Work Text:
It starts with a phone call.
"She's having nightmares," Arthur says over the line, tone low and calculating. Yusuf can tell that the pointman has struggled to make this call, knows the other man doesn't trust him. Not after their first and only job together. "Eames told us about your dream den. Just help her, okay?"
Not without a fee, Yusuf says silently, but he agrees.
Ariadne arrives within the week with nothing but a duffel, heavy shadows beneath eyes that won't meet his gaze. It's near 45 degrees Celsius this time of year in Mombasa, but bits of skin barely peek out from her scarf and her sweater. Yusuf invites her in, the heat no less bearable than that outside, and asks her the usual questions that'll prevent his den from having an accident and shutting down. It may be illegal, but a wrong decision gets people talking -- keeps them away.
And being an honest chemist in Kenya doesn't bring in half as much money.
She skirts almost all of his questions, but Yusuf is used to this. He smiles politely and starts her on the basic compound for Dreaming.
"I don't want to dream," she says, voice clipped. But her eyes tells him she does, just not like this.
Which actually leaves Yusuf in a bit of a situation. He's running a dream den with a client who doesn't want to dream. What did Arthur actually think he could do for her? So he tells her to come back tomorrow to start the tests and watches as she stands on his doorstep for a good ten minutes before deciding which way to go. Yusuf doesn't care much for the lives of clients once they step out of his shop, but he suspects that Ariadne will take everything they accomplish here with her.
Fuck, he should've learned from Cobb that sometimes money isn't worth the trouble.
**
The first test piques his interest.
He puts her under a typical set-up like he does for any other average Joe that walks through his door. She doesn't ask about the compound, doesn't ask what the tests will tell him. Ariadne just quietly takes the needle and sticks it into her wrist with a little too much carelessness for a woman who had just spent the last 13 weeks going under every day for the most improbable inception in dream-conning history.
She always used to ask.
(Is this a new compound? What did you add? Why would it react with a peanut allergy?)
Yusuf gives her five minutes; she wakes up after fifteen seconds, eyes wide and in hysterics. Ariadne is heaving into her hand, turning away from him like she's embarrassed, but Yusuf is too busy recording the time in his notes. Fifteen on the clock means barely four minutes in the dream. The only reason someone would die so quickly is if they off themselves, but judging by Ariadne's reaction she didn't expect it.
"You're having nightmares," Yusuf says this as if it is a great revelation, and Ariadne gives him a scowl that he's only ever seen directed at Cobb.
She's rubbing the expanse of her forehead, a clear sign of a headache, "Yes, I managed that much on my own without you, or Arthur for that matter."
The chemist fiddles with the machine checking for any faults. This hasn't happened before and he asks, "Why are you dying so quickly?"
Ariadne stills, "How quickly?"
"Over four minutes too soon." Yusuf watches as she shoves her face deeper into her small hands and her shoulders tremble. She won't talk, won't tell him why she's emerging from the dream so impossibly soon. He excuses himself easily; tells her he'll give her a few and leaves the room.
The sound of his keys clang unusually loud when he unlocks the rusty doorway to the lower level. He's checking on the first few dreamers when Chief comes to him.
"Difficult dreamer?" He asks.
Yusuf only takes a moment to realize that the old man is speaking about the architect above. Chief works with the dreamers on a more personal level than Yusuf, being the one to watch over them once the preliminary tests are accomplished. While the chemist thinks in terms of supply fees, clients, and payments, Chief thinks in terms of the fantastic, the spiritual, the dream.
Somewhere along the way, Yusuf had lost that.
He nods in accordance to the old man's question and looks at him with his own silent inquiry: how did you know?
Chief gives a brief shake of the head and swats Yusuf's hand away from the machine where he had mistakenly disrupted the Somnacin discharge. A few of the dreamers linked to the same hookup start to stir but Chief puts them under again.
"You're concerned about her. You're distracted," Chief says. And Yusuf's ready to deny it, but he supposes it's true in a sense. He is concerned but not specifically about her well-being. He's concerned that if he can't help her, she'll walk away from his den – back to Arthur. And in exactly 3 days, his shop will be upturned by anonymous shadows. Arthur's efficient like that. (Besides, Ariadne has agreed to a high service fee that can only be paid comfortably by Proclus Global's appreciations.)
So with a grim smile he meanders back upstairs.
The room is empty when he opens the door, the machine all packed up with single bundle of Benjamins neatly placed on top. (Yusuf always makes sure to emphasize true dollars – the conversion rate into shillings makes it lose its value.)
He doesn't know if she'll be back, or if he should be worried about locking his doors in vain.
Yusuf also doesn't know why he doesn't ink the money into his ledger, but locks the bundle into his private drawer.
**
A month passes and she doesn't show, and neither does Arthur so Yusuf breathes easy enough. There are moments that Yusuf almost forgets about the entire obligation so he takes his key, unlocks his bottom drawer, and makes sure the Benjamins are still there, however much dust they've accumulated.
He wonders where she is, if she’s better, and knows that he shouldn’t care – because they mean nothing to each other. They were nothing but co-workers, acquaintances, and they didn’t nod goodbye leaving the LAX. There wasn’t a reason to – they weren’t friends.
And they still aren’t.
So he slams the drawer shut and locks it. And he will do this over and over again.
**
Yusuf spends his spare time looking into any abnormalities in Dreaming. Yes, he’s had experience with the Dreamscape, but his involvement is rather cut and dry. People come to him because he can copy compounds, tweak them, make them better – make them worse. He can do anything they ask so as long there’s money to be had, and they pay it. They pay because it takes a chemist to play with chemicals.
Dreamsharing Technology is moderately new, less than four decades old but the files are expansive. He has friends in odd places and somehow he’s procured these documents through a network. Anonymously, of course. There’s no use risking exposure and getting caught just because he was doing a bit of homework. Chief asks less questions and worries more, but Yusuf can't be bothered to appease the old man. He knows he means well, but the fact of the matter is, Yusuf can't explain it himself.
Maybe it's the mystery of it, the thrill of the unknown. An unsolved Dreamsharing case and he could be the one to solve it – if only he knew what the puzzle was. And suddenly he realizes that's exactly what Ariadne is. She's a puzzle, the very essence of the beauty she creates. No one knows a thing about her other than that she's a damn good rookie architect, sprouting out of the gaudy foundations of the French Renaissance.
(Listen, the classics will never die. That's why there are so many imitations of the style all over Europe and the Americas.)
And Yusuf can't seem to pinpoint when he'd stopped wondering if she was all right to hoping she was.
**
Eames comes sauntering through his door weeks later and it's something Yusuf's gotten used to in the three-year friendship that they've managed to sustain slightly well in a half-way sort of fashion. The Londoner looks grim, however, as he sits himself in the chair on the other side of the chemist's desk. Yusuf stares at him over the top of his glasses, expecting one of the usual reasons for a drop-in: need of a compound, need of a place to hide out, and need of cash because, fucking hell, Yusuf – the guy was counting those cards so loud, I could hear my old maths teacher railing on me.
He's picking lint off his trousers when he casually says, "Arthur tells me he's sent our little architect to you about a few nightmares."
Something about the way Eames flickers his eyes to and away from his gaze unnerves Yusuf. Eames has never been one to hide things, not when it was unnecessary. And Yusuf could hardly figure why Eames felt the need to hold back on anything regarding 'their little architect'. Unless...
"Is she all right?" Yusuf asks, slipping off his glasses and throwing them atop his paperwork. Eames finally meets his eyes for a few significant seconds and nods, more to himself than anything – a habit Yusuf's picked up on but will never understand.
But Yusuf gets a question for his question, "Did you help her?"
And here is where he looks away and mutters, "No." Eames quirks an eyebrow, and the chemist ignores it. "After the first day, she disappeared. Left me the payment, more than enough in fact, but she's been gone ever since."
"Didn't think to seek her out?"
"Wasn't my place to."
"Well, isn't that very like you, Yusuf," Eames crosses a knee over the other and settles back, and Yusuf knows he's in for fight. No half-way sort of friendship escapes the occasional argument. "You reap the rewards and steer clear of the rubble."
Yusuf can already feel the anger bubbling inside of him. Granted, he’s never done anything to disprove Eames’s conclusion on his character. Yusuf certainly isn’t one to turn away what he can take from an experience, and avoiding trouble in his line of work was just common sense. And surely, this was like the teapot calling the kettle black. Yes, it was just one pompous teapot calling him black.
“You of all people should know what it takes to do what we do, Eames,” he replies sharply. He tenses more when Eames actually smiles. Smiles.
“Ah, but Yusuf, my boy – there’s much, much more to what we do than building a fortune on other people’s dreams,” Eames leans in over the desk. “It’s about loyalty.”
Oh, Allah, did he laugh. He laughed with everything in him at that. “You, Eames? Talking to me about loyalty? You would turn in your best friend for the right price. So please, if you’re not in need of anything, I’ve business to take care of.”
And with that Yusuf takes up his glasses again and pencils in his notes on the latest compound he’s dissecting. A few moments pass and the chemist would’ve believed Eames had slipped out unnoticed – another habit and talent of his, but –
“She’s in bad shape.”
The gravity of his voice makes the chemist leave a stray mark against the paper and his words make him pause. Yusuf asks the forger to take him to her.
**
“Spotted her in a bad area of the marketplace a few days ago. Trailed her a bit and called Arthur up to see if he knew what went on with dear little Ariadne, because the old stick in the mud keeps tabs on everyone he’s ever worked with even if they’ve long since been dead,” Eames explains as he unlocks the door to the smelly old apartment he’s squatting in for the time being. Yusuf grimaces at the stench but follows the British man further into the living area. “Found her last night at the Covo trying to drink her way into oblivion. Brought her back to mine and she’s been sleeping it off.”
Eames indicates the only bedroom of the place and Yusuf lets himself in.
And there she was. Their precious architect was curled up at the end of the bed, both forearms between her knees as if this wasn’t the blistering hot fall season in Mombasa. She’s a bit more tan than before, since the day she left without a goodbye (again). It’s only slight, and later upon close inspection, Yusuf could see more evidence of frequent sunburns on her nose. Her ragged scarf clashes yet matches extremely well with the colorfully woven shirt that could only be found in the industrial cities of Kenya. And still, she is the same slip of a girl who traveled a continent over to seek his help and he had let her walk away when he knew, he knew he could do something for her.
The bags beneath her eyes are darker, but was it because of the sun or the nightmares? He supposes he’ll never know but there’s a pretty good guess here.
“You all right, then?” Eames claps him on the back. Yusuf nods numbly and gestures to the Parisian.
“You say she’s been asleep since you left her?”
“Yeah, but mind – that’s only been…” Eames makes a show of checking his watch, “Six hours ago.”
The Indian frowns as he shoves his hands into his pockets. “Out drinking until nearly 4 in the morning…”
“Not exactly something to expect from the little thing,” Eames nods. He snaps his fingers and waves Yusuf closer. “Take a look. She’s been doing a bit more than drinking.”
He gently takes one of her arms and turns it just so for Yusuf to spot one or two puncture marks with significant bruising. Yusuf can only sigh. “Do you know what?”
The London man shakes his head and drops her arm, the girl in question only stirring enough to bury her nose further into the cheap bedsheet. “Only saw these while I was carrying her here. I haven’t actually spoken to her. But if I know Mombasa, and I should like to think that I do, it could be a number of things. Weed, heroin, ecstasy – what do you think? Ever peg her for a party packer?”
"Cocaine at the most," Yusuf says with tilted smile and Eames chuckles. It's wrong to laugh and make fun, but this is Eames and Yusuf's learned how to accomodate how he deals with things.
"Listen," Eames scratches the back of his head. "Apparently Ariadne's been lying to Arthur about her 'progress' with you and he's making his way here once his job in Tijuana is done. We can't let her off on her own again, else Arthur will kill us. You first."
Yusuf shrugs, "He could've called me to see how she was."
"Best mates, are you?" Eames smirks, "The tight ass couldn't even make that first call to you until I personally dialed for him. You might not realize this but he doesn't like you very much."
"There might have been signals."
Eames nods, "Just be prepared for open fire."
He sighs again, trying to think of ways to escape this unwanted persecution by the point man. "She left, Eames. She paid and left. There was nothing I could do." But the words left a bitter taste in his mouth as he looks at her now, sleeping off a hangover with ugly, needled arms. Yusuf felt Eames's eyes on him and was expecting another accusation, but Ariadne rolls herself over and begins to wake.
Eames mumbles something about a glass a water – he had that at least – and leaves the room.
As he waits for Ariadne to fully blink her way to the consciousness, Yusuf drags over a plastic lawn chair from the corner of the room to the bedside. She peaks at the movement and to say she was surprised to see the resident Mombasan is rather understated. "Wh-- I--,"
"Somehow leaving a woman speechless in this sort of situation isn't nearly as flattering as you'd think it would be," Yusuf relaxes as much as he can to not alarm the girl, who is likely to be suffering some sensory overload from the hangover.
She laughs and teeters herself to sit up.
"Did you dream?"
Ariadne's lips thinned and she averted her eyes, "No."
"I imagine not. Alcohol knocks you out, slows your brain function significantly. It usually leaves you dangling between consciousness and REM."
She picks at the hem of her shirt and nods. "I sleep longer like this."
"Like this and other ways," Yusuf says, his gaze intense at her elbow. Ariadne stiffens and crosses her arms. "This isn't the way to deal with your problems, Ariadne."
"This is the only way I know how," her voice holds a steady conviction, but with heavy desperation that Yusuf should've picked up the first time. "No one's been able to help me. I go to sleep and I wake up, and it happens all night every night. I don't know why. If I dream, I don't remember it. I've tried going to Cobb, but he's done with anything that has to do with Dreaming. Arthur's tried, but in the end he's sending me away and I just want to sleep, Yusuf."
The chemist watches as Ariadne rubs the inside of her elbow unconsciously and softens. He knows it must have been terribly unfair for her – to be sucked up into this life of dream crime and only to be abandoned, left to her own devices, on her own to deal with the consequences. Normally, new Dreamers experience very little after-effects, usually minor inability to dream for a short period of time, but Ariadne hasn’t been able to sleep let alone dream for what would be since the Fischer job. That puts it at a good seven months.
Nightmares, he’s dealt with them before. But that usually depended on actually dreaming. This was a mystery and a challenge, and he’ll take it. He’ll take it because he remembers Ariadne as she was; strong, smart and surprisingly stubborn for someone of her stature. She was the sort of girl who would jump into a bar fight and win, the sort to give Gaudi a run for his money, and get involved in a con right in the middle of her last year of graduate school at Sorbonne.
This wasn’t that girl.
For whatever reason, that bothered him. So, naturally, he doesn’t have a choice.
“Come back with me,” Yusuf leans forward on his knees. “And I will help you, but you’ll have to let me. No running.”
Ariadne shook her head, a hint of her old stubborness coming through, “You can’t help me. You were just like Arthur when I went to him. It’s just ‘nightmares’. Except I don’t remember anything.”
As much as Yusuf resents being compared to Arthur, who was no doubt planning to skewer him alive, he takes a cautious step and slips onto the edge of the bed closer to her. “First tests mean almost nothing. It tells me how you react to that particular drug compound and very little else. This isn’t going to be a quick fix-it, Ariadne. It’s going to take time.”
She looked into his eyes and he hopes that he’s convincing her that his intentions are genuine if nothing else. “I’m sorry I ran.”
“It’s only expected. Can’t make logical decisions on very little sleep,” he gives a comforting smile and she returns a tentative one.
“Feeling better, love?” Eames comes in now with a bottle of water and aspirin.
Ariadne gratefully takes the water and downs the pills without asking what they are. “What are you doing here, Eames?” She asks.
The forger gestures to his very humble abode, “This is my place for the time being. In Mombasa for a quick under the table job. I’d ask you the same but Arthur’s already filled me in.”
Her eyes widens in question and and Yusuf answers her question, “Yes, he’s on his way.”
“Shit,” she mutters, collapsing on the bed again.
“Yeah,” Yusuf agrees.
Eames laughs.
**
He’s grateful she doesn’t ask about his change of heart. He’s certain that he doesn’t know why he had one, so he sets her up in a tiny spare room above his den with a forced carelessness and watches as she throws her duffel she retrieved from her shoddy motel onto the mattress. That’s all there is: a mattress, and he had only managed to drag it up from the basement below.
“We need to wait at least three days until we start,” Yusuf says not unkindly. “I need you clean of alcohol and whatever drugs you’ve been using. The less variables, the better I can find the problem.”
He sees her twitch a bit, rubbing at the inside of her elbow, at the mention of detoxing and hopes it won’t be as rough as he predicts it’ll be. Ariadne nods stiffly and swallows, “Thanks. For putting me up – for putting up with me.”
Yusuf only nods with a half smile.
“And for not asking about –,” she does this brisk jut of her arm. “You know.”
“It’s not important.”
There is a moment of silence and Ariadne nods heavily.
**
And to no one’s surprise, Arthur arrives before their first session. Eames is on a job so no one’s there to help Yusuf fight off the one-man ambush.
“Why the fuck didn’t you call me when she left?” Arthur spits out at Yusuf with only his work desk between them. “I told you to help her and you just let her walk out?”
Yusuf holds up a finger, “One: you did not tell me to do anything. Two: I wasn’t aware she gave up her basic rights?”
“She’s vulnerable.”
“Then why send her here on her own?” Yusuf leans over his desk in a challenge, “Why did you send her away?”
Arthur, in his suit and trenchcoat, flinches ever so slightly – and Yusuf takes it as a victory, however small. “… I couldn’t help her.”
“What makes you think I can?”
“Can you?”
**
Yusuf didn’t think he’d enlist Arthur’s help with anything let alone this, but here he is in the back room of the shop hooking Ariadne and Arthur up to the same machine. The point man’s reunion with the architect was interesting to say the least and Yusuf sees that Ariadne’s giving the straight-laced man her best cold shoulder. He can’t help but wonder if there was more to them than former teammates. When they get into a verbal fight when Arthur finds out about what she’s really been doing instead of ‘making progress’ with Yusuf, the chemist is certain there was something between them.
And this discovery may or may not have effected how hard he pushes the lead into Arthur’s wrist.
“Am I Dreaming?” Ariadne asks and Yusuf shakes his head while he secures the line into her.
“We already know that you can’t hold the dream. This will tell us if your subconscious is stable,” Yusuf pats her comfortingly on the hand and eases her back onto the bed. “Five minutes. Tell me how many designer suits Arthur keeps in his Dream Closet.”
Ariadne smiles at that and gives the frowning point man a rare glance. Her quip is interrupted when he sees her falling into the dream.
Yusuf watches the timer on the machine start ticking down and situates himself at the chair next to the architect.
And he waits.
**
“Arthur tells me you like cats more now,” Yusuf says as he’s pipetting the sedative into five different test tubes at five different increments. Ariadne looks up from place on the ledge of the side cabinet with a questioning look, a tabby in her arms. “The dreamscape apparently was littered with a lot more cats than the last time he took you through.”
She gives a shrug with a hint of a smile, scratches the tabby more affectionately behind the ear. It purrs and shuts its eyes.
“I took an Egyptian mythology class while doing my undergraduate in the States,” she says. “Apparently there were priests that would watch cats while they slept to predict things to come. I thought it was silly at the time, but with everything that’s happened to me. The Dreamsharing, the Inception – not being able to sleep anymore. Seems more meaningful somehow.”
Yusuf disposes the pipette tip into his wastebasket and grabs another.
“Am I your priest then?” he asks over his glasses.
She doesn’t miss a beat, tapping the cat’s nose. “Not with your greed.”
He smiles.
**
Ariadne insists on paying him the previous agreed price for each session, but he doesn’t formally make logs. She just gives him another bundle of hundreds when she thinks it’s considered a session. And when Yusuf means give, he really means she finds a frequently used drawer and sticks it there or cleverly slips it into his bag when he’s out. When she moved into the room upstairs, he gives her the original Benjamins back and tells her it’ll be a favor from a friend to a friend.
She shoved the money back into his hands and said, “Are we? Friends, that is.”
Yusuf didn’t answer, but not giving one was just as good of a response as any.
**
The former Sorbonne student regains some rosyness to her cheeks after three weeks at Yusuf’s and it isn’t without the man’s help. Being the sort of busy body that he is and how many experiments he runs all at once he has a tendency to skip meals (he makes up for it though, you don’t get a comfortable belly like his from starving), but he makes sure Ariadne eats at least twice a day even if she says she doesn’t feel up to it. Lack of appetite is one of the side effects of experimental Somnacin usage and once when Ariadne promptly refused to eat the sandwich he’d gotten from the market for her, he threatened to special order those Flintstone vitamin pills and spoonfeed it to her.
So she eats.
But only because those Flintstone things are disgusting.
(And Jesus, Yusuf. I’m not a child.)
**
Ariadne still doesn’t sleep for long. The process is slow and she gets antsy, but Yusuf tries to convince her that he will help her.
“You’re so confident,” she says, wistfully. “I never noticed that about you.”
“You used to be, once.”
“Think so?” Ariadne looks off, “It feels like a dream ago…”
Seeing as though she hasn’t properly dreamt in months, that must feel like a very long time.
**
The first month is dedicated to finding a way to stabilize her dreaming. And it isn’t until Yusuf goes in with her himself that he discovers it.
“Why didn’t you do this before?”
“I rarely go into the field. I’m like the Sandman, Ariadne. But instead of sand on your lids, I pump your system with illegal chemicals.”
“Charming. You must’ve done it yourself when you first started, though.”
“Yes, quite a bit.”
“What happened?”
He doesn’t answer.
**
“She’s essentially dying by being unable to construct a dreamscape even for herself,” Yusuf informs both Eames and Arthur in a corner of a café. “For all of the two minute glimpse I got of what she drops us into, it looks like it’s the ruins of her last dreamscape.”
Arthur perks up, “The Fischer job.”
“So, what?” Eames pops a peanut into his mouth, “Is she unintentionally recreating LA and … destroying it?”
Yusuf shakes his head, “Not LA. Something much deeper.”
Eames beats Arthur to the punch, “Limbo?”
“Or so she tells me, Cobb’s limbo,” he says.
“Her mind is trying to create Limbo?” Arthur asks.
The resident Mombassan gives a one-shouldered shrug, “A cheap imitation of it anyways. Creation is still limited.”
“And you got all of this from what?” Arthur’s eyes glint from the gears turning in his head, “six seconds on the clock?”
“It fluctuates,” Yusuf takes a sip of his black coffee. “And no, half of this I got from Ariadne telling me. We tend to talk, she and I. Or, do you not remember what that’s like?”
Eames lets out a low whistle and eyes flickers back and forth from the two.
“Hold the catfight, I’m out of peanuts. Waiter?”
**
“You’re mad at Arthur?” She asks him one night when she’s watching him check up on the dreamers in his den. Yusuf excused Chief for the evening and the old man muttered something about the girl softening him up.
“What makes you think that?”
Ariadne walks from bed to bed, dreamers slowly waking up. “Eames.”
Yusuf breathes an ‘of course’ under his breath. “Aren’t you?”
She shakes her head and comes up beside him as he shuts down a machine. “I shouldn’t be. It’s stupid actually.” She shrugs her shoulders a little too severely, “He kissed me on the Fischer job. I was silly enough to think it meant more than what it was. Get to the LAX and I’m all alone. Next thing I know, the ‘nightmares’ come and I call up him up. He sends me your way. Between the sleep deprivation and hurt, girly feelings, I must’ve just decided I was mad at him. Not his fault.”
Ariadne ends it all with a laugh, and Yusuf envelopes her into a hug. It’s strange, hugging her, but when she wraps her arms around his back and shoves her face into his shirt, it’s alarmingly comfortable. “You’ve just talked about your hurt, girly feelings about Arthur to me. We’re officially friends.”
Her laugh is rich against his chest and it warms him.
**
Once a day, Yusuf puts her under for as long as she can keep the dreamscape from collapsing. They’ve started a regimen for two weeks now and the progress is slow, but it’s surely.
“How are you keeping her under?” Eames asks leaning back in his chair as the three watch the architect dream.
“After we made the Limbo discovery, I put her under with the compound we used for the Fischer job.”
Eames swirled around in his chair, “You kept copies?”
“Of course. The formula was used to complete the first Inception. Getting rid of it would be a bad business move,” Yusuf says and Eames grins.
“Love it when you think like that, darling.”
Arthur looks up from the seat closest to Ariadne, “She can’t keep using this sedative to sleep.”
The chemist nods at the point man’s conclusion and puts aside his notes. “I’ve customized a version of the compound – the Inception compound – just for her. With the sedative, she’s at her most stable. Ariadne dreams for ten hours and every week I switch her to a new compound, still customized for her, but with a less potent sedative. Each version of the compound should reduce her sleeping time by a half hour real time.”
“Ten hours to 5 minutes,” Arthur scribbles in his moleskin. “It’ll take twenty-one weeks at the least.”
He nods. “It’s the safest way to do this, and hopefully this will solve it.”
“Why is it just her? We were all under the same compound and I’m chipper as I’ve always been – even more after I saw all those zeros from Saito,” the forger says.
Yusuf sighs, knowing the question was to come. “I still can’t be sure why – but Somnacin is still relatively new. People react to it differently. It may be because she dropped into Limbo with the sedative.”
“So did Cobb – and Saito,” Arthur says. “We haven’t heard anything from them.”
“Cobb’s been in Limbo before, and he’s had more experience than any of us when it comes to Dreamsharing,” Yusuf responds. “And Saito’s had extractors train him. They’ve both had considerable amount of experience with Somnacin.”
Arthur still doesn’t look convinced. He’s trying to civil with the point man, and the past few weeks has been this awkward truce between them since Yusuf discovered that he and Ariadne weren’t nearly as involved as he thought they were.
“Look, I know it’s less than solid,” he sighs. “But it’s what I’ve got. Unless you have suggestions.”
Before Arthur could respond, Ariadne starts to shift awake beside him. Yusuf makes a note of the time in his notebook while Arthur eases the lead out of her.
“I’m terribly thirsty,” she proclaims blankly and Eames hands her a bottle of tea.
The water’s terrible in Mombasa.
**
“Is this what you’re like when you fancy a girl?” Eames asks when they’re watching over Ariadne continue into her third hour of the day. They’re in week eleven and Arthur’s away on a potential client call down in South Africa. Yusuf looks up from his makeshift lab desk that he’s set up in the back room so he could actually get work done while he monitored Ariadne’s progress.
“What do you mean?”
Eames shakes his head, “This particular job’s got you working for eight months. You don’t do that just for anyone.”
“She’s not anyone,” Yusuf argues as casually as possible. Bad things happen when Eames thinks you need a good lay. “She’s a friend. We worked the Fischer job together. She kind of went to Limbo and back so we didn’t end up in Limbo.”
“Yes, all that,” Eames cedes. “But that didn’t seem a good enough reason when she skipped out on you.”
Yusuf sighs because he doesn’t know how many times he has to deal with his sorry excuse that she was the one to leave. It’s true, though, that he didn’t find it worthwhile to go after her – and he soon learned that it was rather cowardly of him not to own up to a task. But still, even now, he doesn’t think that he’s helping her because of a sense of responsibility.
And the whole “solving a mystery” theory seems to fall through because he’s just solving the problem, not the mystery. They still haven’t an actual clue as to why the problem exists. That’s insignificant somehow, because when Ariadne wakes up from her scheduled dreaming sessions, she’s as animate as ever. Always chatting about what she managed to go about in the week, the day, the hours she spent in the dream. And that makes it all worth it, Yusuf finds.
“God bless the queen, you’re in love with her,” Eames breathes and Yusuf rolls his eyes. “I mean, I’ve seen you with women – you’re not a timid bloke so this is kind of pathetic. Shit, you’re actually in love with her!”
“No, I’m not,” Yusuf dismisses it, and Eames’s grin grows wider. “Stop thinking you know me so bloody well.”
But, fuck, he does. Better than himself.
**
Their daily sessions grow shorter as they process through each compound. Yusuf always makes sure he gives her three more hours dream-time to dream on her own without the sedative, and only once had she woken up too early.
“Got bored in there,” she shrugs. “Don’t worry. I calculated how long it took for the sedative to wear off.”
Yusuf can understand that. She’s been dreaming for years and years by herself in there. He wonders if what she’s creating in there is still feels like Limbo. He hands her a cup of coffee and a sandwich, “Eat. You’re losing an incredible amount of weight when all you’re doing is sleeping all day.”
She asks if him he has a sandwich for himself and he nods. So they eat together while she tells him about endless towers and eternal stairwells, topsy-turvy pyramids and an ocean in the sky.
**
The chemist comes back from running an errand to see Ariadne and the Chief chatting amiably. It’d be a rather nice sight if they weren’t surrounded by suspiciously sleeping figures in a leaky, dark basement. He doesn’t interrupt them, because Yusuf knows Chief’s grown fond of Ariadne over the past year.
His old minder doesn’t show it much, but the man has gone through a lot in life. Originally from Rwanda, Chief was the leader of a small village on the outskirts of Butare. One day, Hutu militia scoured what little they had – burning everything in their wake. Chief doesn’t often discuss that day nearly sixteen years ago, but Yusuf knows he’s lost most of his family with the only hope that one of his sons was out there, still alive. Yusuf discovers him eight years later, asking around for small jobs and that sort of thing isn’t hard to come by in Mombasa, but the chemist didn’t feel at all right about such an obvious world-weary old soul begging.
So he befriends him, but never learns his name. Yusuf only refers to him as Chief after the old man briefly tells him what brought him to Kenya. Before long, he finds the old man helping him set up his illegal dreaming den. It worked for them, and has worked for them for the past seven years.
“Yusuf?” He looks up at the call of his name. Ariadne’s there, having come up from the basement. “Daydreaming?”
He shakes answers no while she climbs up on the ledge behind him.
“Chief and I were talking,” she begins a little too cautiously for his liking. “He mentioned you used to do a lot of dreaming.”
It’s the third time she’s asked about his reluctance in actually going under, and he’s been fairly good at avoiding her questions. But he thinks about the weeks ahead – only a few left until she’s done with the experiment and if all goes well, she’ll be walking out of his humble shop and onto bigger, brighter things. Ariadne is sure to have a reputation to uphold as one of the best Architects and that meant traveling the world, making a name for herself – far away from Mombasa.
He’ll miss her terribly. He already does. And with the thought of her leaving, he supposes there’s no real consequence of telling her because she’ll be gone.
They’re friends now, he owes her as much.
Yusuf gets up from his chair and leans against his counter beside her, pulling his weight on an elbow. Ariadne smiles and settles in for the story.
He tells her about his life back in Bangalore – when he was much younger, dreaming of a life of opportunity and wealth. A life in a place far better than what south India could offer.
He was in love once.
“She was a beautiful but a humble girl. I adored her,” he says with a ghost of a smile from memories he thought he had long forgotten. “I was going to marry her.”
Ariadne shifted a bit but stayed silent.
“We were still young, though. I was hardly sixteen and there was no way her parents would have her marry someone like me. Barely out of the womb, no real money, no established relations – just my mind and my dreams.” Yusuf picked at a bit of polish on the wood, “So I promised her that I’d go to school, get an education, get to America, earn the money and her parents wouldn’t have a reason against me.”
“And?”
“And so I went to school – finished pretty well. Now a certified chemist in most countries, but the States isn’t one of them. Getting an immigration is hard, especially when you haven’t any relations over there already.” Yusuf lifted himself up on the ledge and swung his legs. “I ended up in Mombasa ten years ago. Went back home to try at her parents again – found out she married a doctor. Last I heard, she was living somewhere in Norway for a time.”
He looked over at the architect and smiled, “I’m sure she’s happy. She deserves it.”
Ariadne’s gaze was sympathetic, but not pitying and he’s glad for that. “I’m sorry.”
“When I first started here, I got into a fair bit of dreamsharing,” he nods. “Did a lot of it just for the cash, had to get the money to marry her – you know? In retrospect, I suppose it was all futile anyways. That’s when I met Chief. He helped me build this shop basically. After finding out about her though – never really enjoyed dreaming much since. Never felt the need to.”
Yusuf takes a deep breath and says, “And that was me telling you about my hurt, girly feelings.” She laughs at this and attempts to give him an awkward side-hug just as he did for her. They sit in comfortable companionship as Ariadne asks more about the girl of Yusuf’s dreams and he obliges with rather embellished tales about whatever romantic escapades they went through fifteen years ago. She teases him – asking if it was anything like that horrific Bride and Prejudice movie with all the dancing Jane Austen-y stuff.
He answers that it might as well have been.
**
Yusuf soon finds himself wandering the streets of his old neighborhood, the raucous laughter of young boys oblivious to the toils around them surround him like a haze of memories. He breathes it all in. Bangalore.
His feet find their way on a familiar route, one he takes nearly every day after their short session in the poor schoolhouse. He passes the old building, but it’s different – somehow. Much more tragic, but a hint more brighter. It’s an odd sight to behold.
But it’s been years and he supposes just because you’re not there doesn’t mean time stops.
The sun is hot against his face, the seeping heat penetrate his curls and there she is: right in the middle of the dirt street.
“Asmita,” he breathes and she smiles bright – as she always has, just like fifteen years ago. Her hair is the same sleek black it’s always been, it’s tightly woven strands only interrupted by beads of jewels. Those are new. Her sari is a dazzling mixture of olive and purple but it is she who makes it beautiful.
“This is a dream,” she whispers, the softness of her Urdu has a faint melody he cannot place.
“Of course it is,” he says like he had always known, the English rolling off his tongue with such coarse habit it shocks even him.
Asmita only smiles, however, as if she understands everything. “My lovely Yusuf, you look well.”
“You look better,” he replies.
“I am happy.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“You deserve it.”
She smiles, and he sees love in her eyes. “You do, too.” His young sweetheart places a tentative hand on his chest and he sees the wedding ring on her finger. “We are no longer foolish children in love, Yusuf. We’ve left this behind – to find a better life.”
“You have,” he mutters.
“As have you,” she takes both of his hands in his – their hands, he remembers them so differently. It is her farewell. “It is just not as you have dreamt it.”
One last comforting smile and he feels himself falling up.
**
“So that was why you wanted me to join you?” He asks quietly from his chair.
Ariadne tilts her head, gaging his reaction no doubt.
“Did you like it?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he pulls the lead out of him, the bitter memories he used to feel after every Dreaming are gone somehow. “A very good imitation, for having never been to Bangalore. You truly are brilliant.”
“That’s not why I asked you to come.”
He looks up at her. Ariadne’s bright eyes remind him too much of Asmita’s. “She wasn’t quite that short,” he laughs. She chuckles along with him, and gets up from her place on the mattress.
“Her projection wasn’t mine,” Ariadne winks.
**
Her last day in Mombasa comes too quickly. She’s been done with the therapeutic Dreaming for a month now but hasn’t had the heart to leave. The den was starting to become a second home, despite the fact that she spends most of her time dreaming of somewhere else.
But she has to get back to Sorbonne seeing as though Miles has called on a few favors to get her back into the graduate program there. She’s got two semesters more before she can fully finish, but the thought is already daunting to her. Yusuf gives her some encouragement, tells her to go become a fully realized architect and then she can come back to the dingy shop to visit him.
Ariadne wants to tell him she doesn’t want to leave. His face is a comfort to her, the ever-steady routine of her life melts with his but she has to realize that that routine wasn’t hers to begin with. Hers was back in Paris, consisting of lecture halls and moldy food and a pencil sharpener that always went missing.
“I’ll call when I get in,” she says when they’re at her gate. Yusuf stands beside her, hands in his pockets and a smile on his face. “Don’t be so happy to get rid of me.”
“I’m not,” he laughs. “Trust me. Especially with you kidnapping my cat.”
Ariadne rolls her eyes, “You can’t take back what you’ve offered.”
“The thing would probably follow you regardless.”
“She loves me more than you.”
The cat mews assertively in its too small cage as if she knows they’re speaking of her. Ariadne lifts up her most precious carry-on and coos at it like it was still a kitten. “I’m sorry to trap you in there, sweetheart. It’ll only be a few hours then we’ll be home.”
She mews again and Ariadne has to agree that it won’t be quite like home.
The nearby speaker system starts to call for coach to board and Ariadne turns to Yusuf for one final farewell.
And it’s a solid goodbye this time.
“Thank you for everything.” She says, her gaze is strong and he recognizes the architect of so long ago.
She’s back.
“Thank you, for everything,” he mimicks and wraps her up in his arms. Her grip around him is solid and he’s sure that she knows he means. “Please don’t kill my cat.”
“I won’t,” Ariadne cries, exasperated. “I’ve taken care of pets before.”
“You’ve only ever had fish.”
“They were very high-maintenance tropical fish.”
Yusuf laughs and leans back just enough to see her pout at him. There’s a moment that makes him pause, and he traces the curves of her face with his eyes and the soft curls of her hair and feels natural to kiss her right then.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, ever so happy with her friendship, he relinquishes her. But the minute he relaxes, Ariadne grabs onto his shoulder with her free hand and presses her lips to his cheek.
And that was enough for them. For now.
“Give my love to Chief,” she says, rushed as the last call for coach sounds over them. “I’ll call.”
Yusuf watches her leave through the gate without looking back, and he’s happy for her.
**
Ariadne stumbles upon her own doorstep seven hours later with a rather moody cat and too much luggage she barely remembers acquiring. She unlocks her old door and pushes through into her apartment only to stumble a bit clumsily over a pile of mail and packages lounging in her foyer.
She suddenly remembers Arthur casually mentioning his haunts to her place. “Shit,” she mutters and lets the tabby out of its carrier before she hates her forever.
Ariadne throws her duffel onto her kitchen counter and picks up a rather large package with no return address.
When she opens it, there’s a note on top with Yusuf’s familiar precise scribbles.
Hardly necessary between friends.
Inside, she picks up bundles and bundles of hundreds. Ones she had slipped him. Each one with a note attached to it.
I said I wouldn’t take it.
Stop shoving them in there, those chemicals might spill.
Really? You had to stoop so low as to ask Chief to help you.
It is really embarrassing pulling this out of here. You know where.
She’s beside herself really, that she starts tearing up. And the only thing that keeps her from hopping a plane back to Kenya is the cat perched soundly on top of the pile of money she’s just pulled out. Ariadne picks up the cat gingerly and cradles her in hand while the other is dialing the call button.
“You know, with all this money, you could’ve gotten yourself a better shop.” She reponds to his hello. There’s a laugh on the other line and she doesn’t feel so homesick anymore. Ariadne drops herself onto the floor in front of the pile of unopened mail and talks to the voice from the other side of the Mediterranean.
It’s a good night there on out.
fin