![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.
Emily had given Arvin The Seven Pillars of Wisdom as a gift, years ago, a first edition bought at Sotheby’s for their paper anniversary, when his dreams did not feature anything more threatening than a family and a highly successful career within the CIA; but it had been Jack, who, having borrowed the book, returned it with the quote underlined. Arvin never asked him why. He took it as further evidence Jack understood him, and had to be recruited into the newly formed SD-6 at once, no questions asked.
Later, he wondered whether the gesture had not rather been Jack’s one and only warning that he was about to do to Arvin what Irina had done to Jack, but it did not change the truth of those lines a long-dead Englishman enamoured by pain and greatness had written about himself. Arvin Sloane had dreams, and he made them possible. He sometimes wondered whether he did not dream up Rambaldi himself. A Renaissance genius and prophet who held the future in his hand like life and death sounded like something only a dream could give birth to, a dream born out of the loss of a child, that terrible loss Emily had demanded his silence about, and out of the purposeless darkness his work had engulfed him with.
His dream of Rambaldi gave him purpose. It gave him a mystery that would take a lifetime to decipher, a challenge he would not be worthy to pass until he had sacrificed all, and a belief that would not fail him as all his previous convictions had. It made him feel invincible.
There was another truth about dreams, though, that he had not considered, even about dreams that were dreamt in the day. They are cruellest when fulfilled.
His dream of Rambaldi became true when he no longer wanted it, and Arvin Sloane has longed to wake up ever since.
Emily had given Arvin The Seven Pillars of Wisdom as a gift, years ago, a first edition bought at Sotheby’s for their paper anniversary, when his dreams did not feature anything more threatening than a family and a highly successful career within the CIA; but it had been Jack, who, having borrowed the book, returned it with the quote underlined. Arvin never asked him why. He took it as further evidence Jack understood him, and had to be recruited into the newly formed SD-6 at once, no questions asked.
Later, he wondered whether the gesture had not rather been Jack’s one and only warning that he was about to do to Arvin what Irina had done to Jack, but it did not change the truth of those lines a long-dead Englishman enamoured by pain and greatness had written about himself. Arvin Sloane had dreams, and he made them possible. He sometimes wondered whether he did not dream up Rambaldi himself. A Renaissance genius and prophet who held the future in his hand like life and death sounded like something only a dream could give birth to, a dream born out of the loss of a child, that terrible loss Emily had demanded his silence about, and out of the purposeless darkness his work had engulfed him with.
His dream of Rambaldi gave him purpose. It gave him a mystery that would take a lifetime to decipher, a challenge he would not be worthy to pass until he had sacrificed all, and a belief that would not fail him as all his previous convictions had. It made him feel invincible.
There was another truth about dreams, though, that he had not considered, even about dreams that were dreamt in the day. They are cruellest when fulfilled.
His dream of Rambaldi became true when he no longer wanted it, and Arvin Sloane has longed to wake up ever since.
