Chapter Text
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(so call to this)
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Fourteen years before he kills in cold blood for the first time, Alexander, who will one day be Eames, locks himself in the bathroom with a packet of crayons and draws dragons on the tiles.
His lips bleed, bitten raw with the sullen effort not to cry.
Outside the door, a silence so full of trepidation it might be an executioner’s final breath.
He can hear a lot of voices swirling like clouds of smoke, but they aren’t real. He knows they aren’t.
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(He’s not well, Nana said to Doctor, who smiled a pale, untrue smile.)
(He just has an active imagination, Doctor said to Mam, who swirled her sherry like it was a crystal ball.)
(He’s very spiritual, Mam said to Nana, who scowled like the witch she was.)
(Father said something else entirely.)
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Alexander, who is not yet Eames, draws dragons on the tiles with angry fists, grunting with effort. Crayon does not stick nicely to tiles, not like Auntie Joan’s pens, only he doesn’t have any of those with him. He wasn’t allowed to pack his bag before he left, stubborn jawed and whimpering.
“Do you know the story of Odysseus?” a voice on the other side of the bathroom door asks. A real one, like Mam.
Only deeper, richer.
Mrs Keel, the man in the suit called her, but she said her name was Abbi.
Alexander, who will be only Eames in twenty years, does not reply.
Abbi tells the story of Odysseus through her bathroom door; all of it, like a poem that lives in her mouth, natural and permanent. Alexander draws dragons on the tiles until all of his crayons are broken.
Until there’s blood on his chin and a blister on his thumb.
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Thirty years later, he thinks about the dragons. Their pastel lines smudged day after day by the steam of the shower.
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The slide of wakefulness is a clean, smooth ride.
Eames opens his eyes in three blinks, stares across the mattress at a soft expanse of dark skin. He reaches out to trace a finger down the valley of Nina’s spine, from the base of her neck to the dip of her coccyx.
Nina shivers, her legs reaching back to kick him lazily.
“Menace,” she mumbles, slurred with sleep. “I was having the most wonderful dream.”
Eames tugs her by the waist to lay flush against him. He nips at the junction of her neck and smiles, rocking teasingly up against the back of her thighs. Despite his efforts, he actually feels barely in the mood for anything more than lazy rutting, followed quite possibly by a joint.
She allows it with catlike condescension.
Her hair is shorter than she usually keeps it. He kisses the back of her head, the strands tickling his face.
“Plenty more where they come from,” Eames replies, one hand on her stomach, the other skimming around her breasts.
“I have to go to work,” Nina groans, making no move to dislodge the man trapping her under the thin sheet covering them both.
The sandy grey light spilling through the open slats of the blinds is gentle; her bedroom smells of the lavender detergent she washes her laundry with, same as last time. She turns a little, kissing slightly to the left of his mouth. Eyes very dark and full of mirth, she smiles at him.
She’s young. It shows in her smile like in nothing else about her.
Despite his proclivity for women at least ten years his senior, he’s found himself increasingly drawn to this tiny flat in Milan, with Nina the photographer.
Nina, darling glitter eyeliner and heavy jewellery and a tight grip, who hadn’t even started school yet when he was getting pushed around by a mean drill sergeant.
He feels her thighs open around his leg, a hot stripe of damp along his hip. She smells of sweat and oranges. Her tongue is wet over his throat and her hands dig into the meat of his arms.
Just as her laughter buries into his mouth, his phone starts to ring.
A loud ringing chirp, hard buzzing over the wood of the bedside cabinet.
“Nnn,” he protests, rolling over her to reach for his phone. Her body is less than pliant beneath his as he locks his knees around her waist, his cock nestled quite perfectly between her breasts, making her laugh delightedly.
The phone vibrates in his hand angrily and he leans over to drop a kiss on her cheek. He frowns at the number lighting up the screen as he kneels, straddling her.
Her hands cup his arse, fingers tracing up and down as if to tug him up to her mouth, though she does nothing more than lick her lips teasingly.
“Is it your wife?” she asks with a grin.
Eames shakes his head, his smile stagnant on his face.
“Just a moment,” he says, tapping her open mouth with his finger.
Swinging himself off the bed, Eames walks out into her living room.
It’s colder here, where warm-blooded bodies haven’t been sleeping and breathing and screwing all night. Eames scowls, shrinking to less than half-mast, grabbing a throw from the back of the sofa to wrap around himself.
This is an awfully nice flat for a barely-twenties photographer, he thinks, not for the first time. Though, he’s not sure he wants to know the answer to his twenty questions.
(Which is, of course, why he’s never asked them.)
The phone in his hand is still ringing but he waits until he’s out on the balcony to answer it, voice grizzled with sleep.
“Make it quick, I was about t-”
“Read your tea leaves recently?"
The voice that interrupts is harsh, almost a whisper.
As he looks down at the Milan street below, Eames feels any lingering stirrings of sexual excitement drain out of him, replaced by a hard and uneasy chill.
“Am I going on a long journey?” he asks, snake belly soft in the hiss of the wind above the buildings.
The churches are open, and not much else.
“Hoping you could tell me. I think I am.”
“Shit,” Eames says, leaning down onto the cold bar at waist height with one hand, the throw tucked neatly around his hips. “Where are you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Arthur replies.
“I can get to you -”
“Too late,” Arthur insists, a grunt of ugly laughter in his voice. “They’re already here."
Eames crouches to sitting, back against the chilly rail, his knees cracking, and his phone clutched to his ear.
“How did they find you?” he asks, his mind already leaping through where Arthur last made contact.
Their job in Dubai. After that Mexico City, then Toronto.
Then? Had they followed so far, or was it unhappy by-chance?
Arthur’s response is feverish, full of regret.
“Mortimer,” he says.
“Fuck,” Eames snaps, louder than he means to.
Through the glass door he sees Nina, her naked body crossing the flat to the kitchen, a towel in her hand that she trails after her like a child with a faithful teddy bear.
Eames clenches his jaw. Anger spills through him like his blood seeping out of his veins, drowning his organs.
He is suddenly furious. Furious at this lovely woman with her twelve cameras and no bras, at himself for being so impossibly attracted to a girl technically young enough to be his daughter.
At Arthur’s stupidly soft heart that is at such odds with his sharp shooting and manic driving.
Eames squeezes his eyes shut as the clouds above Milan gather around the sun in a grumpy halo.
“I told you,” he says over Arthur’s self-reprimanding groan. “I fecking told you, if you got yourself tied down by your mistakes, I would let you burn.”
(It’s been twelve years since Eames told Arthur that.)
“You’re a liar,” Arthur murmurs, but it trembles through the phone and Eames feels his chest seize, cardiac implosion.
“I told you,” he says again as he pushes the panic down, pressing his eyelids hard with a forefinger and thumb.
“I know you did,” Arthur says, but the last word disappears with a clack of teeth.
Eames sucks in the corners of his mouth. He hears Arthur’s breath, precious, nervous.
“They’re downstairs.”
He can see it in his mind’s eye, then. Arthur, crouched low, gun in one hand, mobile in the other, sweat and dirt and dust. Stubble that burns skin with kisses and eyes that see lots of good where there is shit and rot.
“Arthur,” Eames says.
And then Arthur’s voice.
“I’m scared.”
He says it with that self-same curiosity as he always did, before. As if he’s surprised to discover he is frightened of what is to come.
It brings a sad, hollow smile to Eames’ face.
“I’ll come get you,” he says, like all he’ll have to do is pop in a car and drive down the road.
(Once, in January, seven feet of snow, one shovel, and a broken foot.)
He sees Arthur, seventeen years old, foul-tempered and hateful.
“Send the Architect,” he says, quieter still, so that Eames tucks his head into his own lap, straining to hear.
“She won’t have a fucking clue,” Eames snarls. The air inside him is poisonous gas and he feels it staining his lungs like tar. He wants a cigarette. He wants a stiff drink and a handful of unmarked pills.
“She’s good," Arthur reminds him, as if Eames could ever forget.
“Your faith in others will be my end,” Eames gripes, not for the first time.
Inside, Nina leaves a glass of coffee on the table before heading to the bathroom.
Across oceans, Arthur chokes back a sob of laughter.
“You know what to do,” Eames reminds him steadily.
Arthur’s fear is not a new phenomenon, but it’s a very particular kind of weapon against Eames’ resilient armour. His eyes sting, his throat aches from all the barbed lies he’s ever told.
He wants more time. Not much, just a little. Just enough to re-memorise all the pieces of this boy who is far out of reach.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Alex," Arthur murmurs.
Eames’ bones, brittle chunks of cement under his skin.
“I’m not,” he promises, truthfully. “Not even a little bit.”
Arthur’s breaths quieten to nothing again. Eames thinks he can hear crackling movement through the phone, though he could be imagining it.
(I had a vision, his Mam said, not just once, but often.)
“Stay on the line,” he orders.
“I’m out of ammo.”
Eames takes a breath, steadying, cold in his chest. Sunlit and icy.
“Ton visage est caché,” he promises, lucky charm brave, and he can picture it: Arthur, eyes of fresh death, tucking his phone into his pocket quietly.
He listens to the jostle of fabric, the plunge of voices bellowing in Portuguese.
Arthur’s response, Spanish and lyrical.
Silence, then gunfire.
The call breaks, like a phone cracking over concrete.
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Eames learns three words the first day he stays with Abbi and Rian Keel.
Androgynous. Rambunctious. Supercilious.
These are words he carries with him in a thick papered notebook, along with all the other things he learns. The Greek alphabet, some cockney rhyming slang, and a recipe for nettle soup, which sounds horrible and painful but is actually delicious.
“You have lovely handwriting,” Abbi says as she helps him spell fortuitous on the third day.
He blushes, glad she didn’t use the last three words that normally follow.
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(You have lovely handwriting for a boy.)
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When the phone call ends, Eames counts to one hundred, gets up, re-enters the flat.
Nina is still in the shower, probably waiting to see if he’ll join her. The coffee she left him is smooth and warm. He sips it calmly, staring at a blown-up portrait photo of a woman wearing only a necklace and pair of heels.
It’s a distressingly trashy image, the yellow glare of the background, her brown skin and blue choker and pink shoes. Eames loves it. The amused defiance in the model’s eyes, her purposefully downturned mouth.
(My raison d'être, Nina had called it, which was confusing and fantastic.)
Eames looks at the photo canvas on Nina’s wall. Thinks about Arthur, whom he now realises is probably in Brazil. After seven sips, he makes a phone call.
A voice answers, short, cut with the dull of a toothpick held between teeth.
“Parlez maintenan , or forever hold your peace.”
“C’est Anton,” Eames says. “J’ai besoin de ton aide.”
“Parlez maintenant, Anton.”
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He leaves before Nina’s out of the shower.
She’ll probably not forgive him, but he doubts their paths will cross again.
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(And in any case, he really is old enough to be her father.)
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The problem is, Eames told Arthur over a decade ago:
I’m going to help you. But if you think for one moment I will go out of my way to pull you out of any hot water you recklessly find yourself jumping in... I just won’t do it. Understand? I’m not in the business of charity.
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Five weeks later Arthur, who was not yet Arthur to anyone but Eames at that point, was known to the world only as Jeremy, goes on a deep cover operation.
Eames waits three days before he starts the search party.
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(a man without)
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Alexander Dalrymple, otherwise known as Dally, is placed decidedly into the hands of the military to serve Her Majesty when he is eighteen years old. On his birthday, in fact.
The night before, his mother calls, weeping drunk, her voice like an injured walrus through her wine glass.
“I’ve had a vision,” she trembles. "You will be gone from me tomorrow.”
Alexander, standing in the hallway by the phone hooked to the wall, eyes darting wildly up to his father’s office. He doesn’t bother pointing out he has been gone from her for ten years, now.
Sally Scott howls down the phone at her boy, brays like a kicked donkey and Alexander blushes in humiliation and discontent to hear his mother’s affection for him so violently released.
It wasn’t a vision at all, as he will discover later. Not that he ever really believed it.
It had been a plan set in motion, built long before she even thought about spreading her legs for her husband’s business partner, before the arguments and the broken mirrors and Alexander’s bad exam results.
It was, in fact, the plan all along.
She’d simply drunk half a bottle of gin, even more sherry and a lot of cabernet sauvignon, then dreamed up the ghost of her twin sister, who reminded her she’s about to lose her son.
On the phone that night, however, on the eve of his eighteenth birthday, all Alexander Dalrymple knows is that his mother, who loves him even more than she loathes him, is distraught to think her son is growing up, has grown up, without her.
It is the last time he ever speaks to her.
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He sees her once, when his name isn’t Alexander anymore. She’s haggard with drink, prideful and vulgar and he sees all of himself in her, like a mirror turned inwards on his soul.
He walks away in shame as her knees hit the puddles in the ground.
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(In spite of this, she will outlive her only son.)
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She’ll write Dear Dally on all of her letters. He’ll write four in response.
The first he’ll sign Alexander.
The last, he’ll sign Eames.
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“I suppose being a piece of furniture is still an upgrade for you, isn’t it, Eames?" Jason Ogilvie asks with a snort as he cops a cigarette from Eames’ stash one night.
It’s mostly playful, but there’s an edge of viciousness to every word Jason Ogilvie says. He grew up adored in theory and dismissed in practice, leaving him a little desperate and very supercilious, and it shows.
(Eames has kept his little notebook of learnings. He has seventeen of them now.)
Eames, who by now is Corporal Dalrymple, just sucks in another puff of smoke. Blows it right in Jason’s face.
Then he blows Jason, too.
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The name, of course, is meaningless.
Over the course of his lifetime he will tell people all sorts of rubbish. That it’s for his father James and his mother Evelyn. That he was conceived on one, born on one.
That it’s an acronym for his actual, regal name.
Really, though, it’s just a word he likes. The drag of the ea followed by the bumblebee mumble of the rest.
He remembers seeing it written down for the first time in one of his Aunt’s catalogues.
Eames Chair: red, black, grey, white.
So, he chooses Eames because it’s a pleasant word to say. An easy one to mutter over and over mid-fuck. Fancy and plain. It feels utterly dull compared to Alexander William Thomas Dalrymple.
(Dally Scott to his mum’s friends, after the divorce.)
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(Eventually, his passport says Emmett Eames, born in Nigeria. He makes it in a few hours, while the blood on his head congeals around the stitches and he keeps his ear out for the phone ringing. He gets a stamp at the border of Canada when he arrives two weeks later.)
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But it’s more than that, isn’t it?
It’s a name he first chooses when he’s twelve years old. A name that means neutral.
At his father’s, he is Alexander. At his mother’s, Dally.
Eames is the chair that sits at both tables, unflinching. He pulls it out of Auntie Joan’s catalogue like a genie from a lamp, granting all of his wishes.
Anonymity, identity, and a word to tell people when they ask if he has a nickname.
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(feature, nor cadence)
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So, when Eames is eighteen, his father ships him off to the military to learn how to be a real man.
It is here he learns the true price of his father’s mistakes and his mother’s confidence.
Honestly, it’s a good thing he gets snapped up by MI6 before he turns twenty.
(At least, it feels like it at the time.)
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“We’ve got a job for you, Dalrymple,” says a man behind a wide oak desk, wearing a suit that, in Eames’ personal and less than humble opinion, is far too nice to have ever seen a real day’s work at all.
“A job?” he asks with polite curiosity instead of voicing this concern.
The man places his clasped hands beneath his chin, emulating every Enid Blyton worthy picture of a school headmaster that there ever was. It’s not a good look for SIS, Eames thinks, though he doesn’t say this either because he doesn’t really think he’s supposed to know that, yet.
“You all but failed the IQ tests we set you,” the man, whose name is Robertson, says indignantly. “But you’re far from stupid. I’m led to believe you not only flunked them purposefully, but that you know why we were setting them in the first place."
It is at this point that Robertson rifles through a series of papers on his desk and produces Eames’ recognisably tidy scrawl. Underlined in red all over the page are his mentions of the same inexplicable name.
Oneiroi Oneiroi Oneiroi Oneiroi Oneiroi Oneiroi
Eames tilts his head at this, wearing a mask of vapid vacancy that he perfected as a child, during all those lengthy conversations with his parents’ lawyers.
Robertson continues, “Major Hammond here thinks it’s preposterous.”
He gestures to the man sitting beside Eames.
Hammond, a ruddy faced soldier with a mean scowl, purses his lips.
“Well, boy?” Robertson demands. “How did you find out?”
Eames sits back in his chair, taking great pleasure in slouching in front of Major Hammond, who only last month made him do an additional twelve circuit laps for his bad posture. He shrugs innocently.
“Sometimes I just know things, sir,” he says, boldly bewildered.
A snort of bull stomping breath beside him.
“Don’t give us your gypsy fucking tripe, Dalrymple,” Hammond snarls impotently. “Your horse-fucking ancestors did not tell you about Operation Oneiroi!”
Hammond blushes when Robertson raises his eyebrows, piping down even as he throws a particularly withering look at the boy.
Eames preens just a little while Robertson appraises him in this new, mystic light conjured by Hammond’s accusation.
Robertson’s older than Hammond by at least ten years, but he doesn’t seem worse off for it.
He has a thin goatee, oily black like his hair, and the aura of power emanating from his heavy desk and charcoal suit and gold pinky ring is emphasised by the way he never really seems to move. His eyes drift, his face is expressive, yet beyond that he seems more mirage than man.
Eames likes him, he decides in the midst of that penetrating silence. He likes this man more than every other shithead he’s met in the past nineteen months.
“That will be all, thank you, Major Hammond,” Robertson says coolly. “Have Corporal Dalrymple’s things removed from the barracks at once.”
Hammond, fuming, almost topples his chair as he stands. He leaves with only a curt nod to Robertson, is almost at the door when Eames turns in his seat to look back.
“Oh, sir,” he says gleefully. “If it’s not too much trouble, I have a decent stash of playing cards in the lining of my bunk mattress. Do make sure they get packed, too.”
Hammond chooses ignoring him over walking back across the room to slap him one last time.
Eames is still grinning as he sits back down properly in his seat, surprised by the very sudden elation in his chest, as if he has just been injected with helium.
Robertson doesn’t smile at the joke, though he doesn’t dish out a reprimand either, which means he probably found it a little funny too.
Reaching into a drawer of his desk, Robertson takes out a sheaf of paper. He puts it down in front of Eames, along with a black pen, HB pencil and timer.
“I want you to answer every question, Alexander,” Robertson says pointedly. “You aren’t leaving this office until you do.”
Eames pulls his chair right up to the desk, holding the pencil aloft. Robertson smells of ink and a powerful, predatory aftershave.
Eames feels a thrill of excitement.
He opens the papers and rolls up the sleeves of his military green shirt, which he is already mentally preparing to burn in a ceremonial sacrifice to his supposed horse-fucking ancestors.
“All right, sir,” he replies, a flush of pride in his cheeks and relief making his hands shake.
It takes him thirty-two minutes.
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He is nineteen years and eight months old. His hair is gold, wheat chafed brown and his muscles are wiry.
He scores 98.72%.
He leaves for Newcastle the next day. Calls his dad, but there’s no answer.
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Four years later, he flies first class to a secondary army base in Washington DC under the name Captain Alexander Garnett. He had asked for Bond; was given only stern looks for his grin.
On the flight, he gets through multiple bottles of champagne. He’s welcomed at the landing site by a surly Sergeant, who shows him to his quarters most reluctantly.
He’s twenty-three, angrier than he’s ever been and the best dreamshare forger in the United Kingdom.
That isn’t saying much, he jokes with Robertson before he leaves. There are only four of us, after all.
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There’s a rugged, cotton sweat smell of army that supersedes all others it attains to: boyhood, manhood, testosterone, frustration, isolation, brotherhood.
Smells are often the worst triggers, this much Eames knows, but it’s only now he really appreciates it.
Nothing could prepare him for the flashbacks to dirt-licking boot-scraper days like walking into the hall of the Washington Somna Base. He sees over twenty sharp short crew cuts; starched collars and a sea of green.
All men, this unit. Irritating, he thinks, because it’s usually the women, few as they are in this neck of the woods, who ask the sensible questions first.
Eames stands at the front feeling like a supply teacher on his first day.
Twenty-six stony faces stare back at him from their seats.
“Gents,” their CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Colcan, says from beside Eames. “This is Captain Garnett. He’s UK Military, the best in the business, and he’s here to talk to you today about Mirage Theory. Now, it’s all work-in-progress. I want you to show the Captain how much we appreciate him taking the time to tell us what our overseas brothers have learned.”
There are so many unfathomably incorrect statements in that introduction, Eames is momentarily struck dumb. But as far as the United States are concerned, Eames is military, so he knows better than to make a snide Quaker remark.
Colcan has a Major Hammond-esque look about him which Eames is mighty unwilling to test. He looks out across the young faces.
Astoundingly young, in fact. Some of these must be only cadets, not even soldiers yet.
There’s a smattering of obligatory applause just long enough for Eames to recover. He smiles, lopsided corner, nods one move of his head.
“Thanks kindly,” he says in his most Hertfordshire voice, earning a pointed, eye-rolling grin from two punks in the front row. “Now, Mirage Theory is working progress, as your Lieutenant-Colonel says. Emphasis on working.
“We know full well that with the new PASIV model, courtesy of our esteemed Berlin colleagues, we are able to increasingly keep up with the rapid neuron exchange of our real dreams; our perceptions are happening at beyond real time. Faster than real time.”
“We’ve been doing that for years," a cool voice calls out from row three. A large boy, blond and muscular.
“Have you?” Eames scoffs at the beach boy, eyebrows raised even higher than his hackles. "You personally have managed to go under with a PASIV and create from scratch without pre-set architectural structures? You have, all by yourself, achieved spontaneous creation? Maybe you should come up here and tell everyone what you found.”
Eames steps a little aside, gesturing curtly for the boy to join him at the front. The blond head sinks a little lower amidst his peers.
There’s a ripple of uncomfortable disquiet, murmured chitters mingling with the uppity false bravado of refusing to laugh with the British stranger at the expense of an American brother.
“Mirage Theory,” Eames continues breezily before Lieutenant-Colonel Colcan can intervene, “is the theory that we should be able to create entire illusions inside the dreams.”
“Isn’t it all just illusions?” another boy asks. Front row, thin face and dark hair.
Eames smiles an indulgent, patronising smile that visibly rankles the kid.
“When you eat an apple in the dreamshare, what does it taste like?”
“An apple,” the ruffled boy replies.
“Why shouldn’t, if it’s just an illusion, it be able to taste like an orange?”
The expression on the boy’s face, a face that looks all of fifteen but probably isn’t, makes it all too clear exactly how much of a monumental waste of time this line of thought is. There’s an echo of young thunder in the room; sharks scenting blood.
Eames refrains from actually sighing aloud.
“Put it this way,” he says instead. “Wouldn’t it be ever so useful if you were able to change your face in the dream?”
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The scowling boy, whose name is Jeremy Howard, will one day inform Eames that this is the day he signed up for the international branch.
He won’t be Jeremy by then, though. He will be Arthur.
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Eames (that is, Captain Alexander Garnett) is a popular and recalcitrant teacher.
He flies to fellow army bases under a false Captaincy approved by MI6, giving lectures and demonstrations in dreamshare, all the while collecting data on other lab teams to find out if anyone knows something his bosses don’t yet.
He also lays the groundwork for what will be the coup of the millennia, but only if he actually manages to pull it off.
It’s easier to make the scientists like him than the soldiers. Being surrounded by army fatigues keeps him permanently on edge, like seeing a knife in a toddler’s hands. He’s exhausted most days and just miserable on others.
Most unfortunately of all, however, he’s good at what Robertson’s asking of him. Two years later, he gets invited to return to the base in Washington to run a training programme with the US’ brightest.
He goes under pain of being recalled to bootcamp if he doesn’t and there meets a man whom he will one day extract a score of black ops secrets from.
Colonel Louis Wallace.
Colonel Wallace is a round-faced, anxious looking man who is very fond of his unit, introduces each in turn with a good, fair word. Eames tries his best to look only half as indignant as he feels to be here.
“Any standouts?” he asks Wallace, the first evening, brandy and leather sofas and an air of smugness not often found outside of the English gentry.
“Oh, Ingman is an absolute natural,” Wallace says cheerfully. “And Howard, he’s a tough nut but by God, he will get any job done.”
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By now, it’s been seven years since Alexander Dalrymple left home to learn how to be a real man.
It’s been three years since he first used the name that will one day damn him in a room in Romania, where he will kneel bound with zip ties, six fingernails missing.
(Dolos, he’ll whisper, sly pride and hungry for the bullet.)
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His first full day at Washington Somna, which happens to coincide with his twenty-fifth birthday, is strained to say the least.
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US’ brightest are arrogant little fucks, but they do their jobs well.
A Tuesday, windy, clear skies bleeding sunshine through the windows. They gather together for a huddle like footballers and Eames lets them, only because breaking up the powwow is more trouble in the long term than it’s worth.
“Alpha Team, I want to see you holding the line this time,” Major Hansen says, rocking on the balls of his feet like an antsy father on the edge of the playground.
“Bravo, if any one of you are caught playing hares, I’ll skin you,” Eames offers the second half of the room.
“That only works for marathons, you know, sir,” Lieutenant Jeremy Howard says. He’s as much of a mardy shit as he was two years ago, but it’s tempered with bursts of glee now that make Eames feel a little sorry for the kid.
He’s the youngest in the unit by several years, still a teenager, already a Lieutenant with the smarts to prove why.
“Then it’s a good thing you aren’t running a sprint, isn’t it, Howard?” Eames asks, doesn’t hide his smile. “Don’t worry yourself, Lieutenant. I’ll be sure to let you know when tortoiseshell goes out of fashion.”
The kid blushes, taking his IV line and mangles his smile into a loose frown.
Don’t Ask is probably the most horrible and useful thing he’s ever encountered, Eames thinks as from the corner of his eye he sees Howard lie flat on his cot, hooked and ready for preparation from the chemist.
“Remember, lads,” Eames continues. “The target is the base. However, it’s no good to you if you can’t get in once you’re there.”
There’s a murmur of Yes sir all around that makes Eames feel nauseous to hear.
“Sweet dreams,” he mutters as he presses the plunger and all the men’s eyes close at once.
In the end, Bravo Team win. They get a night off, free passes off base for the coming weekend.
Lieutenant Jeremy Howard doesn’t smile once.
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Captain, there’s something I need to know.
What is it, Lieutenant?
Did you really work on the extractions in Warsaw?
Where on earth did you get that idea?
I need to know, sir.
Why?
Because I want to know if I can trust you.
I did.
Ok. Good. Ok.
You’re dismissed, Lieutenant.
Of course, sir.
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(And Jeremy? Don’t you fucking dare ask me a question like that in this office again. Do you understand me?
Yes sir.
Get out.)
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(I’m sorry, sir.)
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In Warsaw, Eames forges a man’s wife based only on a single photograph and the measly details extrapolated from his drugged ramblings in the night.
The mark’s already half-cut when they take him under.
So wild with relief to see his darling, he apologises for forgetting how tall she is and kisses her mouth clean of lipstick. Then he cries into her breasts while she strokes his head, cries himself into a frenzy, until he fucks her on her hands and knees, one fist in her dark hair to slam her head into the floor with every thrust while she sobs and bleeds.
Afterwards, lying heavy over her in bliss, he mutters to her all about the sleeper agent in Bulgaria he needs to go find. How he’ll come back soon, so very, very soon.
Awake again, Eames blinds himself to the looks his teammates give him, shows no interest in their speculation as to how accurately one can imitate the opposite sex.
.
.
(Perfectly, is the answer. Especially after months of intense scrutiny and invasive inspections. Mandatory tryouts until Robertson and every other man in the unit was satisfied with the quality of the product.)
.
.
It’s two months before Jeremy Howard, with his very brown eyes and very pink mouth, conjures the effort to approach him again.
True to his word, he does so off-base.
A week’s leave and as far as every other American knows, Eames is back in London. But Jeremy Howard, the great Jeremy who will soon be the glorious Arthur, knows better.
Eames is nursing a gin and tonic while glowering across the room when he recognises the lithe frame and stick-out ears of none other than the cocky Lieutenant.
He watches the boy brandish his fake ID with confidence, pressing savvy into the bar and overpaying for a bottle of lager. Then he makes his way directly to Eames’ table with nary a blink.
He sits down as if he’s expected, in all his white shirt, grey slacks glory, his dogtags happily on display.
“What a pleasant surprise,” Eames says. “Young Arthur, without his knights.”
Lieutenant Howard sips his beer, lips pressed too tight against the bottle, pushing his mouth obscenely askew.
“It’s an English legend,” Eames explains.
“I know,” the kid interrupts defensively. “Why am I Arthur?”
Eames smiles indulgently.
“You look about as much like a Jeremy as I do an Alexander,” Eames scoffs. “And you look about twelve, and all.”
Arthur, the Boy King, the self-righteous prick.
“Hardly,” the not-twelve-year-old sniffs, looking mighty displeased.
“And yet at every turn, you seem to hold all the answers,” Eames points out. “Smart-arse and otherwise,” he adds as an afterthought.
Young not-King Arthur, with a crown of anger and a sword made of dreams.
“Are you going to teach us how to forge?” he asks hungrily.
Eames licks his lips just to watch the boy’s eyes flit downwards.
“You won’t be any good,” he promises.
.
.
(And he’s right, but he’s also wrong.)
.
.
On the eighth of May, over eight years after Eames answered a call from his wretched, weeping mother, he takes a small team on an operation to Istanbul. Two Italians, a Pole and an American.
“I want eyes on Yasemin Küçük at all times,” he says sternly.
He’s been belligerent for a week and it’s wearing them down.
Dorotka, the mousy, irate Polish chemist, mutters a stream of Russian under her breath that she apparently thinks her team leader doesn’t understand.
“I’ll do more than that if you aren’t careful,” he snarls back at her.
Her blue eyes widen, nostrils flaring, white and pink. She tucks her hair behind her ears with both hands. It’s too short, just falls straight back into her face.
Nick and Vivi, the Italian duo whom everyone pretends not to know are brother and sister, grumble only once they’re out of earshot.
(Eames made it quite clear three days ago he speaks more than enough Italian to recognise their insults.)
Only the American remains, impassive, disappointed.
He follows Eames to the kitchen of the tiny flat they’re going to be cooped up in for at least a fortnight.
Eames ignores him until he can’t anymore.
“What do you want?” he grunts, eyes on the tea brewing in his glass.
From behind him, Arthur sighs.
“What are you so afraid of?” he asks.
Eames doesn’t have the capacity for further anger. He can feel himself spiralling out of control. Purposeless despair is swallowing him whole and it hurts. It hurts to think, to dream, to forge.
To look at Arthur, who is becoming Jeremy less and less every day, and know that bad things will befall this boy.
To know he could stop it, if he really tried.
He could get the kid discharged, honourably or otherwise. He could refocus the army’s attentions elsewhere, or maybe Arthur’s. He could hold out his hand right now and the boy would take it, he knows he would, because he can see the way Arthur looks at him.
But he won’t. Because he’s selfish and because if he saves this one soldier now, what good will it do, really? These past eight years of REM stripping torment will have been for nothing.
“What are you so afraid of?” Arthur asks and Eames, he laughs.
Says, “Nothing, you nosy little shit,” instead of the real answer.
.
.
(You’re in terrible danger, darling.)
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.
In less than a year, Eames will look into Arthur’s eyes and know he, too, is thinking of this exact moment, standing in a sticky sweet kitchen in Istanbul.
He’ll see the deep wells of sadness that are Arthur’s eyes, the pits of his regret that say, I know, now. I understand what frightened you so much.
.
.
Before that comes, though, there is Istanbul, an awkward moment over mango tea and baklava, Arthur stammering as he flees the room in humiliation.
There is the incident with Miles Alloy.
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.
Corporal Miles Alloy is a first-rate soldier and an even better dreamer. It’s an uncommon mix, really, and Eames likes him well enough.
He’s among the first recruits, including the unfathomably clever Ingman and the unreasonably grumpy Howard.
It’s August, and the heat gets to everyone, mild as it remains in Washington.
Eames is going over a file sent by Robertson, containing updates on the new MI6 recruits, including a woman called Polly who forges almost as well as he does and a man whose name is also Alexander who complains almost as much as he does.
(Eames doubts either are very likely.)
He’s mid-reply, encoding some information about a new branch of investigation, that the Americans are returning to the idea of manipulating the terrible and desirable idea of Limbo, when a voice screaming echoes down the corridor.
“Code Red! Code Red!"
It’s Ingman, screeching banshee notes of terror, and Eames opens his door at the same time as Colonel Wallace and the newest addition, Major Pfeiffer.
“Alloy’s opened fire on the others,” Ingman pants, blood streaking down his arm in bright rivers that have dripped along the corridor where he ran.
“Jesus,” Wallace stumbles, but Eames is already rushing to the exit, past the bleeding Ingman who lumbers after him.
“He just lost it,” the young man cries, struggling against Eames’ racehorse gallop. “Kept saying we were still dreaming. He got Major Hansen in the chest. I think -”
Eames runs faster than he has done for as long as he can remember.
Every piece of him burns with fear. In his head, all he can hear is Arthur’s voice, embarrassed and quiet, that awful mumble in Istanbul, I wouldn’t- of course not - I’m so - fuck - never mind.
His heart pounds and his breaths are ragged. He’s not entirely sure what he’ll do if he reaches the training yard and is confronted with Lieutenant Jeremy Howard’s corpse.
It’s mayhem in the yard. A cacophony of bull bellows, the stench of sweat and copper. Orders barked left and right by Captain Santiago, where he’s pressing his red hands into the right side of the unconscious Major Hansen’s chest. Two soldiers lie immobile, unattended to.
The first, Carolla, his face splattered where the bullet tore through his throat.
The second - Eames’ breath stalls in his throat - is Miles Alloy, his gun still in his loose hand. By the looks of it, he’d planted his last bullet in his own mouth.
Scanning the scant group of shivering soldiers, he sees Arthur, curled against the wall as another man, Sergeant Osmond, helps him pack up a bullet hole in his lower flank.
He’s conscious, at least. He’s awake, roaring in pain, his hands flustering and spasming above his abdomen. The balm of relief that crests over Eames is so strong he almost cries at its soothing effects.
He turns to Ingman, whose eyes are full of tears.
“Come here, lad,” Eames says, reaching for his injured shoulder. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
.
.
In the turnaround following the psychosis of Miles Alloy, Eames, who has been dutifully playing the role of Captain Alexander Garnett for three years by now, is recalled to British soil.
He’s given two days to sleep off the jetlag and shake any nasty American habits he might have picked up, then he reports to Robertson.
A few months later, he receives a letter from Lieutenant Ullo Ingman, thanking him for all his help.
Tucked into the envelope is another letter.
.
.
Dolos,
They’re sending me to a UN base in Cairo, along with I and O.
I know what you’re doing. I want to help.
Yours,
Carnus
.
.
To his dying day, Eames never finds out how Arthur discovered him.
.
.
(who adores the viper's kiss)
.
.
“Tell me another,” Alexander pleads.
Abbi Keel, whose heart is soft, her ire an undiscovered periodic element, narrows her eyes.
“I’ve told you them all,” she says.
Stubbornly, Alexander digs out his notebook from under his pillow, skimming the pages until he reaches a list of names. He points to one, and she smiles the secret kind of smile that his mother would give him. It makes him shrink into himself.
“Ah,” she murmurs, settling down again with her arm arched over the boy’s shoulders. “He is the spirit of trickery.
“He created Mendacium, the Falsehood. He was admired even by Prometheus.”
“The fireman?” Alexander asks.
Abbi presses a firm kiss to the crown of his head, the corn curls too long, spilling onto his face. She brushes her fingers through them.
“Exactly,” she whispers. “He was the fireman’s apprentice. He built a copy of Veritas’ statue. Truth. But it had no feet.”
Alexander looks up from his list of names. His eyes are grey, bright, sad, afraid.
“But how did it stand?” he whispers.
The light from his bedside lamp spills over his flushed cheeks. Above their heads, the glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceiling seem to shine brighter at his awe.
“Well,” Abbi whispers. “That’s the point, Alex.
“See, the truth will always stand. But lies, no matter how well they are built, will never last half as long.”
Alex doesn’t believe this. Not for a second.
He has watched his father build lies for years, has seen them stand taller than the truth of his parents’ marriage. He has watched his mother build entire cities of untruths, watched them become inhabited by lots of little truths, impenetrable and vibrant.
He looks down at the name again, tests it in his mouth.
“Do - los,” he states, a good luck charm. Then, “How do you know all these stories?”
Abbi reaches for the switch of the bedside lamp, just below the bulb. Her dark brow creases.
She puts her palm to the little boy’s cheek and he relishes the heat of her hand, the realness of her.
“Stories are good for the soul,” she tells him. “Goodnight, Alex.”
“Goodnight, Abbi,” he mumbles.
The lamp clicks off loudly, plunging them into darkness. The stars above them burn yellow, garish and radioactive.
Just like every night before, Abbi Keel stays until her little houseguest has fallen fast asleep.
.
.
When Eames returns to the daemon of Falsehoods, he does so on a whim.
He picks a name at random even though he knows randomness isn’t compatible with the human brain, that it doesn’t exist where there is sentiment and Eames, he knows sentiment.
He’s cruel and irritable and full of biting anger.
He has never turned the other cheek in his life, no matter how many times his grandmother dragged him to church.
And yet, despite all of this, sentiment clings to the particles of his heart.
It’s cancerous and exhausting, but he’s grown accustomed to it. Perhaps that is why he puts his faith in stories told by a kind stranger to assuage his night time fears.
The first person to hear the name is an arms dealer in Sudan.
He’s a broad-shouldered man in his forties, Akintola, with a permanent half-grin and a scar buried deep into his left eyebrow.
“’ant fataan ghabi, Dolos,” he mutters as he accepts the envelope from Eames, who has dyed his hair chestnut and is bleeding into his shirt from the scar of his newest tattoo.
He sits back, arms crossed over his waist.
Despite the decline in temperature, the humidity is unprecedented. Sweat stripes his back and he can see one of Akintola’s men out of the corner of his eye. He can see the machine gun resting over his lap.
Eames had two knives and a pistol, but they’re all on the floor at Akintola’s feet, now.
He feels itchy, foolish, underprepared and overworked.
“hal ‘ant rajul ghabi?” he asks, matching Akintola’s half-smile.
“ana rajul mutafayil,” the man replies, smoke rough with laughter.
Eames nods, as if to agree, although he isn’t entirely sure if he has the will to put any faith in this foolhardy venture yet.
.
.
He is twenty-two years old.
.
.
You are a stupid boy, Dolos.
Are you a stupid man?
I am a hopeful man.
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.
Eight years later, he takes Akintola’s words as his own, repeats them to an incredulous Arthur.
Arthur doesn’t nod, though.
.
.
(Are you happy now, Eames? he spits, eyes blazing, lips chapped. There are tears dotting his eyelashes and his shoulders fill his shirt nicely and he’s shaking with violent rage.)
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.
Ten years later, when Akintola has a knife pressed to the lower lid of his left eye, Eames’ breath hitches at that voice, outside the door.
“la takun ghabiana,” Arthur says.
Then he puts a bullet through the back of Akintola’s head.
.
.
(Before this, though. Before Akintola’s splattered corpse slams down over Eames’ restrained body, shattering the rest of the bones in his partially fractured wrist. Before Miles Alloy shoots five fellow team mates and then himself. There is this.)
.
.
Washington DC is cold and fresh and full of sunlight. Like every city, it rings with traffic at unreasonable hours and it hides an ugly secret.
(Actually, it probably hides a lot of ugly secrets, but there’s only one that Eames cares about right now.)
Eames stands in the workshop.
Before him, four soldiers lie on cots, their arms draping downwards, connected by the misshapen dot-to-dot of the PASIV’s IV lines. The chemist, a fretting Dr Malcolm, sits at a short, overflowing desk, typing clunkily into his beast of a computer.
A knock at the door, the heavy squeal of the handle and hinges.
No matter how many times he gets saluted, it never fails to threaten a pained grin into Eames' expression.
Readily acknowledged by his superior officer, the newcomer turns to the scruffy, red-faced Malcolm.
“Doctor,” he says. “Colonel Wallace needs you. He wanted you to know that Beckett has arrived.”
“Balls!” Malcolm cries, snatching up his notebook and jamming a pencil behind his ear, where it knots itself into his flyaway hair. “You alright here, Garnett?”
No matter how many times he gets called Garnett, Eames always regrets not being allowed the name Bond.
“Absolutely, Doc,” he replies breezily, waggling his fingers goodbye. “The Lieutenant and I will keep guard.”
Malcolm dashes out of the door with all the grace of a walrus ashore.
And then, they are alone.
Alone but for the four unconscious soldiers, at least.
(It's enough.)
“How are you, Arthur?” Eames asks coolly.
Young King Arthur shifts, his eyes flitting up to the security camera in the corner.
“It’s just visual,” Eames reassures him. “No audio.”
“How do you know?” Arthur asks.
Eames raises one eyebrow with exaggerated amusement.
“Oh, I know everything about this place."
Arthur snorts, an unflattering and very young sound. There’s sweat on his upper lip, glistening, and shadows under his eyes.
“How did you get involved in dreamshare?” the boy asks pointedly.
The truth rests on Eames’ tongue like a mint, dissolving quickly into his hot mouth. Then,
“We had some trials when I was a corporal. I proved useful and we developed the training programme.”
“You’re not like the others,” Arthur says, leaping on the tail of Eames’ sentence.
He stands perfectly still over his fellow men, beside his Captain, chest puffed and fists clenched.
“Am I not?”
“No. You don’t treat us like Wallace or Hansen or Santiago. We’re not numbers to you.”
Eames feels his brow crease. Feels the unmistakable but oft-absent tremor of discomfort in his gut.
“You’re not numbers to Wallace," he says coolly, as Arthur shifts his weight with unfamiliar unease, eyes on the PASIV. The timer is at seventeen minutes. Eames continues, pressing, “He sang your praises the day I got here. And Ingman’s.”
He points to the unconscious soldier closest to them, white sand hair and fine boned features.
Arthur grimaces, glances at Ingman and winces.
“I’ll bet,” he says.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Drop it,” Eames snaps sharply and Arthur flinches.
Eames turns to the boy, bewildered and saddened by Arthur’s reticence, his jibe. He’s pallid and sweating, with bruised eyes and a weakly set mouth. He’s tall, but he holds himself so badly, as if his spine is being slowly shunted closer to the ground with the weight of his burdens.
Eames has made a point of not thinking about how lovely this boy can be, free of uniforms and the anguish of sleepless dreams. As he looks now, he sees not the charming and confident Arthur, though.
He sees the boy, Jeremy Howard, pasty and horribly young.
“You know you can tell me anything,” Eames says, and he means it.
“You’re a good man,” Arthur replies.
“I’m really not."
Young King Arthur salutes his Captain.
“I need to report to Wallace at sixteen-hundred hours. Goodbye, sir.”
He doesn’t wait to be dismissed before leaving.
It’s probably a good thing, Eames thinks to himself.
He’d have waited all night.
.
.
Three days later, Eames follows him.
Follows him all the way to the end of the world.
.
.
(Follows him all the way to Iran.)
.
.
Looking back, that's where it all started, Eames realises, as he carjacks a godawful Lamborghini and drives out of Milan with breathless dismay, Arthur's phone call rattling through his head in broken fragments.
Ton visage est caché.
Your face is hidden, he had promised Arthur, but for the first time, he doesn't think an old gypsy charm gifted to him by his gin-soaked mother will be enough.
.
.
Then again, he is a hopeful man.
.
.
(it is an unsullied rage)
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.