aviary | OPEN | prompt seven

[ Arthur isn't a very social creature by nature but, to his credit, his encyclopedic knowledge of whatever city he finds himself in makes for good cover most of the time. Good enough to pass as baseline functional, at least. (Nobody ever said he was a miracle worker.) Whenever he's about to hightail it out of one country in exchange for another, he parks himself in front of the laptop for a few hours (a few days if he can spare it, but he usually can't), then he Googles the fuck out of it, pirates a Lonely Planet and tries to memorize all of the phone numbers and addresses that qualify as IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: BREAK GLASS.

It's part habit, part leftover boy scoutism and part straight-up common sense. Even when he wasn't working, the Dreamshare business had a habit of creeping up on a guy and the last thing he wanted was to be caught with his figurative pants down. (Julfa, Azerbaijan, 2007. Arthur had learned his lesson then and the lesson had been, never again.)

He wasn't always like this, of course. An obvious statement maybe, if only because who is perpetually themselves all the time. Certainly not anybody capable of positive growth and definitely not anybody in that rough constellation of people he sometimes (but not always) considered his 'close professional associates'. (He hasn't used the word 'friend' since before Azerbaijan, since before Paris and Mal.)

In three days time he has a meeting booked with the wife of an influential businessman in Mumbai and in the middle of his cross-continental game of hopscotch, he's decided to pay Ariadne a visit. Rather than bootleg his latest travel guide, he suggests that they visit a local bookshop instead. ] I know just the one, [ he says with a crook to his mouth. (Arthur always does; it makes him feel good at his job. And he is good. He keeps reminding himself that.) ]

C'mon, you'll love it.

Edited 2012-08-11 02:05 (UTC)

[ For the most part, Ariadne had learned (after a few frustrating instances) that one could never really ultimately know, just what Arthur (or any of the others to be exact) would be up to from one day to the next. Whether it was just their lifestyles, or maybe just their need to keep people at arm's length - she honestly didn't know – and really, she wasn't entirely sure if she should. In a sense, Ariadne liked not being fully immersed in that cloud of uncertainty Arthur (and the others) kept. Of course she would never deny the fact; she was intrigued by it and wanted to know as much as she could about it. But there was still that part of her that was glad, she wasn’t always worrying about; anonymous numbers, being followed by strange vans, or even if she wouldn't make it through the night - things she only could assume they dealt with.

So for whatever reason it was that had Arthur visiting her for just a short amount of time, she wasn't about to question it (though her curiosity was clearly there, and given the right moment, she clearly would try to find out what she could), as she was honestly just glad to see her friend (even if she was fairly sure, it was only a term she would be able to use in private. Because like it or not, she would always considered him a friend. ). ] You say that like you know me. [ she says more in jest then anything (of course he knows her – he's Arthur, he knows about all of them, right?), as her attention is still focused on a group of tourist across the street from them that seemed to be attempting to test the theory of; you can never have too many pictures, which in turn seems to cause a small smile in amusement to tug at the corner of her mouth as she watches them. ]

What exactly are you looking for?

[ The email comes from a dummy corporation, asking him whether or not he's satisfied with the size of his penis. It's the kind of thing that's meant to get filtered immediately to spam, but every so often one or two stragglers slip through. (Phonetic spelling, creative syntax, overenthusiastic use of the space bar in the middle of words like ORG GAS &nbps; M — people nowadays will do anything to get around a smart filter and Arthur's inbox suffers daily as a result.) This email in particular, however, manages to route itself neatly into its own little folder (one that hadn't been there the day before). Clever enough to get Arthur's attention, subtle enough (without being subtle at all) to clue him in as to who might be calling.

12 hours later he's on the red eye out of Moscow to Vladivostok. 16 hours later he's freezing his ass off on a park bench, wishing there were ducks to feed. (This is Russia; there aren't.) By the time he makes contact twenty three minutes later, a light dusting of snow frosts everything in sight, making the world look oddly sugarcoated. Arthur feels like he's been cheated out of something because it ought to look picturesque. (But once again: this is Russia; it doesn't.) He breathes into his hands and wishes he'd brought gloves. (An oversight on his part, but he doesn't downplay it.) ]

Vladivostok, Natasha? [ He's read her file — or the parts of it that weren't blacklined, at least. What it gave him was enough to warrant at least a little bit of levity. (He already knows she won't go for it, but that does stop him.) Arthur adjusts the collar of his coat; he can't feel the tips of his ears anymore. ] A little on the nose, don't you think?

Edited 2012-08-11 02:31 (UTC)

[ Natasha is not sentimental. This is why Russia is just Russia, not the Soviet Union or the USSR, and Vladivostock is just Vladivostock. There is nothing for her here, save the memory of lessons that culled and killed weakness. (They are wrong when they think the Red Room is a place: it is a process.) Her own hands are tucked into the pockets of her coat, though in truth it's more for ease of posture. You're not Russian if you're not born with chill in your bones.

When Natasha reaches in to hand over a slim manila folder, her wrists peek out from the sleeves; red from the chafe of metal, not the cold. Arthur comes to her in a roundabout way that's off the grid and just at the ends of her own radar, which is a mark towards the running tally of both his talent and expertise. The folder is sparser than she'd like; there's not much more than three black and white surveillance photos, a physical description, a birthday, a bloodtype, a series of last known GPS co-ordinates, the start of an elaborate electronic trail. His name is Drakov and Natasha plans to kill him. The trick is to find out where he is — hard to do when you've been cornered to run. ]

You should have told me you were comfortable with your manhood, [ she says easily. Her mouth purses, expression flat except somehow it all comes together in a way that looks like she's smiling. ] I would have stepped away. [ A beat, then she tilts her head. Kindness isn't much native to her blood and doesn't last long. ] There'll be some collateral. Nothing you can't dispose of, but I can look for others.

[ In the pursuit of intel, Arthur will be the first to tell you that there are times when you find yourself so out of your element that you've got to wonder: how the hell did I end up here? Granted, his understanding of this principle is a little less practical and a little more abstract; Arthur's not the type to find himself on the short-end of any given situation and, even in the instances where he does, he always seems to know precisely how he got there. (And if he doesn't, the truth'll come out in the wash. Hindsight, twenty-twenty — all of those adages were adages for a reason, and if his time in the army had taught Arthur anything, it was the value of debriefs and lessons learned. Of governance and accountability — not as words, but as practice.)

Ask him how he got where he is now and, without fail, Arthur would be able to provide an answer. Still that doesn't keep him from looking a little out of place as he makes his way down into the dried-out canal system of Old Town. The drainage system in this part of city is antiquated and hasn't been used in over ten years, and once the local zoning board had deemed the entire system as UNFIT FOR USE, a slow migration of skateboarders and extreme sportists had begun to trickle in — all looking to use the snaking system of cement passageways as the staging area for their next big trick.

Despite Arthur's best efforts to blend and be inconspicious, there's no denying that his shoes are a little too expensive and the cut of his leather jacket is a little too posh. Rather than dive straight in and swim with the local fishes, he lingers at the mouth of one elaborate interchange and watches a few skaters attempt to do loop-de-loops around one another in the air. An impossible endeavor here in the real world, but the Dreamspace—

He fishes his phone out of his pocket. Three minutes late and counting. Rather than leave it, he sends a text to the appropriate number. ]

Ollie ollie oxen free already.
T-minus two, or I'm out.

[Zeke is late. He knows because he makes a point of these things - late, messy, loud, troubling. They'd been important to getting him through high school the way he wanted, middle finger raised to authority and every adult figure that tried to act responsible with him. A waste of potential, a waste of intellect, but not many seniors could claim to have a drug lab in their shed and a guy had to have his pride.

It's why he's here. Maybe his careers advisor didn't have anything to give him, but below board, he had a whole range of choices to pick from. Hack drugs, fake IDs - he could do bigger, do better. And dreams, well. That was interesting. It was baby steps, he knew, and maybe that should mean not messing with the guy he was due to be meeting. But Zeke still had that pesky issue with authority, and this guy - with his well-cut jacket and his shiny shoes - seems like an easy target.

Three minutes and counting, and that's the point when Zeke's phone goes off - vibrate only, buzzing in his pocket. He takes a moment to check the message itself before he tucks it back in his pocket, kicking his board down and coasting down the concrete curve.]

Took you three minutes, man. [He kicks his board back up, wheels caught in one hand, shoulders hunching down slightly as he smiles.] Thought you'd be a one minute guy.

[ It rains on the last day Arthur ever gets to see a dream that Dom has built herself.

A castle of sleet-grey stone, risen out of the middle of a glassine lake — multicolored fishes swimming in the waters that surround it, painting vibrant eddies beneath the unbroken surface. (Things seen but untouched like life under glass, like children you watch grow in photographs but never in real life, like dreams. Vivid but elusive.) These swirls of scale and tail and fin on occasion give a valiant leap into the air and land again into the lake with a sharp splash — the sound of grass breaking underfoot every time, of wineglass stems snapping, of needle rain upon the windows. Arthur isn't entirely sure what it all means but he can tell by the way the fog never seems to lift, the way the trees in the distance are heather green like the color of Mal's eyes, that this is a landscape of grief, of beauty made elusive by loss.

(What happened in that hotel room, Dom? Why won't you just tell me? Arthur asks once in the weeks that follow the incident, in the days that precede her eventual flight. Arthur asks once and Dom doesn't answer. Part of Arhtur thinks the only reason she doesn't say anything is because he hasn't earned it yet.

He never asks again.)

They're standing together on the shores. Both barefoot, their pants rolled up to their knees, the water warm as it laps against their shins and the shoals cool beneath the soles of their feet. For a very long time, no one says anything. Arthur squints out over the water and the mist towards those distrant trees. (They seem so sad.) ]

It's nice. Quiet. Idyllic. [ A beat, and then: ] What's the catch?

Edited 2012-08-11 03:24 (UTC)

[ The smile that crosses her face doesn't reach her eyes, but it's an attempt.

(Dom remembers to be kind to him, sometimes.) ]

No catch. [ Her mouth forms the words but they fall heavy from her lips, as if each syllable has a mass to it. They call that grief. She knows this because there is a stack of books on the kitchen counter, Coping with Loss: A Parent's Guide, Grief and You and Your Kids. It's— That's not important right now. It's... it is what it is. She wiggles her toes and follows his line of sight to the trees instead. (I am so, so sorry, Mal.)

She doesn't think about him. This happens because she thinks about Mal always, there in the spaces between each inhale and every exhale; to say she thinks about anything else would be false when it's a haze that's always there. Haze is a good word for it. These days, nothing feels quite right, does it?

(Marie had dropped by earlier. Dom doesn't remember the details of that either, though maybe she should.) ]

It's just. [ Her voice is quiet. Low. There's a heavy pause before Dom finishes the rest, head bowed as she peers at her feet. The cuffs of her pants are wet from a series of stronger waves, but it's not particularly bothersome. ] I needed to think. You're right— it is quiet.

I'll take up your guts
to the little shed outside.
I'll shuck all the light from my skin,
and I'll hide it in you.

[ There are times when Arthur looks at one of Eames' forges and thinks, if only for a split-second, that he can see Eames inside it. A sleight of hand, a trick of the light, something opaque made temporarily translucent. It's difficult for Arthur to comprehend a lot of the time, but sometimes — only sometimes — he's convinced that he gets it, only to have it slip away again before he's able to dedicate it to memory. A lot of Eames is like that, a lot of the time — an impossible object, an undecidable figure; two dimensions and three dimensions at the same time; Penrose, paradox, an implausible staircase—

Then Arthur realizes that he's probably over-thinking things again and that's when he invariably shoots himself to wake up and decides that it's time for a walk.

—

They're in Singapore for a job and have been for the good part of a week, and to its credit Arthur likes it here — as much as he likes anywhere he finds himself for work. The line between business and personal pleasure is drawn hard and harsh across the slate of his mind and it's not the only set of compartments Arthur has broken himself down into over the years. But the pace suits him, along with the amalgam of cultures, that distinct blend of Southeast Asia and China and Malay, all separate and co-mingled at the same time in a just-jostled kind of suspension. The weather's abject but Arthur forgives it, even if it means he's blowing through two work shirts a day. Today in particular is absolute swelter so instead of go for a walk, he returns to he hotel and peels out of shirt number two in exchange for a third. He considers a shower but ultimately forgoes one, choosing instead to rinse his head in the sink before finishing the pommade out of his travel bag.

According to the clock he has fifteen more minutes. (One hour, that's all he gives himself, every single time. One hour and he can call Eames again.) This time around he makes it to minute fifty-three before he's tapping out a text message to him: ]

What's the progress re: Morley?

[ The official time table gives them another three days before the industrialist's late wife makes a late night appearance in his dreams. Arthur, being Arthur, has given Eames a day and a half. (Nothing out of the ordinary.) Tick tock, tick tock. ]

Edited 2012-08-11 04:00 (UTC)

[ Eames almost hates forging the dead.

There's something about taking on the appearance of someone whose soul has already departed, the sort of thing that makes his skin tighten when he's in the waking world. Eames doesn't like being superstitious but when you have a long life of stories being told and heard, experiences drug up from the deepest of safes at a sound, some things just stick with you; a fishbone at the very back of his throat that won't go down no matter how many times he swallows. Her throat is long - fragile, an easy target for the way she ended up dying. The photos show bruising and the patterns of fingers angled back together when her head isn't snapped to the side - the man who wants the information in Mister Morley's head tried going through his wife first and when that didn't work saw fit to go through his dreams instead.

It's almost passive aggressive, he likes to think, all this much dance and written checks instead of just asking Morley himself.

He hates working with gangsters even more than he dislikes the dead, but the payout is exceptional and it'd been a personal request.

And he always figures if he does something enough times, he'll numb to it eventually, as easy as his interferences are - as easy as any other lie.

Singapore's weather leaves him in cottons and linens instead of silks and he's been almost remiss for it, but instead of going back to change two or three times a day Eames just powers through it. He's used to heat in any form and the feel of sweat rolling down his neck under his collar incites more of a brush than a shudder, just means he has to use more hair gel to keep a coif in place against all the moisture. Eames has been out of the dream for thirty minutes now, taking a bit of a breather and locking their current establishment down in favour for the bar several blocks down with the eight ceiling fans. Eames tries to keep away from alcohol on the job because it makes his dreams less sharp, stays in the body for almost three days, the sort of personal rule he's almost disappointed about as he works on a glass of water instead.

He ignores the buzz in his pocket for at least ten minutes before reminding himself about it, fingers skirting past his wallet and pocketwatch for the cell phone he'll toss with the rest of housekeeping. ]

would have seen it if youd bothered to stay long enugh

[ Vesper Lynd has a secret.

An obvious statement and not really the best sell for a guy who works in the extraction business, but while everybody keeps secrets, it's not every day that you're expressly sanctioned to poke around inside Vesper Lynd's mind.

(In the end, he takes the job and the considerable pay cut that goes along with it, but Arthur hadn't joined the Dreamshare business for the money so that particular drawback is neither here nor there. Granted, he hadn't joined to steal other people's secrets either, but options had dwindled after Mal's death and it wasn't as if he was simply going to leave Dom to deal with the aftermath on his own. There'd been a window of opportunity then — slight, barely a sliver of one — but a window nevertheless. Just because Dom's credibility had gone down the tubes didn't mean Arthur's had to follow suit, but those sorts of debates only fell on deaf ears.

He helped get me out— that was Arthur's standard reply and there'd never been any hope in arguing the point.)

The set-up's a standard bait-and-switch under the ruse of subconscious security training. Arthur — Nolan Schmidt for the sake of this particular exercise — is filling the role of both extractor and teacher, the lesson two-fold: both high-level conceptual and in-the-weeds practical. Arthur briefs Ms. Lynd on the ins-and-outs of subconscious security: how it manifests and why, with what frequency and intensity. He fields the appropriate questions, choosing to use disinformation rather evasion to sidestep the all-too-relevant inquiries. He even offers her a pillow before they begin. ]

Rule number one, [ he tells her as he gets comfortable, his own arm taped and lain loose on the armrest of his chair. ] Be ready for anything. [ Then the plunger depresses and they're both shoved sharply beneath the slow-moving surface of Vesper's dreams. Given her case history he expects an exotic location, something metropolitan or within a stone's throw of a city.

Arthur blinks and he finds himself on a fog-socked dirt road, the ends of which lead into nothing but indeterminate haze. Sitting square in the road is a big black dog which stares at the both of them silently with bright red eyes. Subconscious security? Rather than point, he takes a step back, hands already reaching for the gun holstered inside his jacket. His tone is impossibly dry. ] Case in point.

Edited 2012-08-11 11:52 (UTC)

[ Vesper Lynd has many secrets, both her own and otherwise. She can't say when it started -- this habit powerful people have developed for trusting her with their secrets along with their money. Sometimes, when she thinks back on the past, it's as though there's a stretch of time filled with a little girl with wild hair and skinned knees, perpetually dirty face and ice cream smeared across her chin. And then that stretch of time stops, and a new one starts -- one filled with the woman she is now, with lipstick and suit jackets and LIBOR curves -- and the two have nothing to do with each other. No point at which they ever connected.

It's funny, then, seeing the dog here, funny enough that it pulls her past the strangeness of being in the dream. (Which is strange almost more in how not strange it is. Half her brain keeps trying to supply her with logical explanations for how she got here while the other half is busy reminding her that she is asleep right now.) She steps forward, the first step cautious and the next assured. Mr. Schmidt had said "Be ready for anything," and she is (she's learned that lesson), but she has many secrets, and this is one of them.

When she reaches the dog, she bends down at the knees and runs his hand over the top of his sleek head and then around under his muzzle. He looks up at her with his attentive red eyes. ]

You don't have much to worry about from this one, Mr. Schmidt. Or I don't, at any rate.

OPEN | prompt seven | ARTHUR

dont mind me (whatever works)

( post-canon flavor, I CHOOSE YOU!!!! )

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you! with the pointy ears!

spies! snow! secrets!

no subject

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( inception!au for zeke )

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canon/pre-canon idk yolo.

( post-mal pre-canon )

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WALRUS OR BEAR YOU MAY CHOOSE ONE

( WELCOME TO BEAR ISLAND | post-canon )

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( canon crossover amalgam! )

/smashes canons together, makes gold

WHATEVER WHENEVER.

YUP.

( it's just a dream )