The Problem with Dreams

A/N: SPOILER ALERT! Don't read this if you haven't seen the movie! This is my first Inception fanfic, but I'm open to all comments, good or bad. I used many quotes from the movie (artistic license), just FYI. The more constructive criticism I get, the more I can improve on my stories. This one is an Ari/Cobb pairing, go ahead and argue all you want! I read some of Voldemort's Spawn' and Ginger Locks' stories and they have converted me to A/C. I might continue with more chapters… I'm writing this with each chapter having a definitive ending, but leaving it open at the same time… Kinda like Inception! :D But it depends on what kind of reviews I get. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own Inception. It belongs to the magnificent mind of Christopher Nolan. *Bows to Mr. Nolan* Someday… ;)

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Four months since the Fischer job. Everyone had continued on with their lives, though that is hard to define… Inception had become everything for the team.

Eames, Yusuf, Saito, and Arthur were busy with their work, wherever they were. None of the team had spoken with each other since the Fischer job.

Dom was back at home, with his children and father and mother. He was savoring the life he had missed for so long, the life he came back to like things had never changed. He had spun the top on the dining table while he embraced his kids for the first time in ages. His only certainty that he wasn't dreaming was the metallic rattling the top made as it stopped spinning and lay unmoving on the table.

Ariadne was back in Paris, finishing her education. On a Saturday, she went to the warehouse where she had learned about inception, shared dreams, and the subconscious. Where one man, Dom Cobb, had taken her into another realm of being, another state of mind that could only exist within the far reaches of the brain… the dream. She remembered sitting in the Parisian café with Dom and seeing her surroundings explode out in all directions. She remembered shifting mirrors to make a never-ending walkway, a bridge from her memory, a lesson she learned the hard way.

"The more you change things, the quicker the Projections will find you. They're looking for the foreign nature of the dreamer… Wait a second, I know this bridge," Dom had said.

"Yeah, I cross it every day to get to the college."

"Never recreate places from memory," he lectured. "Always imagine new places."

"Well you gotta draw from stuff you know, right?" Ariadne inquired.

"Yes, but only details, like a lamp or street sign."

"Why's that?"

"Never recreate memories or you could lose your grasp on what's real and what's not."

"Is that what happened to you?" she instigated.

Dom grabbed her by the arm, staring down at her angrily with his frost blue eyes. "This has nothing to do with you!"

Then Mal stabbed her in the chest and she woke. Definitely not the most pleasant experience she's had, especially in a dream. She jolted awake, heart pounding, unable to hear or see momentarily. "Hey, look at me. Look at me, you're okay," Arthur said to her, holding her hand in one of his.

Ariadne took the needles and strap off of her wrist quickly, as if they would continue to fill her body and mind with more thoughts and feelings of the dream she had just had. She looked at Arthur's face with a slightly put-off look. "Do you know what this guy has in there?" She yelled towards Dom. "That's some subconscious you have, Cobb! She's a real charmer!"

"I see you met Mrs. Cobb."

"She's his wife?"

"Yeah."

"Look… You might not notice or not care about what's going on here, but Cobb's got some serious issues, and I'm not just going to open my mind to someone like that." With that, she storms off.

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