this is a disclaimer.

AN: heh. And then I realised that I'd never actually posted "stand a thousand trials" on ffnet. So... here it is.

stand a thousand trials

Dastan had been determined not to fight with Tamina about a single thing. Not this time. Not again. Not now he knows how close they came to never being anything else but reluctant allies.

I wish we had had time to be together, Dastan...

He will not spoil this second chance – this miracle – by fighting with the woman he now knows he loves.

Not a single argument, he tells himself.

"I am not being married off to you within a matter of days in some hastily cobbled-together ceremony meant to legitimise the entire invasion and attempt the momentous task of making your brother look better by proxy!"

"Well, I'm not going to spend the next year sitting around here in Alamut doing nothing and being kept at arm's length away from you by your advisors while my brothers fight on the front lines without me!"

In the end, they settle on a four-month betrothal (still too short, in the opinion of her Council) and a ridiculously lavish ceremony the mere plans for which make the half-starved street boy in Dastan flinch at the sight of so much wasted money.

"Never again," he says to Bis when he leaves her chambers. "Not another fight. I swear it, Bis. Life's too short."

Bis, wise man that he is, knowing Dastan the way he does, doesn't answer.

To say the man is infuriating is like saying a sandstorm is a minor inconvenience.

Tamina doesn't think she has ever met anyone quite like him, by turns frivolous and noble, caring and arrogant. He can meet and match her every verbal strike and sally, he never holds back for fear of upsetting her and proper protocol means about as much to him as it does to his horse.

In that, at least, she agrees with him wholeheartedly.

She knows that he was once a street rat from the slums – half the world knows the story of the Persian Prince Dastan and the generosity (or foolishness, depending on who is telling the tale) of the King Sharaman – but she does not realise how much his origins are still with him until she storms into his chambers one morning to finish an argument and sees how comparatively plain they are.

He is not there, perhaps luckily for her, because the sight of them makes Tamina pause in surprise, and something in her softens, her anger draining away.

She leaves quietly, smiling to herself as if he's just told her a secret.

"You need to learn how to use one of these," Dastan says firmly, holding out the hilt of the sword to her.

"I have in fact had some instruction," Tamina says, frowning at him. "This is what you called me here for?"

"Some instruction isn't good enough," Dastan says. She meets his eyes – such blue eyes! Pale as a Westerner's, like the Christians – and sees a shadow of fear in them, of concern and determination.

Her fingers curl, slowly, around the hilt of the sword, and the quiet suspicion that has been in her mind since he returned the Dagger to her emerges once again.

"Dastan?" Tamina asks, so low it's very nearly a whisper.

He swallows. Looks away briefly. Draws his own sword.

"Show me what you can do, Princess."

Oh, a challenge, is it?

Very well, then.

Dastan begins spending every waking moment with Tamina, entranced not just by her sharp wit and her arrogance and all the tricksy ways she has of getting people to do what she wants them to rather than what they want to do, but also by her smile and her quick hands and the way her hair curls down past her shoulders.

Somehow, he realises, during their little jaunt across the length and breadth of the Persian Empire he forgot to remember her, properly, in every last detail of looks and movements and that little giggle of hers – she actually giggles! – and now he's going to take every chance he can get to memorise everything about her, from the lilt of her voice to the arch of her eyebrow to the gleam of her skin in the sunlight.

(He'll never be able to completely banish the memory of her terror when she let go his hand and the way she called his name as if he was the only thing in the world that mattered to her as she fell, but if he looks at her for long enough, he can push it aside.)

She catches him staring more often than not, but he refuses to be embarrassed. Not anymore.

And the way he looks at her! Tamina has never been watched so much in her entire life, and she is a Princess and a Priestess and the ruler of this city. Dastan's eyes are always on her, and his gaze goes from new to expected to craved, like a drug, like water in the desert, his warm pale eyes and his slow secret smile.

One day, at evening meal, she has one of her maidens bring him a miniature of her, exquisitely painted. He smiles, delighted, and meets her eyes across the length of the table; then he makes a show of tucking it into his shirt, close to his skin.

Damn the man. She'd meant for him to be the flustered one.

King Sharaman arrives at Alamut a month after the initial invasion. When word of his brother's treachery had reached him, he determined to remain in prayer for longer than he had first planned, seeking guidance and comfort from God. Tus and Garsiv meet him at the gates of the palace, and he embraces them, one after the other, longer and fiercer than he has done in years.

"My son," he says quietly to each of them before they draw apart, and to Tus: "You did well."

"It was Dastan's victory," Tus says. "In all ways."

Sharaman's eyes gleam. "Dastan, yes," he says, trying hard to hide a smile. "And where is the newly-betrothed hero of Persia?"

Garsiv looks mildly exasperated. "If he's not here by now, he'll likely be with said betrothed."

"And?"

Tus gives him a sidelong glance. "Well..."

"Half the time I'm afraid they'll kill each other, and the other half I'm worried for the legitimacy of their heirs," Garsiv says with customary bluntness, and their father flings his head back and laughs for the first time since learning the truth of Nizam.

"He's met his match then," he says, sounding satisfied.

When they reach the Princess Tamina's private gardens, it becomes plain that Dastan has also met an extremely quick and eager student in the fine art of swordplay. She's laughing, fierce and free, and Dastan is calling encouragement and advice –

"That's it, see, perfect balance, and now – there!"

Step, thrust, parry, move back, blades clashing, and then he moves faster than a striking snake, stepping in and catching her wrist, turning her sword away from him and dragging her towards him.

"You're still not fast enough," he says admonishingly.

Tamina twists and puts her whole weight into the way she throws her shoulder into his chest; Dastan, caught off guard, yelps and staggers backwards and his foot catches on something and they both fall into the fountain behind him with a huge splash.

Garsiv shuts his eyes in silent eloquence. Tus has to look away to hide an exasperated grin, and the King sighs.

"Dastan!"

Two months after the invasion, after Sharaman has come and gone, taking Tus and Garsiv for the time being but leaving his blessing on their union, Tamina meets Dastan in the High Chamber, before the altar that holds the Dagger.

It is sunset, and the room is lit up red and gold. From here, she used to think when she was a child, she could see the whole world.

"You know what it is," she says, stopping in front of him.

Dastan is sitting on the steps before the altar, and he nods once.

Tamina sinks to the floor in front of him and crosses her arms over his knees, resting her chin on them: even more indecently close than when they spar in the gardens.

"Tell me everything," she says.

He does.

"If you had told me at the beginning..."

"Then what?" Dastan asks. "Oh, Princess, here's your Dagger that I took off your dead Knight, I've just been sent back in time by it to stop my uncle's treachery and by the way, you are destined to fall in love with me, so you'd better say yes to this betrothal or you'd be disobeying the orders of your Gods. Hah! We make our own destinies, Tamina."

Tamina leans up and presses a hand to his cheek.

"Are you sure?" she asks gently, and puts her lips to his.

It's an awkward kiss at first, what with her reaching up and him leaning down and her being so inexperienced at it, but then, with a mutter against her lips that sounds like frustration, Dastan wraps his arms around her waist and hauls her up into his lap and there is nowhere to put her hands suddenly except his bare chest under his shirt, warm skin and hard muscle and the bump of a scar and his thighs are strong and tense under hers and his fingers push into her hair, tangling in her curls, and their mouths slide together just that bit differently – just that bit more, she thinks wildly – and it's dark by the time she finds her way back to rational thought again, the moonlight glowing on the floor, lighting up her own white clothes, casting lovely shadows across Dastan's face.

Tamina traces one with a fingertip, past his left eye, the scar there, by his nose to his lips, swollen with her kisses, parted, wanting more. The look in his eyes makes her shiver: makes her insides tie themselves into strange knots and then melt into jelly. She thinks if she weren't gripping his bicep so tightly she'd slide off his lap into a puddle on the floor.

"You," Dastan says, with an effort, "are a challenge to my self-control. Princess."

Tamina starts to smile. "I think I rather like you without it," she says, and tugs him close for another kiss, far softer than the others.

He groans into her mouth. "Tamina. If you'd been present when my father gave me the speech about just how imperative it was that I do nothing to endanger the validity of this marriage or the legitimacy of our heirs..."

"How," she demands breathlessly, "can you manage – a sentence like that – when I'm kissing you?"

Dastan groans again, hands wide and firm on her lower back. "I have no idea," he admits, and she laughs triumphantly.

"... and after that we'll swear to one another here," Tamina explains, standing once again before the altar of the Dagger. Dastan hides a smile, looking at her there and thinking of last night and the way she flushed and shivered in his arms.

"You and your pagan ceremonies," he says. "Walks, public unveilings, cutting each other's palms..."

Tamina turns to look at him, eyebrows climbing, and crosses her arms over her chest. "If you are that uncertain about my pagan ceremonies, Prince Dastan, then tell me now and we'll say no more about it. Ever. Again."

Dastan swallows.

"So is there a ceremonial knife for the palm-cutting, or..."

Prince Dastan and Princess Tamina are married after a four-month betrothal at dawn in the High Chamber, according to the customs of her people and in the sight of her Gods and his and the eyes of all Persia and Alamut. The feasting lasts for a week, with fireworks at twilight every day and the sounds of music and laughter filling the streets of the sacred city.

Tamina watches from her balcony, wearing one of Dastan's tunics. He wraps his arms around her from behind and draws her back against his chest, propping his chin on her shoulder.

"Lovely," he says.

"Your father's firework-makers are very skilled," she says, smiling a little.

"You know that's not what I was talking about."

Tamina turns in his arms to look up at him, bursts of red and green painting his face and dying away quick as lightening. Street rat turned Prince of Persia turned saviour of the world and protector of the Sands of Time, and now he's hers: Consort of the High Priestess of Alamut.

"I love you," she says, as if she's only just realised it.

Dastan smiles and bends to kiss her.