Disclaimer: I don't own Inception nor any of it's characters.

Warnings: Graphic and Non-graphic scenes of torture. Non-graphic sex later in the story. Slash, Eames/Arthur

Rating: M (Allusions to sex)

Reviews: Thanks so much to Eshlyn Kar, Alice and Yesturday'sNightmare. (I'd love to be able to message you back so please login for your next review :D Until then sorry there is more past to get through but I think it's interesting and it's pertinent for this story and the sequel/prequel I have going up later. Don't worry the action/torture is coming soon.)

Note: So this is a day early because i'm heading out on a road trip tomorrow. Same deal as before, I'll update two weeks from today but with every review i'll update a day sooner. Next Chapter we'll be plunging into the job and into the dream world so exciting stuff coming up. If you login and review I'll send you a sneak peak into the sequel/prequel for this story which I'll post a couple months after this story is up. And if you catch what other Tom Hardy movie is alluded to in this ch. I'll give you a preview of another story I'm working on separate from this one. Thanks for reading and reviewing :D

Chapter Five

The Past of Eames

A week and a half later, back at the apartment Arthur was steadily pulling together who Walcott might actually be. Arthur had scowered their old jobs for a match and he was relieved nothing had come up with their past contacts. It was always more difficult to go against people they knew.

The search had pulled some facts that Arthur was busy trying to interpret and pull together. A possible partial fingerprint from a Belgium murder was a match for one Ector Scott, a pseudonym for a man involved in a murder in Japan. Both murders were a match for the same killing signature as Rickard, suffocated with a hand over the mouth and nose, pressure on the chest and acid blinded eyes just prior to death. Arthur had found dozens of victims with this signature globally. In Los Angles they even got a partial picture of the man they thought had killed a woman there. He went under the same pseudonym Ector Scott. You couldn't see anything more than his profile but Arthur was better than the normal investigator. He was able to get a clear shot from the picture of the man's ear and matched it to the surveillance photos of Walcott's they already had. So the man had been busy. Possibly killing over 56 people in over 14 countries in the past 6 years, never leaving any substantial evidence behind. But all the little bits were starting to add up. The photo from Los Angeles, the partial from Belgium, the false identity in Japan, and a few other insubstantial bits that if looked at individually, left you with a pile of circumstantial evidence but together they were painting a bloody picture.

Arthur went back to the paper trail after he had gotten through most of the circumstantial stuff. Everything had a paper trail: bank transfers, credit cards, even cash could be tracked if given the right experience and Arthur had it. Slowly but surely he was getting an idea of where the man had been but not who he was. Arthur had found over seven different identities that matched the man. Two of the identities were listed as dead, three missing and two still active members of the community. It was hard to shift through and find out which was actually the man he was looking for but he was slowly making headway.

Though he still had bupkis on why the murderer had gone after Rickard. Edward's brother Herman looked clean and his kids did too. The best Arthur could do was that Mark Rickard had been in the army for over fifty years. A retired vet. Maybe he had seen, done or knew something from his days in the service that could have warranted the torturous death.

Arthur ran his hands over his face. He was tired and frustrated with this case. He wanted to get it over with. Ever since the inception job they had been taking more jobs than ever before. All he wanted to do was take a very long vacation with Eames, somewhere with lots of museums and art galleries. They needed time together, to pull some semblance of normalcy back into their lives. They needed to heal and ground themselves. Arthur was afraid that they would loose themselves soon if they didn't regroup. He worried about Eames especially.

Arthur's first time lucid dreaming had been wonderful. Filled with smiles and beauty as he shared the new world with the only family that had mattered to him. Mal and Dom had taken him into their minds where they showed him vast oceans and flowery meadows. Beauty and friendship was the classroom that Arthur got to study in for the world of lucid dreaming. Arthur knew that Eames hadn't had the best first experience with dream technology. In fact it had been devastating. Eames had been known back then as Handsome Bob but his real name was Daniel Renault. He was apart of a rowdy gang of criminals in London called the Wild Bunch. As a young 22 year old, Eames had been subjected to one of the most brutal extractions Arthur had ever heard about. The five men that had infiltrated the young criminal's mind hadn't been subtle or talented enough to extract the information they sought through guile. They were a brutal team who didn't know the intricacies of extraction by finding the information hidden in the subconscious. They just used the opportunity to inflict serious pain on an individual without actually killing them. They had mercilessly put the young man under into the dream state and tried to torture the information out of him. They had doped Eames up on serious drugs, and continually plunged him into the dream world. They would torture him for hours before killing him and putting him right back under. Their brutal method may well have worked if only Eames had known anything that would have been of consequence to them, which he hadn't. The team had botched up their original target and they hoped Eames would be a good backup. He hadn't known what they needed to extract. They didn't believe that Eames knew nothing and had for three days subjected him to their torture.

Eames was in the hospital for weeks after being rescued, trying to get his body flushed of all the harmful drugs that were in his system. The best thing about the drugs was the fact that Eames hadn't remembered anything from his dreams when he was awake. Once he fell asleep though, his subconscious was thrown into turmoil. He had constantly awoken himself screaming but never remembered what had happened.

The first time Arthur and Eames had dreamed together, back when they were both 23, had been the first time Eames had lucid dreamt since the brutal extraction. His subconscious was a veritable Chernobyl. Buildings that should have been pristine and audacious in Arthur's design were crumbling ruins in Eames' dream. The projections had been absent for the first hour and so had Eames. When Arthur had finally found him, he had been cowering in the tub of a washroom beside a room that also appeared to be a torture chamber. The projections found Arthur then and tore him apart, slowly. It took months of help from Arthur and Mal to calm Eames' subconscious enough for him to be able to go into anyone else's dreams and not have his projections enter in and destroy everything in sight. It took years for Arthur to be able to safely enter into Eames' subconscious and years more for anyone else to enter in. Eames had since then become a stable dreamer as shown in the Inception job.

There had been a certain vulnerability to Eames that had enticed Arthur the first time they had met. Because of his upbringing, Arthur couldn't bring himself to ever show any kind of vulnerability, but Eames had had an open face, so readable and so innocent in his way. When he was mad, you could see it in the set of his jaw, when he was hurt, his eyes would scream it out, when he was turned on, his wolfish grin was fixed on his face. Everything he thought and felt flittered across his face so openly that Arthur was instantly drawn and more than a little jealous. Arthur didn't find that vulnerability nearly as often outside their home anymore. It was something only Arthur got to see. He supposed it had happened slowly over the years. As Daniel Renault went from Handsome Bob the criminal and the man who had had his brain picked apart by strangers, to Eames the capable and dangerous Forger extraordinaire, he had hardened his face and schooled his features. Arthur felt as if over the years he had stolen some of Eames' openness and Eames had adopted some of his solemnity. They balanced each other out. Eames' emotions were a vulnerability so he become much more private. Arthur who had been private to the point of unapproachable slowly opened up to Eames and became vulnerable. It worked well for both of them and they were a perfect team because of their balance.

Until Inception. That had been the first time Arthur had noticed the bitterness that had taken over. Though Eames was still joking, teasing and smiling, it was darker than before. The jokes took on a morbidity that hadn't been as prevalent and a coldness that shook Arthur to the core. He had thought he had lost Eames.

Arthur knew that the hardness came from him leaving Eames to help Dom after Mal had died. Eames had wanted to come with. Arthur had told him to wait. He didn't want Eames in danger with the authorities and those who might want to go after Dom for Mal's "murder".

Months later, after all of that had died away Eames had asked to join Arthur and Dom again. At that time Mal the ghost of Dom's subconscious had made her presence known in Dom's subconscious. She was malicious and dangerous. Eames had joined Dom and Arthur for one job and Mal had torn into Eames like a pit-bull into a kitten. Dom's subconscious loathed that he had lost his one true love and Arthur had managed to keep his. Arthur wasn't sure if Dom knew that Mal represented that bitterness towards him or if he was keeping a blind eye to it. Either way, Arthur couldn't bare to watch his beloved sister in law do and say such horrible things to the man he loved and know that it represented his brother's buried resentment towards him. Arthur left Eames after that. They still wrote and occasionally met but Arthur refused to have Eames work with him and Dom. After a year they even stopped meeting because every time they did just ended in angry rows and vicious words. Eames wanted to go with Arthur; Arthur couldn't have Eames near Dom and his projection of Mal and Arthur couldn't leave Dom. Eames still called and nearly begged to be allowed to help and after they started fighting on the phone, Arthur stopped taking his calls. Months of silence followed.

He knew now he had dropped into defensive mode. Self preservation kicked in in reaction to the shock at the loss, fear and overwhelming pain of losing Mal and at the violent ghost of her in his brother's mind. Though he had said he had wanted to protect Eames, he had shut Eames out to protect himself as well. Mal had been so important to him, like the loving mother he had never had. To loose her had been devastating and instead of pulling closer to the people he still had, he had pushed them away to keep himself safe from what he saw as their impending deaths as well. He hadn't been in the best of places back then and only after hours of conversation with Eames was he able to pinpoint exactly what he had been thinking and why he'd reacted the way he did.

Arthur had finally given in by the time Inception had come along. He knew he needed Eames to get the job done, and he knew that he just needed Eames. He missed their cuddling in the morning; he missed their pets playing with their feet while they were under the covers together and so many other precious moments that it was too much to know Eames was in the world but not in his world. So he had caved and allowed Dom to pull the beautiful Brit back to his life. Arthur wasn't sure what to expect from Eames but when Eames had shown up, all cool and professional Arthur had known that he had pushed him away too hard. The flirtation was still there and so was the occasional soft glance but it was so cold most of the time, almost taunting. Eames had recently told him it had been because he had been pining and hurt.

Arthur had almost given up a few times but before and during Inception Eames had playfully teased him, called him Darling and had worried about the security going after him. Arthur knew as Eames fell asleep on the second level of the dream after their brief exchange of words, that he was going to make things right with Eames. He'd chase Eames down hard as soon as the job was done and Eames was certainly going to lead him on a merry chase.

After everyone had left the LAX airport, Arthur directed his cab driver to follow the one Eames had gotten into. He got out where Eames did and followed him up to the front desk of a hotel. Eames was ordering a room with a single and Arthur had cut in, demanding a king on the executive floor. Eames had looked at him with mild surprise and murmured that Arthur was paying.

The elevator ride was silent. Arthur wanted so badly to say something but when he'd opened his mouth Eames had glared at him till he shut it.

Arthur had expected Eames to yell when they got to their hotel room or to kick his ass. He knew he deserved either of those two things. What he got was much better. The second the door was closed, Eames was all over him. Tongue in his mouth, hand down his pants, pressing urgently into him against the recently slammed door. Eames claimed Arthur in a way that they had never done before. They had always been possessive of each other, but never claiming. Arthur found himself rather liking the new Eames he found himself in bed with that night, lots of biting, wrestling and marking. Usually when the two of them got together, there was a lot of grappling and jockeying for position, this time Eames remained dominant. Arthur had known he'd have hickie bruises for weeks. They had talked, though it was through kissing lips and fevered rutting. Mostly the night consisted of Arthur apologizing and Eames demanding he never leave him again between gasps and moans.

The next morning they actually sat down together and talked, after a bout of lazy morning blowjobs of course. Eames had understood Arthur's need to be with Dom. Dom had been the only person for the entirety of Arthur's life that had loved and protected him. Arthur was loyal and Dom had earned that loyalty. But Eames was hellova pissed that Arthur had cut him out because he loved and protected Arthur too. He had earned that loyalty as well.

After some patient coxing from Eames, Arthur explained to him what Mal's death had done to him. Then what seeing Mal killing and torturing Eames had done to him and how that was why he'd left. How he couldn't handle ever seeing that again. The bitterness and anger at Mal for killing herself, the guilt over knowing Dom resented him for having Eames. His fear of losing another person he was close to coming to fruition when he had watched Eames die at the hands of Mal, even if it had only been a dream. All of that had caused Arthur to shut Eames out and to allow Dom to push him away emotionally if not physically. They never did come to a real conclusion with that conversation because Arthur had broken down.

After months of worry, regret and loneliness he had finally broken apart. Eames didn't hesitate as he came over and held him while he cried. He held Arthur against his chest and murmured into the back of his neck and Arthur held on with a vice like grip. They made sappy, romantic love next, the kind where it's slow and heated but you cry afterwards and just hold each other for hours. Then they had rough man sex to make themselves feel strong and in control again. Lots of wrestling and grappling, writhing bodies and biting teeth accompanied by bruises and growls.

Eames never did talk about what he had done for those months of silence between them but Arthur didn't feel brave enough to ask him yet. Their relationship was back on track, stronger than ever but sometimes Arthur was afraid that the damage he had done when he had pushed Eames away would have serious consequences for them. They needed to slow down the jobs and Arthur was determined that they would right after this job. Maybe buy a house, or a farm. Set up a home for themselves and their pets. Until then Arthur had lots of questions about his mark, his employer and the victim that needed to have answers in order for him to get over his pre-job gitters.

Note: "He'd chase Eames down hard as soon as the job was done and Eames was certainly going to lead him on a merry chase." Lame I know but i couldn't resist it!