A/N: Whoops, didn't mean to make you wait for this chapter! I ran into a snag writing it that my wonderful beta Magic713 helped me fix. I'm sure you'll all find it much better than what you would have got without Magic's incluence, and therefore worth the wait. Thank you, Magic!

Chapter XXX: 2 of Spades

The kitchens were deserted when Jasmine entered them. She was glad to see that the servants had had the good sense to abandon ship while they still could. Now at least she didn't have to worry about what would happen to them. Only what would happen to herself and her father.

And what had happened to Aladdin…

She forced the thought of Aladdin away. There was absolutely nothing she could do for him now, except stay alive and try to find a way to bring down Jafar. Unfortunately, that last one was unlikely to happen anytime soon, so Aladdin would have to fend for himself, wherever he was.

Jasmine carefully avoided the thought that he likely did not have much time left, if it wasn't too late already. She couldn't afford to think like that now.

She turned her attention to the reason she had come in here in the first place—to find food. A few minutes ago, Jafar had loudly declared that he was famished, but no servants had come running to attend him. He'd sent her instead, but with a time limit. Evidently he didn't quite trust her.

The gilded chain binding her wrists clinked softly as she grabbed a platter and headed for the pantry. The chain was more a nuisance than a restraint, as it was long enough that it didn't really impede her movement much. Long enough, in fact, to be turned into a weapon should she need one. Jasmine had already fantasized about wrapping the chain around Jafar's skinny neck and pulling until his face turned blue. And she resolved that she would, first chance she got, do exactly that.

As Jasmine pulled fruit, crackers, and anything else she could find out of the pantry and piled it haphazardly on the platter, she pondered how she could get close enough to Jafar to turn the golden chain that he'd given her as a sign of his ownership against him. She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she almost didn't hear the soft noise.

She turned to face the door to the corridor, listening for the sound again, and was rewarded when the faint scraping was repeated. She seized a paring knife and moved silently as Aladdin had taught her to position herself just behind the door.

As the door eased open bit by bit, Jasmine waited, knife in hand, for whatever might come out of the aperture. She heard a scuffling, and then a familiar little voice.

"It's okay, Rami. I don't think anyone's here."

Jasmine's heart sank. Oh god. The children were trapped here now too?

Jasmine's throat closed on itself as she watched Najida's small form inch out into the kitchen, leading her little brother by the hand, Abu perched on her shoulder. She choked back a sob, but she must have made some noise anyway because the two children whirled around, eyes wide with fear.

As soon as they recognized her though, they ran into her waiting arms. She shushed their babbled questions as she held them close to her. "You must hush now, and listen to me, children. We're all in very great danger."

"What's happening, princess?" Najida asked. "The whole palace was shaking! We were scared." Rami nodded his agreement.

"A very evil sorcerer has taken over the palace. He has very strong magic. His name is Jafar, and you need to stay away from him."

Najida's face paled. "We know him," she whispered. "He's a bad man." Rami cowered against his sister, rubbing at a scar on his throat. Jasmine had noticed it before, but only now did she realize where it must have come from. She felt sick.

"You must do as I say in order to escape," she told the children.

"Will Prince Ali help us this time too?" asked Najida.

Jasmine blinked away tears as she shook her head. "Prince Ali isn't here right now. We're going to have to get ourselves out."

"How come you're wearing that?" At first Jasmine thought Rami meant the chain, until she saw his eyes lingering on her pants. The red fabric was so sheer that she could see right through it, and the brassiere that was little more than a strip of fabric wrapped around her chest did even less to conceal. Jasmine might have blushed if she'd had any emotional space left for shame.

"Never mind that right now," she told Rami gently. She didn't really want to explain to the children why she was dressed like a whore in a pleasure house. Jafar's primary motivation in forcing her into this garb was to humiliate her, but she was certain he had other intentions as well.

She led the children by the hand over to the pantry, where she began gathering some food into a towel that would function as a makeshift sack as she gave Najida directions. "You'll have to take the servants' staircase down to the yard. There's a small wall gate on the east side of the yard that will take you out beyond the palace. From there it should only take you a few hours to get back to Agrabah."

"Bad idea, princess."

At the sound of the unfamiliar voice behind her, Jasmine whirled around. It was him, the strange creature Jafar called a genie. In less than a second, Jasmine had snatched up the platter she had planned to use for Jafar's meal, holding it before her as a shield as she placed herself in front of the children.

"You stay away from us!" Jasmine hissed, fear roiling in her stomach.

The blue being smiled blithely at her. "I don't believe we've been properly introduced. I'm Genie."

"I don't care who you are! You did all this," Jasmine accused him, backing the children towards the door without lowering the platter an inch.

The genie actually flinched at her words, his smile fading a bit. "Yeah, heh, about that…I don't suppose a heartfelt apology would suffice?" Then the creature reached into his chest and pulled out a big blue heart, kneeling to offer it to her. Jasmine smacked his hand away with her makeshift shield. "Yowch!" The blue man cradled his hand as though she had actually hurt him. She hoped she had, though she doubted it. The genie was very powerful, and she was just a woman armed with tableware. She wondered if she could distract the genie long enough for the two kids to get away.

"Yikes," the genie chuckled. "Okay, Genie, no more sudden moves. She's like a tigress with her two cubs!" He smiled sadly at her. "I'm beginning to see why Al was so smitten."

"There's more where that came from," Jasmine told him with a lot more bravado than she felt. If the genie decided to retaliate, there was nothing she could do to defend herself or the children from his power. "If you think you scare me, then—" Wait one moment. Al? Did he mean…Aladdin?

Jasmine slowly lowered her shield. "You're the one who made Aladdin a prince," she said, realization dawning on her. "You used your magic to disguise him."

The genie smiled brightly at that. "Sharp as a whip!" he said, snapping his fingers. "Beauty and brains. Princess, you've got it all!"

"No," Jasmine frowned, "I don't. You took everything away. I'm not a princess anymore. You took my father's title. You took my home. You took—" Jasmine choked on the words, her pain and fear too crushing to say her lover's name again. She took a deep breath and prayed her voice would not shake. "You were helping him. Now you're helping his enemy. Why?"

"Well, I don't exactly have a choice," the genie muttered. "Believe me, princess, I wouldn't be doing this if I did."

"What do you mean? Jafar is forcing you to do this?" Jasmine could scarcely believe that. The genie was so much more powerful than Jafar, even now that Jafar was a sorcerer.

"Jafar has my lamp," the genie told her, looking miserable. "Whoever holds my lamp is my master. I have to obey him. I have to give him whatever he wishes for. Even after he uses his third and final wish, I still can't move against him as long as he has my lamp."

"The lamp…" Jasmine had seen it. Jafar kept the tarnished, old lamp close at hand. Now she knew why. But the genie's explanation of his quandary had given her an idea. "So whoever holds your lamp can wish for whatever they want, and you have to give it to them?"

"Right on the money, princess."

"What if I held the lamp?"

Jasmine could see the moment the genie grasped what Jasmine was thinking. A strange glass bulb containing light appeared above his head, blinking on and off rapidly. "Now there's an idea!" he exclaimed, giving her a broad smile. "All you have to do is give my lamp a rub, and I'll be yours."

Jasmine grinned. "So I rub the lamp and make a wish, and you'll grant it?"

"You got it!"

"Good." That decided, Jasmine turned to the two children, who were listening to the exchange with wide eyes. "Now, you two do just as I told you, and you'll be safe in Agrabah."

"Ah, princess," the genie interrupted, "I was going to tell you before, but that wall gate you mentioned has had a change of situation recently." He stepped to the door as he spoke. "You open the door," he said, and suited action to word. Behind the kitchen door there was no longer a hallway, but open sky and howling wind. "…And it's a hundred foot drop off a cliff!" the genie called over gale. He struggled to close the door against the wind, panting when it finally clicked into place.

Jasmine frowned. "Then how did the rest of the servants get out?"

"I think they went a little lower, princess." Jasmine raised an eyebrow at the genie and he elaborated. "They escaped through the dungeons."

Jasmine nodded and turned to the children again. "Then that's where you'll have to go."

"Aren't you coming with us?" Rami begged, clinging to Jasmine's pant leg.

She shook her head. "You'll have to go by yourselves. But you have each other, and Abu too. You can do it."

"We don't want to go to the dungeon!" Najida cried. "We want to stay with you. We want to see Aladdin!"

Jasmine knelt before the children and gathered them in her arms. "I know," she whispered to them. "I want to see Aladdin, too. But he isn't here right now, and I don't know when he'll be coming back." She pulled back a bit to look the children in the eye. "It isn't safe for you here. If Jafar catches you, he won't spare you just because you're children. He will hurt you if he gets the chance. You must not give him that chance. You must go." She pulled the children back into her arms and bit back the tears that threatened as they wrapped their arms about her. "I will come and find you both as soon as I can. I promise. When it's safe, I'll find you."

Jasmine's heart was heavy as she ushered the children and the monkey out the door. She hated this, leaving them to fend for themselves again. As she closed the door behind them, she felt a large hand on her shoulder.

"They'll be all right," the genie told her gently. "They're tough little tykes."

"I know. They've had to be to survive everything that's happened to them," Jasmine responded. "That doesn't make me feel better about sending them off alone though."

She returned to the pantry to finish the task she'd come to do. She had better get moving; Jafar would be wondering what was keeping her. The blue man followed. "I hate this, Genie," she told him as she pulled out anything she could find that was edible and piled it on the tray. Her throat was tight with emotion but still the words spilled out. "You were wrong about me being a tigress protecting her cubs. I can't protect Najida and Rami. Just like I couldn't protect my father, or—or Aladdin. And who knows what Jafar has planned for the people of Agrabah? Whatever it is, I can't protect them either." She banged a goblet down on the tray with a little too much force, denting the metal. "I'm too weak to even protect myself."

"No, princess," the genie said, placing a gentle hand on her chin and turning her to face him. "You're not weak at all. Maybe powerless at the moment, but never weak."

Jasmine jerked away from his grasp. "Stop calling me that," she ground out between clenched teeth. "I'm not a princess, not anymore." She felt that she hadn't been a princess in a long time—certainly not since she ran away, and perhaps not ever. She had never behaved as a princess should. Lying, shirking her responsibility, her many selfish decisions—Jafar was right about her. She didn't deserve to be a ruler.

The genie, however, just gave her a half smile, his eyes sad. "You'll always be a princess to me," he said.

When Aladdin opened his eyes, he thought at first he'd gone blind. It was dark, no color at all in the world. It took him a few minutes to realize that that's just what it looked like here, wherever he was.

It did not, however, take him nearly as long to realize that he was freezing. The frigid wind was howling all around him, cold droplets stinging his skin, which was rapidly going numb. Even the soft ground was bitter cold, such that his skin burned to touch it.

Aladdin sat up with a groan. He wasn't sure if he'd been injured during the rough landing; he was far too cold to feel anything else. He'd never experienced temperatures like this, not even close. He wondered what kind of hell Jafar had cast him into.

Jafar… Damn the man. Damn himself too, for letting Jafar get what he wanted. Now Jasmine, the Sultan, and all of Agrabah were at the mercy of that madman, and Aladdin was going to freeze to death out here, with no way to stop him.

Aladdin shivered and wrapped his arms around himself to try to keep the heat in his upper body. It didn't help. He was back in his usual rags: just a patched pair of pants and a vest, without even shoes. He might as well have been naked for all the good it did him.

As his eyes adjusted, Aladdin was able to see that it was not completely pitch dark where he was, and he was not blind either. All around him the ground was gray and smooth, broken only where he had fallen and disturbed what he now recognized as snow. Nearby there were rocks, rising in a sheer wall to one side. He could even make out the broken tower where it lay only a few paces behind him. And before him…

…Before him was a black abyss.

Aladdin could hear the howling wind echoing off the stone walls of that great cavern. It sounded almost like a chorus of human voices, wailing, calling out to him. Against his better judgement, he began crawling towards the ledge. He knew rationally that this was probably not the smartest idea, but he had the urge to see what was out there. Soon he could go no further, and, after a moment's hesitation, he looked out over the edge.

There was nothing out there, nothing at all. Aladdin could not have said if the cliff on which he crouched was ten feet or a hundred. He could not see anything beyond the ledge either. The chasm yawned beneath him and before him, black as pitch. No doubt dizzy from vertigo, Aladdin had the sudden thought that he was sitting on the very edge of the world, and that he was truly looking out into nothing. Perhaps this really was the mouth of hell.

If that's truly where he was, then it was no more than he deserved, Aladdin thought as his heart twisted in his chest. He had lied to the woman he loved, to her father, and to every man, woman and child in Agrabah. He'd lied to Rami and Najida. He'd tried to pass himself off as something he wasn't. In a misguided attempt to get Jasmine back, he'd taken something that didn't belong to him and that he didn't deserve.

Worst of all, he'd betrayed the genie. He'd denied his friend his freedom, and now—

Aladdin had been a loner most of his life, but he had never felt quite so alone as he did now.

As he knelt there, gazing into the blackness below, Aladdin felt the unaccountable urge to jump—to simply step off the edge of the world and become part of that great void. He wasn't even sure that he would fall. Maybe he would just float away when his feet left land. It would just be him and the screaming wind, drifting through the emptiness.

The despair and frustration and anger—at Jafar, at Jasmine, at himself most of all—built up in his chest until it became an almost physical weight, dragging him down. He felt as helpless against this feeling as he was to save himself, to save anyone. He stumbled to his feet, took a deep breath, leaned forward—

And he screamed. He added his voice to the howling of the wind and roared until he had no more breath left in his frozen lungs, until whatever madness of emotion that had seized him left, and he was as empty as the abyss. He stumbled back from the edge of the cliff and fell backwards into the soft snow. He raised both hands to his eyes, but found himself unable to wipe away the tears that had frozen to his cheeks.

He rolled over and brought himself to his hands and knees. It took him two tries to rise to his feet again. Each step he took was treacherous, not only because he could barely see what lay before him, but because he could not really feel his legs anymore. He stumbled once as he slowly made his way to the tower, barking his knee on the stone beneath the snow, but unable to sense the injury, if there was any at all.

Though his senses were rapidly failing, Aladdin forced himself on, with only one thought left to cling to. It didn't matter that he was well and truly screwed. He could not give in. He could not abandon Jasmine. He would return, or die trying.

Aladdin finally made it to the shadow of the tower, and even found it in himself to be relieved that the structure blocked most of the wind. He would get inside, out of the gale, and try to find something he could use to survive, to get back to Agrabah.

He almost didn't realize when he stepped on something other than rock, his feet were so numb. It was seeing Carpet emerge from the snow that caused him to realize that he had found his way out. He tried to pull the frozen magic carpet out of the snow but soon realized that it was stuck under the weight of the tower. Aladdin instead sank to his knees and started digging.

So intent was he upon his task, that Aladdin almost didn't notice the shift in the tower's position until it was too late. As it was, he barely had time to react to this most recent imminent threat, and only his instincts, honed by a lifetime of dodging danger, saved him. As the tower started to roll toward the cliff edge, Aladdin looked frantically for a way to escape, knowing that running to the right or left or back the way he came would be futile. A glance up showed him the slimmest of chances, and he took it without so much as pausing to think. Leaving the carpet where it lay, he bolted for what he estimated to be the only spot he might be safe. He dropped to his knees and threw his arms over his head.

He sensed rather than saw the weight of the tower come crashing down all around him, so close on all sides of the tiny window aperture that he felt the air displacement. For a moment he was thrown into total darkness and stillness as he was entombed in the stone. Then the weight lifted, and the wind came howling back. An echoing crash resounded as the tower hit the ground far below the cliff. So there was a bottom to the abyss after all.

Aladdin could hardly believe that ducking through the tower window had worked. He was sure that he would be shaking if his body still worked properly, but as it was, he was having real trouble getting to his feet again. He tried three times to regain his footing, but he couldn't seem to get his limbs to do what he wanted them to.

All of a sudden, a shadow passed over him, and he felt something cold but soft wrap itself around his shoulders.

"C-carpet," Aladdin sighed, reaching up to wrap a hand around a tassel. "C-can you g-get us out of here?"

Aladdin felt rather than saw Carpet leave his shoulders and lay flat beside him. He crawled onto the rug and hung on with the last of his strength as he felt it take off. The wind was even worse higher up, blowing past his face with so much force that Aladdin had to fight for every breath. It was soon too much for him. The wind, the cold, and the lack of air combined to make his vision grow dim and his head dizzy.

Aladdin's last conscious thought was a hazy hope that Carpet wouldn't let him fall.