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„You're like the Sun.” Kassim said once, brows furrowed in deep concentration. It was when Alibaba's mother took him and Mariam in, a short while when they all believed they could live happily ever after. Before Anise fell ill, before Mariam did, before Alibaba became aware of who his father was, before he was taken to the palace. Before Kassim died for the first time.
„Who are you, then?” Alibaba asked in return. He didn’t mind the unintelligible answer; Kassim was just like that, so he learned to identify the different kinds of hmphs and other sounds pretty quickly. They were perched on a abandoned crate in the port, watching the ships, listening to the shouts of merchants seeing the city for the wirst time, while holding eachother’s hand tightly, their thighs pressed together.
The answer to Alibaba’s question doesn’t come in his next life, neither it does in the one following.
Alibaba thinks that his second life was the hardest. The world—the Universe was almost the same, said almost being the absence of Rukh, Metal Vessels and Magi. For the first few years of his second life, he was unaware that it wasn’t his first—the knowledge returned to him later, all at once and it hurt so much that he thought his head was going to combust, that it wasn’t big enough to store all of the information and he was going to die.
He didn’t die. It was only the Universe’s way to prepare him for meeting Kassim once again. It hurt, too. He thought it was even worse than getting all of his memories from the previous life back, because he knew—or at least he presumed—what was going to happen. He wasn’t sure, he guessed that his former life was some kind of a glitch, a mistake, an abberation that the Universe wanted to correct itself.
Alibaba learned the hard way that his way of thinking was wrong. He got to hold Kassim’s lifeless body in his arms yet again, the only difference being that it wasn’t thanks to Dark Metal Vessel, there were ordinary blades, sharp and glinting in the flames that consumed nearby buildings, and there was so much blood that he thought the stench of it was going to follow him everywhere for the rest of his life.
His third life is easier. The world is so different, that he has to focus on learning new things. There is hope that the Universe is repaired, because he and Kassim don’t meet until their late teens, but Alibaba is careless, because it was all going so well that he fails to notice the shadow in Kassim’s amber eyes and then there’s the sound gunshot that will haunt him in every next timeline and the love of his life is dead yet again.
The sight of the blood pooling around Kassim’s body isn’t that haunting anymore, but he still mourns and mourns and mourns. Sinbad—he’s an old friend of Alibaba’s father in every lifetime—takes in a kid with sad, golden eyes and tight half-smile.
In fourth life, Alibaba gets his question answered.
„If I’m the Sun, then you must be Icarus” he whispers to Kassim’s sleeping form, pressing a light, fleeting kiss in the space between his shoulder blades. He doesn’t sleep much at night, all thanks to the nightmares that keep disturbing his rest. They wake him up with wet cheeks and gasping for air, with one name on his lips and thank God that Kassim is a heavy sleeper, so he doesn’t notice anything.
If he notices something, it would be a few of his cigarettes disappearing, because inhaling the smoke that settles heavily in his lungs feels grounding—if he concentrates enough, he can almost feel the weight of Amon in his right hand and how the flames curled around him, gently licking his skin, never biting.
He wishes he could possess similar power now. But having a Djinn of Politeness and Austerity didn’t change anything then and it wouldn’t change anything now. Probably.
When Kassim dies for the 24th time, Alibaba is lost. He considered every possibility to him being stuck in the endless loop—the glitch, universe’s way of whacking him in the head and telling to correct his mistakes, the simplest one of making Kassim actualle make it past the age of eighteen, but nothing works. At some point he tried to tell his friend everything, to stop Kassim from acting recless, so he’d actually listen to him for once, only to see Aladdin.
„You’ll mess up timelines, Alibaba. I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that.” he was told and he never thought that he could start hating the former Magi, but he did, especially when he took his voice in one of his many lives, to teach him a lesson—only much later he was able to admit that he deserved it, for trying to spill his secret to Kassim.
Alibaba has knowledge of several lifetimes crammed inside his head and even that couldn’t help him. Not once, because every time Kassim dies, never making it past age of somewhere around twenty. They always meet at some point, there's always Fog Troupe involved, although the names tend to change slightly, as does the location.
He knows he’s not stupid—he could have been, in his past lives, but he learns quickly, especially when he gets to see the effect of every one of his mistakes very vividly. Aladdin keeps close, casting a watchful eye over him and Alibaba feels like he’s walking in circles. The weird one, he gets called by children in orphanage, the genius one, people call him, when he gets the doctorate in physics even before twenty one, hoping it would help him figure things out from the scientific point of view, but it’s still not enough to keep Kassim from facing death again and again and again. He’s always there to mourn and he should be used to it by now, but there is always more tears to spill from under his closed eyelids.
Sometimes he thinks that maybe he had lost it long time ago. That there never was a second life or any other, that it was just his mind’s way of setting things to the right track. Sometimes he thinks that he’s cursed, or that he’s in Hell and that it’s his punishment.
Most of the time he wishes he could think nothing at all.
Most of the time he wishes that he could end up in Kassim’s place, so that his best friend—the love of his life, could get his „happily ever after”, even if he’d be out of the picture. He thinks that he would be pleased to watch from the distance, see Kassim leading a happy life, get married and have a small group of children, even if he’d have to suffer to the very end of his existence.
Because it was his fault. Because he’s like the Sun and Kassim is like Icarus.
Because he got to close, but it doesn’t work either, because he tried to stay away and it wasn’t enough.
At some point, he tries to locate people that are in the same position. It’s not easy—the Internet is a godsend, really, but people’s tendency to make up stuff—not so much. It takes him several more lifetimes to figure out, that he’s been searching too far, when he had that kind of person in his reach.
It takes him that much time to remember that Ja’far always felt like he was the only one that truly understood him, the only one that was able to make things a little bit better. That he was the only one that let Alibaba weep and sob and shake before and after every funeral, no matter which life it was.
„It will pass, someday.” is the answer to Alibaba’s question, probably in his 47th life, but he had probably lost count some time ago, he’s not sure.
He recalls the time he thought he would never feel that betrayed again.
Well, it seems that the universe will always be able to find new ways of surprising him.
There’s a breaking point in Alibaba’s 50th life, maybe because his prayers have been listened and the roles are reversed. This time it’s Kassim who’s taken by the wealthy man—his father who, apprently, isn’t a fucking drunkard and doesn’t hit before thinking, in this universe—and Alibaba gets to experience the life of an orphan and take a part in revolt. Well, not exactly, because he was only trying to prevent it, until the very end, but if he’s not angry anough, being placed in Kassim’s place, then Zaynab and Hassan and many others are. He gets hurt in the process and it’s not like it’s his first experience with being shot at and probably not last but if his death can work as a factor resulting in Kassim’s prolonged life, so be it.
The darkness that envelopes him feels familiar; by now, he can recognize the sweet embrace of death, but something isn’t right. Usually, he jumps from one life to another, he was never given a time to rest, so why does he now?
The silence is so long that he starts to believe that he actually managed to do it and that it’s what death feels like. Maybe the God—or something else, it doesn’t really matter—was clearing his head from the excess of memories, experiences. Maybe he was being prepared to led a new life with a blank slate.
He’s not sure how much time passes, but suddenly he’s in pain again and he wants to scream and cry at the same time, because it wasn’t meant to be like that. He thinks that he wasn’t succesful, that the death of a teenage boy wasn’t enough to stop the revolt, that its members invaded the rich district of the town, that Kassim—or at least the version of him that had a chance to actually be happy, not bitter and angry and treated unfairly—was killed again, despite his efforts.
„Hello, sunshine. I’m sorry it took me so long.” are the first words that Alibaba hears when he’s conscious again and he’s in so much pain, but it doesn’t really matter, because Kassim’s right beside his hospital bed, and he’s safe and sound and smiling so brightly that it’s almost blinding and Alibaba thinks that his heart might combust any moment from all the happiness he’s feeling and, at the same time, that he must’ve lost it completely, that he’s really imagining it all, and in reality there’s some boy named Alibaba Saluja in mental asylum, unresposive to the world, completely lost in all kinds of different worlds.
He has to wait until Kassim’s 21st birthday to be partly convinced that it’s true. Ja’far, treating Kassim like he knows him, is the other part. The last part is Aladdin’s knowing smile, before he vanishes into thin air. Alibaba almost feels guilty for hating him, but he thinks that’s what he gets for being no help at all.
„It’s alright. You’re here now, after all.” he rasps in reply, smiling so wide he can taste his own tears, but Kassim—real Kassim this time, not a picture created from his Rukh—is there to wipe his cheeks and punch him lightly in the shoulder, staying mindful of his wound.
„Stop crying, you brat. I’m not going anywhere for at least fifty lifetimes.”