any undue attention.

"It's your dream, dear, you dressed me, you know," Eames says and Arthur can't argue against that.

000

The first three hours are simple, Arthur and Eames in a hotel restaurant two streets away from the lighthouse, sun setting, the two of them waiting for nightfall.

Eames actually insists on eating and Arthur wonders why he bothers at all, nobody needs to eat in dreams and Eames has orange flecks on the tips of his hair and a wine glass, expensive Bordeaux red, Arthur watching him out of the corner of his eye and wondering why he feels like he needs to.

"No need to stare, sweetheart. I'm not going anywhere."

"I don't trust you," Arthur says, third time.

"You'll need to trust me if you want this to work," and Eames makes a great show of unfolding his napkin. "Can't be fighting projections and each other at the same time, you know."

Arthur notes to himself how quick those fingers are. "I think I can be excused for fighting you."

"Up above? Certainly. But not down here, Arthur love."

It's true and Arthur is annoyed with himself because he knows this. Trust is integral down here, that time on the Weis job and the holding cell and the way Weis had put a gun down on the table within Arthur's reach, said anytime, it's yours, just tell me what I want to know and the awful crack of Arthur's arm breaking, left one, then right, then onto his legs. Cobb had come for him almost twelve hours later, swearing and saying that bitch, that bitch, I'm never letting you set yourself up as bait again, before mercifully shooting him twice in the head.

Eames hums when the duck confit finally comes and Arthur says, "You won't need to worry about me. I'm a professional."

"I never doubted that, dear."

It's condescending and Arthur wants very deeply to punch him but Arthur never does things like that. There are so many lines that Arthur won't cross.

"Good," he says instead, and Eames smiles at him like he knows, like Eames in his own way has always known.

000

[after]

"You know we can't keep doing this, love," Eames says.

It's morning and they're walking along a courtyard and a fountain is going in the centre of it. Arthur thinks of pigeons, in Spain perhaps, or France, and he's never seen a pigeon here.

"We're just walking," Arthur tells him. "We do this all the time."

"Darling, you know that's not what I'm talking about."

Arthur stops and Eames walks on a few steps before pausing as well. "You want to get out."

"Don't you, Arthur?"

"But there's nowhere for us to go," Arthur says, the spray of the fountain behind Eames' hair and Arthur thinks for a moment that he looks perfect like that. "There's something here and we have to find it, Eames."

Eames turns his head and says, "This place isn't right."

"It's the only place we have right now."

"That's not true," Eames says. "There's somewhere else. I can feel it, I just can't remember it too well."

"You've been dreaming, is all," Arthur tells him shortly and keeps walking, even though they never sleep anymore, something deep in his mind that says no less than a gunshot or a final plunge off the highest cliff and Arthur knows there's something wrong with this world, but at least it's better than no world at all.

000

TBC

000

A/N: Erm, look. This fic has exploded on my computer and I think it's going to end up with more than 3 Parts; I might end up with 4 Parts and an Epilogue, or something. Or maybe just 5 full-length Parts. (If the latter, there will be smut involved, but I'm rather doubtful of my smut-writing skills.) Just bear with me while I do this, alright guys? I'm terrified of this fic out-living (or out-wording) its welcome. I'm hoping this doesn't happen, but you can never be sure.

Please don't forget to review, dears!