Work Text:
Yuften is in a cage of his own making.
He does not want to be there, but by the time he finally realises that he does not like the cage, has never liked the cage, has only tricked himself into liking it because he was too afraid of what might happen if he stepped out of it, it has grown much too sturdy for him to be able to break it.
By the time he realises this, it is too late, and he is soon faced with Babel, wounded but still magnificent.
She is terrible and relentless, like a sandstorm, like she’s always been when faced with any obstacle until she saw it broken and buried and claimed by the ever-shifting sands, and she tells them that the northerners had captured the woman she had taken in as a daughter, fed her lies and driven her mad , and that she is coming for them all.
That Jeht is coming to take away the dream of peace and clear, everflowing waters, and tribesmen united instead of squabbling over meagre scraps of vulture meat.
Yuften does not want to believe her, because he knows Jeht, and he knows that Babel’s dream of peace is a lie; that it is merely another thing that will strengthen the bars of his cage, that will take a whetstone to them and make them cut if he ever so much as thinks of touching them, of testing them.
But then Yuften sees Jeht.
He sees her stalking forth, covered in blood (her blades dripping with it, and he knew not how many she had already slain, but he was afraid, so afraid) and with her face stretched and distorted into an inhuman snarl (and in that moment, he did not understand how he could once have thought those features fair, familiar , how could he have welcomed this animal into the tribe and fed her and introduced her to the crocodiles and opened his home to her, not when she stood before him now, rabid ) as she howls and spits about tearing the tribe apart.
He sees her, and he knows that the cage is safe, as long as he does not test it.
This animal before him is not safe, will never be safe, will forever be the man-eater they made her to be.
Now that she has acquired the taste of human flesh, she will never again be convinced that they are not prey.
And so Yuften swallows the urge to just scream, scream, scream until the the noise drowns out all the terrors and the world dissolves into static, and instead tries to wrangle his tongue into behaving, for once, just this one time, please, I don’t think I’ll have another chance , and plead with the monster- the animal- with Jeht , to ask her to just stop , but she doesn’t listen and he… he understands.
At that moment, he understands, and as always, it is too late.
Babel has always assumed him simple, had seen him flinch at noises and withdraw from crowds and never meet anyone’s eyes, had heard his tongue fumble and had assumed that was all there was to him.
And that was safe , and so he let her assume.
(Was it really an assumption, though, if that is how it too often felt? Like he never understood, never quickly enough, never in time. )
It was safe, because it made him a tool instead of a threat, and tools are useful .
However… a knife you plunge into someone’s heart will not remember the deed. It will not see the difference between ending a person’s life and cutting pieces off a roast for dinner.
In the end, Yuften was a person, not a tool, no matter how Babel used him.
So Yuften remembers, and he can see the difference.
Thus, in that terrible moment, he realises that Babel had made him lie to the outlander with hair spun from gold, gleaming in the sun like a blessing (because Yuften could not help but remember the legends that spoke of how Al-Ahmar’s hair had decorated his head like a crown, like liquid sunlight, and he had had to stop himself from reaching out and touching when he first saw it, because he was not supposed to touch people , that made them angry, but oh how he wanted to know how that hair would have felt against his fingers), the outlander who had proved worthy of a Jinni .
Babel had told him a lie as easily as if it was the truth (she always did, and he never knew which one it was, not until it was too late) and he had passed it on, sending the outlander out into the desert never to return.
Just like Babel had sent Jeht out, herself.
But here they were, both of them together and defiant, returned from the sands and the fate Babel had arranged for them (had used him to help arrange for them), and their blades were red with the blood of the tribe in retribution for the audacity of their Matriarch.
He understands.
There is no choice here.
There is only death or the chance to go back to his cage and his crocodiles and live the rest of his life hoping that Babel continues to see him as insignificant.
He chooses the chance of the cage.
Babel has never lost before.
It is a good chance.
(It is not good enough.)
Yuften bleeds out, too fast to stop but too slow to be merciful, his lifeblood pooling on the ancient stones of a glorious kingdom long lost.
The stones are long used to it by now.
Soon enough, the sands will scour the stain away.