Pre-1819: Regret

Malik pulled on his elder brother's sleeve, desperately trying to make the older man stay. "Brother, don't leave me alone! Please, I don't want to be alone!" He pleaded, tears brimming in his dark, mud brown eyes.

Hakim looked away, biting his lips as he tried to resist the temptation to kneel down, gather Malik in his arms and promise the boy that he would never leave. But he knew that if he looked into his beloved younger brother's soulful and expressive eyes, his determination would crumble, and as the Sultanate of Johor, he could not afford that. He had to leave.

Forcing Malik to let go of his shirt, he pushed the boy away and said through gritted teeth, "I don't need you anymore. You are useless to me now."

Malik sniffed and tried to near Hakim again but Hakim avoided the boy yet again. Rubbing the tears from his eyes, he questioned, "W-why?" He did not understand his brother's actions. Hakim had always told him how important he was.

"Does it matter? You wouldn't understand anyway." Hakim sneered, or at least, tried to. "Without that settlement of yours, you are useless." He clenched his fists and steeled his unravelling nerves, "Now stop bothering me! I'm leaving!"

The boy shook his head stubbornly and clung onto Hakim's sleeve again, his brown eyes burning with the determination to make his brother stay. Hakim bit his lips before, with a great amount of reluctance, forcibly pushing Malik away.

He ignored the cry of pain that escaped Malik's lips when the boy fell onto the ground; he ignored the wails that came from the boy behind him as he hurriedly strode away; and he ignored the pain that ripped his heart apart when he continue onward, away from the boy who had always, and would always, claim a piece of his heart and mind, away from the boy who had became his beloved younger brother, and away from the boy who was afraid of the dark, afraid of thunderstorms and most importantly, afraid of being alone.

He did not look back.

And decades later, he would regret his foolish decision to leave. Because the boy that would greet him would no longer the naïve, loveable and cheery boy he had once called his brother. Because the boy would become a calm, composed child who did not act like a child. Because the boy would no longer respond to the name Malik, but to Alex instead.

He would regret, because the boy who would stand before him would no longer be his younger brother.

"Why did you change so much?" He would murmur remorsefully to himself, his voice filled with age-old regrets and pain, whilst questioning a boy who did not even seemed to remember their past together.

"Because you left me alone. Because you did not look back." The boy would answer, his once young and exuberant brown eyes now dark with hatred, and Hakim would discover that the boy did not lose his memories, but rather, chose to forget.

And the barely audible reply, the animosity in the boy's eyes when their eyes meet, and the smile on the boy's face and adoration in the boy's eyes when the boy looked up to the man who now controlled them, would make him mourn for the times long past and regret a decision long since taken.

But because he would not know the consequences of his actions nor the sorrow he would feel decades later, he chose to ignore the boy, ignore the ache in his heart and continue walking onward.

"Don't leave me alone, brother! Please!"

Hakim, the Sultanate of Johor, did not look back.

'Ancient' history of Singapore:

The setting of this story is around the time when Singapore was a trading centre under the Sultanate of Johor in the 16th/17th century. After Portuguese raiders burnt down the settlement at the mouth of the Singapore River, Singapore fell into obscurity (I chose to portray that as Hakim abandoning Malik)