A/N: Sorry for the major lack of updates… Life and writer's block, is not a good combination. :P

This chapter contains references to Tales from Agrabah by Katherine Applegate – spot them, and get a cookie! ;)

Dedicated: To Caroline, because she's great, and to Ducky, my CBS. :)

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Chapter Two: Uptown Girl

It began to snow as Jasmine walked home from her lectures. She wouldn't have minded so much, but she'd had her hair cut two weeks ago, and without the thick sheet of hair, her neck felt oddly vulnerable, not to mention cold. Still, with a light dusting of snow, New York and her little neighbourhood looked almost charming, the white powder covering up all the cracks in the tarmac and the horrible chain link fences that separated the houses. However, as much she liked the snow, Jasmine considered that the best thing about snowy days was going back inside, back into the warmth of her little home... Thinking about the warm electric fire they had in their living room she started to hurry.

"Oh no… Jasmine, wait!"

Jasmine turned around and saw her friend Lisa struggling with her bag.

"The zip split," said Lisa, desperately juggling all her books to keep them from falling in the snow. Jasmine jogged back to where Lisa stood and helped her put the books back in the bag. "Why are law books so heavy?" grumbled Lisa, pulling on the zip irritably.

"Because the law is a complicated subject and needs a lot of pages to describe it," replied Jasmine, taking the bag from Lisa and tugging it shut. "You need to get a new bag."

"I need to get some thinner books," said Lisa, grinning a little at Jasmine. "And it was a rhetorical question."

They carried on walking, Jasmine swinging her perfectly zipped-up bag just over the snow on the pavement. Suddenly, Lisa stopped. Glancing up, Jasmine saw a young man strolling towards them, wrapped up tightly in a long coat, a grey scarf covering his mouth.

Jasmine smiled knowingly as Lisa ducked her head a little and bit her lower lip slightly. As the young man approached, he pulled his scarf away from his face with his index finger, and Lisa looked up again, smiling hopefully.

"Hi," he said softly.

"Hi," said Lisa, her voice a little higher than usual.

He nodded at Jasmine and then continued past them. Lisa turned right around to watch him, blushing hotly when he glanced over his shoulder and gave them a little wave.

"You are hopeless!" laughed Jasmine, as Lisa grinned and linked arms with her.

"He's such a sweetheart," she giggled. "Did I tell you that I saw him in the park yesterday?"

"No - what, are you stalking him?"

"He was sitting on a bench," continued Lisa in a dignified voice, ignoring her friend's laughter. "With a pen and notepad in his hands. He's a poet, isn't that just wonderful? Didn't I say that he was the poetic type?"

Jasmine smiled and nodded. "What did you say his name was again?"

"Christian," breathed Lisa, looking up at the sky. "Isn't that perfect?"

Jasmine couldn't quite work out what was so perfect about the name Christian, but she didn't bother to ask. Lisa continued, her boots scuffing the slush on the sidewalk.

"He's going to The Marketplace tonight – you know, that café on 42nd Street?" Jasmine nodded. "He's going to hold a little poetry reading there – I overheard him talking to his friend-"

"You are stalking him!"

"Oh, shut up," said Lisa, giving Jasmine a playful push.

They were approaching Jasmine's house now: she could make out the cherry tree that had been growing in her garden since they'd moved there. In spring, ripe red cherries fell from the branches, littering the small lawn with little bittersweet fruits. Now, without its leaves or fruit, it looked depressingly bare. Their footsteps slowed as Jasmine approached the gate, Lisa falling a little behind.

"I was thinking," continued Lisa, wringing her gloved hands a little nervously, "that maybe we could… I mean, I could…" 

Jasmine paused, her hand on the gate's latch. "What?"

"I thought maybe we could go down there and… cheer him on."

"Oh, Lis," cried Jasmine, "I don't think I can – I've got so much work to do…"

"Forget work!" said Lisa, waving her arms about. "Take the night off! This'll be so much more fun!"

"It's due in tomorrow," said Jasmine, pulling a little face. "Besides… my dad said something about us having people over for dinner."

"Oh," said Lisa, her shoulders slumping a little. "Well, if you can't go, you can't go…"

Jasmine regarded her friend for a moment. How long had they known each other now? Three, four years? It felt longer. It felt like there had hardly been a time when she hadn't been able to call up Lisa and they'd talk for hours about everything and nothing… She was the only true friend Jasmine had ever had.

"Look," she said finally, "dinner won't go on for that long… I can meet you there a little later – give you a chance to talk to Christian!"

"You will?" said Lisa, grinning brightly. "Oh, you're the best!" She hugged Jasmine impulsively.

"Wow," laughed Jasmine, "you must really like this guy, huh?"

Lisa giggled. "What time are you going to get there?"

"Oh, probably about nine-ish… And don't you arrive at that time – you need to talk to him!"

Lisa giggled again and squeezed Jasmine's hands. "Thank you, Jas! I'll talk to you later, okay? I need to go…" She trailed off, grinning and biting her lip again.

"Go!" laughed Jasmine, pushing Lisa a little. "Get ready!"

Lisa nodded and danced off down the street, singing "Get Happy" to the heavy clouds. Jasmine smiled, shook her head and opened the gate.

"Hello, dad!" she called cheerily as she entered the house, stamping her feet to get rid of the snow.

"Hello, dear!" called a voice from the kitchen, and Hamid poked his head around the door. "How was your day?" he smiled at her. "Helene's here."

"Hello, Jasmine!" boomed another voice from the kitchen. Jasmine grinned to herself: her father and Helene made an odd couple; Hamid looking like an Arabian version of Santa Claus, and Helene, tall and strong, like an Amazonian, but somehow, they were just perfect for each other. It was a pity they didn't realise it yet.

Jasmine dumped her bag in the hallway and then went into the kitchen, sniffing the spicy air hopefully. "Whatever you two are doing in here, it smells wonderful!" she smiled at them both.

"It's Helene's recipe," explained Hamid, wiping his hands on a tea towel. "Grilled chicken with roasted bananas."

"Sounds… interesting," said Jasmine.

"It's an old family recipe," said Helene, "and your father's made some poppy seed cakes and fig pie for desert." Hamid smiled and nodded proudly.

"So you finally got that recipe from Safiya, huh?" laughed Jasmine. "Well, I guess that means you can stop spending a fortune at the bakery…"

"I'm afraid my version shall never match Safiya's," replied Hamid, a little sadly. "She wouldn't tell me the name of the secret spice she uses." He sighed, surveyed the cluttered kitchen top, lightly dusted by flour, and then smiled brightly. "Still, it's a nice smell, isn't it?"

Jasmine nodded. "So, who's coming tonight? Friends from the station?" she asked, hopping up onto a stool by the breakfast bar and nibbling on a sunflower seed from the dish they always kept there (a vain attempt on Jasmine's part to get her father to stop snacking on Safiya's poppy seed cakes). "Are you staying for dinner, Helene?" asked Jasmine hopefully, since dinner with Helene was always interesting. Helene always seemed to have just come from some amazing accident or adventure and was very good at re-enacting them using food and cutlery. She was by far the strongest woman Jasmine knew, body and mind.

"Sadly, no," said Helene, briskly brushing down her clothes. "I've got another training session with Scara. I just came round to help Hamid with dinner."

 "Jafar and Iago are coming at about 8-ish," said Hamid, looking just a little guilty as he spoke.

"Jafar and Iago?" repeated Jasmine, in dismay. "But you said you wouldn't let Iago set foot in this house after what he did!"

Hamid nodded, looking very uncomfortable. Jasmine knew that it was a sore point for him, that his daughter didn't like his closest friends, but Jasmine didn't think there was much she could do about it: Jafar especially was a dreadful man. 

"I know," sighed Hamid. "But I felt it was about time that we settled things… After all, the best of us make mistakes, and besides, it was getting awfully awkward around the station… He's a good officer, Jasmine," he added, looking at Jasmine sternly under his bushy eyebrows.

"Only because he's friends with all the prisoners," muttered Jasmine, but Hamid didn't hear her; he was too busy saying goodbye to Helene.

"Goodbye. Jasmine," said Helene as she put her coat on. She leant closer and muttered underneath her breath, "If either of those men tries anything funny tonight, just remember that move I taught you." Jasmine smiled weakly and nodded. Helene patted her shoulder not too gently, and then sailed out the door, Hamid trotting after her.

Jasmine shouldered her bag and trudged up the stairs, her good mood completely gone. She flung herself on her bed dramatically. "Oh, Rajah," she sighed, looking and the striped fur-ball currently lying on her window seat. "Why did it have to be them?"

In Jasmine's opinion, Iago and Jafar were two of the most insufferable people on the planet, though Jafar was far worse. At least Iago made enough noise to allow one a moment or so to prepare. Jafar was much sneakier.

Sighing, Jasmine decided she would have to make the best of it. Besides, she could always skip dessert (even if it was poppy seed cake and fig pie) and meet Lisa a little earlier… Much cheered by that thought, Jasmine pulled out her books and started on her work.

To Jasmine, law was fascinating. Perhaps it was the fact that her father was a police chief that had first inspired her: some of her earliest memories were playing "Cops and Robbers" with her father. There was so much injustice in the world, something Jasmine felt she'd been aware of since she'd been very young. She'd been a passionate child, caught up in her own day-dreams, and yet almost morbidly fascinated by the news, listening intently as Hamid told her mother about his day and the cases he'd been working on. It had seemed a logical step to go to law school after high school, and even more logical to stay in the city, near her father…

All of Jasmine's life, she had dreamt of travelling the world, seeing new places, meeting new people. But when the time had come to leave, she couldn't. The week before she was supposed to leave for a college halfway across the country, Jasmine had taken her mother to the doctor's; she'd been feeling rundown for a while, and the dark circles under her eyes worried Jasmine. They'd both thought that it was just a cold, or even just stress making her ill… It had been much worse.

Jasmine swallowed back her tears as she remembered her mother's last few months. Her mother's thick black hair had thinned, clinging to the hairbrush as Jasmine brushed it delicately; the tanned skin fading to a sickly yellow, and the bright eyes that became dimmer and dimmer until, finally, they closed forever. Hamid had been in no state to take care of himself, so Jasmine had stayed. She didn't resent it – she loved her father very much – but sometimes…

Sometimes she wondered what it would have been like if nothing had changed… if her mother had lived. She saw herself, going to that college so far away, laughing and joking with new friends, having new experiences… And then flying home for holidays, back to her mother and father's welcoming embraces and telling them all about her new life, and that no matter what happened, she still loved them and would always love them. And they would have told her that they loved her, too, and that his little house would always be her home. Jasmine sighed, and then opened up her law books; it was no good to reflect on what might have been. She had to make the most of her life now and forget about past dreams. They were finished for now.

It was a little after seven when Jasmine heard the cacophony of noise outside; raised voices and a motor thrumming. She sighed, and closed her books. Iago had arrived.

"Whaddya mean, $20? You think I'm made of money?" Pause. "But it cost $17 last time! I tell you, you drivers have got it made!  $20 for ten minutes of work? Geez-louise!" Another, longer pause. Jasmine peered out her window and saw two figures, one as short as her father, and the other twice the height of both of them. The driver of the cab was hanging out the window, but Jasmine couldn't work out what he was saying from this distance.

"Dangerous?!" shrieked the short figure. "Listen, bub, you want dangerous, try tracking down a Brazilian nutcase for six months, huh?"

The tall figure, who had been standing regally apart from his companion, glanced up suddenly and spotted Jasmine. He stared at her for a moment and then smiled slowly. He turned away and touched the other man's arm, murmuring something that made Iago stop mid rant. Both turned up to the window. Jafar smiled, his teeth like a sharp piece of ice; Iago gave a brief wave and then paid the driver reluctantly. Jasmine moved away from the window and made a face at Rajah.

"Well… they're here." Rajah meowed and stuck out his tongue. "You said it," said Jasmine darkly.

She loitered in her room for as long as possible, unwilling to go downstairs as her father invited his colleagues into the house. She frowned as Jafar's low baritone penetrated up through the floorboards. There was something about that voice that made Jasmine's skin crawl… Anything that could be so low and yet pierce through floorboards was just… creepy.

Jasmine knew that Hamid's welcome to Jafar would be much happier than his welcome to Iago. Jafar had been friends with her father for many years; he was the closet thing Jasmine had to a godfather, but strangely, neither he nor Hamid had ever brought up the subject on making it an official role (to which Jasmine was immensely grateful). There was something about Jafar that made Jasmine's skin crawl. He was too calm, too… too collected. She had never seen him look ruffled, even when he had been working on the same cases as Hamid. Frustrating days that left Hamid weary and angry barely seemed to ripple in Jafar's cool exterior. When he smiled, it was as if his face had cracked in half: his jaw and lips twisted into an oily expression but his eyes retained their calculated look.

Iago on the other hand… well, you couldn't get a more different person. Iago was short and had fiery red hair, with a temper to match. He also had a gambling problem and a strange obsession with the "get-rich-quick" scams that TV companies played late at night. He'd been disgraced about a year ago, when he'd run up a huge debt and, to hide from the debt collectors, had camped out in the police station for three days. Eventually they dragged him out and repossessed his furniture anyway, but the press somehow got wind of the story. Hamid had been furious; the angriest Jasmine had ever seen him. The media coverage had definitely caused some bad publicity, and Hamid was all set to fire him when Jafar stepped in. Why he did so, or how he managed to persuade her father to keep Iago on, was still a huge mystery to Jasmine. In truth, she suspected that it was a bit of a mystery to her absent-minded father; whenever she brought up Iago's return to the police department, he coughed and changed the subject.

"Dearest! Won't you come down?"

Jasmine jumped a little as Hamid's voice broke her out of her thoughts. Sighing, she patted Rajah on the head. The cat gave her a solemn look, licked her hand and, his tail held jauntily high as he leaped off the bed, followed her downstairs.

"There you are, Jasmine!" said Hamid cheerfully. "Jafar was beginning to think you didn't want to come downstairs!" He laughed as Jafar smirked and nodded his head at Jasmine again. She gave him a tight smile as Rajah wandered through the crowded hallway, sniffing feet on his way to the kitchen.

"Good evening, Jafar… Iago," Jasmine said, noting with some degree of worry that Iago was scrutinising the ornaments in the hallway with a shrewd and careful eye. "I'm very happy to see you both again," she added hastily, as her father beamed and bounced on his toes. He did so much for her… the least she could do was to be polite to his friends. Even if those friends were a compulsive gambler (supposedly reformed) and a snake. She ran her hand self-consciously through her hair.

"Aah…" said Jafar. "You look so much older, Jasmine, without all that hair."

"I know," said Hamid, with a sigh. "It's amazing how quickly they grow."

"Indeed," said Jafar, looking at Jasmine from under heavily lidded eyes. Jasmine felt herself flush and curled her hands into fists

"Hey, Jas," said Iago suddenly, turning to look her in the eye. "Jafar was just tellin' me all about how you put a salamander in his hat – that true?"

"I was only nine," said Jasmine, fighting back a smile of her own as Iago screeched with laughter. Her fingers relaxed themselves again.

"Ahh, I would have loved to have seen the look on your face!" he shrieked, smacking a hand down on Jafar's shoulder. "Think you can do it again tonight, huh, Jas?" This time Jasmine did giggle and decided that Iago really wasn't all that bad.

"It was just a childish prank," said Jafar smoothly, delicately removing Iago's hand with the very tips of his fingers, "pulled by a child. I'm sure Jasmine is far too old for such things."

Jasmine stopped laughing immediately, smoothing her hair again. Jafar's dark brown eyes suddenly seemed to be glittering pieces of onyx, dancing with fire. Iago was still chuckling, apparently unaware of the sudden tension that filled the hallway. Hamid coughed and then motioned towards the dining room.

"Shall we eat?" he said, looking nervously from his daughter to his second-in-command. "Helene helped me make it: grilled chicken with roasted bananas."

"Hey, if it's food, I'll eat it," said Iago, patting his stomach. "I could eat anything right now!"

"Shall we, Jasmine?" asked Jafar, taking hold of her arm. Darkness abruptly clouded her vision. A wave of dizziness overcame her; a sense of a terrible dark power coiled around the tall man. A bitty, grainy something filled her mouth, and she thought that she would choke, as heavy weights chained her wrists, and she had to free herself, she had to stop him from hurting her father, from hurting the boy-

"Jasmine?"

Jasmine wrenched her arm from Jafar's and backed away, clutching the stair banisters, breathing hard. What had that been? She stared up at Jafar, his expression oddly closed and piercing.

He knows, she thought. What I saw, he knows… What he knew, she wasn't sure, or even if it mattered that he knew what she'd just experienced, but she was sure of one thing. She had to get out.

"Dearest?" Hamid touched her arm gently, concern written all over his soft face. Iago watched them all carefully, his mouth pinched, as if he was working something out.

"I-I'm sorry, father," said Jasmine in a quiet voice. She could feel herself shaking, but she didn't know why. She didn't understand any of this, why a man whom she'd known nearly her entire life suddenly had such a powerful and frightening effect on her. "I just remembered," she continued, more confidentially (for it is easier to pretend to be confident when you have a game plan), "I promised a friend I'd help her out with some work… There was a case she wasn't sure about, and-"

"And you gotta go help her out," said Iago unexpectedly. "Well, I guess them's the breaks nowadays - gotta study hard to get anywhere, right, Jas?"

"Yes," said Jasmine, blinking at this unexpected ally. "I'm so sorry…"

"Well, I suppose nothing can be done about it, if you've promised this friend," said Hamid, "Still, I wish you'd remembered earlier, Jasmine."

"I know, and I'm very sorry," said Jasmine, backing away from the three men again.

"Are you going to be late?"

"I don't know," said Jasmine, mounting the first step. "It's a hard case-"

"What case is it, Jasmine?" asked Jafar, smiling a little. "After all, you have three important members of the police force right here, in your home. Couldn't your friend come here? Then you could pick our brains and have this delicious-sounding dinner your father has so kindly prepared."

"Excellent idea!" beamed Hamid, patting Jafar's arm. "Just give her a quick ring, Jasmine, and-"

"Oh, no," began Jasmine, "it's-"

"Theory," completed Iago. "It's all about the theory, and books, ain't it? Besides," he continued, taking Jafar's elbow and steering him towards the dining room, "she's gonna become a lawyer, not a police-lady. What does she need to listen to a bunch of old cops for?" He laughed at his joke, but to Jasmine's ears it sounded forced. Iago's eyes met hers, and he raised his bushy eyebrows at her.

"Yes," said Jasmine slowly. "That's right. Sorry," she added again, feeling that she'd never apologised so much in her life (not even over the lizard-in-the-hat prank).

"Well, it can't be helped, I suppose," said Hamid with a disappointed little shrug. "Don't be late though," he added.

"I won't," promised Jasmine. "I'll just go get my things." And she bolted upstairs before any of them could say anything to stop her. She grabbed her coat and bag, trying to think, but to no avail. Her thoughts were in such a whirl, conflicting emotions battering against each other, that all she was capable of thinking was what on earth…? She knew that she was panicking, and normally she hated panicking, but… She couldn't stay in this house with that man. Not even for her father's sake.

Jasmine ran back down the stairs, shouted a hurried "see you later!", opened the door and was out in the snow again. She stood still for a moment, tiny snowflakes drifting around her and catching in her newly-bobbed hair. She touched it nervously, wishing she still had the long, waist-length hair she'd had when she'd been a child. On cold nights like this, it had been like a thick blanket that smothered out the rest of the world, and it had only been her, thick blankets of hair and stars and her mother, smiling and beautiful. The corner of Jasmine's eyes prickled and she sniffed loudly.

"She's dead," she whispered to herself. "She's dead and standing here thinking of her won't bring her back."

Shifting her shoulder bag, Jasmine tilted her chin out, marched out into the street and then towards the city that echoed with the traffic of now, trying desperately to leave the echoes of the past behind her.

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