Three Ways to Betray

[triedunture]

One.

Omission.

Jeeves entered the flat, shaking his umbrella so that the flecks of rain fell into the carpeted hallway and not the pristine foyer. The thunderstorm outside was behaving viciously; his trouser cuffs were completely soaked, and it would be a pleasure to change out of the damp pinstripes and morning coat and into something dry.

Lightning flashed through the sitting room window. Jeeves cocked his head, listening to the silence of the flat underneath the patter of raindrops on the windowpanes and the low rumble of thunder as it crawled through the city streets.

Of Mr Wooster, there was no sign or sound. 'Sir?' Jeeves called, placing the umbrella in its stand and shutting the door. 'Are you in, sir?'

No answer. Jeeves removed his hat and walked toward his lair, where he could hang the bowler to dry on a peg and then divest himself of his rain-spattered suit.

He opened the door to his rooms and found Mr Wooster kneeling on the floor, beside a hole where the loose floorboard had been, a pile of papers in his hands. Letters, yellowed photographs, documents and certificates, small tokens pressed between the pages of an old journal.

'Sir,' Jeeves gasped. 'Those are my private effects!'

'I didn't mean to go snooping,' Mr Wooster said quietly, almost to himself, as if in a dream. 'I only meant to peek in here; had never seen it before, you know. Stepped on this creaky bit in the floor and-- Well.'

Bertie didn't look up from the photograph in his hands. The sadness in his eyes was overwhelming.

'I--' Jeeves attempted.

The photograph was held up between two nimble fingers so that Jeeves could see it, a young woman with an alabaster face and light hair. 'Where is she now?' Bertie asked. 'Where is your wife, Jeeves?'

Jeeves cast his eyes down at his feet. He spoke in a low voice: 'She is where I left her, sir.' The thunder roiled through the room once more, and Bertie placed the artifacts back in their hiding place with ill-concealed disdain.


Two.

Calculated.

She knows from the beginning of time itself how this will end. They are lovers, yes, but ultimately they are the supreme destroyers. And she knows that Shiva will always be the lesser warrior; after all, all things are mirrored pairs: the sunrise with the sunset, the flower's bloom with the naked branch, the heat with the cold.

One thing cannot exist without the other to provide its balance. The creator and the destroyer. The Mother and the Oncoming Storm. Shiva cannot give birth as she can, try as he might, and so he can never know the sweet taste of death as compared to the stinging light of life. So let him dance, she thinks, while I sharpen my swords.

The battle is fierce and she completes it by standing on his blue neck, her belt of human skulls clack-clacking at her waist, her many blades raised to the sky in her many arms as her scream of victory rings over the Himalayas. There is smoke and ash falling from the sky, sent by her avatars, her army of goddesses.

"We were destined to destroy this world together," Shiva chokes out, his godlife draining from his eyes, where she can watch planets dying as he, too, dies.

She allows her tongue, soaked red with the blood of her enemies, flick out at him. "This world belongs to Kali now," she says. "I'm through watching you dance. Now I will burn."

And so begins the Kali Yuga.


Three.

Folly.

'I'm ready for this war, Thete,' he told the Doctor. 'I've been waiting for this my whole life.'

The Doctor watched from a perch on a nearby railing: the frenzied movements of his friend's hands, the manic gleam in his eye, the way his lips jerked spasmodically from a grim frown to a toothy snarl.

'I'll send the Daleks straight to Hell,' the Master swore, setting the final line of code into his beautiful machine. The thing that he and the Doctor had built together. The thing that might be capable of blowing an entire race from the clutches of existence, time, and space.

Or perhaps two races, the Doctor mused silently.

'The counsel will see what I've done and they will praise the day they freed me from my cage,' he continued.

Or, the Doctor amended his thoughts, it could annihilate two races and have some spare energy left over to distill the essence of a Time Lord into a safe container and hide the body.

Brilliant machine, the Doctor told himself as he fingered the cool steel pocket watch in his hand.

'Thete?' the Master asked when his companion's silence became noticeable. 'Theta, are you having second thoughts about this insane plan?'

'No,' the Doctor said softly.

'Well, then.' An over-excited gesture of an arm. 'Let's start this baby up and--'

The Doctor stood. Opened the watch. Keyed in the activation code at the panel before him. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

The Master's wild grin slipped. 'What are you--?'

'I'm so, so sorry.'

A flash of light, a scream as a soul was ripped from a body and a body was transmogrified into something it wasn't supposed to be. A pocket watch slipped into a now-human hand, a boy's hand, small, trembling, and confused.

The Doctor leaned in to whisper he supposed would be his last words to his old friend: 'But I can't let you die here too.' And with the flick of a switch, he sent him to the ends of the earth.

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[lady529.livejournal.com]

I did NOT come up in anywhere with ANY accusations of ANY murders or children or any crazy!

..just a vampiric wife..

The Lady 529