I do not own Inception, though I wish I did.
And the small pieces of dialogue that are taken from the movie have been modified.

"So…this is your workspace?" Ariadne asked as Cobb opened the door to a drafty warehouse, furnished only by cheap pine desks and odd bits of machinery.

"It isn't much, but it's enough for what we need to do." Cobb admitted, leading her over to the semi circle of plastic lawn chairs.

"And what is that exactly?" she asked, sitting down and slinging her jacket over one arm of the chair. She couldn't fully place her trust with this man she had only just met an hour ago, a man who looked as if he was in his 30's, behaved as if he was in his 20's, and had eyes that looked as if he had lived for centuries.

Cobb almost gave a smile, and looked as if he would have responded wittily, but at that moment, another young man walked into the room.

Ariadne wasn't proud to admit it, but she did a double take. Or a triple take. For starters, he looked as if he had wandered into the wrong workspace. He was dressed in a three-piece suit, of all things, and it appeared to be without crease. It also fit him like a glove, though Ariadne tried not to concentrate on how much it complimented his physique. He was lean and tall, but then again, with her 5'1 stature, it was easy to be taller than her.

Concentrating now on his face, she noticed his expression. It was…blank. Like he had never smiled before. In a matter of seconds, Ariadne's impression was made up. That man was clearly far too arrogant, far too proud, and far too aware of his effect on women. Or, more so, her.

It was within that moment she realised that she had been staring at him for far too long, and that he had seen it all with a smirk on his handsome face. She glanced away, fiddling with her scarf.

"Morning, Cobb." He greeted, and Ariadne was astonished to find that his voice was a pure melodic opposite of his expression. How was that even fair? Her regard for him only sunk lower.

Cobb nodded. "Arthur."

Ariadne's eyebrows rose. Arthur? At least that made up for something. She could take some small delight in the fact that his name was clearly an old family one.

"This our new architect?" Arthur asked.

Cobb glanced sideways at Ariadne, noticing just how much she hated being talked over like a child, and let her respond.

"My name is Ariadne. And I'm not anything, yet," she said coolly. "I'm not quite sure I want to commit myself to something I know barely anything about."

Arthur's smirk grew. "Well, this job isn't something you find every day." He walked over to a desk strewn with paper and folders, shrugging off his coat as he went. "What I'm trying to say is, you have to open your mind a little." He locked eyes with her, and she held her breath. Had his eyes always been such a warm shade of brown? How was it possible that he existed, with so many contradictions surrounding him?

Cobb cut across her vision, distracting her momentarily. He was holding some sort of tube.

"Ariadne." He said gravely. "How much do you know about shared dreaming?"

Arthur put five minutes on the clock of the PASIV device and watched the first time dreamer sink off into Cobb's world. He tilted his head, studying her features. She was barely a woman; surely she must still be a child. But that was only when she was asleep. Arthur recalled the fire in her eyes when he had awoken her temper, the steady way she held herself in a world she knew nothing about.

He found himself smiling slightly, and shook his head. Work. Inception. An impossible thing. He had to focus on making the impossible possible. So why did that thought lead him back to dwelling on Ariadne?

He busied his mind by concentrating on the PASIV, and playing their waking song, 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien'. Cobb had insisted on it, even after Mal's death.

Mal.

Arthur remembered working with Mal, the few times she had accepted a position on their team. She had mostly wanted to explore the different possibilities that the dream world provided.

Cobb was the same, but someone had to work, and that was how they had entered the extraction business.

And Arthur? Well, he had been trained in the same way as Ariadne would, selected from university, finding a world that shouldn't have ever existed. And after a few successful jobs with Dominic Cobb and his lovely wife, he found his calling.

Mal had used the song to remind them that what they were doing wasn't completely illegal all the time. They had helped catch criminals through the PASIV. They had brought some good into the world through their jobs. They should never regret their life, because they had done so many incredible things that shouldn't have even been possible, and they were lucky to be the select few who could.

Of course, Mal changed soon after that. Arthur wasn't one to pry (at least not when it came to the personal matters of his colleagues and friends), but he knew some of the facts surrounding her death, that while it could have been suicide, Cobb appeared to be the one who had thrown her from the hotel window. But Arthur sensed the falsities. Cobb would have never laid a harmful hand on his wife, and Mal was more than capable of protecting herself, unless it meant that pain would come to another person.

Perhaps an enemy of the Cobb's was to blame.

Either way, Cobb had returned to his work along with his dead wife's favourite song, and Arthur would never question him.

The PASIV showed the time as 0:00, and Cobb sat up, smoothly removing the tube from his wrist. Arthur was pulled from his thoughts as Cobb responds to a question from inside the dream.

"Because it's never just a dream."

Ariadne's focus shifted back to Arthur's face, their eyes locking again. He blinked and glanced away, resolving not to meet her eyes anymore. Their depth continued to shock him, and he didn't want to fall any deeper than he already was.

"Hey, hey, hey. Look at me. You're okay. You're okay."

Arthur put a soothing hand over Ariadne's wrist as she gasped and clamped an arm over her stomach. Arthur knew the signs. She had been woken from the dream too early, most likely from an injury to her abdomen. He watched her eyelids flutter, watched her try to come to terms with reality.

"Why wouldn't I wake up?"

"There was still some time on the clock. You can't wake up from within the dream unless you die."

"She'll need a totem." Arthur glanced at Cobb as he rushed off, looking like a man condemned. His brow furrowed. What happened down there?

"What?" Ariadne continued to quiver and move, edgy after her attack. Arthur focused on her. Cobb was a grown man. He could take care of himself for now.

"A totem, it's a personal item—"

"That's some subconscious you've got on you, Cobb!" Ariadne spat at Cobb's retreating back. "She's a real charmer."

Now Arthur knew. Mal. "I see you met Mrs. Cobb."

"She's his wife?"

Arthur grimaced. "Yeah." Best to not let her know about the dangers of dreaming. "So a totem. You need a small object. Something you can have on you that no one else knows."

Her panting was so distracting. He had to concentrate.

"Like a coin?"

"No, it needs to be more unique than that." Arthur pulled out his only comfort, his totem. "Like, this for example. It's a loaded die."

Ariadne frowned, reaching for it.

"No, I can't let you touch it. That would defeat the purpose. See, only I know the balance and the weight of this loaded die."

She had gone back to panting again. Why was that so distracting for him?

"That way, when you look at your totem, you know beyond a doubt that you're not in someone else's dream."

Ariadne attempted to pull herself together to warn Arthur.

"I don't know if you cant see what's going on or if you just don't want to, but Cobb has some serious problems that he's tried to bury down there. And I'm not about to just 'open my mind' to someone like that."

She watched the effect his quote had on him before grabbing her coat and storming out. She tried not to dwell on what she had just witnessed. Especially the handsome, warm eyes that had flickered with amusement at her fear-fuelled rant.

And she tried to block the feeling out of her head that this wasn't an ending, but a beginning.