Author's Note: As promised, here's the next chapter. Well within my 24 hour promise. This one morphed...a lot. And is much longer than the others. I hope you all enjoy! And please remember to leave a review when you're done!

Disclaimer: I only own the plot, not the generalities and the characters.

She was stuck.

Trapped in a glass prison, on the inside lookout out. And she was stuck. Boxed in.

All her violent outbursts on her cage did nothing but give her throbbing hands and a raw throat. Everything about her goes unnoticed.

People meander and stroll past, like pedestrians on the street. Strangers who would never meet each others' eyes.

Her box gave the illusion of being as big as the world that surrounded it, but it was so, so tiny. The size of her childhood room, maybe enough for a full-sized bed, a writing desk, and a dressing table with barely any room to walk around. But it held none of this.

Just a traveling trunk in the center, a deadbolt hanging off it, broken and mangled.

When she took a step towards it, she heard cheering on her left. Looking, she saw her family gathered together. She went to that side of the box, leaning hard against it. Calling for her mother, her little brother seemed fruitless. They were all to busy fussing over a bassinet in the middle of them all. Her cousins and aunts and uncles were all cooing at, what she supposed, was a baby.

Who was having a baby? Why wasn't I told?

As if they could hear her thoughts, Ariadne's brother looked up, annoyed.

"Where's Ariadne?"

Her mother and her Aunt Jenny gave each other a long look before answering him.

"I called her, but no answer. I guess she couldn't be bothered," her mother's voice rang with disappointed disgust.

"Not that we really expected her. She doesn't seem to put much effort into anything anymore," Jenny added snidely.

Ariadne beat on the wall of glass, determined to get their attention. Her family... Why were they angry at her? What had she done to deserve their nasty comments?

To the right, her eyes caught her schoolmates and friends, talking at a cafe. Dragging her hand along the glass, she went to watch them, a lump in her throat. She needed to get out of here and to call her family. Now.

Five of her friends were surrounding a table, chatting amicably. Seeing them together made her realize she hadn't been spending a lot of time with them lately... She missed these times they'd all go out and just relax from their school work, which wasn't often. But something, a topic, had caused their faces to take on different emotions.

Anger, disgust, relief, worry, smugness.

Then she heard her name.

Ryan, the one nearest to Ariadne, started talking about her. She could only see half his face, but she could tell he was upset. "Where the hell is she?"

"Well, she hardly said anything about leaving before, so I doubt saying where she was going after was on her list of things to do." Next to him, Fiona sipped at her coffee after speaking, then added, "She can't go too many places. I mean, she dropped out for god's sake."

Dropped out? Wait... Were they talking about her? She'd never drop out. Architecture was her life. She'd never give it up.

Her closest friend, and lone Parisian native of the group, Claire, chewed on her lip before speaking.

"Don't you think something is wrong? Ariadne would never just leave without a word..." The others gave her a look Ariadne couldn't discern. "Well, besides a few months ago... But she wasn't totally gone. We saw her from time to time. And the professor said she was okay, just doing a small work-placement."

A hand came down on the table, getting their attention, also startling her terribly. The noise had reverberated throughout her prison, shaking the glass like a small earthquake had come.

"Who cares. Now that she is gone, we can focus on our schoolwork and getting top spot. It's a real competition now. None of us had any hope with her here."

She didn't want to see this anymore. It hurt to see what her friends were really thinking. The lump in her throat was growing and tears prickled at her eyes.

Rain suddenly started pouring on the group, causing them to split up and all run for cover in different spots. The water seemed to wash away the scene and she turned once more to her right to see something else. Anything else.

But not this.

Her fists balled up, the tears fell.

As if her neck could no longer support the weight or the burden, her head came down with a painful thunk onto the wall that was now nearly supporting her full weight.

Cobb was with them again.

Working with Arthur, Eames... Even Yusuf had been called in. But someone new was there. They were doing her job, building mazes, mapping blueprints.

She laughed and joked with the others, like she had.

She looked older, younger than most of the others, but closer to maybe Arthur's age. Certainly older than Ariadne's twenty three years.

She'd been replaced.

Why?

Why hadn't she been told?

Well, the lack of phone calls was certainly a clue... But she'd thought she would have been given a courtesy call that lead along the lines of "We won't call you again, so don't wait up."

A sob escaped her when she saw the woman sneak a kiss to Arthur's cheek when she thought the others weren't looking. And instead of the stoic face she was used to, he actually grinned.

Slyly.

"Anna, this is fabulous work," murmured Cobb as he looked at her models.

A chord struck her from the inside. Cobb had never truly looked at her blueprints like that before. He never could, thanks to Mal, at the time.

Yusuf, looking up from his chemical notes, grinned. "Never saw anything like them. Not even Ariadne could live up to those, I don't think."

"Be fair, now, Yusuf. She never had the opportunity. Though, I have to say, she'd have to work hard at it." Eames played at his totem, the poker chip flipping through his fingers effortlessly.

He'd never been able to do that before...

Eames looked up, as if hearing a song or voice no one else could. He looked right at Ariadne, hunched over, and played with the totem more. Staring.

Backing away, she nearly tripped over the trunk behind her. The lock rattled and fell to the floor, rust flakes floating down slowly.

Feeling Eames' eyes still on her, she tried to focus her attention away from the laughs of Arthur, Cobb and Anna as she knelt down and tried to open the small box.

The lid was rusted, which made it difficult to lift at first. It creaked and groaned in protest.

But inside, she saw all her current projects.

Blueprints, small models. Notes on various kinds of papers.

All of them were marked with stinging red marks.

Failure.

Too simple.

Wouldn't work correctly in the real world.

Try harder, Ariadne.

She tried to reach in and grab them. To see what each one said.

But each time she reached her hand out, they would shrink away, as if it was bottomless or just a projection.

She reached farther own, nearly tipping over into it, feeling like Alice about to fall down the rabbit hole.

"Its a shame, isn't it? That Ariadne ran off like that."

She lifted herself out of the trunk, falling onto her behind in pain, as the voice spoke conversationally.

The last wall of the cage. She hadn't looked there yet.

She wasn't sure if she wanted to.

She couldn't stop her crying.

All the words of the people she loved, trusted were like needles. Thousands of needles in her most sensitive spots.

Why were they doing this?

She wouldn't look at the last wall, but despite her denial, the person kept speaking.

"She messed up one job, then... Just collapsed. Failed so many classes, then just dropped out."

"That doesn't sound like her..."

"We were all taken back. We'd all put so much confidence in her and she messed up. No one knows where's she's gone now."

"Hiding in shame?"

This sounded nothing like her. She hadn't failed anything in years. Not since middle school. She wasn't allowed to mess up. No room for failure.

She went to stand, to tell these people off, but she couldn't move.

Chains were on her legs, her wrists.

When had they snaked onto her?

They came from the box and when she noticed them, they started to slowly pull back into the box, dragging her with.

No... No, stop.

She tugged on them, but unlike the metal on the trunk, these were brand new. Flipping over, she looked for something to grab onto. But not even the walls of her prison would give her this.

Eames was still watching her, the others gone. His smirk widened when he saw her look at him. He continued to play with the poker chip, faster now.

Over, under, over under.

It weaved between his fingers like it was made just for that.

"STOP!" Ariadne yelled. At what, she wasn't sure. The chains were dragging her into the box of her failures, Eames was staring, her family and the mysterious voices were talking louder now. But when she yelled. It became quiet as death.

Eames tossed the chip to the ground and it rolled to her. Her fingers reached for it unconsciously, which made her start.

She wasn't supposed to touch this. Eames wouldn't have let her. She tried weaving it between her own fingers and found herself doing it as flawlessly as he had.

–

–

"And that's when I woke up." Ariadne shuddered as she finished, toying with her now empty water bottle.

Cobb tented his fingers together, his elbows resting on the table of the restaurant they were at. His face was in deep concentration. "When was this, Ariadne?"

"Two nights ago?"

"Do you still dream in general?"

She nodded. "Not so much as I used to, though."

Cobb ran a hand through his hair and reached for his drink. "I don't like the sound of what's going on. It's not just you, though..." He threw back his drink and sat the glass on the surface a little harder than he meant to.

"You, too?" she asked timidly. When he didn't respond, she had her answer.

Silence sat between them for what seemed like hours. "I'm afraid to sleep now, Dom," she admitted.

He licked his lips. "Me too."

A/N: Well, what did you think? Tell me in a review! Thanks for reading! New chapter will be up soon! Who do you think should be next?

Story recommendation this chapter is Colliding Clocks by UnderageThinking