Disclaimer: I don't own Aladdin.

A/N: This is both the beginning and the end of my other story Red Flowers. Thanks for putting up with the ramblings of an Arabian Nights-crazy person. And if you're wondering where Aladdin is, I don't have a good answer to that. You'll just have to search for him, I guess.

Jafar took a freshly cut tulip, a bright scarlet, and the color of blood. From his tower, he sent a pigeon, each claw clutching the edge of a silken handkerchief. Gently, he placed the tulip stalk in the little handkerchief, and set it off to his beloved.

In her tower, Jasmine eagerly anticipated the scratch of tiny pigeon claws striking her marble window ledge. A bright red tulip! Jasmine blushed, thinking of Jafar. The symbol of their passionate love, though they may be in separate towers and must never meet unaccompanied, they kept their love alive with the pigeons they sent to each other. Absentmindedly feeding the pigeon, Jasmine thought about how she kept one pigeon while Jafar kept its mate. If only, she could be like this pigeon, free to fly towards her beloved.

Taking a pen, she wrote,

If you can tolerate my absence, I cannot stand yours. I miss you.

Rolling up the paper, she attached it into a small tube and attached it to the bird's leg. Holding the pigeon in her hand, she calmed the bird with a few pats. "You must be anxious to meet your mate, hush now, be calm, lest people know of your presence." Releasing the pigeon, she smiled as it flew speedily away to Jafar's tower.

Fly, my lonely bird of time,

never will we know if our love is true,

at night I sleep and dream of you,

only to awake in my empty room.

One night, the princess was restless and unable to sleep. Startled, she heard a flurry of wings at her window.

As I am the nightingale, you are the rose whose thorns pierce my heart, turning the rose red.

And another message:

Do not worry my love, I will be away to Istanbul. Pray that I come back safe.

Numb, that was how the princess felt. Everything in the palace gardens reminded her of Jafar. 'How could the flowers bloom so? When my lover is no longer of this earth?' she thought.

A caged nightingale, brought forth by a party of ministers, gloating on their success. They wound Jasmine with every barbed insult to Jafar al-Barmaki, mocking him even in death. When they saw the princess, they paused in their merrymaking.

"Let the nightingale go, let it be free," Jasmine ordered.

"But princess, this bird has been bought to sing for our entertainment," they protested. However, they did not wish to give reason for an early dismissal and grudgingly complied.

Suddenly, the sultan showed up. "Jasmine, since they have let the nightingale go, you shall have to tell us a story," the sultan said merrily, though his eyes were pleading.

"Or else, what will you do? Have me executed the next morning?" Jasmine said cynically, remembering Jafar.

She felt pang of pity in her heart when she saw her father's stricken expression. Try as she might, she could not bear to hurt him, even when he had caused her so much pain.

Sitting on a cushion, she began her tale, "There was once a poor boy from the streets by the name of Aladdin…