seeorseem | (no subject)

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It's been a long time since Eames had to be the subject of a dream. He's been very good to avoid it, given that his subconscious often gives too much of him away without his intentions there (that is, after all, why they call it a subconscious), but in order to properly show Mystique the dreamspace, he's allowed her to be the architect. That said, the moment they hit the dream and the PASIV was working away, Eames had hit the ground running, rearranging his body and his voice and his core balance to become a lovely little blonde number that the hotel had seen fit to introduce to him.

He's honestly beginning to believe the Nexus is his crash course in the minutia of perfect forgery (though not perfect, never perfect. It always helps to have some flaws).

Now, though, he's sitting in a little chair with a drink as he waits for Mystique to find him in the dream, wondering if she'll be able to pick Eames out. If not, then he's more than patient and can wait until she comes around before engaging and seeing what fun someone who can shift in real life can have when there are no rules at all.

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Only the prospect of an experience a world away from any she had yet experience could have coaxed her into offering up her arm to a set of twin needles, no matter how small and unobtrusive the device Eames had offered up had been. Dabbling in tinctures and alcohols and tastes of drugs here and there on her travels had been one thing, a concept apart from more medical-based thoughts of needles and of willingly relinquishing her consciousness in the room with someone who was not a trusted lover or the brother she had left behind.

The doseage of the sedative had been something else entirely, although her metabolism while at rest still burned a touch faster than her human equivalent would have, Mystique was left calculating that as long as she did not shift bodily while unconscious, there should be no undue complication. Still, she had tensed as the needles had slid into place and had to take a purposefully calm breath in and out as she lay back on the couch provided.

The world that rose around her as she opened her eyes again was at once like and unlike any she had seen before. There were hints of Paris' Latin Quarter in the winding streets she built around herself. Hints of Berlin just along the wall on the Eastern, decrepit and iron-rust side of the city in the streets beneath her feet. Manila for the scent in the air. Rome for the people who moved around her in the hot summer sun as she stepped out from the corner of one street in search of Eames.

How a place could exist in his subconscious that she built, she did not quite understand. It seemed too much the realm of Charles to think on comfortably, but as she wound her way through the moving crowd for a cafe that stood at the end of the boulevard, Mystique was too fascinated to concern herself with the regrets the memory of him might hold. Instead she focused on the feel of the wall beneath her fingertips as she reached out to touch one in passing, the feel of the ground beneath her heels as she shifted into something a bit more...Sophia Loren in the wide brim of her sunhat and the sunglasses she wore perched on her nose. The shift was unlike anything in reality, too featherlight smooth but at once a touch more difficult than the instinctive step from one form to another as she knew it. She pressed further as she stepped up to the cafe, losing her jeans for a dress that swept about her knees, but did not trade her physical form for another. Not yet.

That she doesn't yet know which of those around her is Eames is a challenge that's all too appealing, her quick inspection of the people milling about seeing her discard one after another as simply feeling too otherwise occupied. She's looking for someone who is waiting she knows. Someone like- ah.

If she's smiling then, it's in a grain of triumph, sliding into the seat across from the sleek little blonde number and hooking her knees over one arm of the chair to lean back against the other. "Well, I can't fault your taste."

Eames has been watching the whole time. The truth is that most of his talent comes from observation and it's in people's both conscious and subconscious actions that he finds the most information. He watches as she begins to work her way through the dream (having watched the dream, as well) and looks out for projections and what they might do. He's very self-serving and counts on his survival instincts to get him through any situation. It also just helps to have camouflage.

He watches as she sights him and lets out a languid, lazy smile as Eames reclines in the chair. "Gentlemen do prefer blondes," he replies in a dry American accent, shifting again, but this time it's into a direct mimic of her copy of Sophia Loren, right down to the dress. "Impressed yet?"

A shift as she knew it had never been so simple as taking the barest impression of a person and mimicking the shape of them. There was the frame beneath flesh and fat, the gait drawn as much by experience as by biology, the hundred tiny details and overarching themes that all went into a person. Thirty years after her ability had emerged and she could mimic the shape of a person in under a minute's observation, less if adrenaline pumped and she needed that camouflage in a panic.

It was strange to think of another person doing as she did, even if it was meant for the dream world and not the one they both lived in. She knew exactly how much experience went into that chameleon nature. How careful and observant a person would need to be to learn what she had found instinctual and needed only to refine in order to pass closer or more lengthy inspections.

She smiled as he copied her shape, the whim of a moment calling on having seen several of the woman's movies and never quite having had a chance to play her out in space beyond a spot in front of a bedroom or bathroom mirror. "Impressed? I think you'll have to do better than that, Mr. Eames." The words are teasing despite their apparent formality, and where she paused and stretched with a careful arch of her back, it was in shifting in the same smooth action. Sophia stretched up, a new woman relaxed. Darker skinned and sharp eyed, this form was an imitation of a young doctor Mystique had seen moving about the hotel, boasting the kind of cleverness she preferred to avoid in those who dealt in scalpels and curiosity. "And here I thought gentlemen preferred variety," she said, her voice a pitch perfect London estuary accent.

Eames laughs with delight at the sudden change. "Darling, do be careful. If I think you could ever stand to replace me in my work, I might have to see fit to find an accident to befall you." There's the edge of genuine worry and jealousy in his voice, being immensely proud of having become the best forger in the business thanks to his propensity for identifying tics, traits, history, and more. Actor, psychologist, thief, and charmer in one, it's taken him a long time to get here.

"The accent," he says curiously. "How do you perfect it if you haven't got a range of speech to take from?"

The curve of Mystique's lips might have suggested she had thought of that very thing, but in all truth there was no place, no duty that could replace what she had left unfinished in her own world. "You can relax, Mr. Eames. I'm competitive, but not competition." Her head tips back with the pretense of laziness in the action as she settled herself more comfortably into her seat, allowing herself a small tease for the rare respect she gave to a man whose observation skills were at least on par with her own. "Besides, I've learned I don't do very well in teams. I don't think I'll miss waiting for a dagger in my back any time soon."

She did not feel the need to mention that if the hard line of his jaw and the swagger of his step in the real world was any indication, she was, in all likelihood, some years older than him.

"Easy," she said, tongue finding the curves and lines of the sound naturally. "I used to live in Oxford, just off the university campus with my brother." The words were given freely, and where it was not wholly unpainful to speak of Charles in any circumstance, her speech was (relatively) unmarked by it. "I recognized the accent when I 'accidentally' bumped into her in the hotel and she, being quite British, apologized. It probably wouldn't fool anyone who knew her well for too long without a closer study, but most of the time I only need a quick change."

"Usually, I have to study at least someone's accent for a period of three or four days of prolonged exposure. While the dream can account for minor discrepancies, the last thing you want is for everything to fall apart because of the way you pronounced a flat 'a'," Eames says, watching her curiously as if trying to assess whether she is a threat to him or not. He is one of the best -- even better now that he's got inception under his belt -- but it does pay to be wary and to practice.

"Do you find this very different?" he asks, shifting back to his own form from dear Sophia, clad in a sharp little number with a purple pocket square framing the gray suit. "Switching in the dream compared to reality?"

"You work on a more intimate scale than I do," she replied, finding the understanding between her skillset and his easily enough now that she had been given a personal tour of at least what it was like to touch, to step, to shift within the boundaries of a dreamscape. "I choose my targets because they're usually unfamiliar enough that their suspicions aren't likely to be raised as long as I color with the lines of what they know of the other person." The tabletop beneath her hand snagged her attention, her fingers slipping over its surface under the watchfulness of dark brown eyes. How exact the sensation was. How perfectly ridged it felt beneath the trip of her fingertips as she found a small imperfection in the design before her. She raised her eyes to him again and leaned back in her seat, "Otherwise I need a little more...research."

In exchange for his slipping back into the shape that belonged to only himself, Mystique raised a hand to brush back her dark hair and, even as she brushed the strands over her shoulder, allowed the shape and color to melt into herself. Herself as she truly was, all rich blue skin and red hair, watching him from behind yellow eyes she had shown him only once. "There's none of the physical sensation here. Not really." She held up her hand, allowing it to flutter in transformation to turn just her fingers to the more human shade belonging to the blonde body she wore so often. A tip of her head and she allowed the color to flutter away again. "It could be that your mind adjusts for the new body you put on here, but out there in the world I feel my bones moving into place, my muscles bunch and move into whichever physique I've chosen."

"Ah, well," Eames remarks ruefully as he gives her a look that says there can be plenty of sensation if they so choose to go that route. "You know how they say pain is in the mind? Well, if the dreamer were to experience pain, then there would be a great deal of pain. The subjects, too," he assures. "Perhaps the shift doesn't feel the same, but I can promise if you were to seek out physical sensation, you could find it."

"Try not to rile the projections is all," Eames offers his good advice with a waggle of his fingers, sipping on his drink.

A decade had done its work in making pain as intimate and familiar as an old friend. It had proven to be as much ally as enemy when she had had too many of the latter, too few of the former. In comfort it was easy to forget how the lingering agony of an injury might keep you awake to hear the snap of twigs beneath a nearby boot and allow you a moment more to make your escape before you could be caught. It was a thought she could not forget then when it rose with his words, and if she stilled a second at hearing them, she had no desire to draw attention to it.

"That's...pleasant," she replied, allowing her shape to pull enough to have a white dress falling into place over the blue curves of her as she considered the scenery. "Do you know how they work, the projections, are they kind of like gravity? You know, you know it works and how to avoid getting on the wrong side of it, but you don't know how."

While she had not excelled in the least at school, let it not be said she wasn't always ready to absorb some new information that might prove itself useful. Even had there not been the added weight of then being inside his head and ready prey for whatever madness might come with that territory.

Eames watches the fabric of the dress, beyond impressed by the way she's taken to it, though he supposes if one shifts like this in the day to day, learning it in dreams should come naturally. He smiles, slightly, when she asks about projections. "I'm not exactly an expert on the mechanics of the dream outside of forging, though, if you're very nice and you let him see your talents, I'm sure my mate Arthur might be happy to share."

Mate might be a bit casual, but Eames doesn't like to get too serious, too fast. "Arthur's probably got diagrams of how to keep projections in line. Me? I find blending in is the best way. A good forgery means no one notices you in the dream. A great forgery means they trust you enough to think you belong."

The ability she had been born to was one that was built as much of instinctive action as active observation, the years having given her more flexibility in her shifts for her having fine-tuned the raw ability already at hand, rather than having grown in power in any way. Perhaps it might have felt like cheating to borrow a few hours of Eames' dream world and flex her proverbial muscles. Perhaps, but for the fact that it was a wholly new experience and not one she would have wanted to pass up for some strange idea of fair play (as if the underlying thread of competition was of anything but of a friendliness that was at once foreign and inviting).

Shapeshifting as she knew it was not simply a physical transformation, although that was always at its core. Her ability was one that required a solid concentration, one that could be accomplished only if she sunk mind as well as body into the new image of herself. It could very well have explained how readily she took to translating that ability into the dreamscape, her mind already used to the flexation required to reshape herself mentally to match the physicality she needed to live.

The very fact that someone not born to it had such control over his own transformations (his echoing her temporary Sophia Loren in little more than a second or two being proof of that) was enough to earn a modicum of extra respect, as far as she saw it. As familiar as she was with the idea of someone manipulating the mind of someone else, the translation into what little she knew of what Eames did felt...different. More invasive, less, she didn't know. Different, though, that much she was sure of.

"My talents," she repeated, turning over the prospect of giving over the truth of herself to another person in a world she used as a safe haven. The fact that she had agreed to the dreamscape at all was proof of having decided to trust Eames as far as that, further perhaps than he might understand to allow herself to be left insensate in the presence of someone who wasn't bound to the same cause she was, but still she needed a moment to consider. "Okay. Introduce me and I'll play nice, I promise."

Returning to the thought of projections, she lifted a hand to indicate her blue form, "Should I slip something else on for now, or will this do?"

He can't wait to see what Arthur thinks of her, if Eames is honest. True, he's somewhat wary for his own personal sake, having taught himself how to survive (which does include a great deal of selfish looking out for number one), but there's a fascination in learning. He's the best forger in the world at the moment, but what happens when some young child discovers a PASIV and starts becoming better than him? "I really don't mind," he assures. "Perhaps years ago, when I was first learning, I might have held a few hangups, but once you learn to live in anyone's skin, those fall away rather quickly."

"As for the projections, it might suit better if you were as you naturally are. Less for them to target as out of place," he explains. "Bad forgers are horrible on the job. Gets you ejected from the dream quite painfully when they figure out something is wrong with the fabric of their reality."

Perhaps there was something in the steadiness of his gaze as he watched her, or in the easy slackness of his broad shoulders as he sat across from her, Mystique believed him. At least as far as anyone could believe a professional liar. Where a decade had hardened her, it had as well taken the sheen off her desperation for the acceptance that lay forever out of reach. It was no longer absolution, but valued still for the rare nature of the thing.

As it was, she did her best not to read too much into what amounted still to a stranger's opinion. Not without valuing it, of course, but in understanding that he could not be aware of the implications even so casual a statement would mean in her world.

"A blue woman," she said with a broad smile, tipping her head back with the action. "Wouldn't be out of place?"

Eames raises both brows at her, running his tongue along the inside of his cheek as he sinks into the chair before smoothly rising out of it, offering her his arm and encouraging her onwards. "I could have a whole blue naked orchestra playing Salieri in here and so long as it felt right and like it belonged, it wouldn't matter," he says, punctuating the words with a throaty, soft laugh.

"Unless you were aiming for more forging practice?"

How long it had been since she had had a chance to laugh, full out, she couldn't exactly remember. Then again, remembering didn't keep her from it then while she stood and slipped her arm into his as if it were all as easy as that. "I think I'd pay to see that." Strange, she hadn't thought about it for so long, and yet she was almost distracted a moment by the realization that she hadn't ever seen another blue mutant still. No matter how far she had traveled, there had been none quite like her.

There was more curiosity over the dreamscape than there was any desire to mull over the thought before, and when she spoke again it was to say, "That depends. What else can you do here?"

"If I were a more skilled architect, I could play with physics the likes of which you wouldn't believe," Eames speaks, but he settles for a glass of scotch with two cubes of ice in it, at his fingertips even though it hadn't been there before. "Now, mind you, I'm passable," he admits, given that he would never go so far as to be modest, "but it's hardly my wheelhouse. My talent lies in theft and forgery," he says. "Come on," he encourages. "Let's take a tour and maybe you could play with the landscape a touch, see if you've got any talent in that."

She considered his words only for a moment before she replied, the curve of her smile pulling deeper on one side than the other, "You'd be surprised." Revealing what she was capable of had been one thing, but aside from a reference or two to the fact that she was not the only one in her world with abilities beyond human capability, she had never made direct references to the things either Charles or Erik could do. Those were their secrets and for all that had happened between them, she would not betray them that far.

The idea of being able to manipulate the world outside of herself was one she had set aside long before, but was perhaps thrilling. Or maybe the thought brought something more like nausea, she could not be sure. Still, she nodded. "Lead the way, Mister Eames."

He's more than happy to, but he does make sure that there are mirrors sprinkled every so often in their path. If she plans to come after him, he'll be prepared. If not, it's better to be paranoid than to be thrown out of the dream. He opens the door to what appears to be a quaint European street, though none that could actually be named.

Cobb's little lessons about not using memory and reality have sunk in and his own tendency to look out for his sanity have adopted it. "Some architects put detail into everything," he explains. "I've a more focused approach when I build. Put your details where you want the target looking. Guide their attention. And if you can't use the dream, use yourself," he says, changing his tie to a colour brighter than the rest of the dream, that stands out.

Where the inhuman blue of her skin worn openly was more honest than any other face she might have chosen, the hyperawareness that came with wearing what she was could only give off signals that might draw more attention than either of them could use. She let the blue feather away to leave the blonde form that had been her default for so much of her life.

If she avoided looking too closely at her reflection in any mirror she passed, so be it.

"Details," she repeated, brushing a hand down the skirt she had pulled around herself. The skirt shortened into a design more appropriate to her own decade than the Nexus. "Distracting the eye has never been an issue for me." She gave him a wide, bright smile, affecting an air best described as 'distracted California bikini model.'

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