This is just the first part, I've got the other parts in the works- so far, it's not looking like it's going to be an over-long story, which I'm glad about. I'm thinking it's going to be between 3 and 5 chapters, all roughly the same length as this one.

I'm going to try and make each chapter be something that feels complete, so that if you ever get bored of the story, you won't feel compelled to finish it, because each chapter feels like it's an ending.

So anyway, this one starts off with Ariadne and Cobb in Limbo, and it's (obviously) told from Ariadne's POV. Drop me a note if something doesn't make sense, so I can go through and fix it when I add chapter 2.

She hadn't understood, before this moment, just how lost he had been. Hadn't appreciated the depth of his confusion- that he hadn't just wanted Mal to be real, but had really believed her to be. And she knows she's intruding on a private moment between the two, but they have to hurry, because Fischer needs them, and she's not so sure how much longer Saito can hold on.

It's then, as she's watching them speak; watching Mal yell and whisper and seethe that this is real, that these are their children; it's in that moment that she feels her brain fold in on itself, because she realizes she's four layers deep, and Mal just up and created a life for herself down here, children and all; and she's not entirely certain anymore whether or not Mal isn't real.

But she had died, she had jumped from a window and died.

She's not so certain she can handle the implications of that thought, and grips her totem tightly, feeling the grittiness of it from the sand and the slickness on the curves from where the sea had soaked through her jeans and washed at the object.

Cobb glances at her, and she has to fight the urge to vomit, because she doesn't feel real anymore.

Mal died, and came to the real world, and Dom Cobb stayed behind, populating a dead world with projections- bits of his subconscious. She knows it's ridiculous (knows it because everything around her is made of pieces of dream and memories and sadness and loss. Knows it because she has a whole lifetime of memories long before he came along), but she still can't shake the idea, and it's somehow made her less.

The world around them is falling apart in a beautiful display of decay and light, and it's no longer important if she's real or not- it's all about getting Cobb out of here; because if he stays here he'll die.

It occurs to her, moments later, as she's out on the deck with Fischer, that if she really were a part of his subconscious, she'd probably be the part that comprised his self preservation.

She takes one precious moment, carves it out of time with pure stubbornness, to watch her totem swing about on the surface of the deck; and she lets out a puff of air in gratitude when it can't quite decide which part to fall on, so it settles on swinging lazily about.

At least now she knows that this one part isn't real, that she can safely leave this little niche.

It still doesn't tell her if she is real, though, and she's afraid that there's no such thing as totems for that.

So when she jumps, she lets herself relish in the feel of the freezing air ripping painfully through her hair, and the tears that pool at her eyes from the wind burn. Because she doesn't know for certain anymore, and so all she really can do is feel.

Three layers up, she can feel the pressure of water around her, and for a brief moment she's terrified that she's somehow managed to swing around in full-circle and ended up back in the ocean. It's not until Arthur's blurry form is in front of her that she realizes she's made it this far, just one more to go, and then she'll be back on the plane- back to what she had thought of as reality.

Only she can't think of it like that anymore, because she's still twisting her mind around stupid Cobb and the god damned limbo that she was in; somehow, she knows, she's going to be spending a lot of time trying to convince herself that she's really out. That she's really her and not him, and she knows, right now, that no amount of totem swinging is going to work, because she's been irreparably fissured.

"He'll be fine," she tells Arthur when he continues to stare out at the water; she wants to add more- to tell him that she knows he'll be fine, because right now, she's pretty certain that they're all just bits of his subconscious. And so if he wasn't fine, by conjecture, they wouldn't be fine, either.

But she doesn't say that, instead she takes her totem out again and sets it on the bit of rock showing between her splayed out legs; watches as it once again can't decide where to land.

Arthur raises an eyebrow at her, and she can't really blame him- they all know this is just a dream, after all. But she wants to make sure it's not somehow different here than it was in limbo, because she's got enough on her mind as it is.

She just shrugs at him, letting her totem continue to rock itself about, before she begins to poke at it, making it sway in an over exaggerated manner to the left, then to the right. She sighs, and puts it in her soggy pocket, settling herself as she waits to be woken up.