I just...I just had to do a quick little Cylice ficlet because, come on! How adorable are they! So I cranked this out, hope you enjoy!
100
"Tell me about your life as a genie."
Well, let's see….
The first year –
On second thought, let's not talk about the first year.
(His first mistress, Aliyah, tossed his bottle into a well after he egged her into losing three fortunes by making bad bets at Basra. Khaliq, who fell somewhere between master number seven and twelve, actually clocked him when Cyrus' fail-proofed idea for a ponzi scheme ended up, well, failing spectacularly. On his worst week, he went through seven masters in seven days, each of their last wishes being that they would never, under any circumstances, ever see him again.)
Why not? Alice, you're always so inquisitive! But really, there's simply no time to get through each and every one of my years as a genie – one hundred of them, you understand, so I'll have to speak very generally if we want to accomplish anything.
Now, I'll have to think back….if I recall, my first years as a genie weren't terrible. Yes, I know that seems rather odd. But what you have to understand, Alice, is that I was still very much reeling over the whole ordeal, the loss of our home, my mother's near death, the Guardian's curse, wondering how my brothers were faring.
(And the relentless guilt which, after Saif's final wish for a poisoned pill to end the trouble his first two wishes had caused, made Cyrus eye the sturdy ropes holding up the drapery in his bottle as a grim yet effective backup plan.)
Most days I'd look at those glittering, golden cuffs, like some wonderful dream gone terribly, utterly wrong, and wonder when I'd finally wake up.
(But as Cyrus would learn years later, in the Genie Rulebook, which he'd never been handed upon his initiation into the creed, it states that a genie cannot be killed inside of his own bottle. It was four months before a new master finally found him and his feet once again touched the floor, and in his nightmares all the shadows are shaped like nooses.)
And back then, I was still much more of the man I used to be than the one I am now. I was arrogant and stupid. To make up for the pain of my mistakes, I tried reveling in the power. I'd grant wishes with fanfare, as if I were a great sorcerer rather than the slave that I truly was. And my masters and mistresses, for the most part being as equally arrogant and stupid, were easily persuaded to use their wishes unwisely.
(Often to tragic results; a more experienced genie would have never convinced Mahir that wishing for unparalleled magical power was a good idea. As the lid on Mahir's own new bottle closed over the vanishing smoke, Cyrus wondered if his true curse was to curse all other's around him.)
It was like living in a perpetual daze. I was too overcome to despair, and so while the early years weren't grand by any stretch, they didn't feel terrible. It was really the years after, once I'd realized that for all my power I was well and truly powerless and I'd likely spend eternity in imprisonment and solitude, that were my darkest.
(And when he'd learned to hate himself.)
…What? Oh, I'm sorry, Alice. I was lost there for a moment. Did you say something?
(Because of every master he'd ever had the displeasure of serving, none of them ever seemed as vile as the young man who ravaged his whole family in the span of a single day.)
When did it start getting better? Oh, Alice, you would want to jump to the happy ending. The truth is, I couldn't fix an exact time. It was gradual, like most things. I'd met so many people who reminded me of myself that eventually – very, very slowly, I should add – I began to change, until finally, after the seventieth year or the sixty-third, I can't say, I'd shed just about everything about myself that caused me to be cursed in the first place.
(Eroded away. There went the vanity, on year fifty-seven when Hala wished for a roomful of mirrors and died of starvation staring at her own reflection. Musaf took care of the impetuousness by way of making all three wishes in a single breath and getting crushed to death by two tons of gold bouillon and a river of silver coins. The narcissism and arrogance were harder friends to let go, but his abject helplessness when Amir pleaded over his dead child's body made him feel something close to microscopic, and Cyrus finally laid them aside as well.)
And once all that baggage was gone, well – I became at peace with my fate, and with myself. Someone who felt less and less like they were cursed and more like who I….am.
(By the time he landed on a green lawn in Wonderland he'd been stripped of everything but that which made him the great favorite of his mother, the leader of his brothers, the best friend of everyone in the village – charming, insightful, friendly, and loyal – Cyrus, as he was always intended to be.)
Which is what the Guardian always intended, I suppose.
(And he couldn't be more grateful.)
"And then one day, a beautiful, adventurous girl wandered into my bottle, and, as they say, the rest is history."
Alice stopped their trek and leaned over to kiss his cheek. "Thank you for telling me all of that. I know it can't have been easy."
How little she did know. Finally unloading his tale was not only easy, but felt like setting down a basket of stones he'd been carrying for a hundred years straight.
Cyrus had never felt more alive, or more in love. But the sincere trust in Alice's eyes made him hang back when she began to move forward again. "Alice…"
She turned around, eyebrows raised. "Yes, Cyrus?"
"There is more. More that I haven't told you."
(That I couldn't tell you.)
She surprised him, which in itself never surprised him, by smiling. "Of course there's more. Believe it or not, there are some choice things you don't know about me, either." She reached for his hand. "We've only ever seen each other at our best. Sometimes it's difficult letting the ones we love get to know our less attractive sides. But as long as it's a side of you, I want to know it, I want to know it all. And I will, and you will, and all of that will come, in time." She kissed him "You don't have anything to worry about. I'm your bottle, remember?"
"I do." He shook his head with a laugh. Even after a hundred years he was still not as wise as his Alice. "How do you always manage to make everything sound so wonderfully simple?"
"Because it is, silly. But just remember that simple doesn't always mean easy."
He stroked the back of her hand. He wouldn't look her in the eye. "And when the simple truths become too difficult to bear?"
She lifted his chin till their faces met. "If I wanted easy, Cyrus, I would have made my three wishes years ago."
Mistress mine. For the next year or twenty or one hundred, it will always be Alice, his love, his home, his bottle. He can't go anywhere without her.
My will is mine.
Nor would he want to.