I saw a life, I called it mine

[wldnst]

.i saw a life, i called it mine
while in mombasa, a job turns sours. so ariadne does the only logical thing, and hides out at yusuf's. written for this prompt.
notes: title from the joanna newsom song 'on a good day.'
pg13 . 6444 words


Cobb told me not to take the job. This is the first thing Ariadne thinks when everything goes to pieces. She knows before it happens; something is off, the air in the dream feels too thick, the people around her are behaving strangely. Jaffrey, the extractor, is talking too loudly.

Ariadne may not have been dreaming long, but her instincts are good.

The team is standing around, talking and preparing to begin, and she shoots herself.

There are people in the room with her, with them, when she wakes up. She lies prone and peers through her lashes at these people, all in suits and carrying guns. She feels for the holster at her hip, but it’s been emptied, which is really shitty, to be frank. Ariadne is good at some things, like dream architecture and drafting and counting by three’s. Like knowing when things are going to go all to pieces, and knowing when to ask certain questions. There are other things she is just okay at, like cooking and not getting in fights with her mother and knowing when to kiss someone. And there are some things she is terrible at, and among those things, she is pretty sure she is bad at orchestrating single-handed escapes from between rocks and hard places, but she hasn’t had a chance to test that theory until right now.

Cobb told her not to take this job. Cobb told her Jaffrey was untrustworthy, but Jaffrey had also said lovely things about her work and had been the first person to offer her a job since the one she did with Arthur and Eames after inception. And it had been seven months since then and everyone else had found work already, and maybe she was new, but everyone knew she was damn good and she wasn’t some narc.

Unlike, apparently, Jaffrey, who would probably wake up and turn her in if it wouldn’t blow the whole thing with the rest of the team. She wasn’t the biggest fish he had to fry, after all.

But this was not the time to think about these things. There are men in suits milling around the room, and eventually someone will figure out Ariadne is not actually asleep, and Ariadne needs to get out before they do. So she needs to think about that.

She ran cross-country, once. Running cross-country was something she was just okay at, which is why she quit, but it seems like the only option right now.

She yanks the needle from her arm, and it stings, and then she is on her feet running. The man nearest to her shouts, but Ariadne had suspected they wouldn’t leave the big guns with the least experienced dreamer on the team, and once again her instincts serve. She throws a punch at the man at the door, going for the groin. If it’s not a strong punch, it’s stronger than he expects and also in his groin, and it suffices. There is an echoing gunshot once she’s out of the motel room, but she doesn’t feel anything, and her feet keep moving beneath her.

Somehow part of her is sensible enough to know she needs to get to her own room, and get her bag. She fumbles for her key in her pocket, and presses herself against the door when she reaches it. Once she’s inside, she locks and deadbolts the door, then throws things into her duffel haphazardly, and gets her cut in cash out from under the mattress. They’re banging on the door now, and there’s more shouting, and she wraps one of the shitty motel blankets around her hand and breaks the window.

She nicks herself on the broken glass, but it’s a small cut, and she’s outside, now. The motel where they were working is on a side street, and people are looking at her, and she keeps sprinting. Maybe there are footsteps behind her. She’s not entirely sure, but now is not the time to check. She ducks into another alley, and another, and thankfully they all go through, and she has no idea where she is when she comes out onto a main street.

This is not the time to stop. Ariadne knows, on some visceral level, that this is not the time to stop. She weaves through the crowd, and only when she gets to another alley does she allow herself to breath. The adrenaline got her this far. It is okay.

She calls Cobb. It’s probably a bad time; he’s probably asleep, and she’ll wake the children. But Ariadne has a habit of calling Cobb at bad times, and given all she’s done for him, he owes her. Besides, people have to expect this shit when they pull innocent architecture students into lives of crime.

Phillipa picks up.

“Dad’s asleep,” she says.

“It’s Ariadne, Phil. Why aren’t you asleep?” Ariadne asks.

“Because you called me on the phone,” Phillipa says, in a tone that suggests Ariadne is very foolish.

“Well, can you go get your dad for me?”

“Dad will holler.”

“I’ll tell him it’s his fault.”

“Dad says you’re in Mombasa in Kenya in Africa. Will you bring me a scarf if I wake him up?” Somewhere along the line, probably when Ariadne spent two months helping Dom Cobb readjust to having children, Phillipa had become obsessed with Ariadne’s scarves, and stolen two of them, and now Ariadne sent her scarves from everywhere. “Bring it, not send it.”

“Okay, Phil,” Ariadne says. “Just please go get your dad for me.”

“Promise,” says Phillipa.

“I promise,” Ariadne says. “That as soon as I can I’ll come visit you again, and I’ll bring you a scarf from Mombasa in Kenya in Africa. But only if you wake up your dad and put him on the phone right now.”

There are some noises on the end of the line, grumbles and whispers (“It’s Ariadne”) and groans.

“What is it?” comes Cobb voice, thick with sleep still.

“You were right about Jaffrey,” Ariadne tells him, and Cobb groans.

“Fuck. What happened, Ariadne?”

“He set us up. Had feds or something in the room.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Ariadne looks down at herself. “Yeah. But I don’t know what to do next.”

“Fuck,” Cobb says again. “You’re in Mombasa?”

“Your daughter knew as much.”

“Eames is on a job--find Yusuf. You might need to push him a little, but he’ll help.”

“Where is Yusuf?”

“Ask around. He’ll turn up.”

“That’s helpful,” Ariadne says, but Cobb has already hung up the phone.

Mombasa is the second largest city in Kenya. Ariadne speaks English and French and nothing else. And yeah, they speak English here, but Mombasa is still the second largest city in Kenya, and Ariadne doesn’t even know where she is in it, and it’s possible people are following her, and she’s supposed to find Yusuf.

Cobb is the most unhelpful mentor ever.

Ariadne peers out of the alley, and doesn’t see any suits, and then she’s into the whirl of bright colors again. Only this time she stops, she catches people by their elbows and says, “I’m looking for a chemist, his name is Yusuf,” and they look back at her, and they must see the desperation in her eyes, but they shake their heads no.

Then there’s this man, a skinny balding man with a goatee and large feet.

“Yusuf?” says the man. “I might know him.”

And if the man asked her to follow him Ariadne wouldn’t have any of that, but instead he tells her to go left here and there, and then take a right, and to look for the shop front with glass bottles in the windows.

His directions are bad, but she finds someone else who also knows Yusuf the chemist, and then a few other people, and they keep telling her to look for a shop with glass bottles in the windows.

Somehow, she finds it, and the door is open, and she goes inside. There’s a bell, and light flickering through the liquids bottled on shelves.

“Just a moment,” someone calls from the back, and then Yusuf appears, wiping his hands on a green-and-white striped apron.

“Ariadne,” he says. She knows she must look a fright, with her duffel slung over her shoulder and her eyes frantic, but there’s nothing else to be done.

“I might need your help,” she says.

Yusuf deadbolts the door and takes her upstairs for a cup of tea.

“I was on a job with Jaffrey,” she begins, and Yusuf groans.

“Fucking Jaffrey.”

“Yeah, I know that now,” Ariadne replies ruefully. “It was a set-up. Men in suits, feds I assume, showed up while we were under. I got out, but...”

“You need to disappear for a little?” Yusuf asks.

“I don’t even know what I need. Cobb said you might be able to help.”

“I might,” Yusuf says. “The inception job’s not really on record. If no one knows we’ve worked together, so they shouldn’t think to check here, but that doesn’t mean they won’t.”

“Half my share for the Jaffrey job was paid in advance. Cash. I can pay you.”

Yusuf looks at her.

“Deal,” he says. They shake on it.

Yusuf stands up. “You stay here. I need to get back to the shop, and then I’ll figure things out.”

“Okay,” Ariadne says. “What’s the cat’s name?”

Yusuf pauses, and looks at her again. His expression, as before, is opaque. “Beryllium’s the grey. Boron’s black, but he hates strangers.”

“Help yourself to food,” Yusuf adds as an afterthought.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Ariadne says when he’s gone, and goes to the kitchen to scavenge.

When Yusuf comes back Ariadne’s tending a large pot on the stove. She’d found chickpeas and a bag full of curry powder in Yusuf’s cupboards, and she might be a mediocre cook but she was perfectly capable of putting a crapton of things in a pot and cooking them into mush. Which may not be a curry proper, but proper has never been her primary interest. So she adds tomatoes and onions, ginger and garlic, and is cooking it all until it’s soft.

“That smells good,” Yusuf says. “Surprisingly.”

“Good thing,” Ariadne says. “Because I am terrible at gauging portions.”

Yusuf sits down at the table, and sighs.

“Okay, so I talked to Arthur, and he reckons you’re best off with me for a little bit.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“He thinks the group that Jaffrey was working with was after Kara, because she has some stuff in her past--You’re a relative unknown, which means they probably won’t pursue you unless it’s some sort of honor thing, or they want to make out like Jaffrey was innocent and are worried you’ll spoil it. On the other hand, they may try to frame you as the narc, since you got out.”

“And I can’t leave Mombasa why?”

“That’s the first place they’ll look--airports, roads out. You’re safer here. Not to mention, if they do decide to frame you, it’ll be best if you’re with someone who knows the business.”

“So you,” Ariadne says, looking at Yusuf, who nods.

“Me.”

“Okay,” she says, and spoons the chickpeas into two bowls, squeezing lemon juice over.

They eat in relative silence, and after dinner Yusuf shows her to a tiny room in the back, with red walls and big windows. There’s a small bed and a litter box, and it reeks of cat, which makes it apparent that Yusuf has less concern for his guests than his cats. But when Ariadne was in high school she’d gotten a kitten on the one condition that she keep the litter box in her room, so it also smells a little like home.

“Sorry about the smell,” he says. “It’s usually the cat room.”

“I can tell,” Ariadne says.

They find Boron under the bed, and Yusuf shrugs.

“He might want to get out, in the middle of the night. You should probably leave the door ajar.”

Ariadne does that, and falls onto the bed fully clothed. She hadn’t realized how tired she was, until she saw the bedspread and the pillow, and then thinking about anything other than sleep became impossible. She’s asleep before her head hits the pillow.

She wakes up in the middle of the night and there’s a black cat on her stomach, watching her with bright eyes.

“Hello, Boron,” she says, and goes back to sleep.

When Ariadne wakes up in the morning, her nose is buried in Boron’s back, and it really doesn’t bother her at all. She puts on jeans and a t-shirt and wanders into the kitchen, where Yusuf is eating a chapati and reading the newspaper. He looks up when she comes in.

“Have you seen Boron?”

“Yeah, he slept with me.”

“Huh,” he says. “Chapati?”

Ariadne takes one and douses it with sugar, then rolls it up to eat.

“So,” she says slowly. “How’s work?”

“I haven’t even started working yet,” he says, but his eyes crinkle a little at the corners.

“Well, then, what’s work?”

He chuckles, at that. “Chemicals, of course.”

“Do you make more than just somnacin?”

“Yeah, I’m above ground. I do some work for the local university, and some traditional medicines. Whatever people want, really. I freelance.”

“Oh,” says Ariadne, because she doesn’t remember enough about chemistry to ask any more intelligent questions.

“I got a C in chemistry in high school,” she adds.

“So did I,” Yusuf says. “But maybe not for the same reason.”

He goes downstairs, then, and Ariadne thinks Yusuf might be alright after all. She does the dishes, though there aren’t many, and paces the apartment until Boron comes out of their room and looks at her anxiously, which makes her think she should probably sit down.

Yusuf has a bunch of books piled up on several shelves with no semblance of order, and several more sprawled across the coffee table. Most of them appear to be chemistry journals, replete with small text and incomprehensible figures, but near the bottom Ariadne turns up the trade paperbacks of The Sandman after some digging, so there’s something else about Yusuf to like. Beryllium comes over and curls into Ariadne’s side, purring, and it’s nice to just read for a little.

“Sandman,” Yusuf says approvingly when he comes up for lunch. “Appropriate, isn’t it?”

“Appropriate,” Ariadne agrees. “But it’s a bit sad that this is the only publication you own that’s unrelated to chemistry.”

“Now that’s where you’re wrong--I’m sure it’s related to chemistry,” Yusuf calls from the kitchen, where Ariadne can see that he’s taking things from the fridge and transferring them to bowls.

“Seriously, do you have no other books?” Ariadne asks.

“Yeah, they’re in my bedroom. Feel free to peruse if you need more reading material.”

“And they aren’t chemistry tomes?”

“Not a one. And there’s cookbooks in the kitchen. You just aren’t a very good searcher. Now come here, lunch is served.”

Lunch turns out to be--Ariadne isn’t sure what, but it’s tasty.

“Thanks for doing the dishes,” Yusuf says through a mouthful.

“Just fulfilling my wifely duties,” Ariadne replies without thinking, because that’s what it felt like.

“You’re a crap wife, then. I made lunch and breakfast,” Yusuf says after a pause.

“I know full well you bought breakfast on the street.”

“Clever girl,” Yusuf says with a grin, and Ariadne can’t be bothered to make a stink about her age and womanliness.

“So,” she says instead. “How’d you get a C in chemistry?” Yusuf’s grin broadens.

“I dropped a potassium sample down the drain.” Ariadne chokes slightly on her juice.

“Potassium reacts with water, right?”

“Of course,” he says. “Huge explosion. Fucked up the plumbing bad, too. It really shouldn’t have impacted my grade, but you know how these things go.”

“I wish I’d done that. I just didn’t study for some tests. Math was always more important, anyway. But some kids stole potassium or something from our lab, and ran around chucking it in snowbanks.”

“The joys of youth,” Yusuf says, and Ariadne goes back for seconds of whatever it is she’s eating.

They watch a DVD that night; “Live Free or Die Hard”, because Yusuf likes the bit where the helicopter collides with the cop car. And, okay, Ariadne likes it, too. Loves it, actually. She went to the theatres exclusively for that, even though it was already in all the trailers, but it doesn’t lose much on the second viewing or the third. It’s a car hitting a helicopter. It is glorious.

Boron sits on Ariadne’s lap, and Yusuf mutters something.

“I didn’t quite catch that,” Ariadne says. “I don’t think Boron heard, either.”

“He’s disloyal. I bring him in off the streets, and he abandons me for the first warm lap he finds.”

“Beryllium still likes you.”

“Beryllium has taste,” Yusuf says. “Now shush, I need complete silence to follow this complex plot.”

Ariadne snorts, and pets Boron, and watches the movie.

“This doesn’t really feel like being in hiding,” she says idly when the credits begin to roll.

“No one’s come in asking for you, by the way,” Yusuf replies. “But that doesn’t mean they won’t.”

“How long, do you think, before I can leave Mombasa?”

“Two weeks, maybe? Let’s see how things go. But you can leave the apartment during the day, if you like.”

“Sure,” Ariadne says, and then they both go to bed. Ariadne wakes up in the morning because Boron is sitting on her head.

Yusuf’s bought fruit, this morning, for breakfast, and he looks at her and laughs through a mouthful of banana.

“Didn’t you mother teach you to keep your mouth closed while eating?” she asks. “Disgusting.”

“Didn’t your mother teach you to comb your hair?”

“Your cat sat on my head. Didn’t you teach him not to sit on people’s heads?”

“I’ll tell you one thing, I didn’t teach him to abandon his owner for complete strangers.”

“Maybe he has a learning disability,” Ariadne says, going to the fridge for something, anything, to get the morning taste out of her mouth. “You should be nice to him. You did name him Boron.”

“Boron is a perfectly legitimate name,” Yusuf says. “I bet you named your cat Doric, after columns or some shit.”

“God, you’re terrible at names,” Ariadne says as she sits down at the table.

“Says Ariadne. What sort of parents saddle their child with a name like that?”

“I happen to like my name. And if I didn’t, you shouldn’t use my parents’ bad taste against me.”

“Chip off the old block, I’m sure you are.”

Ariadne had actually named her cat Asterion, after the minotaur, but it didn’t seem worth discussing.

After Yusuf goes downstairs, Ariadne calls Cobb because she thinks it might a reasonable hour where he is.

It turns out it’s not, though it’s not quite as late as when she called last time, which shows how good Ariadne is at time zones.

“What is it, Ariadne?” Cobb mumbles into the phone.

“I found Yusuf,” she says. “No thanks to you.”

“Well I’m sure I’m very happy for you,” he says.

“I just thought you might be concerned.”

“I would be,” Cobb says. “But I have children.”

“What happened, Cobb?” Ariadne asks with a sigh, and he proceeds to tell her.

She hangs up when Yusuf comes back for lunch, and decides to send her next cell phone bill to Cobb.

“Cobb’s in a feud with Phillipa’s teacher,” she tells Yusuf. “He says she doesn’t realize how advanced Phillipa is.”

“Okay,” says Yusuf.

“See, that’s what I wanted to say. But you can’t just say that to Cobb. He keeps talking.”

After lunch, Ariadne does the dishes, and tidies Yusuf’s chemistry journals, and sweeps until Boron gets nervous, and then she and Boron and Beryllium make a pile on the couch while she reads The Sandman and the cats nibble at the corners of the pages.

“If you lure Beryllium away from me,” Yusuf says when he comes back up, “I will cut you.”

“I think Boron doesn’t like you because you’re so concerned about Beryllium,” Ariadne suggests, covering Boron’s ears. “He’s very sensitive.”

Yusuf shakes his head.

Over tea after dinner that night, Ariadne asks Yusuf about dreamsharing.

“You could be legal, couldn’t you,” she says. “Why do you do it?”

“I could ask you the same,” he says, and she nods.

“Because so much more is possible.”

“And the chemistry I’m doing,” Yusuf adds. “No one else is.”

“What’s the appeal of that, though? Why do we need to do what no one else is?” Ariadne asks.

“Because it feels useful,” Yusuf says. “Because it’s nice to be needed.”

“Yeah,” Ariadne agrees, although that hasn’t been her experience thus far; but she’s not quite sure how many in the dreamsharing world know who she is, what she could do if given the opportunity. She’s good, she knows so not as a point of pride but as a truth, but that doesn’t mean everyone else does.

“Besides,” Yusuf says. “I told you, I make whatever people want.”

“If they can pay,” Ariadne adds.

“Yes, well. It’s a dangerous job.”

Ariadne looks at her cup of tea. She’s getting down to the dregs, and this is only her second full day at Yusuf’s, and things already feel different than they had. Which is maybe a given, but being here in the first place is not what she had expected to come out of taking a job in Mombasa, and she’s always been slow to realign her expectations.

“I can read tea leaves,” Yusuf says.

Ariadne slides her cup across the table to him, and he swirls it and peers inside.

“Don’t worry,” he says after a minute. “You’ll be just fine.”

“What, you aren’t going to tell me what they say? I’m beginning to doubt your skills, Psychic Yusuf.”

Yusuf shrugs and smiles, then slides the cup back to her.

Ariadne spends most of her days reading and cleaning and sometimes drafting dream levels and buildings. If Yusuf finds the cleaning invasive, he doesn’t complain, just occasionally looks at her flatly and asks where she put the most recent Journal of Organic Chemistry. Ariadne usually just shrugs, but Yusuf always finds it. Eames gets back to Mombasa the next week. Most know that he and Ariadne have worked together, because of the job they did after inception, but he is also friends with Yusuf, and so has every reason to visit without arousing suspicion.

Eames bursts into the apartment one morning, and sits down with them at the kitchen table. Yusuf is reading the newspaper and Ariadne is doodling on a scrap paper, and Boron disappears to go hide under the bed, and Beryllium jumps up on Eames’ lap and begins to purr.

“I thought the door was locked,” Ariadne says to Yusuf.

“It was,” Yusuf says, and looks at Eames. “And if the lock is broken, I’m not paying for it. Or fixing it.”

“Well, isn’t this domestic,” Eames says, reaching across the table to steal a chapati. “How lovely. I heard you were in a bit of a pinch Ari darling.”

“Really,” Ariadne says. “Is there any reason for me to be in hiding, then, if everyone knows?”

“No need to worry, I heard it from Arthur,” Eames says.

“And why does Arthur know?”

“Arthur knows everything,” Eames says, at the same times as Yusuf says, “Cobb told him.”

“I don’t know why I even talk to Cobb.”

“Yeah, did you hear about this thing with Phillipa’s teacher?” Eames asks.

“Yes,” Ariadne says. “Yes I did.”

“Arthur is an incorrigible gossip,” Eames says. “It’s adorable.”

Ariadne and Yusuf both look at him.

“Is there something you’d like to tell us?” Yusuf asks.

“No,” Eames says, but he looks ridiculously smug.

“Eames got laid,” Yusuf tells Ariadne. “He got laid, and he’s here to be smug about it, not out of any concern for your welfare or my sanity. We should kick him out.”

“I can land a mean punch to the groin,” Ariadne offers.

“I have Arthur’s number in my cell,” Yusuf says.

“Oh, oh, that’s better,” Ariadne says. “Call him, and we’ll sing a congratulatory song.”

“I don’t know who thought leaving you two together was a good idea,” Eames says, now munching on a banana he’s stolen from somewhere.

“Arthur,” Yusuf and Ariadne say together, grinning.

“Well,” Eames says. “This has been lovely, but I really must be going.”

“He really only came here to be smug and steal our breakfast, didn’t he?” Ariadne says to Yusuf.

“I’ll be back for dinner,” Eames calls over his shoulder.

“So, Arthur and Eames, huh?” Ariadne says that night when she and Yusuf are making dinner.

“It happens, in dreamsharing,” Yusuf shrugs. “Like any other job. You get to know the people you work with. Plus, there’s the criminal element, and it’s hard to bring someone else into that, or hide it from them.”

“Did that happen to you? Dating someone not in dreamsharing, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Yusuf says, then goes back to chopping carrots. Ariadne nods.

“Me, too. And I’ve only done two jobs.”

“Three,” Yusuf says. “If you count the botched one.”

She had had a boyfriend, some guy from school, before inception, but not after. That was the short version; the long version was longer. They weren’t in love, the sex was mediocre, it wasn’t a big deal. But watching the relationship crumble to pieces, watching the structure that they had built out of their two lives permutate until it no longer existed--Ariadne was left wondering if, in her desire to build everything she could, there were some structures she would never be able to realize. She’d seen Cobb and Mal.

But Eames looked so happy, sitting at the kitchen table like the cat that ate the canary, and all because of Arthur, that Ariadne had to think there was more to that than sex.

“Don’t worry,” Yusuf says from beside her, and pats her on the back. “They’re big boys, they can take care of themselves.”

“Yeah,” Ariadne replies. “I know.”

Dinner with Eames is, as is to be expected, a raucous affair. Eames brings beer and tells a series of increasingly lewd and unfunny jokes, and Ariadne practically pisses her pants laughing anyway. Yusuf tells several long stories that are nigh incomprehensible until they reach the chemical explosion that is the inevitable conclusion, which causes both Ariadne and Eames to make sounds of glee. Ariadne, for her part, tells them every stupid thing Cobb has ever said, imitating his squint.

“What is up with you and Cobb?” Eames says, obviously nosing out gossip to pass along to Arthur.

“He’s my mentor?” Ariadne says. She usually only thought the word ‘mentor’ with regards to Cobb, but it seemed worthwhile it to voice it now.

“So you aren’t sleeping together?” Eames says, and Yusuf looks at her.

“Ugh, no,” Ariadne says. “That would be like if Buffy slept with Giles.”

Eames and Yusuf both look at her blankly.

“It would be like if Luke slept with Obi-Wan,” she adds.

“So you’re suggesting you’re Luke Skywalker in this analogy?” Eames asks.

“Yes,” Ariadne says. “I am Luke Skywalker.”

“So who’s your daddy?” Eames asks, and Yusuf dissolves into laughter.

“Haven’t figured that bit out yet,” Ariadne says, then frowns. “There’s not a chance you slept with a lady in Canada about twenty-five years ago, is there?”

“How old do you think I am?” Eames asks, aghast, and now Ariadne dissolves into giggles.

That’s pretty much how it goes until Eames leaves.

Ariadne is happy when she goes to sleep that night, surprisingly so.

She wakes up to Yusuf shaking her. If she had thought that was a possibility, she probably would have stopped sleeping in her skivvies, but right now that doesn’t seem as important as what Yusuf is saying, which is this:

“Ariadne, wake up. You need to leave. You need to leave. Ariadne.”

Ariadne wraps a sheet around her chest and looks at him. Yusuf is looking carefully at her face, but something in her eyes scares her.

“Eames heard something,” Yusuf says. “Get dressed. We can get you out of here, but we need to work fast, before they know we know.”

Ariadne nods, and Yusuf leaves the room with the door ajar.

She dresses quickly, and luckily had kept her bag ready for such an event. She hugs Boron before leaving the room, stroking his back.

“You need to take the bus to Nairobi,” Yusuf says, when she comes out. He’s holding an American passport. “Then you’re flying to London, under this passport. Arthur will meet you there. They might look for you, there. But.”

“People don’t fuck with Arthur,” Ariadne nods, then reaches into her bag, “Yusuf. Thank you. Here’s your money.”

Yusuf looks at her, and his eyes are heavy.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Keep it.”

Something in his face tells Ariadne not to press the issue.

They leave out of the back of the shop, and then they’re at the bus stop, and Yusuf hugs her awkwardly and pats her on the back, and then Ariadne is standing on a packed bus.

Several hours later she’s sitting on a packed bus, and the woman next to her has a chicken, and Ariadne’s not entirely sure how she got here. She puts her forehead against the bus window, and she can feel the vibrations from every stone they roll over, and it’s okay.

The bus ride is endless. Ariadne is hardly paying attention when the city rises up, and then they’re there, and the bus fills up again, and suddenly they’re being shunted off the bus. It’s night. She finds a taxi driver who seems reasonably reliable, and goes to the airport.

Everything goes astonishingly smoothly. No one looks at her twice, and the flight to Heathrow is nonstop, and Arthur is there at arrivals to pick her up.

Arthur drives a Bentley, which is typical, really.

“So,” he says once they’re in the car. “Looks like you got yourself in a spot of trouble.”

“I guess so,” she says. “Nice car.”

Arthur looks pleased, and pulls out into traffic.

“You can stay with me for a bit,” he says. “And I’ll run some interference. Jaffrey is an asshole. He really should be out of the business.”

“Is he saying I was the narc?” Ariadne asks.

“Yes,” Arthur says. “But I’ll take care of it.”

Ariadne looks out the window, and thinks how different this grey city is from Mombasa. Part of her wants to tell Arthur she can take care of herself, because she’s tough, but she knows that’s not the truth. Strength can’t carry you the whole way, when you’re new. There are things she simply doesn’t know.

And right now she’s just grateful, grateful that these people will let her sleep in their guest rooms and will treat her like an equal, despite all the gaps in her knowledge.

“Arthur,” she says. “Did you ever pull something like this, when you were new?”

Arthur nods beside her. “Cobb and Mal got me out.”

“Thank you. For passing on the favor.”

“Don’t worry,” Arthur says. “You’re good at this.”

Ariadne can’t help but wonder why she wants to be good at this, but she finds that she does, that Arthur’s words make her feel warm all over. She thinks back to her conversation with Yusuf, about why he does dreamsharing.

There’s another reason, she wants to tell him: because there’s something so wonderful about being good at something, about finding those things you’re good at and doing them.

But Yusuf isn’t here right now.

Arthur’s apartment is unsurprising: devastatingly tidy, all modern black leather, stainless steel, glass. He puts her up in a tiny bed with white sheets and a black comforter, and Ariadne tries not to think about why she doesn’t like it, instead just falls asleep.

Arthur is eating oatmeal for breakfast, when she wakes up. He peers at her over the newspaper.

“I have more oatmeal,” he offers.

Ariadne hates oatmeal, but takes some anyway. It turns out Arthur has neither raisins nor cinnamon, which makes things worse. When she goes to add sugar, Arthur frowns but doesn’t stop her.

“So,” she says. “You and Eames, huh?”

Arthur puts down the paper and arches and eyebrow.

“So, you and Yusuf, huh?”

“I assure you,” she says. “There is nothing going on between Yusuf and I.”

“That’s not what Eames thinks,” Arthur says, looking smug.

“That’s not what Eames thinks,” Ariadne mimics, and Arthur looks slightly less smug.

“My relationship with Mr. Eames is none of your business,” Arthur says, and picks up the newspaper again.

“Whatever,” Ariadne replies, twirling her spoon in her oatmeal. “If you don’t want to tell me about your gay love, fine by me. I was just trying to make conversation.”

They sit in silence for a bit, and Ariadne attempts to eat her oatmeal but mostly just watches it go cold.

“What exactly did Eames say about Yusuf and I, from which you extrapolated a relationship?” she asks.

Arthur puts down the paper again, and there is a laugh curling around his lips.

“Just that you two seemed to be getting along well, and Yusuf was unusually interested in the status of your relationship with Cobb,” Arthur says.

Ariadne looks at the table, which has a glass top, so she can see through to her knees.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought of Yusuf that way, it was just that she hadn’t thought about it much at all. Overthinking wasn’t really her m.o.--she tended to stumble in, and then analyze in retrospect. Which was how she ended up on the Jaffrey job, for one. And the Jaffrey job was how she ended up with Yusuf in the first place.

“Do you have a drafting table?” Ariadne asks Arthur, and Arthur smiles a little.

“Sure,” he says, and shows her to a room with big windows.

“Go ahead,” he says.

Ariadne draws until lunch, not thinking particularly about what she’s doing. But the movement of her hands helps her clear her mind, so thoughts can rise up.

She wasn’t with Yusuf very long. She doesn’t know him very well.

But she likes his cats. She likes the way his apartment looks like a place where someone lives, even after she’s cleaned it. She likes how much he likes chemistry, and how he’ll talk to her about it like she understands, even when they both know she doesn’t. She likes what he eats for breakfast, in stark contrast to what Arthur eats for breakfast.

He didn’t take the money.

And then something else occurs to her.

“Arthur,” Ariadne says. “If they knew I was with Yusuf, will they go to him for information about me?”

“Yusuf can take care of himself,” Arthur says.

“When can I go back to Mombasa?” Ariadne asks.

Arthur looks at her.

“Fine,” he says. “But I’m going with. And you’re taking my Glock.”

“But you’re a better shot than I am,” Ariadne says.

“I have other guns,” Arthur tells her.

They’re on a flight to Mombasa the next day. Ariadne sits next to Arthur, and drools on his shoulder. It sometimes surprises her, what he’ll put up, but she’s pretty sure Arthur is only in this because Eames is also in Mombasa, and he’ll put up with a lot for Eames. Which is surprising in itself.

When they get to Yusuf’s shop, the front window is smashed, and it’s all jagged glass edges. There are broken bottles on the floor. Also, a dead man. And another.

“Well,” says Arthur, looking around. “We may be too late for this party.”

Upstairs, Yusuf and Eames are sitting at the kitchen table, and Jaffrey is tied to a chair.

“Darling,” Eames says, grinning broadly as he gets up. “You made it.”

Yusuf looks at Ariadne, who is holding Arthur’s Glock uncomfortably, and Ariadne thinks the expression on his face might be hope.

But maybe she’s just projecting.

Jaffrey squirms.

“Jaffrey,” Arthur says, and his voice is dangerously low, though the effect is offset by Eames’ arm around his waist.

“No,” Yusuf says. “I’ve got it.”

Yusuf is toying with a small brown bottle, and now he stands up.

“Jaffrey,” he says. “I know you’re a dumbass, so I’ll make this very clear. This,” he holds up the bottle. “Is extremely toxic. I don’t usually make poison, but you’re an asshole and it’s a special occasion.”

Jaffrey coughs.

“I don’t know why you came here and didn’t just leave it to your goons,” Yusuf continues. “But the way I see it, there are two options here. The first one is simple: we can give this to you. With a hot cup of tea to wash it down. You’ll die and no one will give a fuck, except for maybe you.

“The second option is slightly more complicated: you can disappear. I’m sure you don’t have any other marketable skills, but get out of dreamsharing. Shut up about Ariadne. Go to some sad little backwater and live out your sorry days.”

Jaffrey coughs again. There is a wetness forming around his crotch.

“I think that means he would prefer the second option,” Eames contributes.

“Okay,” Yusuf says with a shrug. “But if you change your mind about this, we will find you.”

“Arthur knows everything,” Eames interjects, and nuzzles Arthur’s neck, which ruins the effect slightly, but it seems like Jaffrey’s got the idea.

They cut Jaffrey loose, and he runs.

“Sorry about the shop,” Ariadne says.

“Most of the bottles were just water with food coloring, anyway,” Yusuf shrugs. “All the real stuff is done on commission.”

Arthur and Eames are watching them.

“Thank you,” Ariadne says.

Yusuf is looking at her, and he suddenly seems very close, his eyes large and dark.

“It was my pleasure,” he says.

It occurs to Ariadne that she may need to take the lead on this one, and that maybe for once her life she’ll kiss someone when she’s supposed to.

She steps forward and loops her arms around Yusuf’s neck, and Arthur and Eames are whispering to one another in the background, and then cheering, and Yusuf’s lips are warm on hers and his scruff is rough against her cheeks, and it’s pretty much exactly right.

Ariadne knows that much.

“Arthur and Eames can sleep in the cat room,” Yusuf whispers.

Ariadne laughs, and Yusuf wraps himself around her.