Author's Note: Yay for a new chapter! I was kinda bummed at how little response the last chapter received, but I guess I deserve it for not updating in a couple months. So I hope you enjoy this chapter! A special shout out to actressen, who gave me my 100th review! Seeing that totally made my day.

One question: Would you like me to respond to all of your reviews? If you want me to, let me know on your next reviews. I love talking to you guys, but if you'd rather not, let me know!

Oh, one last thing really quick. I already typed Chapter 14, so that means I just have to edit it before I get it up. Say "YAY JORDAN!"

Disclaimer: Inception, alas, does not belong to me :(

Chapter Thirteen

Ariadne, plus the group of men, stood in the lobby of her college in Paris. An ache of wanting passed through her as she realized how badly she wanted to go back there, to go back to simpler times. When reality had been enough.

"Ariadne?" her professor Miles called her from the stairs. Her memory self walked over to where Miles and Cobb were standing. "I'd like you to meet Mr. Cobb."

She offers her hand to Cobb. "Pleased to meet you."

Ariadne watched herself turn to Cobb with curious eyes. "A work placement?"

Cobb smiled. "Not exactly."

As Ariadne observed from the sidelines, she was surprised at the amount of pain that she saw in Cobb's eyes. It was a wonder she hadn't noticed it sooner.

The lobby dissolved, only to be replaced by a rooftop. Ariadne hid a smile as she viewed herself growing irritated when neither of her mazes were good enough.

Shaking his head, Cobb sighed as he looked at her second maze. "You're going to have to do better than that if-" Her memory grabbed the notebook, defiant, and drew a more complicated maze. Cobb nodded his head in approval, and even though this was just a memory, Ariadne still felt a surge of pride go through her.

The scene changed to the café where Cobb had explained the dream state to her.

"So…how did we end up here?" Cobb asked.

Her memory self looked confused. Not a good look on me, Ariadne decided. "Well, we just came from the, uh…"

"Think about it Ariadne," Cobb demanded. "How did you get here? Where are your right now?"

The group of men around Ariadne also looked confused. Does this count as a dream within a dream? she wondered. The ground began to shake, and the buildings began to tremble in their spots.

"We're dreaming?" she gasped.

Ariadne wondered whether the debris from the explosion would hit the men beside her, but her hopes immediately plummeted when the concrete and bricks merely passed through them, almost as if they were ghosts. That didn't stop them from trying to run or protect themselves from it, though. Ariadne snickered.

Shards of glass flew through the air and into her face. Ariadne winced, even though this was just a memory. That glass had fucking hurt. Watching herself wake up next to Arthur made Ariadne slightly jealous. Am I jealous of myself? The thought was ridiculous. Back in the second dream, that Ariadne controlled instead of Cobb, she was impressed with how much she had done for the first time. When the world started to fold itself in half, Ariadne watched in glee. It was just so cool. She noticed some of the men shift slightly away from her after witnessing that. Good. Her momentary excitement shifted to dread when she realized what was about to happen. Soon enough, Mal came at her with a knife that sliced through her abs.

The first thing she remembered when waking up from this dream was Arthur's eyes. They were a deep chocolate brown, which instantly soothed her. Brown was her favorite color. Most people didn't like it, but the color reminded her of melted chocolate.

She watched herself argue with Arthur that Cobb was messed up, that she wasn't going to share dreams with someone like that. "I'm not just going to open my mind to someone like that."

Her memory stalked across the room. I look like an angry midget…

"She'll be back," Cobb said.

Ariadne turned in surprise. She hadn't heard this before.

"I've never seen anyone pick it up so fast. One reality won't be enough for her now. When she comes back, get her building mazes," Cobb ordered Arthur.

Ariadne's eyebrows rose. He knew she would come back? Bastard.

The dream scene dissolved, the sunlight being the only sign that anything had changed. Arthur was sitting at his desk, his sweater pushed up to his elbows, working on the dream equipment . Even without looking at her memory self, she knew she looked sheepish. She saw Arthur turn at her not-so-subtle cough.

"Cobb said you'd be back," Arthur said, sounding just a bit smug.

"I tried not to come, but…" she trailed off.

"But there's nothing quite like it," Arthur finished for her, a small smile on his face.

"It's just…pure creation," she said.

The men on Browning's team looked surprised. Surprised enough to stop taking notes and glance at her with open looks of curiosity on their faces.

"What?" she asked, defensive.

None of the men said anything. Biting back a scathing remark, Ariadne put a mental block on her memories. The scene stopped changing, and she crossed her arms while giving the group a defiant look. "Until one of you decides to tell me what the hell you're looking at me like that for, we're not looking at any more memories."

More silence. Browning's jaw clenched, and he gave a short stiff nod to his right-hand man. The man stepped forward, Greg, if she remembered correctly, and offered her an explanation for their strange behavior. "You…you did it for the creation of the dream. To build something from nothing, and make buildings out of thin air. To people like us who just complete the job required for the paycheck, it's a new concept," Greg said.

Ariadne faltered. Out of all the replies that she had imagined as an explanation for their looks of utter stupidity, that had not been one of them.

"You really only did it for the creativity, the creation?" Greg asked quietly.

She cleared her throat. "Yes," she answered, just as quietly. "Yes, I did."

Another bout of silence fell upon the group, and before anyone tried to awkwardly break the tense silence, Ariadne took down her mental barrier and let the playing of her memories resume.

She saw herself learning the paradoxes, meeting Eames, and building all of the levels. She saw herself making a totem, invading Cobb's dreams, and that fateful day on the plane ride from Sydney to Los Angeles. Already, she noticed, the men's notebooks were half full. Boy, were they in for a surprise when they say the actual job.

Ariadne and Browning's crowd appeared on the first level of the dream, the rain coming down around them as if they weren't there. Soon after, she saw the majority of the men jump when the train suddenly made an appearance. She covered her snort of laughter with a cough.

Level two. Face already burning with embarrassment, Ariadne braced herself for what very private memory these people were about to see.

"What's happening?" her memory asked.

"Cobb's drawing Fischer's attention to the strangeness of the dream, which is making his subconscious look for the dreamer," Arthur explained. "For me. Quick, give me a kiss."

She obliged. In her defense, Ariadne really had believed that kissing him might help the projections stop looking for him. Sly bastard.

"They're still looking at us," she observed.

"Yeah, it was worth a shot."

Even now, the memory still made her heart race and face flush. As suspected, Browning turned towards her with a smug smile on his face and a raised eyebrow. She ignored him, but felt her face grow warmer under his gaze.

And on and on and on it went. The men furiously scribbled in their notebooks, and she wondered if they had figured out how exactly they were going to take the notebooks with them out of the dream state. Idiots. It wasn't until the third level that she stopped the memories, this time by Browning's voice.

"How did you know?" he demanded.

"How did I know what?" she snapped. She was a damned good architect, but she couldn't understand his cryptic wording, despite the face that they were in her dreams, and she was the one controlling everything.

"That Fischer would be down there?" No one needed to specify where exactly 'down there' was.

Ariadne faltered again. What is it with these guys and their odd questions? "If you think about it," she said, emphasizing the word 'think' and ignoring the glower he sent her way, "that's the only place he could go. It's not like he was going to wake up. You saw the amount of dosage of sedation we were all under." Based off of Browning's red face, he was less than satisfied with her answer, but at this point, she really could care less.

Finally, finally, she was able to stop. They woke up, and Ariadne noticed with a dark satisfaction that the men were having to write a mile a minute to try and remember everything they had written and seen while in the dream state. Unfortunately for her, her victory didn't last long when the men began bombarding her with questions.

After two hours, she had had enough. "Can I please go to sleep?" she pleaded, not bothered in the least that she was begging. She was so, so tired.

Browning nodded. One of the men stepped forward and motioned for her to follow. She trekked down a hallway until he gestured into a room off to the side. Ariadne gratefully sank into the mattress, noticing how a lock clicked once the door had shut.

She really was a prisoner.

A/N: I'm hitting a really low point in my life right now, so waking up to a billion reviews would really raise my spirits. I love love love all of my subscribers and those who have favorited me. You all don't know how much that means to me.