A/N: yes, I have decided to do a collection of Bartimaeus Trilogy oneshots. Yes, this is my first time doing something like this. I haven't read the books in a long while, though, so please tell me if I make any mistakes or if I suck at this.
**
Sometimes, Kitty Jones couldn't help but wonder.
Was there any way that either of them had survived?
That question haunted her dreams.
She would sometimes reminisce on the old days, when her life was an adventure.
She would feel happier, until she remembered the way the Glass Palace had exploded. Then she would feel age beyond her years.
She would remember the way she had trusted Nathaniel, waited for him to return.
He hadn't.
She had had the faint hope that maybe Bartimaeus had survived, and tried to summon him.
But with no answer.
With every try, the result was the same, and her determination to find proof of their existence dwindled as her doubt grew.
She still had the teeniest spark of hope, but she was too discouraged to act on it.
Her life now seemed bland and adventureless, having faded back to the norm.
But even though she wondered, she had come to accept the truth.
They were gone, and her life was on hiatus.
**
Bartimaeus didn't easily get attached to humans.
They were weak, fragile, spineless, reproduced like rabbits and eventually died. What was the point? There was none.
Even when he had, once, Ptolemy had died, and he had been proved once more that trusting in humans was like going around in circles.
He had vowed to never do so again.
But somehow, he has gotten attached to those two teenagers.
And, now, look where he was; Nathaniel had died, and Kitty would soon have the same fate.
He was sure that Kitty Jones hadn't given up on him. But even if she had done the summonings, she would have no answer.
Because despite the rest from the pull of Earth that he had anticipated, he had been snatched from his vacation almost immediately.
Another delusional visionary, another harebrained scheme, with him to do all the work.
It all got a bit old after a while.
He knew that Kitty would think him dead, but he still felt the inexplainable impulse to tell her that he lived.
He sighed.
Being a djinn wasn't as easy as some might think; he never got a break. Always the slave.
So many privileges, yet so many responsibilities bound him.
He snorted at the irony, that was that such a powerful being would be a slave to such weak race as the human one.
But even if he had nothing to bind him, he would have nothing to go to.
As a slave, his life was now on hiatus.
**