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

Warnings: This is where the graphic depictions of torture begin. Physical/psychological abuse. Slash, Eames/Arthur

Rating: M

Reviews: Thanks to SSA Amber Janee Reid.

Note: Same deal as before, I'll update two weeks from today but with every review i'll update a day sooner. Thanks for reading and reviewing :D

Chapter Eight

Horizontal Dreamscape

Eames awoke with groggy gradualness. His head pounded and he groaned when he tried to open his eyes. The light overhead was much too bright so he shut his eyes against the morning light. He pulled his arm to place it on his eyes but his arms refused to co-operate. He hadn't had a hangover like this in ages.

"Arthur, am I dead yet? I feel like I got hit by a bus," he mumbled to his sleeping partner and received no reply. He tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes and felt a tight strain on his wrist. Nausea cursed through him when he realized his arms weren't moving not because of weariness, but because they were restrained. His eyes flew open now, tiredness forgotten. He wiggled his fingers and pulled at the restraints trying to find a way free of the leather bindings. When he realized he couldn't slip the bindings Eames took stock of what his current situation was. He was flat on his back, tied to a cot. His legs were also restrained. The room was bright white and smelled like bleach. He was only in his under pants, no other clothes. There were other cots in the room, as well as an instrument table but Eames couldn't see what was on it.

"Morning sunshine," Eames was startled by the fake jovial tones of another man in the room. He twisted his neck to catch a glimpse of the man in the corner behind his cot. He was lounging casually in a chair with a book in his hands. His chair was leaning back on two legs, feet on a small table in front of him and the book was blocking Eames' view of his face.

"What the fuck?" Eames growled. He didn't feel the need to expand, as the clear reason for his irritation was rather obvious. The man chuckled and flipped the page of the book.

"This is really quite the good read, though you wouldn't know anything about reading would you Bob?" Eames' heart did a little flip-flop of panic. He hadn't been called Bob in years. Even One-Two and Mumbles, his two best friends who had known him for years as the pseudonym Handsome Bob, called him Eames or Daniel. Besides the name, not many people knew about his difficulty with reading. How did this man know two of his best-kept secrets?

Eames didn't say anything just waited for the man to lower the book or keep talking. He tried to think back about how he had gotten here. After minutes of silence Eames ignored the man in the corner. He closed his eyes to concentrate but his thoughts were groggy and slow in coming. As soon as his first recollection of the job came to him, the rest of the memory flashed on his retinas in super speed starting with going into the dream, taking the pills from the nurse and ending with the image of Walcott's face in front of his as he had lost consciousness. His eyes burst open in surprise and he literally choked back a gasp to see Walcott in front of him, inches from his nose.

"Boo," he said with cackle and stood back, watching Eames. Eames' wide terrified eyes followed Walcott's every move. He now recognized the man in front of him. He knew this man and his name wasn't Walcott.

"Recognize me yet? Yeah, I can tell by your expression that you do. It's been quite some time since we've seen one another hasn't it. Oh I'd say about nine years. How time flies eh? I knew you wouldn't forget me. I certainly haven't forgotten you Handsome Bob," the man made his deliberated monologue as Eames remained tongue-tied, his eyes unable to leave other man's movements. He stopped pacing suddenly and stood behind Eames' head. Eames couldn't see him and slid his eyes shut tight. Walcott knelt close to his head and whispered, his hot breathe on his ear, "You were my first you know. I'd also have to say you were my favorite. The sounds you'd make, oooo," Walcott moaned and nuzzled his nose along Eames' cheekbone and then back to his ear. When Eames tried to flinch his head away, Walcott slid his hand into his hair and kept him still, saying softly, "I've spent years trying to duplicate those screams and the blood but no-one could quite bleed like you. I tried the dream world for a while but it just wasn't as fun as reality. I was quite disappointed when I didn't get you in reality. You were rescued before that delight. No I haven't forgotten you, you don't typically forget someone when you've been elbow deep inside them..."

"Are you quite done with the silly double entendre's Orion because your speech is a little long winded and a tad over dramatic," Eames opened his eyes and he fell comfortably into his mask of being indifferent and cheeky. Walcott –Orion, Eames now remembered his real name- snapped his mouth shut audibly and his eyes seemed to burn into the back of Eames' head. He stood slowly and glared down at him. Eames steeled himself and met the fiery glare with an icy one. He was not Handsome Bob anymore; he was Eames, the deadly dangerous forger/thief extraordinaire. He was not one to be intimidated or cowed; he was the one to smile and laugh in the face of those who hurt and threatened him. So he slipped into the familiar façade of Eames and let Bob and Daniel fall deep into the back of his mind, into the place that no forgery every got close to.

Orion glared daggers at him for interrupting his speech and huffed frustrated air through his nostrils. Eames thought he looked a little like an angry cartoon character, a bull or something and was surprised smoke didn't come out of his ears. He told Orion as much and got a fist in the jaw for his observation.

Orion was one of the team from the extraction on Handsome Bob all those years ago. Even though he had aged in the time since Eames had last seen him, he was unmistakably the same man. The same predatory hazel eyes. The close-cropped sandy blonde hair. He was broader now; he had lost all of his young thinness and had thickened into a strong athletic man. He had been much smaller back when Eames was his prisoner. Eames knew he was dreaming because he was able to remember exactly who this man was and what he had done to him. All those years ago this man had been the one to slice, cut, bruise and break him with the most amount of cruelty and glee. The other extractors had beaten and cut and tortured but this man had broken him. The man had been in his late twenties back then. He had an American accent, from the Boston region. He had grown out of the accent and the boyish looks but the cruelty in his face was still there, the glee at the prospect of inflicting pain.

"I'm a lot better now than I was back then," Orion began again as if Eames hadn't interrupted. "I still torture, that is much too much fun to give up, but now I don't need you to say a word to get what I'm looking for, you just have to think it and it'll go right on that little pad of paper over there. Now that I've sown that into your subconscious there is no way you cannot think about it. It'll work just like your silly safe idea but under torture you can't blank out the lines you don't want me to see, it'll just seep out. There is no way for you to hide your secrets."

"Why can I remember you? I spend half my life in dreams and I've never been able to remember any of you or what you did to me before. Why can I now? Are we deeper than three levels?"

"It's the drugs you see. You need them to get into this part of your subconscious. It isn't deeper than the levels; it's more of a linear progression. You and your crew were always going down, me and mine explored the horizontal regions, sideways."

"What do you want?"

"Ah, we'll get to that in due time. For now we'll just get reacquainted for a while. I really do miss your screams Bob. I will hear those screams again. I will see those tears and I will hear you beg. You will lose everything that you have spent the last nine years building up and I'm going to be there to see you fall. When I've broken you down, we'll get to the questions. Till then just enjoy the ride."

The next hours were hell. Bob had been tortured since that first extraction, even in the real world but this was worse than anything he had been through. Orion knew what he was doing. Eames had fingernails torn off, bones broken, skin burned and flayed. The worst was the psychological torture. Orion would be torturing and laughing at him one moment and then soothing his hair back from his face and cooing reassurances the next. His touches disturbingly reminiscent of Arthur but not in a comforting way. It was like taking a favorite childhood toy and cutting out its eyes and replacing them with creepy button eyes. You knew what it was supposed to look like but it wasn't quite right, it was distorted and wrong. (Eames knew he'd have to thank Arthur for making him watch that creepy Coraline movie for that visualization.)

Orion would place his forehead to Eames', quiet and fake comforting while he burned a cigar into the empty place where Eames' fingernail had been. He would brush his fingertips over his chest just before digging them into a wide cut that he had made on his stomach. He would kiss down his neck then bite deep and painful into Eames' skin. The intimate touches were just as much a torture as the burning, breaking and cutting. Eames' refused to take solace in the touches, knowing that was why there were given. They were there to screw with his head, make him feel comfortable with this man. To make him feel for his torturer, the person who caused him so much pain and relief. It was a power play as well as a psychological one. It was a sped up process of the psychology of a beaten lover. The person being abused was so grateful for the times that were good that they excused the times that were bad. It was a sick psychological game and it had worked on Handsome Bob. This man's goal was Stockholm syndrome. Bob had fallen for it. Eames' remembers waking from his nightmares feeling heartbroken as well as scared and not knowing why he felt like he was missing someone.

Through it all Eames refused to scream, beg or be baited in anyway. He was not Bob and he refused to succumb to this nightmare again. He laughed when he wanted to scream, he cursed, vision red tinged with rage when he wanted to cry. He would smart mouth and sass when he just wanted to beg for it all to stop, please god make it stop.

He forged, refusing to allow Orion to touch his body. When the pain got too much and Eames was forced to drop the forge that was Orion would touch him, caress him. He held his hair in one hand and a knife or cigar in the other. The grasp in his hair switching from caressing to restraining when he would pull the blade slowly across his skin or burn the cigar deep into an open wound. He would place his lips an inch from Eames' own, nose-to-nose, and forehead-to-forehead. He breathed in Eames' gasp of pain when he stabbed a three-inch knife into his ribs and twisted. He would kiss his knee and soothe circles into Eames' hip as he cut off his toes with a cigar cutter. He would rub the tension from his calf while burning the stubs where his toes once were with chemical acid.

In the midst of the torture Eames was faintly aware that he still had a job to do.

"Why did you kill Rickard?" Eames asked, needing a distraction from his agonizing wounds. He was currently in the body of a fourteen-year-old boy and his voice cracked. Walcott looked up from his inspection of the flesh he had just filayed from his stomach.

"I needed a way to get into your head. I knew that Rickard Jr. had a connection to Arthur's family and I wanted you two to come into my head. I can only do this if I am the subject. Your projections would freak out and take me down but mine are trained to do my bidding."

"How could you possibly know for certain that we'd be hired?"

"I didn't, I've killed three other people with vague connections to Arthur and you. You weren't hired till this one."

Eames recoiled at the thought that his secrets, whatever Orion needed from him were worth four innocent lives. He was distracted from his thought train when Orion continued with his ministrations.

Seven missing fingernails, four broken fingers, three missing toes, three stab wounds, eight long gashes, three two by two inch patches of raw flesh where the skin had been removed, two broken kneecaps, five bites, uncounted burns and small cuts later, Eames wasn't able to hold a forge anymore. His body was in too much pain for his mind to be able to hold the concentration to keep a forge.

He didn't talk or sass anymore, he was too tired. His muscles quivered with exhaustion and tears leaked from the side of his eyes and he wasn't able to stop them. He never did scream or beg though. He gasped, grunted, laughed, yelled and swore but never screamed. Orion was patient but Eames could tell he wasn't pleased that he had Eames on his torture table and not Handsome Bob.

Sandy blonde hair and a firm jaw filled his vision. The soft look in Orion's eyes made Eames feel like he was going to throw up. He grasped Eames' chin and forced him to tilt his head back. He wiped the tears from Eames' face with his thumbs, a knife still clutched in his fingers.

"It's alright Bob, let it out. I'm here," he said softly before bending his head to Eames' exposed throat. He ghosted his lips up and down his neck, over the bleeding bite at the crook of his shoulder and neck, kissing it almost in apology. Eames tried to pull away like usual, but the grip tightened and Eames felt the bones of his jaw creak with the force.

"I need something from you Bob, and then I can make all of this go away. It will be hard for you to give it up but I'll make it worth your while. You tell me and I'll send you back to Arthur and never bother you again. You'll forget all of this, just like before," Orion pulled his head up and met his gaze, still grasping his face and stroking his hair.

"What do you need?" Eames' hoarse voice asked before his mind could catch it and bring it back. He forced himself not to nuzzle into the strong fingers that soothed his hair. Every touch that wasn't pain was a comfort that Eames could barely allow himself not to feel.

"I need the Stilman code," Orion said against the skin of his cheek. Eames' felt his entire body tense and panic gripped him by the throat. He tried to pull his face away from the lips at his cheekbone but the hand was still tightened on his jaw and refused to let go.

"No, never," Eames' growled. He felt Orion tense as well and suddenly the hand holding the knife was no longer stroking his hair or wiping the tears gently from his face. It was crushing his windpipe, the other hand still gripping his chin. His head was forced at an uncomfortable angle backwards and to the side, facing Orion.

"You'll tell or I'll go find Arthur. We'll see how long you last as I strip the flesh from his bones. Or better yet, I'll leave you tied to this table while I wake him and I up and do all of these lovely things to him in reality. How long would you last if you could hear him screaming and dying while you were stuck here helpless to save him? His screams would last so much longer down here, drawn out by the time lapse. Could you sit here for days and hear me kill him?" Orion yelled in his face and slammed his head back against the table. Eames' shut his eyes tight and felt his face drain of blood. He pressed his eyes closed firmly against the anger of the man in front of him. In all the time Eames' had spent on the table, Orion had not once yelled at him and his anger was terrifying, it was tinged with insanity. He wouldn't give the Stilman code to save his own life but what wouldn't he do to save Arthur? He panicked. He couldn't give Orion the Stilman code; to give it to him would mean the death of hundreds of innocent people, maybe even thousands. The knife still grasped in Orion's grip nicked Eames' neck just below the square of his jaw when Orion shook him yelling, "Tell me what I want to know."

Eames felt the blood from this tiny cut slide down the side of his neck. Orion still yelled at him but Eames' had found a way out of this and tuned him out while he planned as quick as he could. He took a deep breath and met Orion's gaze again.

"I'll tell you but you have to promise to let Arthur alone," Eames said painfully. Orion blinked stupidly, he obviously had expected to have to torture the code out of him. He expected to torture Eames till his subconscious scrawled the fourteen number's and letters onto the pad of paper.

Just as Eames had planned the grasp on his chin loosened slightly and in that split second Eames forced his chin down hard, forcing the knife into his neck, below his jaw and into his artery. He choked on his own blood as Orion screamed at him in rage. His eyes slid shut as his fast beating heart pumped his blood out through the gaping hole in his neck. He smiled as he died.

He awoke in the nursing home, not strapped to the bed. He saw Orion sitting asleep on the chair beside his bed still plugged into the pasiv. He pulled the needle from his arm and got painfully to his feet. He was still forged as Rickard and dropped the forge as he tried to rush from the room. He made his way to the locked door as quick as he could. There was nothing in the room that Eames' could kill himself with. Before he could get the locked door open he was suddenly wrenched back by his shoulder. He was flung onto the ground. He landed with a sickening crunch and felt his hip pop.

"You're still in a dream you idiot and now we're in the level that dearest Arthur is in. Your going to tell me about that code, whether you want to or not! Your going to think it and it's going to go down onto that pad of paper and there is nothing you can do about it," Orion screamed at him and climbed on top of his body, straddling him. Eames' fought against the man on top of him but the drugs in his body weakened him and he wasn't able to do much. His lungs burned from the effort of escape. He couldn't let Orion have the code; it was worth more than his life. It was worth more than Arthur's life. How could he possible keep it from his head? How could he keep a secret from his subconscious leaking out?

He could forget the subconscious entirely. Within moments of this thought, Eames stopped fighting Orion and started loosening the mental tethers to himself in his brain. He closed his eyes with the effort and ignored the torture the man above him was giving his body. He cut loose himself and embraced his forge. He became Mark Rickard. He forgot the code, by forgetting himself. By the time he was done he was Mark Rickard. He didn't just burry Daniel Handsome Bob Eames, he let him go, cut him loose. He wasn't there anymore.

When he opened his eyes and saw the shark tooth snarl above him, it was with Mark Rickard's eyes.

"Who are you? Wh… What's going on? Please stop hurting me," the man asked with fear and trembling. Orion stopped and stared down at him blankly. He didn't accuse the old man of lying. He understood immediately what had happened. He got off the old man quickly. He went to his notepad and read briefly.

"No! Damnit," he roared and kicked the old man in the ribs. He grabbed the chemical acid and sprayed it into the old man's face as he tried to get away. He beat the man with all of his rage before climbing onto his chest and suffocating him with his hand. He knew he had lost Eames and he took all of his rage and frustration out on the forge in front of him.

When the man was dead he turned from the broken body and began his search for Arthur.