Title: The Bible Didn't Mention Us, Not Even Once
Pairing: Eames/Fischer
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Minor violence, minor character death, inexplicit potentially disturbing content
Word Count: 2,264
Inspiration: This was originally inspired by Regina Spektor's "Samson", and originally conceived as a much simpler piece.
Summary: Watching the film, you may realize that the inception wasn't planned by Cobb, but by Eames, down to every detail. Why?

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Arthur came down into the dark to find Eames alone at a table, beside a bottle the point man couldn't make out. There was a difference in the man's posture between getting drunk and just having a drink; Arthur wasn't sure when he had picked up on this. The younger man could tell Eames was getting drunk, regardless of how much he may have actually had to drink at this point.

"Did we do the right thing, Arthur?"

"How do you mean?"

"I mean what we did. Are we any better than him?"

"Who?"

"Fischer."

Arthur peered at him. He wasn't sure how to dissect what Eames had said into a logical flow of thought. "I would say we aren't better than him. We are thieves, Eames." It was stated with a minute laugh. The forger of all people should be aware of the sketchy ethical nature of their work. "Fischer was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"What? No, not Robert! I meant the father, Maurice." Eames spoke as if this should have been obvious.

Arthur considered him a moment more, and sighed. "You should get some sleep."

"You can take my share for the night," Eames replied. "Good night, Arthur."

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Twelve years ago.

Robert's hair was pulled back, but some of it had come free, falling in a loose curl near his ear. It's this that makes Eames' lips want to press there, which they do.

Robert smiles, cheek shifting so near to the spot. "I didn't hear you come in."

"You were too consumed by your book," Eames answers. He rests his hip against Robert's desk. He always enjoys simply watching him. They've been together for quite some time now - almost four years - but he still feels newly enamored each time he sees him. It's like a tightness in his heart that would be painful if it weren't soothed by being able to touch him, having him as his own, receiving his smiles.

Robert bookmarks his page and closes it. Beneath is revealed an engineering draft.

"Pinwheels?" Eames asks.

"Windmills," Robert corrects after a moment.

"Ah, right. Like farms use?"

"Not just farms. Whole cities could be powered by the wind," Robert tells him.

"Are they?"

"They could be."

Eames is smiling and reaching for his hand when they're interrupted by a knock on the door. He's already standing, so he's the one to answer it.

He doesn't recognize the man outside, who looks thrown off guard at the sight of him. "Can I help you?"

"I'm, uh..." The older man clears his throat. He doesn't approve of Eames and doesn't care to discuss his business with him. "I'm here to see Robert."

"Peter." Robert has appeared at Eames' side.

When he gives no indication of either inviting Browning inside or stepping outside with him, the man named Peter prompts, "Can I speak with you privately?"

"If my father sent you, I'm really not interested."

Browning sighs. "Robert, be reasonable."

"I don't want to work for the company, I don't want to work with the company. You can tell him I appreciate his offer to pay for my business degree, but I'm not getting a business degree."

Eames has never seen Robert like this, so resolvedly dismissive. Robert's told him about the strained, estranged relationship with his father, but this is something fiercer than he imagined.

"You know you're not going to have much of a choice. Your father's only going to humor this for so long." Browning gestures vaguely at 'this,' and he seems to be encompassing Robert's long hair, Eames, their apartment, Eames' half-finished canvasses against the back wall, Robert's choice of career.

Eames doesn't understand why, if Robert's father gives so much of a damn, he doesn't bother coming here himself.

"What can he do? I'm not a boy anymore," Robert says.

The older man gives Robert a look - we'll see - and although he doesn't speak, Eames finds it threatening. "I think you should leave."

Browning's eyes narrow at him. "This is none of your business. Why don't you go for a drink or something?"

"You should go now," Robert agrees with Eames. He isn't going to tolerate Browning talking to Eames like that, and Eames finds that fairly arousing.

Once the other is gone, Robert leans on the closed door with a sigh.

"You alright?"

He nods. "Yeah. I'm sorry about that."

"Your dad's a bit like the moffia," Eames jokes. He doesn't know what else he could say.

Robert laughs, and Eames loves the sound. "He thinks he's more like a Roman emperor. He thinks he needs an heir to be more powerful, but I have no interest in the job."

"He'll figure that out eventually," Eames reassures him.

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A few weeks later, Eames' arms are wrapped around Robert's chest, caressing his bare skin, and he's kissing along his neck.

"Mmm... I have to go to work..." Robert gently tries to extract himself from the embrace.

"No you don't. Stay here with me. I love you more than work does." Eames holds on to him tighter, wrapping a leg over him as well.

Robert laughs again, and squirms around to kiss Eames on the lips. "I love you." This raises the other's hopes. "But I have to go."

"Tease."

Robert is up and heading to their bathroom now. "I'll be back tonight, and then we can do whatever you like."

Eames gives him a naughty smirk.

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Robert never came back. It was eight months before Eames saw him again, and then, it was only by random chance.

He was still living near the university, though he was becoming increasingly doubtful he would be returning to his classes for the next semester. He had been taking a few, trying to develop more versatility, and he'd thought he was paying for them himself. Little had he known, Robert had been intercepting his tuition bills and paying for most of the total himself; by the time Eames saw the remainder, it was a manageable amount for what he made selling paintings.

He'd called Robert's work - they said he'd mailed them a letter of resignation. He'd called the police - they were unhelpful. He'd called Fischer-Morrow - they wouldn't give him the time of day. His insistence to the receptionist that Mr. Fischer's son was missing, something might have happened to him, didn't get him any more of a reaction.

He just happened to be cutting through the campus when an outside lecture was letting out. He waded through the crowd of people, and suddenly, there he was. He pushed toward him, without apology to the people he knocked into. Robert's hair was short and neat, and he wore a sharp, expensive-looking business suit.

"Robert!"

Robert looked at him, then behind himself, as if expecting Eames to be speaking to someone else.

"My god, I've been looking everywhere for you! Where the hell have you been?"

"I'm sorry, I don't remember where we've met..." Robert looked genuinely confused.

"What are you talking about? It's me!" He wanted to yell at him for disappearing like that, say if he had wanted to leave him, he could have at least told him! But there was no recognition in Robert's eyes. Eames knew Robert had zero skill as an actor; he couldn't even lie convincingly.

Robert shook his head. "I don't know who you are."

"It's... It's me. Robert, it's Eames."

"I'm sorry, you must have me confused with someone else. I don't know you." Robert began to walk away from him.

"Wait!" Eames grabbed his arm, "Robert, please. Look at me!"

Robert did, and there was the same lack of familiarity as before. He was telling the truth; he had no idea who Eames was.

Then Eames was being shoved away and a body guard was dragging Robert to a waiting car. Their eyes met once more, then he was gone again.

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Two years later, Eames had a gun to a man's head.

"Robert Fischer. I know you're the one who did it. I want to know exactly what was done and how you undo it."

The man looked at him, of all ways, skeptically. He also looked afraid, however, so Eames would accept that. "What do you know about it?"

Eames pushed the tip of his gun into the man's forehead, firmly. "I'm going to be asking the questions."

The man didn't appear appropriately intimidated.

"I know Maurice Fischer hired you to brainwash his son."

"Then why are you asking me?"

"I want to know how."

The man was silent. Eames waited, then pulled his gun back and slammed it into the side of the other's head. "Talk!"

He was surprised how easily the action came. He was realizing he was capable of doing whatever was necessary.

"Dream sharing."

"What, like the military? How can that be used to brainwash a person?"

"The same way you ever brainwash anyone."

"How?"

The man gave Eames a long, contemptuous stare. "You take them under, deep. That gives you as much time as you need. Use their exposed subconscious to find what needs to be erased or replaced, and apply traditional brainwashing techniques."

"Such as?"

"You don't want to know."

"Try me."

"The classics. Sensory deprivation, sensory overload, repetition, reinforcement, negative response training. A lot of intravenous medication," the man said.

"You tortured him." Eames had hated this man as soon as he learned about him, but now there was a new depth to his loathing.

A shrug. "If you want to call it that."

"How do I undo it?" he demanded.

"Look, I know who you are."

Eames wasn't expecting that.

"Of course I know who you are. I spent a long time erasing every trace of you. And I'm telling you right now, there's nothing left. You're not gonna get your boyfriend back." The man's tone was even, despite how this straight-forward explanation might seem like a taunt to the man pointing a gun at his head.

"If it can be done, it can be undone. Tell me how!"

"You want to get him back? I don't know, try flowers. Introduce yourself and ask him to dinner," the man sneered. "He won't have any interest in you."

"You tell me how to put him right, bring him back to his old self, or I will kill you right here!" Eames threatened.

"There is no way. It can't be done. He's a different person now, and you can't just get back what's been wiped out."

"He's not a computer! You can't erase memories, you can only force someone to forget!"

"And the difference being...?"

"Stop playing with me. There has to be a way to undo it. You tell me right now, or I'll kill you."

"There isn't a way!"

"I'm serious. You tell me how it's done."

"There's no way!"

The gunshot was louder than Eames expected. As he left that place, his hands were shaking, but his mind was steady. Dream sharing: he was going to have to learn more about that.

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Eames had the inception planned before Dom arrived in Mombasa. He'd tried to do it before, on less important people. Never successfully, but the idea had been in his mind for a long time.

Sever Robert's ties to his father in a way that wouldn't hurt him. That was Eames' objective; it was what ihe/i wanted. Free Robert. It was perfectly plausible this would also lead him to dissolving his father's conglomeration, so Saito and Cobb accepted the suggestion without question.

He knew how he wanted to get in: through Browning, the man Robert had been made to think he trusted. Use Browning, as imitation and projection, to get Robert to reflect the idea of separating from his father back upon himself. If his solutions to all their questions came too quickly, too readily, no one seemed to notice. He brought Cobb to Yusuf to take care of the mechanics of dream depth, which may have been a mistake.

When he used his fake references - prepared before Saito said he'd need them - to get the job at Fischer-Morrow, he had worried Browning would recognize him, would realize what he was there for. But no, the man was too arrogant to bother remembering his godson's once-lover.

Able to observe the situation closer, Eames felt his convictions reaffirmed. Robert was miserable, and trapped. Browning couldn't be trusted. He was doing the right thing.

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It wasn't until they split up in the airport in Los Angeles that the true defeat of his success hit him. In the form of the man he wanted to see most in the world, as he walked out of the men's room with his head down.

"Sorry," Robert murmured, and made to go around him.

"Wait." The word escaped him before he thought of any follow-up.

Robert stopped for a moment, looking at him.

He was looking right at him, straight at him, and he still didn't show any sign of knowing who Eames was.

"Sorry, I thought you were someone else," Eames managed. Robert went past him.

Of course he wouldn't remember him now. Why would he? Inception wouldn't bring back the memories that were gone.

He had wanted so badly to take Robert back from his father, but Robert wasn't his again. All he had done was play around in Robert's head, made him believe another thing that wasn't true.

Eames felt his chest ache. He was going to need something to drink.