Jooster kid fic

[triedunture]

Title: All Things
Pairing: Jeeves + Wooster friendship
Rating: G
Warnings: kid!fic, death (possible spoiler there)
Disclaimer: Owned? Not really, no.
Summary: Jeeves and Wooster meet for the very first time as children.

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Reginald Jeeves surveyed the bright green splash of Russel Square one fine sunny morning when he was supposed to be at the shop. Unlikely, you might say, that he would dally so. However, this was not the Jeeves that you are envisioning: tall, dark, and bowler-hatted. While still possessing the first two qualities (at least, for his age), this Reginald Jeeves was a mere fourteen winters old.

You may think of him as Reggie, if you like. It’s what the headmaster called him, anyway. Whemblebottom was the headmaster of Whemblebottom’s School for Girls, where Reggie served as a page boy. Today was their annual trip into the heart of the city for a lecture tour of the British Museum. But Reggie could only accompany the young ladies to the front steps of the massive granite building.

‘Go, young Reggie,’ Whemblebottom had said that morning, ‘and take a stroll around the square during the girls’ tour. You’ve heard this lecture three times already; surely you would rather do something useful. Here.’ He handed over a shilling. “Get me a pack of toothpicks from the shop, will you?’

Reggie was not given a chance to correct his master; he did want to hear the tour again; he never tired of the cool quiet of the museum, the long, shining glass cases, and the soft whisper of bearded intellectuals discussing history in dusty corners. Also, one of Reggie’s uncles worked as a curator in the museum’s Egyptian exhibit, and he had been looking forward to the visit. But Whemblebottom, while not a cruel man, was apt to care more for toothpicks than the comfort of his young servants.

It was Reggie’s opinion that toothpicks were not a suitable habit for any proper gentleman, and it was his intention to tell Mr Whemblebottom that the shop was fresh out. But until then, a few hours in the cheerful square would be refreshing.

Reggie was walking along the perimeter’s path, noting the flight of a honeybee around a stand of lilacs, when he heard the noise. He tilted his head to better hear: yes, a short, choked gasping sound. A whining intake of breath. Three loud sniffles.

Now, while Reggie was a very serious boy (some would say rigid), he was not altogether cold-hearted. It was a lesson that he had learned at his father’s knee: give satisfaction, if you can manage it, to all things. Give warmth to what is cold, clothe what is threadbare, feed what is hungry, and to leave all things better in your wake. That was what being a valet meant to Reggie: the embodiment of all the good teachings of Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha. Where others saw only servitude, Reggie saw Godliness.

This is what made him drop to his knees, mindful of the fabric of his trousers, to peer into the underbrush.

A small urchin of a boy was huddled there in the dirt, his cheeks alternately streaked with grime and tears, his hands locked around his thin legs. Reggie stared.

‘H-hullo,’ the child said weakly. He wiped a hand under his nose, but continued his pitiful sniffling unabated.

Reggie fought a sad sigh. He was not unaware of the plight of London’s street children, even being tucked away safe in the halls of Whemlebottom’s School as he was. It was a sorry sight, indeed, but surely there was some improvement that could be made in the poor creature’s situation.

‘You’ll have to come out of there,’ Reggie said gently.

‘I’m very sorry.’ The little thing couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. His voice broke on his words, but he soldiered on. ‘I’d like to keep this bush, if you don’t mind. There are plenty of others down the row if you need one.’

A thoughtful frown drew Reggie’s lips down. The accent was not a lower-class one. ‘I’m not in need of any shrubbery right now, thank you,’ he answered. ‘But perhaps the young sir had better come out and be put to rights?’



The boy shook his head violently. Bits of twigs tangled in his mussed light-brown hair. ‘I’m not ever coming out. I’ll live here from now on,’ he said with a sob.

‘Your parents will surely be worried,’ Reggie ventured. At that, the young boy’s lower lip trembled and he broke out into a fresh peel of crying. ‘Oh, dear,’ said Reggie.

He reached into the underbrush and managed to tug the boy’s boneless body out onto the packed earth of the path. There was a small grassy patch on the other side, and that is where Reggie deposited his charge, who was still senseless with tears.

‘And what is the young sir’s name?’ he asked when there was a lull in the howling.

‘Bert. Ie.’ This was said between gasping breaths.

Reggie sat beside him on the grass and picked up his left hand. There was a small scrape on the palm, undoubtedly from clawing around in the bushes. Reggie tugged his kerchief from his pocket and applied it to the small injury to stymie the sluggish beads of blood.

‘Your parents have been lost to you,’ he said quietly. Bertie nodded his head, gazing off into the distance, seemingly at an oak.

‘Could you tell me, young Bertie, who is acting as your guardian now? They must be looking for you.’

‘They aren’t looking!’ he exploded. ‘They wouldn’t mind if I disappeared forever. Why, Aunt Agatha said she’d wished I’d—’ And here Bertie stopped and bit at his lip with a whimper, as if against another bout of wailing.

Reggie studied the dirtied cuffs of Bertie’s shirt and pulled out a small bottle from his inner jacket pocket. It was his father’s invention: a solution for stains of all kinds. He set to work dabbing the liquid on the shirt cuffs with the clean side of his handkerchief.

‘Often, and especially during periods of stress and sadness, even our dearest loved ones say things which they do not mean,’ Reggie said.

‘She did mean it! And she’s not my dearest loved one.’ Bertie scowled through his tears. ‘I don’t want to live with her. I want to live with Aunt Dahlia!’

‘Young master is lucky to have so many relatives on whom to rely in this time of sorrow, perhaps?’ Jeeves suggested.

But Bertie deflated. ‘No. Going to Aunt Dahlia’s is impossible. Aunt Agatha says she’s expecting a baby and can’t have me underfoot.’ He now peered with a small amount of curiosity at his newly whitened left cuff. ‘So Aunt Agatha will send me away to a school, I suppose, though she says it’s a waste of money,’ he muttered.

‘Surely not.’ The right cuff was now nearly cleaned.

‘Surely yes; she said so. Just like she said it might’ve been easier on everyone if I’d been in the train car as well.’ Bertie looked up with doleful eyes. ‘Mother and Father were on a train, you see, and…’

‘I understand.’ Reggie re-buttoned the cuffs. ‘And I am so very sorry, young sir.’ He folded his handkerchief to the last remaining clean spot. ‘If you feel your strength returning, would you care to accompany me to the fountain?’ And he retrieved a small comb from his trouser pocket.

Bertie glumly allowed himself to be helped to his feet, and he toddled along the path in a sort of winded daze. ‘Nothing will ever be right again,’ he said.

‘It seems unlikely to you now, but I assure you,’ Reggie guided him to sit on the stone lip of the square’s fountain, ‘it will be.’

Bertie harrumphed a doubtful snort. ‘Unless you’re God himself, you couldn’t know, could you?’

Reggie combed Bertie’s wayward hair back into place, then leaned over the fountain to wet his handkerchief. He scrubbed at Bertie’s dirty cheeks and said, ‘I suppose not.’

‘Aunt Agatha is certainly going to let me have it for running off, though.’ Bertie winced. ‘That much even I know.’

‘Is this aunt a very tall, imposing woman?’ Reggie arched an eyebrow and glanced over his young charge’s shoulder. ‘Perhaps wearing a blue brocade?’

Bertie gasped and spun around, and the tensing of his small shoulders gave Reggie the answer. The approaching female was undoubtedly Aunt Agatha.

‘Bertram!’ she bellowed, honing in on him like a hound. ‘What is the meaning of this? Scurrying off while I was speaking with Mr Charles!’ Charles, Reggie knew, was of Charles & Sons Undertakers, whose offices were not a half-block from Russel Square.

He quickly pressed his sullied handkerchief to his forehead in such a way that the drops of blood appeared foremost. He then moaned convincingly and leaned against the fountain.

Aunt Agatha stopped short, mere yards from her destination. ‘What is the matter with that boy? What have you been doing, Bertie!’

Bertie whimpered.

‘Madam,’ Reggie said in an awed voice, ‘this boy is an angel. He heard my cry for help when I stumbled and dashed my head against the pavement, and he ran to my side to offer assistance. Without him, I would have surely been run down by the traffic.’ He nodded to the bustling intersection beyond the park gate.

‘Bertie.’ Aunt Agatha drew herself up. ‘Is this true?’

‘Uh, rather,’ he answered quickly.

‘Very well, then.’ She tipped her head in Reggie’s direction. ‘You, young man, had better be more careful in the future. It’s thoughtless featherheads like this that cause so much trouble for the rest!’ She said this last bit to the air, it seemed, or just herself.

‘Very good, madam,’ Reggie said. He took the handkerchief away from his temple gingerly, as if not to jar his pretend wound. He needn’t have worried; the aunt had already turned away, prepared to leave.

‘Come along, Bertie,’ she barked.

‘Your kerchief, sir,’ Reggie said, handing the cloth over to Bertie. ‘Thank you again for your aid.’

Bertie gaped at the small token he now held. ‘But it’s not—’

If Reggie had been another sort of boy, he might have allowed himself a wink. But as it stood, he was a very serious child who could only produce the smallest glimmer of a secret smile for Bertie.

‘I insist, sir.’

‘Bertie, I said come along!’ Aunt Agatha was already marching to the south gate.

Bertie clasped Reggie’s hand, a gesture of familiarity that the older boy would have recoiled at if it hadn’t taken him so off-guard, and he whispered, ‘Thank you.’

And then he was gone.

Fifteen years later, and Jeeves can’t imagine that his young master remembers that meeting. There was never the tiniest hint of recognition when he was sent by the Agency to Mr Wooster’s doorstep. Jeeves is content with his own private memory of the event, and the terrible vulnerability that he saw in Bertie that day (which, if he looks, he continues to see every day). It might be due to this, in part, that Jeeves remains so steadfast in his position in Mr Wooster’s household.

But hidden even from Jeeves is the thing that resides at the bottom of Bertie’s box of special cigarettes: a worn handkerchief, still streaked in dirt, that sits as a testament to the truest of all things:

It all turns out right. It must.



fin.



Download the podfic here.

Comments

[bernie-laraemie.livejournal.com]

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

This was such a treat to read again--it's such a beautiful piece. Poor Bertie : (

[theempress14.livejournal.com]

If there's one thing that is more numerous in J&W fandom than Old! Jeeves & Berite, it's Kid!Jeeves & Bertie! and I might even say that I enjoy those stories more! This was fabulous!

I listened to the Podfic (as is my wont when given the option) and I have to say, I LOVED your Agatha voice! Just great and old biddy-ish, despite her being not quite an old biddy yet. It fits her regardless of age. On little thing tho: I would've loved to hear you go off a bit more when doing the dialog where Bertie is crying. A little sobbing and huccuping would've been great, especially around the line "Ber.tie."

But overall, wonderful!

[random-nexus.livejournal.com]

Well now you've done it. The mist has gone to rain. *sniffle* Lovely, lovely, sweet, and more lovely. Oh. You are made of utter awesome.

[pyrocrastinator.livejournal.com]

D'awww. That was great.