Doctor, Doctor

I own nothing except my own OC, whom you don't even meet until next chapter.

Pairing: Eames/OC

Summary: Eames had worked with doctors before. He had tipped them off, bought them out, even occasionally impersonated one in a dream. But never like this.

Prologue

Ariadne stared blankly at her ceiling. It was three in the morning and she couldn't sleep. In fact, she hadn't slept in 24 hours. She woke up at precisely three a.m. the night before, noticing a strange void within her. She hadn't dreamt.

It had been two years since first having been pulled in to the dream business by Dominic Cobb and his damned job offer. After having 'compelled' Robert Fischer to disband his father's empire, the team had performed multiple extractions and one other inception, all based out of California so that Cobb could stay close to his children.

She had been warned about and was waiting for the day that dreams would cease to come naturally to her, but now that the time had arrived, she was discomforted by it. There was an odd and significant difference between not remembering her dreams and consciously recognizing that she no longer had them. In truth, this knowledge creeped her out.

She picked up her phone and pressed a button. After a few rings, a voice came thinly over the line.

"Dominic Cobb."

"Cobb, it's me."

"Ariadne? Jesus Christ, it's three a.m. What so fucking important that it couldn't wait until morning?"

"Cobb. I'm not dreaming anymore." She heard a sigh over the phone, and imagined him running a hand over his face while staring intently at nothing on the floor.

He sighed again. "I told you this would happen."

"I know. I just didn't expect it to feel so…"

"Unnatural?"

"Yeah. Unnatural."

"Well, I can't really help you with this, nothing's gonna bring them back. You kind of just have to come to terms with it yourself. Try to sleep. You can still sleep, even if you don't dream."

"I don't want to sleep without dreaming."

"It's the only option." She mulled things over for a minute.

"Ariadne?" Cobbs voice brought her back to the present moment: 3:15 a.m., awake and dreamless for 48 hours.

"Dom." She could hear that her use of his first name called him to attention.

"Yeah, Ari?"

"Dom, couldn't we get a doctor?"

"Ari, nobody knows what goes on in our heads-"

"That's what I mean, Dom. Couldn't we get a doctor to take a look at us? To figure out what's wrong with our heads and maybe get our dreams back for us?"

"Are we talking like a shrink? Cause I think I've heard from people that other teams have tried therapy and it didn't work so well."

"We won't use a shrink then. We'll use a legitimate neurologist. I have a friend."

"Ariadne, I don't know-"

"Come on Cobb. I've known her for years. We went to school together."

"What school?" He had her there.

"High school."

"So you haven't seen her in years."

"No. We were best friends, though."

"And you trust this girl?"

"…Yes. With my life."

"You're not trusting her with your life, Ari. You're giving her your mind."

"…I trust her with that, too."

"Then go for it. Good luck."

"You're not in?"

"Not right now. Let me know how it goes and we'll see."

"Alright. Night."

"Night. Sleep, Ariadne."

"I'll try, but no promises." She hung up the phone. Pulling up her contacts list, she shuffled through them until she found the number she was looking for. It went strait to voicemail. Typical.

"Bonjour," came the recorded greeting, "vous avez contactez Madeleine de Niort. Laissez-moi un message et j'essaierai de vous rappeler tout de suite. Merci!"

After the beep sounded, Ariadne took a breath and started what she hoped would revolutionize her world. Again.

"Bonjour, Maddi. It's Ariadne. Remember me? It's been a while, non? Listen, I have a proposition. Last I heard, you'd passed your boards and were looking for a Ph.D. thesis . I hope your still in that search, since I've got a good one for you. Call me back. You have my number."

As she put down the phone and crawled back under her covers, Ariadne mused that she sounded oddly like a combination of Arthur's professionalism and Eames' lightheartedness. She fell into an uneasy sleep.

A translation of Madeleine's voicemail message: "Hello, you have reached Madeleine de Niort. Leave me a message and I'll try to call you back as soon as possible. Thanks!"

Thank you for reading this far! This will, hopefully, be my first full length story. I already have a few chapters written and the inspiration just seems to keep coming!