A/N: My first . . . er, second, technically, Inception fanfiction featuring the number one architect Ariadne. Just a little something I thought up when listening to The Counting Crow's Colorblind. It's a good song. I said "second Inception fanfiction" because I've been working on one with two OCs, but I've never gotten it posted yet. This was meant to be one of those, "Ariadne needs an intervention from the dream world and Arthur's there to save her ass from pulling a Mal," but when I wrote it, Arthur just didn't make an appearance like I planned. Neither did Eames, which is a shame. Review and tell me what you think! Yes, you are allowed to chew me out if you're an Eames or Arthur fan for them not making a fantastic entrance. Side note: This is one of the stories I had to delete due to some problems with the site I had and I lost one review and the number of people who had read it when the first version was published, which was 139. So, my apologies to Ben Vesta- Hero of Skies for losing your wonderful review.
Disclaimer: I do not own Inception in any way, shape, or form. Or the song I used to come up with this story—well, more the title and tiny snippets here and there. Only the plot is really mine.
Summary: Months after the inception, Ariadne looks around at her reality and realizes it's not what reality should be. There are no colors, not anymore. Only shades of black and white.
Colorblind – Chapter 1
The world had lost its color.
Reds and greens and purples and oranges no longer existed in reality. Not after the world she had visited only months ago. That world was hers and no one else's. She controlled everything there. From the landscape to the weather to how things turned out, all of it was molded in the palm of her hand.
Imperfections didn't exist in the dream world. There, everything was perfect, exactly how she wanted it, how she made it be. Simple, short thoughts could alter the dream to make it something even more extraordinary than before.
In this subconscious world, Ariadne was God. The shots were called by her, the architect, the creator of everything. What was more powerful than God, after all? Nothing had or could ever rise to the power that this simple college girl possessed. The world would fall apart without her there to keep it steady.
But she wasn't God in reality and she was no longer simple, but she pretended to be, just like she kept telling herself they would call for her again. They had to. Cobb, Arthur, Eames, Yusuf, someone had to call her to bring her back, to succeed, because without her they were nothing.
Here in reality, she was confined, rooted to Earth like a plant. She was unable to move, to stretch, to test the boundaries of anything anymore because there was no imagination. Everything was under thought, too narrow-minded for anyone to appreciate it or call it beauty.
They were all everlasting, boxy shapes that were boring over time and unappealing to her now. Squares, rectangles, trapezoids, parallelograms, rhombuses, triangles, octagons, pentagons, hexagons, circles, they were all fine on paper. After all, the world's greatest dreaming accomplishment had risen off of average graphing paper drawn on by graphite pencil.
Something was off. Those shapes became towers and buildings and bridges and cities, but they weren't good enough. Dreams were good enough. Once they became the reality of reality instead of the reality of dream and the dream of reality, they would soar to new heights all over the world.
That was a dream, a hope, a wish because no one could know about dream worlds and extraction and inception. Not a soul.
Ariadne didn't remember when becoming an architect was the deity of her life, but she remembered why. Creating things no one had ever seen had been such a wonderful-sounding career once upon a time. Until there came a time when she had seen it all. If something wasn't totally perfect, Ariadne could no longer fix it or replace it with something that rose out of dust.
All she had left to do was pretend it was fine that flaws were all around her.
Simple college girls thought that way—appreciated the beauty and forgot the careless mistakes that marred the earth. Simple college girls studied hard to pass the school that had given them so many scholarships to their wonderful college in Paris and get a career and go out with friends for drinks and didn't obsess over impossible things like dream business.
Ariadne saw things differently now. What was once a world full of vivid colors and brilliant architecture had turned into shades of black and white and gray. This reality didn't feel real to her anymore. She knew what she could do, how far it could stretch, and no one else could understand her.
The Parisian fashions weren't noticeable anymore. The sunsets weren't beautiful anymore. Seasonal colors were all the same. A faraway dream of beauty and a foreign country was boring. Unchanging, unexciting, nothing.
Arthur and Cobb had warned her. Hell, Eames even gave a lighthearted attempt at a warning, which was the most he would do. Yusuf never said much to her anyways, but she had a feeling he would have tried to help her had he known what was happening.
She remembers what reality used to be like. It used to be like a dream. Becoming an architect, having a life with a husband and a house and kids. The whole deal was fantastic and colorful. Beautiful and imaginative and full of unending possibilities.
But everything came to an end in time.
Buildings crumbled, paint chipped, greenery withered, people would pass on, things would be forgotten. It was the way life worked. Achieving her dreams, making new ones, and being surrounded by people who she loved and vice versa was what she needed. It was what she had to do.
So all she could do was fit right back in with her old life and her old friends, dreams, goals, hopes, and wishes and save herself the pain and hurt and loneliness.
Months may have passed without a word, but she knew they would call eventually.
Of course she would come back to the team when needed because it was about more than just the money, but for now, she just needed to learn to accept things the way they were and to draw the line between what she wanted and what she needed more.
And right now, reality was more important than dream.
She was more important than a fantasy. She would not lose herself. Not like the rest of them.
A/N: Oh my god, I finished! I'm a little iffy about the ending, but it took me so long to finish and I'm just so excited, I can't bring myself to really care, so it's sticking. This was really hard for me to write! I hope you liked it!