[1] Someone Wake Me Up

"Wake me up!" I screamed the loudest my lungs would allow, alarmed. My eyes were tightly closed in anxiety, "Wake me up!"
The dream, or nightmare, was recurring.

Cobb tells me it's bad to retrieve and project memories into dreams. He once said to me: "Never recreate from your memory. Always imagine new places." He says my dream is just a dream, complex & disturbing. In my eyes, a nightmare. This dream, or nightmare, is always recurring. It never stops. It starts over and over each night, replaying in my head like a broken record. Arthur warned me that I can't keep this up, it's unhealthy and it will affect my work performance. I agreed with him. My eyes flashed open. I realized I was laying on a lawn chair in Cobb's working area, the IV in my arm was gently stuck in my skin, the IV connected to the machine. I blinked a few times. My heart was beating so fast, thumping faster every second.

In this nightmare, I always was in the same hotel room; chairs and broken glasses strewn across the expensive carpeting, a bottle of Marque Auxiliaire champagne sprawled across the floor in pieces. A candle burns by the window. The New York City night lights was always in the background outside the beautiful, large stone open window. He was always there in this nightmare. He stood across from me, I was sitting down on the comfortable, expensive couch, feeling the breeze coming in from the open window that revealed New York City.

He seemed disappointed and irritated at me, looking at me with his blue irises, "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"I don't know," I attempted to explain, holding the end of my black cocktail dress tightly, which ended slightly before my knees. He looked down at me with a paternal glare, and I stammered, "I didn't think you would accept it. I assumed you'd run. You have enough to suffice with right now."

"Jesus, Ches. Something like that you should tell me about! You let me believe some bullshit. What do you think I am? I can't believe you thought I would run." His voice rises, causing me to cringe. He's authoritive, and he's angry. I know I should've told him, because it was his responsibility to know. A fight uprises between us; an angry screaming match ensues.

Arthur reached up and brushed the blond streaks of hair from my eyes, gently grasping my forearm and giving it a little shake, and said urgently, "Ches, it's over. Hey, c'mon, breathe. Come on, Ches, focus. I'm right here...Look at me."

Alarmed, I looked at him, panicked. I breathed heavy, inhaling & exhaling. I could feel my lungs working hard at breathing. I shut my eyes again, trying to regain myself, lying back and breathing. He helped me prop myself up and sit up properly on the chair. He fixed the IV in my arm and yanked it out, now between his thumb and index finger, held it up for me to see. Arthur reached across me and placed two fingers on the left side of my neck, to check my pulse. It thumped fast & swift on his fingers. He removed them after forty said gently, "Jesus, Chesapeake. Easy, calm yourself."

"I know, I know," I huffed lightly, "I'm sorry."

Arthur was going to interrogate me about this dream, but Dominic "Dom" Cobb stormed in the room, leading along the young girl who must have been the new crew member to replace our last "architect", Nash, who had intently failed on our last mission. Cobb was stern and to himself sometimes, but was the leader of our crew. This new girl, who would make the second girl on our team, including me, was pale with dark, long black hair and an intellectual, honest face. She didn't look a day over twenty.

Cobb had troubles with his past, much like I did, but his was far more disturbing & severe. Cobb revealed to me when I first joined the crew three years ago, when I was twenty, that he and his wife, Mal, spent what felt to them like decades in a limbo dream world forging their lives. After waking, Mal remained convinced that she was still in a dream and committed suicide, trying to force Cobb to join her which consequently incriminated him in her death. Cobb refused to kill himself, afterwards fleeing from America and his kids, James & Phillipa, to avoid murder charges.

The reason for the recent mission was to help Saito, an important corporate in the business world. He had asked Cobb if we performed the act of inception; secretly implanting an idea in the mind of a person. Saito promised Cobb would be reunited with his kids and his work would be over. At first, Arthur & I had told Cobb to just walk away from the offer, that Saito could be lying. But after a while it didn't seem like a bad idea. Not that Cobb would've listened otherwise, being the stubborn man he was.

As for me, my story isn't as disturbing or heartbreaking as Cobb's. When I was about to turn twenty-one, I was hired by Cobb to work on his crew as the Distractor. I could extract real life situations and implant them into a dream as a distracton for the victim/dreamer. Right now, Arthur was the one who really cared about me. I was closer to him than anybody. He had a sarcastic sense of humor, snarky, & sometimes ignorant. But he was professional and knew how to get the job done and over with.

Arthur and I were extremely close friends rather than dating, it was comfortable that way. Dating was something I feared after him.
I was in a relationship in the past that violently spiraled downward and caused the dream that haunted every space in my mind...
Cobb interruppted my thoughts & said, gesturing to the girl, "The new architect, Ariadne."

"Chesapeake," I shook her hand, and slightly smiled. "Everyone calls me Ches."

A/N :: My attempt at an Inception fanfic. I'm going to follow the storyline of the movie, just inserting my OC into it.
Please review if you like it, but please don't flame!