Right, so, not long ago I came across a post on Tumblr (there's a link in the AO3 version of this fic) challenging people to mash up their oldest and newest fandoms and make something with it. Well, my current focus of obsession is MCU Loki and has been for the last few years (I don't know that the MCU is exactly my newest fandom, but Loki definitely qualifies as "that thing that you love and can't stop thinking about right now"), and Aladdin was my first fictional crush when I was like 6 or 7. Little me pretended to be him a lot and even wrote really weird stories about him, years before I'd heard of fanfic.

And by "really weird," I mean he had an orca whale for a friend because that was my favorite animal at the time? (He dug a channel from the ocean to a fountain in the palace so they could hang out. Obviously this was a sensible thing that would totally work!) One time he found these orphan girls named April, May, and June stuck in an avalanche and adopted them? (When you're little, teenagers seem like old grown-up people, that's my only excuse for that one.) Later he had a run-in with Jafar's "chopping machine," which was straight out of one of those factory scenes in movies except it was mostly orange for some reason? So on the plus side, the weird little crossover you're about to read is easily the least nonsensical thing I've ever written about Aladdin.

He's almost there, he has the lamp in his hands, when he catches frantic motion out of the corner of his eye and whirls to see Abu lunge from the carpet's grasp, hands outstretched toward a massive red gem. "Abu, no!" he yells, starting to scramble down, but he knows he's already too late, Abu's going to grab it and then something bad is going to happen that at best will probably get them buried alive, and all he can think is well this definitely isn't how I expected to die—

Then there's a flash of green light and Abu freezes in midair for half a second, his fingers a hairsbreadth from the jewel, before dropping limply to the ground. Aladdin shoves the lamp in his pocket and starts down the steps, nearly skidding in his haste, as a young man steps out of the shadows—tall, probably not much older than Aladdin himself, dark clothes, definitely foreign—and crouches next to Abu.

"Get away from my monkey!" Aladdin shouts at him, and please don't be dead, if you've killed him I swear—

The stranger glances up, eyebrows raised. "Your pet is only sleeping. You are welcome for my saving us all from a fiery doom, by the way," he says dryly, and adds as Aladdin nearly slips between one stepping-stone and another, "you really don't want to fall in the water."

"Worked that out for myself, thanks," Aladdin snaps. "Get away from him."

The stranger raises both hands in exaggerated surrender and straightens, taking a step back, although his expression is distinctly amused. The carpet swoops in, bristling, and scoops up Abu before darting up and back to a safer distance. The stranger looks amused at that too, but otherwise he doesn't react, just puts his hands behind his back and waits.

Aladdin finally makes the last jump to shore and goes straight to Abu. The carpet helpfully drops to a more convenient height, and Aladdin automatically reaches for the monkey, but he can see immediately that Abu's all right—not injured, just sleeping heavily. He's even snoring.

"You see?" the stranger's voice says, much closer than Aladdin expected, and he jerks around. The stranger is still several paces back, smiling faintly. "Entirely unharmed. Now, if neither of you intends to cause another disaster in the next few seconds, I believe I shall be on my way."

Well, that's…not what Aladdin was expecting. "Were you following me?" he demands. "And you're just going to, what, randomly help us and leave?"

The stranger's smirk widens, and Aladdin really wants to punch that expression off his face. "Hardly. I came here for the same object you did, though perhaps not for the same reason. And now that I have what I came for, I have no reason to linger."

Aladdin reaches into his vest and comes up empty. He stares at the stranger, who makes an odd little gesture and pulls the lamp right out of thin air. "You bastard, you can't just—"

"Can I not?" the stranger says, his smile growing a little sharp. "You pick pockets yourself, correct? Do you follow any particular rules in doing so?"

Aladdin considers pointing out that he steals to eat, which he's almost sure the stranger has never needed to do, judging by his clothes (travel-worn but clearly well-made, mostly heavy cloth and fine leather), but that probably won't help. "I need that. I don't know what you want with it, but I need it."

"Do you," the stranger says. "Even if I wanted to give it away, I would certainly not hand an artifact like this to a sorcerer of petty, grasping ambition, as you propose to do."

"No I—wait, what?" Aladdin says. "I don't know any sorcerers. I'm just getting the lamp for some old guy. I don't know what he wants with it, but he's just—I don't know, an old beggar, probably."

The stranger's eyebrow twitches upward. "You know best, I am sure."

"He's not a sorcerer. He can't be," Aladdin says. The stranger just watches him, a very faint smirk tugging at the corner of his lips, and suddenly Aladdin wonders how the old guy got them out of the dungeon in the first place, how he knew about the cave, and he hesitates. "…is he?"

"Mmm," the stranger says. "Passably talented, too, for one without much innate power, although his greed far outstrips his ability to gain what he wants. Unless, of course, he were to acquire something like this." He nods at the lamp.

"The bent-over old guy," Aladdin clarifies, "the one with stick-skinny legs and some of the worst teeth I've ever seen, is a sorcerer."

The stranger rolls his eyes. "If it makes the truth more palatable to you, he took the obvious precaution of disguising himself before he spoke to you. Wouldn't do for anyone to see the sultan's vizier sneaking about the dungeons and making deals with common street thieves, would it?"

"Um," Aladdin says, "what." The stranger might be lying—nothing about this entire night has made any sense and now probably isn't the best time to start taking things at face value—but if he's right that the vizier is a power-hungry sorcerer, then… "I have to warn Jasmine. She could be in danger."

"You are in a magical, somewhat sentient cave far beneath the desert, attempting to retrieve an artifact about which you know nothing for a mysterious old man about whom you know nothing, and at any moment you might brush against the wrong object and doom yourself, if your pet does not do it for you. Perhaps you should be more concerned about your own danger." He leaves out the fact that he is himself an unknown quantity and quite possibly dangerous as well, given how much he knows and how powerful he must be, but that seems to go without saying.

"Yeah, well," Aladdin says, an angry sort of stubbornness welling up inside him. "I'm just a street rat, right? Nobody cares if I live or die, and about all I can look forward to is turning into an old street rat like that geezer upstairs. But Jasmine's different. She matters. She cares about the people here, like she might actually do some good if she had the chance."

The stranger tilts his head, expression turning thoughtful. "Such as?"

Aladdin shrugs. "Redistribute food, maybe? Make sure little kids aren't starving to death on the streets? Actually listen to people? I don't know."

"She cannot rule," the stranger points out.

"Maybe she can, if she keeps refusing to marry and her father gets desperate enough to change some laws," Aladdin says, and he wishes he'd thought to tell her that earlier.

"And you would wish that?" the stranger says. "Not to reach for power yourself, but to support a ruler in defiance of tradition simply because you think she would be best for the people?"

"Well…yeah," Aladdin says. "I'm not…I've never wanted power." He frowns. "But you do, right? What do you want with that lamp?"

The stranger huffs out a mirthless laugh. "I was hoping to impress my father, but I am beginning to realize that any such attempt on my part is doomed to failure, simply because my brother effortlessly overshadows any gift I offer. And this particular artifact, at best, will end up gathering dust in one of our vaults, eventually forgotten, unused either for good or ill."

"So, like it is here, basically."

The stranger shakes his head. "Buried and forgotten rather more thoroughly than that, I think, particularly considering your mysterious benefactor already knows of it and desires it. Truthfully, I suspect you have a better chance of achieving your aims than I do. And who can say, it might be fun to see what happens." He tosses the lamp to Aladdin, who's caught by surprise enough to fumble it a little but not to drop it. Street-rat instincts are better than that.

"Thanks, I guess?" Aladdin says. "I don't even know what to do with it."

A smile tugs at the stranger's lips. "I don't believe it requires detailed instructions—in fact, I think it might be said to be self-explanatory—although you might do well to clean it before you attempt anything else. And do mind your pet. It would be a bit silly for you to end up buried after all."

"Don't get buried, don't give the lamp to the creepy old guy, right, got it. Anything else?"

"Bear it in good health, I suppose," the stranger says, and then he takes a short step backward and disappears.

"…right," Aladdin says. Abu makes a sleepy and probably obscene gesture in the stranger's general direction, or at least the spot where he's been standing until just now. Well, considering Aladdin started the night by nearly kissing a princess and he's now standing in an impossible talking cave with his new friend the magic carpet, seeing an extremely strange stranger vanish right in front of him is probably only the third-weirdest thing that's happened today. Second-weirdest, maybe.

He picks up Abu with one hand and holds the lamp up in the other, squinting at it in the dim light, and the carpet peers curiously over his shoulder. Two different and differently weird people—plus the lamp's placement in this cave—have indicated it's something special, but frankly he's never seen a less special-looking lamp. It's cheap metal with no embellishments to speak of, it's tarnished everywhere, and it even has a couple dents in the side like it's spent time getting kicked around. There's some writing on the side, maybe, but it's hard to tell under the grime.

Abu pokes the lamp with one finger and shrugs at him. Aladdin shrugs back and starts rubbing at it with a relatively clean corner of his vest. It's at least worth a try to see what happens.