Fandom: Inception
Disclaimer: Not mine, all Warner Brothers's and Syncopy's. No money is being made from this.
Characters: Yusuf
Rating: PG
Prompt: Inception, Yusuf, after Inception, Yusuf detests rain.
Notes: Set after the film, so spoilers for the plot and world.
After everything that happened, Yusuf can't stand the rain. So of course, it's rainy season when he returns to Mombasa. He could just wait it out, the rainy season is only really two months, and he's missed the start of it. But the job has given him enough money to do anything he wants, so he runs away to Namibia.
Then there's a rain-shower in Windhoek, so he runs further, into the Namib Desert itself. If it rains while he's here, he'll just accept that he's cursed.
He waits for everything to feel better, hopes that his subconscious will dry out in the heat.
It doesn't.
Because, and he knows this really, it's not the rain he's running from but what they did. He sells dreams for a living, so he really ought not to have such a problem with this, but his dreams are all the dreamers's own, all he provides is a way for them to get there, a chemical chauffeur, if you will. The thing with Fisher was something else.
Yusuf tries to console himself with how much happier Fisher was now. He'd been interviewed after selling off parts of the Fisher empire to Saito, and did seem to be legitimately glowing with a cheerful relief. But can true happiness be built on a lie, even if the person believes that lie to be the truth?
Yusuf isn't sure. The one thing he is certain of is that what they did wasn't right. Changing someone's mind, a large part of their identity, without their consent, couldn't be.
On the worst nights, the long dark hours before the morning, cold and alone in the desert, he tries to comfort himself that everyone is happier now. Saito has his deal, Fisher, deceived though he was, was happy in his choice, Cobb got to see his children again and Miles got his son-in-law back. Miles never asked how they did it, knew it was undoubtedly something illegal, but was grateful and sent them all a video of Phillipa and James with their father, and it's the look on Phillipa's face that Yusuf clings to. There's innocent delight on her face, and that, that is something worthwhile.
It gets better. The harshness of desert life brings a clarity. It wasn't as though feeling guilty about it would change what had happened, nor would giving away the money, or anything else in that vein.
What was done, was done, and feeling bad about it wouldn't fix it, and maybe he should think about things before he did them in future. All of that was trite but true and none of it worked as strongly as the photo of Phillipa.
When the sky above his ad hoc campsite darkens, and thunder booms and lighting crashes down in the ensuing storm, and he holds his face up to the rain and dances with the other traveller that was passing, he takes that as a sign too. He may actually be missing rain. His time here is done. He should go back. Face whatever consequences there would be, if there were any, face the lack of consequences, and why there weren't any and how wrong what they'd done had been.
Because there would always been rain, no matter what he'd done and what he did in future.