DISCLAIMER – I still do not own Inception or any of its characters. They still belong to Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. Once again, I'm only borrowing them.

AUTHOR'S NOTE – Hi there! It's BeeKay84 again, with another piece of Inception fanfiction. This movie is pretty inspiring, planting ideas inside my mind every time I watch it. So, I decided to turn these ideas into a little fanfic. I started this a little while ago, not really knowing where it would be going. I don't even know if I really do now. All I can say is it's going to be about the pairing Arthur/Ariadne, my favorite ship in this fandom. I guess the meaning of the title should be pretty obvious…
Once again, I'm sorry to disappoint those of my followers here who might have expected a different kind of fanfic. Please, don't be mad.
I started writing this for an Arthur/Ariadne group over at deviantART, so if you happen to be a member, you might recognize it. I uploaded the first 2 chapters there already, but the rest will be uploaded here as well as over at deviantART. Now, let's get to it. I hope you enjoy. ;)

NOTHING QUITE LIKE IT

Chapter One: Sleepless Dreams

Her eyes snapped open and stared at the ceiling of the darkened room above her. As she fixed her gaze upon a random spot of the blank ceiling, a series of thoughts crossed her mind, one by one, like the wagons of a train would cross an intersection. Thoughts that had struck her several times already in the past few weeks.

Why would she always wake up in the middle of the night?

Why was it so hard to go back to sleep?

Was it a dream that kept her mind busy?

And how come she could not remember her dreams?

Ariadne sighed, rolling over on her right side and slowly sitting up on the edge of her bed, her bare feet dangling a few inches above the floor. For a moment, she looked at the linoleum, then pushed herself off the bed, forcing herself to stand on the cold material. In her short-sleeved pyjama top and panties, she tiptoed around her bed into another corner of her one-room-apartment to sit down at her desk. Turning on the desk lamp, Ariadne blinked several times and rubbed her eyes to adjust them to the sudden brightness, then began looking through the pile of sketches on one side of the desk, opposing the pile of books on architecture on the other side. This seemed to have become a nightly ritual for her.

It had been a few weeks since Ariadne had returned from the Fischer job back to her studies in Paris. What had seemed like the strangest job offer she could have ever imagined had introduced her to the most fascinating experience of her life, something she could have never thought of even in her wildest fantasies: Dream-sharing.

Having been part of Cobb's inception team as their dream architect had given her the opportunity to create structures that would be impossible to build in the waking world. While dreaming, she had been able to construct whatever she wanted, with little effort and in a few moments' time. Now that she looked through her sketches of buildings night after night, products of hours of work, Ariadne could not help but feel uncreative, disappointed, incapable. She could do so much more, if only she had been given the chance to activate her mind's secret talent again.

Pure creation.

There's nothing quite like it.

Ariadne could not help but think of this one sentence Arthur had said to her when she had decided to join their team, against all moral doubts she had seen herself confronted with in the first place. It was absolutely true. There was nothing like having unlimited creative abilities, following every source of inspiration, defying reality and physical laws, constructing impossible architecture. Like paradoxical staircases.

Once again, memories of her dream-sharing experiences came to her mind. This time she remembered her first shared dream with Arthur, when he had shown her how to use paradoxical architecture in order to hide the boundaries of a dream. In another few shared dreams, he had taught her some basic subconscious defense skills and how to keep her own projections out of someone else's dream. After that, he had let her create mazes in another few dreams, inspecting her work with interest, throwing in comments and compliments every now and then. The more she thought about those shared dreams she had experienced in the course of her training, the more she remembered how much she had enjoyed them.

Suddenly, Ariadne caught herself smiling from ear to ear at those memories. As if being kicked awake from a dream, she almost jumped from her chair, shaking her head as if to recollect her thoughts. For a whole while, she stared into nothingness, gaping, pondering.

How come she could not stop thinking about Arthur, all of a sudden?

Before, she had always focussed her memories on what she had experienced in her shared dreams, not who she had experienced them with. But was this really the first time he was on her mind?

Ariadne thought back to when she was first introduced to Arthur. Her first impression of him had been pretty simple: A young man wearing three-piece suits, gelled back hair and a nonchalant expression, much the silent type, non-talkative, mysterious, calm. And to her, it had seemed as if there was nothing that could possibly cause him to lose his composure, be it by shouting at someone or by showing any kind of emotion. Just like the stereotypical "man in black".

But the more she had gotten to work with Arthur in the preparation phase as well as on the actual inception job, the more Ariadne had noticed that there was much more about this man. Not only was he very intelligent and dedicated to his work, he also showed the same fascination for the infinite possibilities of the dream world she did. And even though his line of work was to be considered not quite legal, he did not appear to be a cold-hearted criminal. He certainly had the ability to react to events emotionally, but most of the time, he was good at hiding his feelings.

There were some things she had gotten to know about Arthur's personality. But still, in his entire being, he remained a mystery to her. And Ariadne was easily fascinated by mysteries and by the urge to solve them.

One mystery had been keeping her mind busy in particular. And that was the meaning of one certain event that had taken place during their inception job. On the second dream level, when they had created a hotel to hunt down Fischer and put him under yet again, Cobb had pretended to be the head of Fischer's subconscious security. He had told him he was dreaming, causing all of Fischer's projections to look for anyone suspicious. All those people, projections of Fischer's subconscious, had been looking at her and Arthur.

And then he had kissed her.

Or had she kissed him?

She was no longer sure about this one detail of those half-remembered dreams. All she remembered was that their lips had been touching for a rather short, but intense moment. And just a few moments later, Arthur had been all business again, and so had she.

It meant nothing. Ariadne told this to herself every time she caught herself thinking about that memory. However, in the corner of her mind, she could not help but wonder if it had meant something, after all.

It was just a dream. A dream within a dream, to be precise. Then again, Ariadne knew it had been a shared dream, and therefore a lucid dream. All the time, they both had known exactly what was going on and what they were doing. And it had been Arthur's dream, after all.

Maybe he just wanted to have a little fun. Ariadne pondered the thought for a second with a knowing smile, but dismissing it at the same moment. Is he really that kind of guy? She did not know what else to make of it, though.

There was only one way to find out. She had to ask him. Ariadne stood, making her way to the phone lying on her bedside table. It was only when she sat down on the edge of her bed, holding the cell phone in her hand, that it occurred to her she did not have his number.

Actually, Ariadne had no way of contacting anyone from the team. After they had landed in Los Angeles that day, they had all been picked up by different limousines and taken to their respective hotels. Saito had arranged all of that, Ariadne had figured. She had not seen or heard anything of the other team members, after they had all left the airport. She had spent one night at her hotel room, then returned to the airport in her limo the next morning and took the next flight back to Paris, all the while noticing that everything had been paid for in advance. After having been back in Paris for a few days, she had received a pretty huge amount of money on her bank account, too. Another few days later, she had heard a special report on the news about Robert Fischer's decision to split up his recently inherited company.

But after all of that, there was nothing else left to remind her of the incredible experience she had been a part of. And apparently, there was no way for her to live that kind of experience again. Additionally, she had no way of knowing just what had been on Arthur's mind when they had kissed in his dream.

Ariadne sighed and put her cell phone back on her bedside table. Slowly, she crawled back under her sheets, trying to go back to sleep. A sleep without dreams.

At least without the type of dreams she wanted to have.

End of Chapter One

AUTHOR'S NOTE – This could also be called a prologue, I guess, for it was rather short and merely an introduction to the story. Well, what do you think so far? Of course, you can't tell much from it yet, but I hope it made at least some of you curious. There were so many other things I wanted to include in that chapter originally, but I didn't want to ruin the flow of it. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed it. The next chapter should be a little longer and will be coming right up. Until then, please feel free to leave a review!