A/N: Inception, Eames, Arthur, and Ariadne all belong to the incredibly talented Christopher Nolan.

The story follows directly after the events of the film and is going to be mainly about the relationship between Ariadne and Arthur because I ship them so hard it's insane.

As far as she was concerned, there were three worlds: reality, the dream-space, and limbo. Ariadne didn't know if she believed in death anymore or if what she thought was life was simply the shell of it, a dream that she couldn't seem to wake up from.

As she opened her eyes, her fingers curled around the little brass chess piece that remained constantly suspended in her pocket. She could hear the breathing changing as the others woke up around her. Her heart was pounding as she gazed at Cobb, though. Ari's breath held, but finally the air escaped her lungs as Cobb's eyes opened. Saito emerged less than a second later and picked up the airline phone. Ariadne gave a smile, genuinely happy that Cobb would be able to see his children again. Phillipa and James Cobb would have their daddy back.

"You okay?" came a familiar voice from behind her. Ari looked up to see Arthur where he had been when they'd fallen asleep many hours before. A half-remembered thought lingered back into her brain, wriggling into her subconscious like a worm. She could feel eyes on her as she recalled the kiss that no one but the projections had seen. He'd written it off as an attempt to distract the projections, to avoid detection, but it hadn't really done anything. The blank and almost harsh stares continued in Arthur's direction. She'd felt a small surge run through her body at the light brush of soft pink skin and she'd turned away to hide the reddening of her cheeks.

Unfortunately for Ari, Arthur had noticed the blush and almost let his calm façade fade and reveal that perhaps he'd just wanted to know what it would feel like.

As the plane banked and the wheels touched down in Los Angeles, the group made a point not to show familiarity with one another. A glance that lasted longer than a few seconds, a smile that touched the eyes. The whole plan could be destroyed by a slip up as simple as that. For the idea to stick and the plan to be completely assured, Fischer couldn't suspect a single thing.

As Cobb nonchalantly turned away from Fischer, Ari finally realized just how important this moment must be for him. Granted, his children weren't waiting for him at the airport, but Ari could easily make out her professor and she smiled in spite of herself. Forcing herself to look away, Ari felt a small brush of a hand on hers and looked up to see Arthur holding her luggage out for her. She bit her bottom lip and grabbed the duffel bag from his hand before heading outside. Squinting into the sun, Ari was able to hail a cab and directed him to the hotel where the group was supposed to meet.

Twenty minutes later, Ariadne was tossing the bag full of her clothing onto the floor of the hotel suite that Cobb and Arthur had paid for. Each of them had been given a suite and Ari suspected that Arthur probably had an in with all sorts of airlines and hotel chains. Considering the amount she was certain that he traveled, it didn't surprise her that the room was ridiculously nice. It wasn't any sort of presidential suite, but it was definitely something to be reckoned with. Her reverie was interrupted, though, but a knock at her door.

"Darling, your presence is being requested in Arthur's room. I'd be there right now myself if it wasn't for the fact that Arthur believes me to be some sort of messenger boy."

Ari couldn't help but smirk at Eames's comment. The Forger and the Point-Man were an interesting pair to see interact with one another. Despite the witty banter and the horrible sarcasm, Ari knew that Eames would trust Arthur with his life and vice-versa. Ari quickly shoved her legs into a pair of jeans – allowing herself to be much more comfortable after the plane ride in a skirt and tights – and threw on a t-shirt as well as one of her signature scarves. Grabbing her room key and shoving it into her back pocket, Ari headed down the hall to Arthur's room, noticing the plaque under the room number that read "Platinum Suite". She wanted to roll her eyes, but simply knocked only to find the door opened by Yusuf. He smiled at her and forced the door wider to allow her entrance.

"There's our architect. Great work, Ariadne."

Even without a warning tone, Ari could hear the implications in Cobb's voice. She had discovered a lot about her employer and friend the past few weeks, and her discoveries would be secrets that she wouldn't allow the rest of the team to know. She owed Cobb that much. His stare now told her that he was grateful to her for risking everything – sanity included – to bring him back to his family. In a few hours, Cobb would hop on another flight that would take him home to his children, stateside for the first time in years. Saito gave a smile. Certainly, Cobb felt he had been more than paid for his efforts, but the other members of the team still needed their payment. Four envelopes with names written on them contained the checks, payment for the job that Saito had needed to be done.

"Mister Cobb, your work has been incredibly useful and working with you has definitely changed my grips on reality. I look forward to hearing from you in the future," Saito said as he dropped the checks on the large mahogany coffee table around which the team was seated. The Extractor at the head, to his left, the Point-Man, then the Forger, followed by the Chemist, and finally the Architect. Saito, the Tourist, was standing. He had a flight on a private jet to get back to Tokyo in about an hour. Cobb was leaving, Saito was leaving, and Yusuf would be heading back to his patients in Mombasa sooner or later. Ari wondered how long the team would be apart for. Hell, Ari wondered if there still was a team.

As Ari grabbed her check, she noticed the disapproving look from Arthur. He was implying she shouldn't open it until the benefactor was out of the area. She imagined it had something to do with Extraction politics and manners. She wasn't in the mood to ask questions though. Biting her bottom lip, she recalled Limbo. The world that Cobb and his wife had created was disintegrating. Perhaps it was a sign that he recognized that world, Limbo, was a shared state of subconscious. In layman's terms, it wasn't real. Perhaps that crumbling city was what kept him sane as he waited for Saito. Decades must have passed before the two had found each other. Ari was sure that Saito and Cobb would be the only ones who would know.

She felt a tightening in her stomach, realizing the things she'd heard in limbo would be stuck in her mind forever. Ideas that could shape her, destroy her, changed everything about her. The concept of inception, the fate of Mol. Was that destined to happen to all of them if they forgot themselves? Ari could hear the words echo in her mind.

"Your world isn't real."

Ari was absolutely certain that Cobb was the greatest extractor in the world, but no one had the right to perform inception. Not in the way that Cobb's first experiment with it had gone, at least. When Ari had caught a glimpse of Fischer's face in the terminal, she could see the change. He had decided something and his path had veered off from the original course. Inception performed successfully would be a dream come true – no pun intended – but there was no possible way to know how far-reaching the consequences of their actions would be. Could the fact that this small group of people dividing the energy empire cause the energy crisis to become an energy meltdown?

As much as Ari yearned to never have to face that frightening world again, there was still so much she wanted to learn. In the short amount of time she'd spent inside of it, the dreamscape had already become her creative playground.

"Daydreaming again?"

Ari flinched, once again yanked from her reverie by the voice of one of her comrades. As she looked around, she noticed that everyone had gone except for she and Arthur. Eames had gone down to the bar, having spotted, as he so aptly put it, "a bloody bitch of a blonde bombshell" when they'd gone through earlier. Yusuf, Saito, and Cobb all had planes to catch. They were either packing or already on their ways to the airport.

Carefully, Ari removed the chess piece from her pocket and placed it on the table. A light flick from her finger tipped it over and she exhaled softly.

"Don't worry, we're out. You don't ever have to go back in if you don't want to," Arthur reminded her, finally opening the envelope containing his check. A low and impressed whistle escaped his lips as he read off the balance. He would have to remember to stay on Saito's good side for the rest of time. Ari's check was worth the same, somewhere in the millions.

"That's not what I want at all," Ari argued hastily. "The real world is great, but dreams are pure creation. There's…"

"Nothing like it, I know," he finished for her. She smiled at him, noticing he was still wearing his neatly-pressed 3-piece suit. She realized she'd never seen him dressed down in anything other than exceedingly nice clothes.

"So, what's gonna happen to the team now?" she asked, her voice dripping with curiosity. She didn't want to leave this life she'd been brought into. However weird it was and however much it would end up affecting her, she realized now that this was a dream come true. She was destroying the laws of physics in her sleep.

"Cobb will stay in the real world. He always said that when he got back to his kids, he would stop working. He doesn't need the money anymore. Eames will keep it up, whether with me or not. Yusuf will go back to his patients, of course. We won't likely hear from Saito ever again. I'm going to continue my work, but not as a thief. I don't really need money now thanks to this job. Dream research could be a very interesting path for me to follow. I guess you'll probably go back to school, won't you?"

Ariadne simply shook her head. She wanted to continue building cities that could never exist in reality.

"I figured you wouldn't want to leave it all behind. I don't blame you, really. This world is pretty enticing. I've been dying to ask you though…what was limbo like?"

Ariadne felt her stomach drop. That world, crumbling and destroyed, was all that Cobb had left of his wife. She could hear Mol's voice echo in her head as she watched Cobb finally confront her, or at least his own mental version of her. Ari couldn't imagine ever going back there. The idea of having to spend an eternity creating her own world only to know, deep down inside of her, that none of it was real, that she was still asleep somewhere young and vital…it would kill her.

"It was like nothing you could ever imagine…a world built decades ago and now falling beyond repair with Mol trapped there waiting for Cobb to come back to her. He finally let her go after locking her up inside his mind for so long."

"So, not somewhere I would want to spend my vacation?" Ariadne only smiled at him.

"So, did you really think that me kissing you would distract the projections when we were in the hotel?" she asked. She'd wanted to talk to him about this for what felt like hours or days and when he stood up and rubbed his chin, she knew she'd put him on the spot. She was afraid she might have offended him. Despite the amount of time they'd spent together, she really didn't know him that well at all. But, as she was about to tell him to forget it, he gave a smirk.

"No, I just wanted to kiss you."

Ari felt blood pool in her cheeks and she looked away from him. Of course, she could still hear the laughter escape his lips.

"You wanna see something?" Arthur asked, finally breaking Ariadne's uncomfortable silence. She looked up at him in confusion. "I wanna show you some other tricks in the dream-space. More specifically, my own, considering we don't need your subconscious knifing me."

"Why? Isn't that sort of thing really personal?" Ari questioned, feeling a bit awkward now. Being invited into Arthur's head wasn't something she'd expected when she'd come to the room to bid her farewells to Cobb, Saito, and Yusuf.

"Well, yeah…but you'll see it anyway eventually, considering what Cobb's told me about your knack for climbing into people's heads," he said, hands on the back of the chair he had been sitting in before, leaning over. Ariadne blushed, though. She didn't know Cobb would have told them about her rude interruption of his dream that night in the warehouse. "You know, for a girl who I pegged as someone who doesn't care what people think, you certainly blush quite a bit."

"You know, it's kind of rude to call people out on that," Ariadne accused, her cheeks still flushed. Arthur only raised his eyebrows at her, surprised by her reaction. He'd pegged her as someone who was too on the shy side to call anyone out. Turning away from her, he headed in the direction of the closet and pulled out that signature silver briefcase. Ariadne stood up. Her mind was still reeling from limbo. As badly as she wanted to see the tricks Arthur was talking about, she didn't want to face those alternate realities again…not yet at least.

"You know, I'm really tired and I'm kind of hungry. It's too soon after that place. Maybe another time," she offered. Arthur simply nodded, pushing the briefcase back in its place. "Sorry," she said, trying to amend his blank expression. He looked up at her and gave a half-hearted smile.

"No, it's alright. I couldn't even begin to understand how you're feeling after limbo," he said, running a hand through his dark, slicked-back hair. "You wanna go get something to eat down at the hotel restaurant?" She nodded, a smile finding its place on her lips again as she stood up and followed him out the door of the hotel room.

The two took the elevator down to the lobby level where the restaurant was and could easily see Eames at the restaurant's bar attempting to chat-up a very pretty blonde.

"Eames!" Arthur called, seeing the British man begin to lose his footing with the woman who was clearly out of his league. Eames looked up, eyes narrowed and feeling betrayed. He stood and headed over to the pair who were being led to a table.

"You know, Arthur, I would never interrupt you while you were in the process of trying to get laid. That was very rude of you, chap," Eames said, sliding into the booth next to Ariadne who was sitting across from Arthur, trying to keep her composure and not laugh. Arthur simply rolled his eyes.

"You were going to strike out anyway," he promised, looking past Eames to the bar where the woman was now busy talking to a completely different stranger. Eames sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration.

"So, what have you kids been up to the past half hour, eh?" he asked, tone light and airy as always.

"Just talking really, trying to decide where we're going to go from here…with regards to the team and everything," Ariadne supplied.

"Oh, the team…well, love, that's an interesting concept. You see, I was under the impression that the three of us would remain quite a good unit in regards to extraction. I may be a forger, but I am quite a good thief as well. You know it, Arthur," Eames stated, a grin playing on his thick lips.

"Is that what you had in mind?" Arthur asked, brows arched in contest. "I was under the impressing that Ariadne and I had some say in what we were doing."

"Well, you thought wrong," Eames joked, his grin evolving into a full-fledged smirk.

After the three of them ate their dinner and returned to their rooms, Ariadne was still incredibly nervous. She'd seen it in Cobb's eyes, how he'd found some way to alter Mol's totem while she was in the dream, convince her that her world wasn't real. Ariadne spent a good hour simply staring at her chess piece, flicking it over and setting it back up. She seemed entirely unable to accept the fact that the world was real again. Something didn't feel quite right, not anymore. Perhaps it was because she had seen more than she'd bargained for – more than she ever wanted to see by any margin. Despite that, she couldn't bring herself to accept the fact that Limbo was gone from her life. She was frightened that at some moment it might come creeping back to her, find some way to lock her down there with no hopes of escape until she found the bravery to kill herself…again.

Maybe that was the reason she was so upset. Throwing herself off of that building had been so difficult to do. She didn't feel it…but she was afraid she would. She could only imagine Dom and Mol laying on the train tracks and waiting for death to find them.

"You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you want this train to take you, but you can't be sure. It doesn't matter though, because you'll be together."

Just remembering that…all of those things that were said, seeing Cobb unable to look the shade in the eyes. It hurt Ariadne to even think about. She knew that there was no way she would be able to sleep, not unaided at least. Rising from the chair and shoving the chess piece back into the pocket of her pajama bottoms, she grabbed her room key and exited the room, heading down the hall to where a silver plaque read "Platinum Suite".

Arthur couldn't sleep and he couldn't dream. Too much of today had been too unreal for sleep to grasp him easily. He sat on the large bed in his hotel room, flipping through television channels and hoping to find something that might take the edge off of this particular day. He settled on HBO, not really paying attention to the movie that was on the screen. He was mainly focused on running his fingers over the dice and feeling its weight, tossing it to make sure it landed properly on the right number. His tests were interrupted, though, by a knock at the door.

"Go away," he called, voice annoyed. In all honesty, he thought someone was simply playing a joke on him, perhaps Eames was too bored in his own room by himself and wanted to hang out.

"It's me," came the soft and feminine voice that Arthur hadn't expected. He got up off the bed and opened the door to see pajama-clad Ariadne, biting her bottom lip in anxiety and nervousness.

"Come on in. Sorry, I thought you were Eames," Arthur said with a sigh, walking back to the bed and flopping down on it. "What can I do for you, Ariadne?"

"I was wondering…or I guess hoping…you might sit and talk to me. I can't sleep. Limbo's got me spooked and I don't want to end up back there again," she said, finally releasing her bottom lip from where it had been clenched in her teeth, a little red mark lingering just where the skin's pinkness vanished.

"Yeah…sure. I can't seem to get to sleep either. Something about that job just has me spooked, but I can't imagine how you feel right now. Don't worry, though. You won't end up back in limbo. I've been invading dreams for years now, ever since I hopped out of college and I've never even been there. The fact that you got there in one of your first dreams is actually kind of incredible. Granted, I would never want to see that place, but you really appreciate the frailty of this world and your connections to it when you go down there…at least that's what I've heard."

"Who told you about it?" Ariadne inquired, legitimately confused.

"Cobb did. When he and Mol finally made it back from there, he wouldn't stop talking about how we don't appreciate this world and how sometimes there's no way of knowing. For a while, he wouldn't stop talking about inception. He said that what we did could change people in huge ways, that we should be careful what we take and what we give. Even then, I was convinced Inception was impossible. I even told him that he was just suffering side effects of being in the dreamspace for too long. He said he didn't even know if I was real anymore."

"What was that like?"

"It was like talking to someone who had been alive for decades, grown incredibly old and somehow found out that that entire lifetime was just a lie. He knew when he was there that it wasn't real, but that didn't change the fact that he lived an entire lifetime there with Mol and when she came back, she died. It's no secret that Cobb might even have regretted leaving. He considers it Mol's undoing. When he convinced her to leave, he also convinced her that her entire life was a complete lie."

"That's terrible," Ariadne said, looking down at her hands folded in her lap. She and Arthur were both sitting on the bed. He was leaning against a few pillows propped up against the headboard and she was sitting next to him cross-legged.

"Are you still shaken up from what happened down there?" Arthur finally, asked, sitting up and placing a hand on Ari's shoulder. She simply nodded. Without warning, Arthur gently placed a hand on her cheek, the back of his fingers touching the soft skin there. Ari turned her face towards his hand, feeling the comforting touch and realizing that it was helping. Subconsciously, her hand came up to hold his own to her face and she let out a sigh. "You're okay. Nothing bad can happen to you right now."

Ariadne's eyes immediately softened and she wiggled her body closer to Arthur's, leaning against him as he sat back against the pillows again, one arm draped over her shoulder as he continued to flip through the channels. For the first time since she got on the plane that morning, Ariadne felt safe and secure, as though she truly couldn't be hurt by what she'd seen that day. She gave a soft smile, staring down at her hands, before she looked up at Arthur, who gave her a simple and reassuring smile. She smiled back and sat up a little straighter, pressing her thick lips against his surprised thin ones before she sat back down, head against his chest.

"What was that?" he asked, brows raised.

"Shh…I'm watching," she hushed, pointing to the television where the channels had been cycled through completely and HBO was back on, some low-budget, after-hours horror movie was playing. The two were able to stay awake for quite a while, but by the time the serial killer had the beautiful young lead pinned against the wall, they had fallen asleep, dreaming soundlessly in each other's arms.

Review please, let me know if I should just keep it like this or should I make a whole story out of it? Any input is very much appreciated.