He's marrying his enemy.
No way.
A runaway prince materializes from the shadows of street corners, his profile so strikingly average that not one of the palace guards recognize him as anything but a common thief seeking to appease rampaging hunger pangs. He knows his way around, one of them remarks, as the intruder slips through their grasp like the shifting desert sands he came from. Alibaba vaults over fortress-high castle walls, forcing his way inside his former home in a bid to save his people. Hallway upon corridor of guards block his path, brandishing steel guarantees of merciless death. His only allies are the sword in his hand, wits honed by years of wandering the hostile streets, and what little courage he mustered from Sahbmad's report the night before.
What results is a face-off — no, actually, a face-down — ending with a disgraced Ahbmad caressing his puffy cheek on the floor. Now the only problems are an empty throne and his eldest brother's fiancee.
"Your logic is flawed! Your words make no sense! Why should I listen to you?" the princess screams after too many minutes of a heated argument.
She's a royal pain in the neck, he decides. He will not — shall not — shall never, ever marry such a girl.
He wins the debate. The defeated girl returns home, unwed yet begrudgingly satisfied by their arrangement. He hopes this will be the last he ever hears of her and her country. For now, he has the fate of a whole nation to attend to.
The Balbadd revolution ultimately fails, the resulting republic dissolved by Kou's policies. He had lost to that girl after all, and more than once he imagines her face gloating over his imagined triumph, all the while knowing he could never, ever do anything but screw up.
The desert air is so, so cold.
Who would have thought that a former enemy would become her first friend? Kougyoku sighs, wrapped up in reminiscing the past. The flower crown in her hands is round like the sun and twice as bright. She weaves a stem into a slender wreath, more patiently this time, like her friend taught her. The result is sturdy yet delicate — beautiful.
He's heading this way now, eyes sparkling like a child seeing his first rainbow.
"Kougyoku! There you are. I've been looking for you!"
"Alibaba-chan!"
"Hey, there's something I wanna show you!"
"What is it? What on earth are you so excited about so early in the morning?"
"My master taught me a new move, and I just perfected it a while ago. Here, check this out!"
With a burst of flames, his weapon triples in size. She should be scared as he executes such dangerous moves, but all she can do is wonder how a single person could be so full of light.
In sea of unfamiliar faces, he finds an ally in the girl soaring over the waves.
"We're good friends," she declares proudly, an hour before Magnostadt's monster rips off the flesh of his arm.
This is enough to make her go berserk.
"How dare you hurt my brother and my dear friend!" With a chilling battlecry, she sends a hundred spears of solid ice at the enemy. He has never seen her this furious before. When there's something — or someone — this girl wants to protect, you'll have to fight the ocean and her before you inflict any harm. That is, if she doesn't tear you apart first.
This is why, months later, when she promises to do anything in her power to help him, he believes her.
"You want me to marry him?" she asks her brother, unconvinced by what her ears claim is truth.
"It's merely an arrangement for mutual benefit. Nothing more, nothing less. He already said yes."
Kouen is stern, she knows, and cruel, but isn't this too much? She remembers a fanalis girl always by Alibaba's side. Maybe Alibaba-chan likes her. She definitely has feelings for him. I'll just get in the way.
It's awkward on so many levels, but as the eighth princess, she doesn't have a choice in the matter.
And when the news reaches her that Alibaba and Judal were killed in a two-on-two duel, all thoughts of friend and marriage turn to vapor in the dry, dead air.
The mess of war is layer upon layer of despair flowering upon the land. Sinbad's forces rain down to shatter illusions of black and white. In the time it takes to recover from Zepar's grip, her brothers are gone and she is missing.
Three years later, a world has changed. Kou is falling, and Kougyoku feels the remaining outline of her soul being dragged under with it.
Then someone barges into a palace, like so many years ago. "I'm here to see a friend!" he exclaims, with all the sun shining on the patch of daisies from those golden days in Sindria. He tells her stories, and three years of nightmares chip off.
When he explains a plan to save her struggling country, she can almost see the scattered blossoms of her life come together in his hands.
There's a wedding taking place, and the entire court of Kou is witness. They could be Prince and Princess. Or Empress and Prime Minister. Neither of the pair cares. They are friends, and that's what they'll call themselves until the end.
"An engagement is an engagement. You were destined to marry into the Saluja clan anyway," says Kouen, weeks before the ceremony. Only this time Kougyoku's lips don't curl in disgust.
The affair isn't lavish enough. The economy is still swaying on its knees. Kou isn't half as rich as it used to be. But for Alibaba and Kougyoku, simplicity is a nice change from the display of wealth they're more than sick of.
In the absence of fireworks, they have the stars, and under the brightest moon they raise a toast to the future. It won't be easy, he knows. A part of her heart will always hurt, but she's okay with that. There's so much that remains to be fixed, and so much that will never be.
Kougyoku has yet to fully grasp the intricacies of politics and marriage. Add to that the street orphans to whom they open the doors of the palace, and Kougyoku's got a quite a handful to worry about.
Alibaba's travels don't end for a long time. The thirst for adventure is deeply ingrained into his blood. He will always heed the call of the streets.
If chasing after places is a song, she can't hear it. But he does. So off he goes on another mission, and another, spreading sunshine wherever he goes. Let's make peace, he'll say to the leaders. Everyone should live their own picture of happiness, he'll tell whichever traveler he comes across. And at the end of every journey he'll come home — to Aladdin, Morgiana, Hakuryuu, and Kougyoku.
Life has been kind, Kougyoku thinks. Despite the tears of the past, despite the gray of the present, she finds reasons to smile. A nation's faces less broken. The promise of a tiny tuft of golden hair. She's made too many mistakes, but he taught her to stop cursing destiny.
Had I been unlucky, things would have gone the other way.
She is not.
After all, she married her best friend.