DESPERATLEY
"Jafar?"
In the past few months her voice had developed a reedy hollowness he disliked. It wasn't the timbre of her voice that irked him so much as the hope in it. That hope, which she continued to bear despite everything, both frustrated him and made his skin crawl.
He glanced at Iago on his perch, who glanced back, nonplussed, shrugging. Jafar was unsure what he hoped to gain from the bird at times like this. Since when did a sorcerer-sultan need … need what? Reassurance?
He placed his hat down on the desk, rubbing his hand over his smooth head. He pasted on a kind smile and turned to her. "Yes, my queen?"
Jasmine smiled the same smile, that of utter delight, with which she'd regarded him since he became the Sultan.
"Ah!" she said, then blinked in confusion. She placed her hand on the wall. "Where…where are you?"
He walked to her, then took her hand and pressed it to his lips. "Here. Right next to you."
"Oh, Jafar," she said, looking up at him with cloudy, nearly blind eyes. "My love." She stepped forward into him, wrapping her arms around him, pressing her face to his chest. "I had the most terrible day," she said, and sighed.
Jafar placed his hand atop her head, stroking her hair. "Did you?"
"Mmm," she said. "But it's better now. Now that I'm with you."
"Good," he said. "Good."
He desperately wanted to untangle himself from her, but he knew she would beg him to hold her should he release her too soon, before she drew out whatever comfort she wanted. He'd never gotten used to Jasmine coming to him for comfort. That was not what he'd anticipated when he made his final wish. Amusement? Pleasure? Sex? That much he'd accounted for, looked forward to. But a seventeen year old woman-child who longer for his attention and time? Who wanted nothing more than to curl up in his lap, to talk to him? A man who'd long lost the art of personal conversation, utterly lost for words when this lovestruck girl looked up at him and asked, hanging on his every vowel, what his childhood was like?
What in the world was he supposed to do with that?
Jafar glanced at Iago, but the parrot had turned away, facing the open window.
Look at me, you little shit, he thought at him.
Jafar shut his eyes, shook his head, and lead Jasmine to the bed. "Tell me of your day," he said, resigned to hearing about it.
There was a grunt, then a fluttering sound. Iago launched from his perch, sailing out the window.
"Damn it, Iago," Jafar muttered,
"Hm?" Jasmine asked. She felt gingerly along the bed until she found his lap, then lay down with her head on his thigh and sighed. "What about Iago?"
"Nothing, nothing," Jafar said. "Go on."
And she began, looking up at him with her pale, moony cataracts. The queen of Agrahbah, going blind at seventeen. She felt for his hand, and when she found it made hers into a little fist which she pressed into his palm, closing his long fingers around it. She smiled. "You have such big hands," she said, then kissed his fingers one by one.
Jafar closed his eyes.
"Desperately in love with you," he remembered Iago scold when Jafar first realized the true breadth of that wish, what it actually meant. "You said 'desperately in love with you.' What the hell did you expect, your highness?"
"Not this", Jafar replied.
O
It was fun in the beginning, Jasmine living entirely for him, being the very sun in her sky. The wish was so powerful that she allowed him to do virtually anything to her, and he did. She would crawl naked across the floor and bark like a dog if he asked her to, little humiliations he found incredibly amusing at first. Ah, you thought you would banish me, and now I have you tied to the bedpost moaning my name, you little bitch, he would think, twisting his hand into her hair as he drove into her. His mistake was that he hadn't thought beyond this point, beyond taking his pleasure-filled vengeance. His lust for Jasmine, the fullness of which was only brought about recently, was such that it eliminated such things as planning and forethought.
It wasn't until Iago initially floated the idea of Jafar becoming Jasmine's husband that his desire for her truly kicked in. He knew he was attracted to the girl - who wouldn't be, with a body like hers - but he'd largely put it aside due to her objectionable personality. Ah, that snide, spoiled little face, her entitled whining and tiresome self-pity. But Allah, she was beautiful, even moreso than her mother was.
It was Jasmine's mother whom Jafar had truly craved, the kind of craving that could wake him from a dead sleep, heart pounding, his dreams of her skin too much to bear. She'd given him reason to believe she craved him as well, though with the fat, short, bumbling Sultan in her bed she probably longed for anyone with a proper staff and talent enough to wield it. But no, something was there, a woman doesn't look that long into a man's eyes for no reason. Whenever there was a crowded room, a royal banquet, with enough distraction and revelry where it would go unnoticed, he would catch her staring at him over the rim of her wine glass. When he met her eyes she did not look away, but gave a long, slow, catlike blink as she finished her wine. He did not shy from this contact, but returned it more intensely, letting her know the nature of the fire with which she played.
Her mouth ticked up at the corner. The very hint of a smile, the smile of a challenge accepted.
To this day the memory of that smile made him burn to his core.
He'd been readying himself to make good on that potential - he'd arrange to meet her, alone, and make good on what that smile promised - when she died in the sea, the royal barge caught in a storm and dashed upon the rocks. He'd mourned her, mourned the loss of that potential night with her, that he'd never know what it was to drive his hands along her thighs, to rake his teeth across her shoulders and neck. When Jasmine flowered into a woman the resemblance was uncanny, but when he looked into her eyes he saw no such promise, just the petulant brown orbs of a spoiled, hateful little brat.
"What if you're the chump husband?" Iago idea, ridiculous at first, took on a sudden appeal when he realized that as her husband he'd have a right to Jasmine's body. The rest of Iago's plan muted itself in response to that sudden upsurge of desire. That impudent little imp, so determined to banish him, so pouty and beautiful and shrill and shrewish, not only destined for his bed but the very tool of his Sultanship? It was almost too beautiful a plan, too elegant. Boorish and loud as he was Iago was sharp of mind, a sharpness that, every once in a while, paid off quite handsomely. All it would take is a little creative re-interpretation of the nuptial laws, and he would be ruler.
Of course, he hadn't had to actually use those creative laws once he had the lamp. He made himself Sultan, then a sorcerer, then in a final moment of recklessness, made Jasmine irreversibly his forever.
"That was a stupid waste of a wish!" Iago yelled at him as they bickered one night, as they did more and more these days. Having accomplished their ultimate goal their friendship, if it could be called that, often fell victim to senseless bickering, sometimes over details, sometimes over the paths of their entire lives.
"Perhaps I should have wished for a quieter bird!" Jafar yelled back, but he knew Iago was right. It was a waste. He was already Sultan, it wasn't as though he needed Jasmine's hand to legitimize his rule. Thinking back, he could not recall why, exactly, he'd offered her the Queenship to take willingly in the first place, other than he liked the way she looked in that red outfit. She refused him, threw the wine in his face, and in an instant of rage and arousal, he'd used his third wish. In that moment he had to dominate her. Spite, lust, thirst for the final and complete subjugation of Agrahbah in subjugating the tempestuous, spoiled, devastatingly sensual princess who hated him.
She hadn't always.
Well. She'd never exactly liked him, but there was a brief period when she was still a child that she developed an interest in chess, and the Sultan asked Jafar to teach her what he knew of the game. She was not warm to Jafar, and never had been and never would be, but she was at the very least not outright objectionable and learned the game quickly.
"Why are you here?" the little girl asked one night as he contemplated the board. He often contemplated his move for far longer than he really needed to, to give her a chance to strategize. She would never quite master this.
"Sorry?"
"Why are you here, working for my father?"
"I - " he began to respond, thrown. "Well, why is anyone here? Why are you here?"
"I was born here," she said flatly. "You weren't born here. You could be somewhere else if you wanted."
"That's.. true," he was forced to admit.
"So why are you here?"
He lifted his chin, looking down at her. "Why do you want to know?"
"You're never happy."
Jafar paused, alarmed by this sudden intrusion. "It is … kind… of the princess to show such interest in the grand vizier's happiness, but the matter is beneath her concern," he said, then picked up his knight and moved it across the board, taking one of her pawns. "Your move, lady highness."
They played one or two games every week until she lost interest and moved on to other hobbies, but her question haunted him. Was the princess watching him? Did she have some sort of suspicion of him? Was a child her age, and of her slightly lackluster intelligence, capable of such a suspicion? It wasn't until a few weeks later, when the Sultan presented Jasmine with the cub Raja, that he felt he had something of an answer: the girl's nurturing instinct, now properly channeled into the care of a tiger cub, had merely pointed itself in his direction for a moment. He was satisfied with this theory, and Jasmine never again concerned herself with his emotional state until the genie's spell was upon her.
Recently, they'd began to play chess again.
He'd gone too far one night. The pleasure he gained from humiliating Jasmine in the bedroom began to wane, so he kept upping the ante, trying to recapture the initial arousal, trying to find a border at which she would resist him. And he had, though it was not her will which resisted him but her body itself. He had a leash around her body and neck, knotted in such a fashion that her wrists and ankles were tied together behind her back, bending her body into a C. The knots connected so if she relaxed too much, the leash would tighten around her neck. It was this rope that Jafar grabbed as he took her, so she never knew when the choke was coming no matter how tense she kept her body. He'd engaged in this sort of thing before, during which she briefly lost consciousness, but she'd always recovered once he loosened the tie. But this was different. As he chased that elusive pleasure into the distance he went overboard, pulling and pulling at the leash until her body went limp, and did not tense back up so as to loosen the tie around her neck, even when he released it.
"Jasmine?" he asked. He turned her on her side. Her eyes were open but saw nothing. He asked her name again, leaned down and put his ear to her mouth, but heard no breath.
He blinked, at a sudden loss. "Shit," he said, quickly undoing the ties that held her bound, her limp body collapsing to the bed like a doll. He pushed her on her back and blew breath into her mouth, to no avail, her lips turning blue. "Shit, shit, shit," he said, heart pounding. He flailed for the cobra staff leaning on the wall next to the bed. He had very little idea of what he meant to do, only that he pointed it at Jasmine and commanded "Breathe."
A zap of electricity emerged from the cobra. Jasmine's body jerked once, twice, and finally her eyes opened and she gasped for air, hacking. She turned on her side, reaching for him. He took her by the shoulders and gently sat her up. The leash, now loose around her, left a dark and gnarled bruise around her neck. She leaned against him as she caught her breath.
"What happened?" she asked, coughing.
"I pulled too hard on the leash. You passed out."
She looked up at him in alarm. "Are you all right?"
He blinked. "Am I all right?"
She nodded. "You're upset," she said, coughing, her voice still rough. "Don't be upset, my love. I'm fine."
He found himself suddenly repelled by her touch.
Be angry at me, Jafar thought, surprised at himself. I nearly killed you. Be angry at me.
She smiled.
He took her by the chin, forced her to look into his eyes. Surely she was in there somewhere. Deep down that sultry, spoiled, hateful little princess had to exist, hating him for what he had done to her, to her beau, to her father. But she just smiled up at him, placing her hand gently on his face.
"Really. I'm fine," she said, then stretched her bruised neck to kiss the corner of his mouth. .
His heart gently detangled himself from her, then reached behind her for his robe, which hung halfway off the bed. He brought it up around her shoulders and wrapped it around her, then paused, thinking.
"Jafar?" she asked.
"Stay there," he ordered, then rose from the bed. He returned a moment later in a nightshirt, with the chess set he'd used for her lessons all those years ago. He placed it before her, then handed her a cup of water from the nightstand.
"Drink that, then set up the board, " he commanded.
She did as he asked without a word, rubbing her bruised neck.
Within him, a potent and deep-seated fear began to grow.