Alibaba sat back on the back of an expensive chair, massing the tired neck by the hand. The lines on the threw off papers have been swimming before his eyes for a long time, and he sat at the table anyway, having his nose in various trade contracts, acts and other important pieces of paper for decision-making. Though Balbad is a republic, he has to solve the most part of questions after all, as the person who leads all the people believing in him. It was difficult, but he turned from the quick-tempered boy doubting himself into the strong young man in nearly ten years, he learned to be cool and devoted to the country, to be the Master his people are proud of.

But even powerful and imperious people have the days when it is necessary to get closed in the room, trying to distract from the thoughts gnawing the soul. Alibaba had such a day. The only day in the year when he locked in himself for the tenth year. The day when the part of his soul charred, having left a small, but not healing wound.

The day he lost Kassim.

Love is a cruel feeling after all. It leaves aching scars on the heart. You try to forget everything, checking the tears, nothing helps you. It is necessary to hide only behind a false smile, hoping that it will become real one day.

The body as well as heart remembers everything, too. Alibaba's hands still remember the warm crumbling ashes, and his cheek – the weightless last touch. Sometimes it seems to him that he still feels it as when Kassim's soul smiled to him for the last time, but it always turns out to be just a naughty beam of the sun slipping through a chink between the curtains and awaking him in the mornings.

Warm palms touch unexpectedly the strained shoulders, carefully massing the aching muscles through the fabric.

Alibaba doesn't turn around, he just closes the eyes relaxing. He never asks Aladin about the way he manages to slip into his locked room. Aladdin can do everything.

The sounds of the cool Balbad night are getting into the room through the slightly opened window, being pacifying and almost silent. They are not disturbing, they are just shrouding the two in the room by the magic cover as always in this day.

The feeling of the warm, massaging palms disappears, and Alibaba opens his eyes, lifting up the head slightly and meeting the eyes of Aladin.

He also changed for these ten years. The children's naivety disappeared from the blue eyes - it was replaced by the gravity peculiar to those who bear a lot on the shoulders. And though even being an adult guy, Aladin kept the same fragility, as it was in the childhood. The hidden force is sliding in each his movement preserving Alibaba for the long time.

They say nothing – they are just maintaining eye contact. They don't need words to understand each other. A look, a warm touch is enough.

When a bit later Alibaba is relaxing on the small sofa near his magi, feeling the thin hands giving cozy heat, he is smiling by the real smile which he hides on the Aladin's shoulder.

Long time ago he smiled sincerely to the other person, who was rough, bloody-minded, burning, but so beloved. Aladin differs from him, he differs so much. He is touchingly warm and tender. Alibaba always wants to preserve him, despite of the fact that his force has already eclipsed the abilities of the other magis.

But Alibaba could admit him to himself, allowing to treat little by little the sickest wound on his soul.