Disclaimer: Inception does not belong to me. Copyright infringement is not intended.
A/N: One-Shot. Don't ask for more.
Warning: I have mild dyslexia and dyscalculia. There may be small grammatical errors and large mathematical ones.
Summary: Ariadne is a projection for Cobb. Even in daylight. After all, isn't the world God's dream? Post-movie AU.
Projection
"Dom," she laughed. "Do you remember how you got here?"
"No," Cobb gasped, startled.
"You're dreaming," she smiled. "On the first level of the Dreaming, in fact. Arthur is about to give you the kick. But you should know that the job was real; you'll really get to see your kids again."
The railing was gone, the music played, and she pushed him into the water.
"Ariadne?" he asked.
"Who?" Eames blinked.
"Never mind."
Dream or not, she'll never be gone.
He doesn't know how the job really went. Without Ariadne. Arthur remembers her too, his projection, but they never speak of it. Dom doesn't ask his father if she's real or not; he isn't sure he wants to know.
"Dom," she says one day. "You hired me. Just not for this."
He doesn't know what she means. Her look says not to ask.
Arthur was always in it for Dom, always, always in it for Dom, he needed to give Dom that desperately needed Kick to reality, but without Ariadne something was just… missing. They both knew it. And neither spoke of it.
She was a projection. Probably Dom's. And Eames had never seen her. That truly didn't make it hurt any less.
She was the first girl he'd ever kissed.
The kids like Arthur. They knew he wasn't replacing Mommy, but they also knew that he made Daddy happy, and he was nice. Arthur was still in the business. Dom wasn't – and that was okay. Arthur just didn't know what to do with his life without it. He didn't want to go back to South Boston, Southie, and live out his life like that.
The kids like Arthur. Dom likes Arthur. But it's not enough anymore; not without Ariadne in the mix.
One day, Eames says he's found a third. One to go into the Dreaming with them. The second he sees her, he sweeps her into a spinning hug. She's a little confused by his enthusiasm, but laughs. She's not confused about who he is.
Ariadne.
After the job, he insists she take the first flight out with him to Dom.
"You said I hired you," Dom says softly, playing with her hand.
"We met in the space between dreams and reality, when they're not quite awake but not quite asleep either," she tells both him and Arthur. "You hired me to help you with your personal demons. I didn't know they'd take my projection to Limbo – I followed it –, but I've done it before. Once. Not on an Inception; that nervousness was real. But I didn't expect to get so attached. And I didn't expect you to get attached to me."
His top stops spinning, Arthur's die rolls like it's supposed to, and Ariadne grabs her chess piece to topple it over for their benefit.
Naked, she is lying in the bed between them.
One-Shot. Don't ask for more.