Disclaimer: Magi The Labyrinth of Magic belongs to Shinobu Ohtaka.
A/N: The featured song is "Sanctuary" by Noel Cabangon, very loosely translated by me because the song fits Alikou so well.
When the empress sleeps, she dreams of war.
A great noise pours into the morning clamor of the marketplace. Kou soldiers march in, ranks of battle-hardened men in merchant's attire swinging money pouches like metal clubs. Beside them are their finest steeds, the finest hogs, goats, and bulls in the land, followed by the rest of the cavalry - ducks, geese, pheasants, and pigeons of every sort- and their trump card, a hundred sacks of grain. For artillery, mountains of egg crates overflow the streets. There is wine and there is cloth and the roads they tread are blanketed with rice stalks. With a mixture of nervousness and determination they take their positions across the battlefield, the look on their faces one and the same: This will be a fight to the death.
War commences at the crack of dawn; the haggling and the hawking go on for hours until piles of silver have replaced their merchandise. And she, their commander, is selling peaches.
A boy comes and steals a fruit, red eyes and raven braid and hands for strangling. She glares at him. He smirks and runs off, never bothering to leave a single penny. The boy is gone in a blink and the miniature sandstorm he stirred up makes it impossible for her to give chase. She huffs and takes a swig of sour citrus, stifling a grimace as the juice scrapes down her throat, leaving her just as parched as before. The rising heat adds to her frazzled nerves; Kougyoku unties the ropes holding up the front flap of awning, letting it down by several degrees to shield her goods from the sun. Wiping rivulets of sweat from her brow, she concludes that economic warfare is simply not her forte.
From the distance, her ears pick up the clink of coin on cobblestone and trace it to the source. A blond boy is selling flowers by the corner. He catches her gaze and sends her a warm smile, Come here, and she obeys, leaving her last half dozen peaches to elbow through the rambunctious crowd towards his humble stall. He offers her a pastel magenta lily, which she accepts with blistered fingers, and takes a whiff of countryside scent.
The boy begins to hum. She closes her eyes, letting the familiar lullaby wash over her with echoes of sand dunes and rain. The humming stops; she opens her mouth to ask him what the song is, but her cart gets upset by a passerby. Her precious peaches tumble out in a flood of topaz and carnelian, transforming into flower wreaths, which children scoop up and use to adorn their sweaty heads. They sing and they dance, and their joyful laughter is so bright, it awakens a memory.
The empress stirs.
Do you remember
When we first met?
We were so young back then
Behind a folding screen of peach trees and daisies, Kougyoku prepares for another day's labor. Adjusting her hanfu, she waits for the maids to apply the finishing touches to her hair before the bejeweled mian is set on its rightful place atop her head. Minutes later, the young empress steps out of her chambers to answer the beckoning dawn.
Like an old friend, the sunlight lends its coral tone to her skin, freeing it of sickly hues. Gone as well are the dark circles that once festered under her eyes and the weariness that used to cling to her bones like dead weights. Her feet are lighter than they've been in ages and her sleep patterns have improved; nowadays she no longer competes with the night to welcome daybreak.
Along the way through tunnel-like halls, she passes a door cracked open just enough for a glint of color to be visible from the inside. Intrigued by this discovery, she presses closer to peer through the shred of space, but stops, opting instead to knock and enter in.
"Alibaba-chan?"
The person in question is busy leafing through maps, tracing untraceable patterns between his homeland and hers. Two members of the committee accompany him, as well as a lone guard yawning by the corner.
It strikes her that he shouldn't be here. The excuse that Aladdin will find him if he makes a name for himself in Kou makes no sense. Aladdin could appear at this very moment if he wanted. Judal would always find her, disappear, and show up again as he pleased. So why does Alibaba stay? What draws him to this heap of ruins when he could easily take off like the dandelion seeds she imagines whenever they meet? Pointless self-interrogation comes to an end when she notices him staring, eyelids puffy with unfulfilled sleep.
"Alibaba-chan, you're up pretty early today."
He marks his place in the scroll, pushing it aside, and turns to greet her with a crooked smile. "Oh, Kougyoku. Good morning. I was just finalizing plans for my trip."
His tone remains pleasantly calm but there's an sliver of longing in his eyes as he explains his itinerary. This man is coming home. There's something profoundly touching about that thought.
Cold fingers curl on cloth, grappling with invisible hooks that prevent her from hugging her knees like a distraught child. She wishes the ponkan and amethyst weave were sturdy enough for to fashion into a sieve, because the honey flecks in his eyes shift around like desert sand and she wants to save a few bits of him before it all slips through her fingers like everyone else.
"Balbadd, eh? That's where we first met," she says, to appease the silence, before it eats her.
"Yeah, I remember that night when you destroyed Aladdin's friend, Ugo-kun."
Of all things, he remembers that? "No, er, I mean, at the palace!"
"Oh, you mean when my younger self tried to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic?" He sighs, nostalgic, regretful, grateful. "It feels like an eternity ago. I was just a naive, impressionable prince who wanted to save the country he abandoned."
"And I, a princess who knew nothing about politics. Those were the days."
He hums in reply, probably caught up as she is with afterimages of one, two torrential encounters of fire and ocean.
"I have to thank you, though. If it weren't for you, I'd be in Balbadd married to that pi— to your brother, and never get to be a general."
He gives her a curious look. "Don't you regret it? You were forced to be part of that war."
Those words make sense. Yet her heart says otherwise.
"Fighting, no. I could never regret risking my life for the people I swore to protect," she replies, slowly, because the next images in her mind make her taste bile. "But to be used in such a horrible way by someone who only showed me false kindness, how can I ever forget such a thing?"
Two names go unsaid, Sinbad and Hakuryuu. Alibaba was a friend, and she was a sister, and too much was lost in the tragedy for words to be spoken. Her gaze settles on the embroidery on her garment, and she notices for the first time how oddly similar the regal patterns are to the carvings on the wall.
He pulls his seat away from the table, drumming his fingers on his knee. "If I only knew, I'd have given you something better than a handkerchief that day."
"I still have it."
"Seriously? The exact same handkerchief?"
"Uh-huh. It's the only gift I ever received from a friend, so of course it's special."
His face dissolves into a mask of horror, alarming her.
"What's wrong, Alibaba-chan?"
"Nothing. I think I need to visit the market. See you later!" He shoots up from his seat, hastily rolling up the maps and thrusting them into the arms of a confused official. Away he goes, striding out like a soldier on a very important quest.
The remaining persons in the study share confused shrugs. What could have prompted such strange behavior?
Kougyoku tilts her head in concern.
Was it something I said?
There among the flowers
We began to dream
As our hearts overflowed with song
In the cool of late afternoon, Kougyoku accompanies her friend into what remains of the royal gardens, and she tries to look past the signs of how economic turmoil have taken their toll on the flora and fauna of these parts. Thieves stole their prized ornamental plants; years of neglect destroyed the rest. It breaks Kougyoku's heart to see sparse clumps of disfigured mulberries, once the pillars of Kou's silk trade. What was once a plethora of color has been reduced to a mirage of mocha and sepia. Alibaba greets an old man by a patch of overgrown bushes whose wrinkled face remains hidden behind his worn-out straw hat. He either ignores them or doesn't hear, too busy drowning tiny seedlings to notice.
Soon they reach her favorite spot, where bursts of daisies, a pair of bamboo palms, and low-growing shrubs soften the harshness of the landscape. Near the edge, vines trek up a bamboo palisade, offering a few buds here and there, orange and violet and red, which in fully blossomed clusters would have been a spectacular sight.
"Over there looks like a nursery for peach seedlings," he observes.
She explains how every week she would bury a seed in this makeshift grave of dreams.
"Every week? Isn't that a bit too-"
"Obsessive?"
"I was going to say 'thoughtful'. It's as if you're waiting for somebody and want to surprise him when he returns."
Was she waiting, really? She doesn't know.
His voice fills the noise of her silent thoughts. "That's okay. Not everyone comes home," he says, with that in-between of unresolved loss. She wants to ask him why, what happened, was it about that former friend he so rarely talks about?
"I know, she replies instead, thinking of deserters, exiles, refugees, and herself.
Not all return. But some do. She sees her brother with two doves perched on his shoulders. She sees her friend and remembers what sustained her all these years of being an unwanted child. Take what you can get and make it enough. That's what she did in the past, and it's how she'll survive the highest position in the land.
"Hey, is this what I think it is? I didn't know you could grow desert plants here." He tells her of blooms that, when the time is ripe, unfurl once a year to share their secret knowledge, and, satisfied, return to eternal slumber, never to be heard of again.
"Mother would drag me to see them in the middle of the night. Mariam loved them," he says, and for all he's been through, he sounds just like a boy with a dead mother and a dead sister and a dead brother and a country that calls him prince no more.
Alibaba leans back against a peach tree, looking very much at home beneath its spreading branches. There is only one other person she associates with peaches, and that person is nowhere to find.
Having nothing to do, Kougyoku begins plucking white-tufted weeds with tiny pink buds. "I wish we could weave some flowers, but blooming season is still a few months away."
"When I was in Reim, the common practice was to award bay or laurel wreaths to the champions."
She reaches for her sixth flower. "That would be cute. If I were there, I'd probably make you some."
His face crumples. "No thanks. That would be terrible."
Kougyoku stops midway through her second handful to ask why.
"We wouldn't want the audience to see me with a bird's nest on my head."
"What?!" Kougyoku whirls on him, accidentally squeezing the bunch of weeds in her grasp. "I'll have you know, when I returned from Sindria I practiced everyday for a month! A month! That is, until the gardener complained he couldn't do his job if all the flowers kept disappearing. Well, I didn't want them to execute the poor guy, so I quit. Then I tried make paper blossoms, but nothing beats the real thing."
"I take it back! I'm sure Reim would love any ivy wreaths you make."
Kougyoku pouts. Alibaba will be Alibaba, nervous laughter and all.
"Hey, what's it like to be a gladiator?"
"Absolutely thrilling! You take on monsters ten times your size knowing one misstep and it could be your last day on earth. And the crowd goes wild but you can't tell who they're cheering for, and you just have to do everything you can to survive."
"I wish I could have watched one of your fights. It was boring here in the palace."
"Trust me, it's best you didn't. My first fight and Garda nearly tore me apart!"
"Garda?"
"A gorilla. Sorry, didn't I mention this before?"
"No. Last time we barely talked. It seemed you couldn't get away from me fast enough."
No, she doesn't hold it against him. No, it doesn't hurt. No, it doesn't matter if her only friend did what's to be expected from a stranger.
"I'm sorry," he says. "For avoiding you. For everything else."
Kougyoku sighs and shakes her head. He chose to protect his country, and she finds no fault in that. She's killed people trying to save people and perhaps that's just what war is. If there's someone or someplace you hold precious, there will also be a hand you'll have to let go of, but...
A light breeze stirs her hair. She reaches for a flower in grave peril of being crushed beneath his shoes.
...letting go once doesn't mean you can't hang on.
"Alibaba-chan!"
"Yes?" He casts her a repentant look, similar to the one that keeps replaying in her memory.
"You almost stepped on my flowers!"
She starts to giggle and he laughs because amid the occasional thrum of white noise, the melody of the past can be beautiful.
Do you remember
The flowers I laid at your feet
As we held hands by the sea?
Suppertime finds them in a circle around carved oak, along with Ka Koubun and Koumei. Kougyoku carefully slices bits of steak and pretends food isn't as tasteless as it's been for three years. Ka Koubun claims a boulder has made its way into his head, so the aroma of his food mixes with pungent herbs. Koumei eats in silence, save for the occasional sound of chopsticks tapping his plate. Before them, Alibaba heartily digs into his meal, raising eyebrows as the food keeps vanishing and plates begin stacking up.
The servants begin to whisper among themselves, appalled by his behavior. Kougyoku shoots them one vehement look, which hushes them as effectively as threats of torture.
"He eats like someone who hasn't had a meal for a year!" remarks Ka Koubun, whose cross mood makes his voice more grouchy than normal.
"Ree," Alibaba mumbles.
"What?"
"Ree ears."
Kougyoku turns to Ka Koubun, who merely shrugs, both unable to decipher their companion's statement.
Alibaba swallows, draining his glass in one gulp. "Three years."
"Not a single bite?" asks Koumei, who has barely taken part in any conversation until now.
"None until I got back."
The look on her brother's and assistant's faces are priceless. To think that of all the facts surrounding his return, this is the one to make Ka Koubun finally snap.
"Which reminds me." Alibaba reaches into his pocket, unwraps a small package and places the contents on the table. "Here, for you."
Kougyoku eyes the strange object with curiosity. A concave disk half as big as her palm, perfectly flat in the center with ridged edges, and iridescence rivaling mother of pearl, but clear as crystal that sparkles when it hits the light. "I've never seen anything like this before," she declares, marveling at the absence of even hairlike cracks.
"It's a keepsake from when Judal and I were travelling the dark continent, a scale from the mother dragon."
"A real dragon scale?" Ka Koubun, Koumei, and Kougyoku exclaim in varying degrees of shock.
"Yeah. I had a craftsman fashion the silver frame so you could use it as a mirror. Figured you'd find some use for that. You know, since I don't have a better gift."
"Alibaba-chan, you're amazing! How kind of you to bring a present. Thank you so much."
And she would have said more and he might have said more, but an exaggerated cough from Ka Koubun reminds them to hurry with supper so they won't be late for the final conference of the day. So he smiles and she tries not to choke on her meal and the meeting that night remains a blank space in the back of her mind.
In those moments
We were like birds in the sky
Soaring wild and free
On the morning of Alibaba's departure, Kougyoku shares a few last words with her friend before their goodbyes. There's so much she wants to say, but even if a whole year were crammed into the final minutes, no amount of conversation, spoken or unspoken, would ever be enough. Her only consolation is the knowledge of his return, and even that isn't enough to quell her worries. What if he doesn't come back? What if he chooses not to? She'll be alone again, no Kouen, no Kouha, no Judal, no Alibaba – no friend to remind her of an entire world apart from the crown she sees everyday in the looking glass. Envy's bitter weed springs up, why does he get to leave when she cannot?
"Hey Kougyoku, remember when we hid in the library in Sindria?" There's mischief at work, she knows, and it starts to chase away her despondent thoughts.
"How could I forget? You kept making those silly animal noises and I couldn't stop laughing," she says.
Why is he asking this? What's the point, when he's going to leave anyway? Silly recollections will never fill the gap left by a person's absence. So why? Why?
"We gave them a real scare that time, didn't we? They thought there were stray cats and dogs fighting inside. I remember someone said, 'Is that how a princess should act?'"
"Hey! You're the one who told me to knock around some furniture to make it sound realistic!"
"Admit it, you had fun!"
"But then your friend came and growled so loud my ears were ringing until the next day! I'd never been that scared in my life!"
"Not even at Magnostadt?"
"At least at Magnostadt it wasn't just the two of us against that monster!" It's so easy to imagine them now, with tongues of flame enveloping him like the aqua swirls she prided in, and she wonders again where the relics of yore have disappeared to.
"To think, I had just finished mastering full-body equip."
"You were so cool, you know, working together with Kouen onii-sama."
"That guy is crazy! No offense, but I went into shock from watching a volcano emerge from the ground. And then your brother dragged me into it!"
"Ah, that's why you fainted."
"I didn't...no I…I did faint." That sheepish smile steals into his face again, and anyone who wasn't there would hardly believe the two of them were the very same excited teenagers blowing up monsters in the sky. It wasn't without its risks, though. The image of him being carried in the fanalis girl's arms like a life-sized doll makes her laugh, causing her headpiece to sag by an inch.
"That crown must be heavy," he notes, and it's something besides pity that she sees in his gaze.
"It is," she confesses. It really is.
"Worry no longer. I've got the perfect remedy for that!" He grabs the burdensome headpiece and starts running.
"Think this would make a good plate?" he calls out before racing back down the hall.
"Hey! Give that back! That's against the rules, Alibaba-chan!" It isn't good, someone might see and stir a fuss; the palace is a breeding ground for rumors, and she's been a victim of nasty ones more times than she can count. "Alibaba-chan!"
Off she goes, instinctively chasing him the way Judal-chan would - the way Judal-chan can't - and before she realizes it, they're back in the garden. He waves the heirloom mian like a white flag over a sandcastle, and there's something so foreignly nostalgic about that gesture that sends her to her knees, breathless.
"My family would have killed each other over that," she says, narrowing her eyes. He smiles and he's not panting as much and she thinks it's not fair she gets almost no exercise these days.
"A crown isn't worth dying for," he says, from decades' worth of experience. "It's the people's trust you need and I guarantee you have it."
The flowers from those days
Remain etched in our memories
But in the passing of time
Why did they have to fade?
"Expect to find a very different place. As Kou has changed, so has Balbadd," is Kougyoku's final warning before Alibaba heads out the palace gates.
"It's alright. I'm prepared to face whatever. Home will always be home, even when you don't recognize it." With a wave of his hand, he is off, to follow wherever the wind takes him.
It's okay, Kougyoku thinks, reassured at last of his wellbeing and their own. For as long as they dwell under the same sun, there will be light, filling the cracks and the gaps and the empty spaces of the heart, and that is all she could ever ask for.
"Take care, Alibaba-chan!" she calls out, unable to resist.
"See you, Kougyoku!" And he is gone.
Months later, Ka Koubun brings reports of their envoy's progress. "He's currently on his way to Parthevia. But I still don't understand, why is he helping us? Alibaba has no duty whatsoever to our nation. If anything, he should consider us his enemies. It was Prince Hakuryuu who cut him off from the world for three years. Let's not forget how Kou subjugated Balbadd. Surely he doesn't take that lightly," the assistant-to-the-prime-minister points out. "How can he volunteer his assistance without taking anything in return?"
Kougyoku rises from her seat, because from her position, the blast from the hearth can only burn with its cold.
Why does he help? Having asked the same question many times herself, she knows the answer, sure as summer's breath and the hiccups of fall. Alibaba, like her and anyone else, will do anything to protect what he holds dear. He values human life. He values friendships. He values countries and the citizens who strive to uphold them. He makes mistakes, grave mistakes - yes, and so did she – but he will do his best to right his wrongs. That is why.
"Maybe it's atonement," she says, grasping the world and molding it into those three words.
Ka Koubun doesn't seem convinced. "What for?" he asks, skeptic as ever.
"Atonement," Koumei repeats. "That explains much."
"How?" Poor Ka Koubun is reduced to confused glances as the siblings share a faraway look. She is the Empress and Koumei wears a mask. For losing the war, for losing their brothers, this too, is atonement.
"If our brother were here, he'd praise that man," Koumei predicts.
"If Kouen onii-sama and Kouha onii-sama were here, I'd give them a hug," she says, and her brother's face softens in the warm afternoon light.
That night, Kougyoku finds the perfect spot for her present. She sets it beside a set of clay figurines she made of Judal and her brothers, so many years ago. And right next to the Judal figure, reflecting light from the candles, it seems to wink happily.
When Kougyoku sleeps, she dreams of flowers.
Now you have returned
Feeling the same thrill as I do
To see our safe haven, home of our dreams
But it's gone
The sun is bright when Alibaba returns to Kou. The empress nearly trips on her hem in her rush to greet him.
"Yo, Kougyoku!" And there he is, looking even better after all these months.
"Welcome back, Alibaba-chan! What happened?"
"Let's see…Balbadd, Magnostadt, Heliohapt, Reim, Parthevia. Met some old friends…and their kids. Talked with Sinbad, and left behind a few pirates on the way. So much has changed! Imagine my surprise when I returned to my country. I could barely recognize the new Balbadd!" He's brimming with suspended exuberance. There will be stories, many, many tales of his adventures, and they'll talk around the fireside and she'll relate some of her own. But that's for later.
"Everyone...they just...grew up," he states, and she nods in agreement.
War and the absence of war can change so much. And it's only been three years since the transformation began. Kou, the ancient infant, struggles to adapt, find its place, find a balance between new and old, and survive.
"But," he continues, grinning, "you haven't changed at all."
"Really?" She doesn't know whether to take it as a rebuke or a compliment, but that doesn't stop a grateful tear from scalding her cheek.
"Yeah. You still cry at the drop of a hat."
"Alibaba-chan! That's mean!"
As time passes
Chances come and go
Those blissful yesterdays
Can we ever bring them back?
Life goes on.
"Your Excellency! Urgent news!" proclaims a messenger, herald of success and doom alike. A younger princess might have complained over the additional work, but this Kougyoku does not.
You can't always bring back the past.
"Kougyoku! They're waiting for us!"
The truth is, you don't have to.
Her heart breaks into a run - forward, not away. Good or bad or total disaster, she promised to face it as a true leader should.
Because there is today and there is tomorrow, and if you try to fit them in the hole left by yesterday, they'll never fit.
"I'm coming! Wait for me, Alibaba-chan!"
But they're all you have now, and if you reach forward to clasp hands with every tomorrow, you'll find the present, overflowing, enough.
The empress rises.