This was the final I did for my Jewish Traditions class this semester. Its kind of based off of You're Not Welcome with a rather @neena -like character making an appearance. I didn't think this was Alternate Universe-y enough to consider it a proper AU post nor is it anywhere close to canon. So, we have this nice middle ground here in my development thread.

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When the morning sun rose over the hot and humid Judean city, Hazael had no inkling of the sheer chaos that would be unleashed as the sun’s morning rays shown their light upon the crimes of the night.



His day, though, started like any other as he woke up and went about his daily chores meant to relieve some of the pressure of running the household off his parents. It mostly included work outdoors; hauling water from a nearby well and tending to the few goats they had among other tasks that were so menial that boy really didn’t think much of them. Instead, he just enjoyed the peaceful bliss of the crisp autumn air and the serenity that came with it. In truth, it was no different than any other morning; that was until his older brother Tiras came racing into the household bearing a piece of dreadful news that was now making its way swiftly through the city.



It was in that singular instant when the prideful young man came bursting through the door into the small main room of the household, angrily shouting for the others to follow him, that things outside of the family’s little bubble had changed drastically.



Through his brother’s angry words and jabbed insults, Hazael was able to piece together that a body had been found outside the Greek encampment clear across the city and now all of them had to go to the site of the crime for some reason that his brother refused to explain, but would not accept the answer of no in regards to.



At first, Hazael didn’t understand what was so important about this and why his brother was so worked up. The Greeks were not known to follow the same moral standards as most Judeans, especially when it came to murder and other similar crimes. In fact, nearly nightly, their father would rant and rave until his face was a blotchy red that their quarter was a cesspit of depravity fueled by the wine in their bellies that only warmed their barbarian blood. After all, Avriam was not shy about his less than savory opinions of the so-called “Guests” of the city and the danger they posed to the Judeans. He wasn’t alone in them either. Rumors often swirled about the soldiers’ inability to contain their raging bloodlust. Too many fights in the barracks supposed ended in an unfortunate Grecian ending up on the business end of a Doru and being found dead in the morning once the effects of the previous night’s drink had dulled.



As heartbreaking as it was to hear that a man had died, Hazael didn’t have any reason to believe that it hadn’t been just another case of a conflict within the camps spilling past the gates. It was a common occurrence and truthfully, it was hardly something for any of them to be up in arms over. After all, the man who died was Greek. Judeans like them didn’t bother with the deaths that occurred within the one portion of the city that they were not welcomed in.



Well, they didn’t care until they learned the truth of what had happened. It wasn’t a Greek who was found outside the gates of the barracks. It was a Judean and to make matters worse, he had been Tiras’s friend.



Even now, a few hours later, Hazael could still recall the cold, frightening shiver that crawled up his spine when Tiras revealed this through gritted teeth, trying desperately not to turn his rage on those he loved in this moment of grief. It was clear though from his balled fists and the slight tick of his jaw that he was just barely keeping his emotions restrained as he ushered his family out the door to join the crowd forming at the encampment. There was strength in numbers and if the Judeans were ever going to hold these men responsible, they would need all the men they could get, including the cowards like Hazael.





From the moment he arrived and found himself separated from his brother and his father Avriam, who was a stern man in every sense of the word, Hazael wanted nothing more to escape the crowd. There were too many people here and the energy was just too tense for the solitary nineteen-year-old to handle as the mourner’s kaddish swelled through the crowd of men and women. However, the group had been almost entirely split down the middle as they surrounded the gates with the men keeping to the right and the women to the left. As the prayer rose above the din, Hazael could also hear the angry shouts of other young men in the crowd who had no qualms about letting their anger be known. It didn’t take a genius to realize that they would have a devastating effect on the atmosphere as the already tense crowd grew more fraught with anger over the supposed injustices they had been subjected to with the Greeks in their city.



Not wanting to be swept up in whatever chaos was to follow this, Hazael glanced about the crowded space, his mud-colored eyes searching for an escape route. It didn’t take him long to notice a darkened alley running along the sides of two nearby buildings. Normally this was the sort of thing he wanted to avoid as all sorts of horrible things were said to happen in cramped, dark spaces like this, but quite frankly with the crowd’s chants grew into a crescendo as the tension in the air became so thick with the hatred and anger from the men and women surrounding him, that Hazael was just going to take whatever he could get.



So, as the policing force of the city moved in to disperse the crowd, Hazael weaved his way through the throngs of people as he made his way to less full streets. Many people were incredibly irritated by the boy’s actions, angrily huffing and shouting at him as he passed and bumped into their shoulders. The first few insults forced Hazael to glance at the ground in order to avoid looking at these people. Instead of focusing on them, he turned his attention to the words being shouted around him that easily drowned out the cruel words directed at him;



“You are not welcome. Go home.” The whole crowd spoke as one voice, finally bringing forth their frustrations with the fact that the Greeks called their city home.



Hazael was not an exception to this.



His own meek voice joined a hundred others that surrounded him as he finally emerged from the crowd, just outside of the alley entrance. Glancing back at the crowd, knowing full well that his brother wouldn’t be pulled away from this until he was ready to leave, Hazael decided that he didn’t want to stick around to see how they were going to make the mob forming disperse. It was just far too dangerous and truthfully, Hazael had no desire to get involved. As much as he believed in what they were saying, as he had been raised to do so all his life, this wasn’t his fight. No, instead that would be better left to his brother.



So, without a second thought, Hazael slipped into the alleyway, intent on making his way home. Unfortunately for him though, he wouldn’t quite get that far as almost immediately, he felt someone run into him. The force of the collision forced Hazael to stumble backward, but by some miracle, he didn’t fall over. His hand immediately reached up to rub his shoulder which took the brunt of the hit, from the sharp stinging pain he could tell that soon enough there would be a bruise.



“Hey! Watch it!” Hazael snapped, spurring on from both the remnants of the crowd’s anger and his own pain as he glanced up at who he had run into. His angry scowl quickly morphed into one of confusion as his eyes landed on the other person in the Alleyway.



To his utter surprise, he had run into a woman and from the looks of her, she was not someone who had called Judea home for very long.



His ingrained manners quickly overrode his own pain as Hazael moved forward, offering a hand to help pull her off the ground. As she did this and dusted herself off, the young man could easily see that he was correct if from nothing other than her clothes. He could see that she was wearing a mitpahath, a head covering his sisters and mother would never dare to leave their house without if they had any respect for themselves, but it was pinned on so haphazardly to her head that it looked almost like it had been shoved on instead of carefully being styled like any respectable citizen would do.

That alone clued Hazael in on the fact that she was not a native Judean… well, that and her obviously foreign look to her.

A sense of distrust quickly settled over him as she found her way to her feet, partially fueled by the chants that could still be heard from where they were. The city had just lost one of their own to a group of outsiders, every instinct in his body told him that the girl should not be trusted either.



If she noticed Hazael’s wide-eyed expression as she brushed the dirt off herself, she didn’t let on. In fact, she practically ignored him for a moment as the young man glanced back between the crowd behind him and the empty space in front of him that gave him a way to escape. However, given that he had run into her, it would be quite a bit rude for him to dart off without making sure she was okay first.



Glancing her up and down, she seemed to be fine, but she was practically ignoring Hazael, so it was hard to tell. After a moment of heavy, awkward silence, he cleared his throat and asked her, just to be sure, “Are you alright?”

She glanced at him warily when he asked her this, almost as if she was surprised that he had addressed her at all. “Yes, I’m fine,” Her words were filled with apprehension, clearly untrusting of the boy who had just come from the crowd screaming about how they wanted people like her gone. However, her eyes had a glimmer of curiosity to them that shone bright and clear when she spoke again, in a hushed whisper, asking as she gestured to the crowd “What happened?”



Her accent was so thick it took Hazael a moment to process what she had said as the gears slowly turned. Once he understood though, he couldn’t hide the bewildered expression take over his face as he silently thought to himself, how could she not know what happened? After all, it seemed to be that the entire city was there in that crowd, but then again, she probably didn’t consider herself to be a part of that group given how different she was.

It never even crossed his mind that the others may not have accepted her either.



Unsure of how to respond he stuttered a bit with his answer, “Err… A man was murdered.”



The girl raised her eyebrow at this, almost as if it were a challenge to what he said. Though to what end, he really didn’t understand. The fact that there had been a murder was unquestionable… except in the one element that no one really knew if the young man really had been killed by another man, let alone Hazael. He hadn’t seen the body for himself, after all, he just simply trusted the word of his brother when he said that he had been killed and the word of his father when he spouted forth anti-Greek rhetoric. These were two of the men that Hazael trusted most, they just couldn’t be wrong… could they?



“Oh,” She quietly said into the empty street, her words being amplified by the echo surrounding them. The girl then paused for a moment, as if she was reading the confused expression on the boy’s face. There was a moment as he turned in realization and she clarified her first inquiry with another question, “Why are there so many people then? And why…”



She paused for a moment, seemingly unsure of how to phrase her next sentence as she stumbled over the Hebrew words that Hazael had known since he was a child. It was just another clear indicator to the boy that Judea was not her homeland. It made him wonder how long she had been here in the city. Glancing back up at her rumpled headdress, clearly, it had been long enough for her to learn that it was wise to copy the dress of those around her. It made him wonder if she had also copied other things as well like did, she follow along when the prayers drew the city to a halt? Or what did she do for the Sabbath when the streets practically died with how empty they were after sundown? Did she take part and honor the day of rest as any other Judean would? Or did she not see the night any differently from any other?



Lost in his own thoughts, like the daydreamer that he was, he almost missed the way she ended her question. “And why are they so angry?” Her voice was barely above a whisper and he could hear how it wavered from fear. But fear of… what? Of the crowd? Of him?



Hazael, however, did not have the nerve of this girl, as soft-spoken as she may be. His worries of how he would be seen outweighed any possible gains that could be made from him having the boldness and inquisitive nature that this young girl before him did and so he was never going to question her on it even though at that moment, he wanted to. As far as he knew though, questioning things was not something that was generally smiled upon. Things would just be the way they were and that was that.



The sheer difference in their personalities made him wonder how she got to be that way though, given that she looked barely older than his twenty years. She probably grew up in a place where questions were welcomed and not frowned upon as his father did with his long-winded rants about the Greeks in their city.



He was taken aback by her questions for a moment unsure of how to answer them. They were very deep questions that he just personally didn’t know the answer to. Of course, the first bit was easy. There was a certain strength in numbers. One man could not call the Greeks on their injustices alone. However, there was safety in a crowd. The anger… why that was just natural. It bubbled up from all the horrible things that the Greeks had done to them or at least Hazael had been told was done to them.



Shaky and unsure of his own answer, he tried to explain simply in a way that hopefully satisfied her, “Because one of our own was murdered by the Greeks. They need to be held accountable for all the damage they’ve done to my people and that can’t be done with just one person.”



Hazael didn’t know what he expected in response, perhaps a nod or a statement of understanding, but to his surprise, he only received a glare from the girl. Immediately Hazael grew self-conscious of what he had said the wrong thing as her shy and inquisitive nature suddenly vanished. Instead, now he was confronted with a stony expression with anger instead of curiosity flashing in her eyes. He didn’t quite understand, what had set her off like this? Didn’t everyone know how badly the Greeks had treated the Judeans over the years?



Clearly, she didn’t as she practically growled at him, “And what exactly have they done to your people?” The last bit of her statement almost seemed to mock Hazael in an odd sort of way. Perhaps separating her from the Judeans was what angered her for some unknown reason that Hazael did not have the nerve to delve into, especially as she continued gesturing wildly to the crowd behind them, “Was it worth all of this?”



Hazael was physically taken aback by this response, growing red in the face as he stammered a bit, trying to come up with some sort of answer to this outsider who clearly seemed to look more favorably upon the Greeks and for whatever reason was deciding to accost this Judean boy for his beliefs. He struggled to find the words to defend the people in the mob that was now quickly being dispersed, but in all actuality, he was struggling to come up with something tangible that they had done besides this obvious murder. Everything he thought of was a rumor of some kind about the Greek’s tendency for violence or their love of alcohol. However, there wasn’t a singular event he could personally point to on account of him never really interacting with them. All his life he had been kept away from them, reminded through his father’s harsh words that they were not to be trusted. It was safer to avoid the men who refused to assimilate to Judean culture, insisting on their ugly, stiff chitons instead of the free-flowing simlahs the people wore.



However, given that she was clearly searching for a rise out of him now as he had infuriated her, Hazael refused to answer to her bait with anything beyond a stammered and hurried, “Isn’t murder enough?”



Now suddenly aware of the fact that this girl favored the Greeks, he quickly moved past her and headed up the alleyway towards the peace and quiet of his own home. He moved at a quickened pace, so he might avoid any more of her challenges to the way he saw the world. She clearly was fond of the Greeks, so she was a lost cause to him. She wasn’t worth the trouble she would bring if he continued to argue with her ad nauseum. The girl didn’t follow him, which was a good thing as he was eager to forget her sympathies for such evil people which within itself didn’t make sense. Everyone in Judea knew how horrible the Greeks were and she was trying to somehow defend them? It didn’t make sense to him.



Just like how he couldn’t seem to shake her last question and his inability to answer from his mind as he hurried up the streets towards the one place that may allow him to escape the insanity of what had happened today, if only for a few hours. Though he could already tell that the question of what did the Greeks really did to him had begun to sink deep in his mind and it would probably rob him of the peace that this city deserved after such a volatile day. There was little doubt he would mull over it for a while. It would spur him to ask questions that he was never supposed to ask when he was spoon-fed this rhetoric all his life and told him that it was normal.



But when it came to this question’s answer… would he truly ever accept the possibility of nothing being the true answer to what the Greeks did? Or would he continue to exist in his own little bubble, believing the lies he had been fed all these years somehow contained a sliver of truth?



It was an impossible question that Hazael just simply didn’t know the answer to.