"Mozenrath!" Aladdin threw open the door of his room, hand held to his head in an attempt to focus. "Moze…no… no please don't have been that stupid." Upon awakening everything had returned in a rush. He still felt ill from the after affects of the potion, but not enough to keep him down with what he knew had happened. That idiot! Tha stupid…beautiful…idiot! Aladdin shook himself fully awake and called out again. "Mozenrath!"
A sound down the hall echoed to his ears, a cry of undeterminable origin. "What the…?"
The doors to Jasmine's room flung open, a nurse maid scrambling out with his cheeks flushed and breathless. "Sultan! Your majesty!" she stammered as she saw Aladdin in the hallway. "Your majesty…it's impossible…I've no idea how it came about…!"
"What happened?" When the woman continued to babble incoherently, Aladdin seized her firmly by the shoulders. "What happened woman!" he demanded and she pointed to his wife's rooms.
But despite all fears, the quarters of the Sultana were filled with light.
Jasmine sat up in bed, her hair left unbound and wafting in the morning breeze, her eyes gazing off into the skyline as the sunlight cast against her caramel tinged flesh. She heard Aladdin's footsteps in her room and turned to him, her rosy complexion returned. Aladdin…"
For one brief moment, everything else vanished from Aladdin's mind. He grasped his wife to him, holding her cheeks and kissing her face a thousand times over, adoring the smile on her compliant lips and glow in her nutmeg eyes. "Jasmine…Jasmine how…I don't understand…"
Jasmine slowly took his hand, leading it under the covers and pulling it back to reveal tha beginning of a belly. Aladdin flushed bright red and rubbed the back of his neck, realizing what his wife was showing him. She took am moment, letting him enjoy the sensation of a pregnant womb as much as she did, and then looked into her husbands eyes. "You have to save him." She said in a voice that brooked no refusal. Then she told him everything from the previous night, all she could remember from the glowing red eyes in her vanity, to Mozenrath burning away the plague that threatened to ravage their child.
"He gave himself…to save our child." Aladdin said, sinking down beside her bed, hands still on the precious stomach. "He sacrificed himself…"
"Because he loves you." Jasmine finished, her chest burning.
Aladdin hesitated, looking at her with fear in his eyes. "I have been a terrible husband to you love." He said. "No I have. I've been an even worse Sultan, allowing my hero complex to sway my decisions and endangering ourselves and our people." He bent him head in humility. "Do you still love me Jasmine?" he said suddenly, afraid to meet her eyes for the answer.
"Aladdin…" she thought, trying to find a way to phrase it right. "I think…I was so angry at you. For such a long time I hated you, because I could feel you falling for him the way you did for me. I could feel my hold on you slipping like sand through an hourglass and I thought if I let you go, you'd leave me forever." She shushed him when he tried to protest, a firm hand on his mouth silencing Aladdin. "But my anger at you had little to do with your actions…and more to do with my lacking. I felt I'd failed you as a wife because I hadn't born children yet. I thought you fell into Mozenrath's arms to spit me for my inability to carry." Her eyelids glistened with tears. Everything was coming out now. Why are humans such fools? To hold back emotion and allow for such foolish misinterpretations that only build the walls of anger higher? Why do we wait till too late before we confess our truth to those we love, especially when so much trouble could be saved?
"But last night I came to a realization." She smiled, a little ruefully. "He loves you Aladdin. And I know you love him. You don't need to protest it." Her smile turned a little more jovial. "It's alright. I didn't understand it then but I think I do now."
Aladdin stood up, looking at her with renewed respect and appreciation. "I love you Jasmine. I always will."
"And I know that now." She responded. "But…"
"…I have to find him. I have to rescue Mozenrath." His voice was firm, steady, the voice of a man realizing his power and responsibility.
"I know." Jasmine nodded and kissed him gently on the lips.
"I'll come back. I promise." Aladdin said and returned the kiss. He turned to the servants, instructing them to keep her safe and check on her every second. But Jasmine was no long thinking about her condition. Everything was alright now, she could sense it in her heart.
She hadn't lied to Aladdin when she said she understood now. Well, maybe not entirely, but much better than before. People are not one dimensional beings. You can not place them into convenient little packages and put a label on, justifying your personas of them. The Aladdin she had first met was she knight in shining armor, her bad influence with a good soul. And all his deeds had turned him into the Seven Deserts hero of fairy tales and bedtimes stories. But the reality was much more complicated. Jasmine knew there was a part of his life, rougher and darker than she could ever imagine, that she couldn't understand. Not for lack of want but lack of experience. She was his light half, the part that kept Aladdin's goodness shining through in the most desperate of situations.
Mozenrath, with all he had been through, all she knew he had suffered, represented that side she couldn't know. She knew rumors of what went on in the deepest scum pits of Agrabah's alleys. What a young man like Aladdin could have been forced to do just for a meal, or because someone thought he was too handsome for his own good. She knew his struggles outweighed hers ten times over. She knew, but couldn't grasp it any more than she could grasp wind. All she could provide sympathy but sometimes that just made things worse. Mozenrath knew first hand the kind of daily strife Aladdin could (and probably had) gone through.
He loves us both because we both are so like him, only to different extents. Jasmine said to herself as Aladdin kissed her good-bye and headed out the doors. I can't thank you enough for the Mozenrath. For giving our child back to us. "Bring him back Aladdin." She muttered under her breath. "Bring him safely home."