Bartimaeus and Nathaniel
By the anonymouslibrarians
Note: I do not own the Bartimaeus series or any of its characters. Obviously.
01. Bartimaeus considered charges like cooking and housekeeping beneath him. So naturally, when Nathaniel ordered Bartimaeus to cook him dinner, Bartimaeus found the largest rat in a nearby alleyway and made a very nice stew. Nathaniel never knew what it was, but he thought it was delicious.
02. Nathaniel would never admit it, but he never felt entirely safe with imps and foliots guarding him at night. So, as he grew older and his enemies became more numerous, he took to having Bartimaeus guard him instead. The off-key lullabies and blankets being yanked off him in the middle of the night were small prices to pay for being able to sleep soundly.
03. In the years between the incident with the Amulet of Samarkand and what would become known as the Demon Uprising, Bartimaeus was occasionally summoned by magicians other than Nathaniel. The djinni had always found it amusing when the more sadistic of those masters ended up dying from unfortunate accidents. He wasn't sure how to feel, though when, on merging with Nathaniel, he realized most of those deaths weren't accidental at all.
04. Years after Nathaniel's death, Bartimaeus was walking around London when he caught a glimpse of a familiar face in the crowd. It took him several minutes to realize that the face was that of Nathaniel's birth mother, whose image Bartimaeus had glimpsed on the last night of Nathaniel's life.
The djinni had followed her home, unsure of what he was going to do. He had been tempted to kill Nathaniel's parents when, upon searching the house for some sign of their son, he'd only found a box of baby photos in the attic. He'd changed his mind when another boy, maybe six or seven, who looked painfully like Nathaniel had come home from school.
Bartimaeus settled for waiting until the child was asleep before appearing to the parents in the guise of their dead son (or what Bartimaeus assumed Nathaniel would have looked like at the time they'd given him up). He told them of the young boy, so starved for love and attention, who received insults and was locked in room full of imps and beaten for a minor prank. He told them of the cold and cruel man who the boy became, and of the selfless hero the man turned into. And, of course, he told them of the brave and noble and handsome djinni who never gave up on the boy.
When Bartimaeus left, he gave the parents a warning not to treat Nathaniel's brother the same way they did his sibling. Then next time Bartimaeus was in London, he went to check up on the boy, but oddly enough the family had moved.
05. Nathaniel knew he was asking for trouble when he made Bartimaeus accompany him to a banquet being held for Jane Farrar's birthday. But he knew that people whispered behind his back when he didn't have a plus one and he hated trying to make small talk with paid escorts. Luckily, he didn't need to worry about small talk with Bartimaeus there. Nathaniel's biggest concern was stopping his attractive blonde "date" from challenging their hostess to a baguette duel over a flirtatious comment Jane made to Nathaniel.
06. Sometimes Nathaniel wonders why he puts up with Bartimaeus' witty remarks and back talk. Then he finds himself struggling to stay awake during one of Ascobol's or Cormocodran's reports and everything becomes clear.
07. Nathaniel never took off of work. Even when he was sick. As far as he was concerned, sick days were a luxury magicians didn't have. Therefore, when he started to feel achey, he put it off as minor exhaustion. Even when his nose became stuffy and his coughs started sounding like he was hacking up a lung, Nathaniel merely thought he had a cold. It wasn't until he was having trouble standing up in the shower and the floor came up to meet him than he thought that maybe, just maybe, he should have gone to a doctor.
When Nathaniel woke up, he was in the hospital with an IV in his arm. He found out that he had a severe case of the flu and had been brought in by a young Egyptian boy over a week ago. Beyond an embarrassed thanks, Nathaniel and Bartimaeus never talked about the incident. But for several months afterward, Nathaniel allowed Bartimaeus to remain in the Other Place. He told himself that it was because it was too dangerous to summon a djinni when not at full strength, but some lies were too big to convince even himself of.
08. After John Mandrake's death, his belongings became treasured keepsakes. Some went to surviving magicians. Kitty was able to get her hands on quite a few items. And others were exhibited in museums.
Bartimaeus was strolling through an art museum one day, when he came across "The John Mandrake Collection." Many of the drawings were of small, insignificant things. A flowering bush. A sunset. The kid was a talented artist, but most of his artwork was done for himself, not a museum. There was a whole wall, though, of "an unknown Egyptian boy." Bartimaeus stayed there for hours before Kitty found him and he tore himself away, pretending that he'd only just seen the exhibit.
Later that night, Bartimaeus broke into the museum and stole the entire collection. He hid the paintings in an ancient catacomb that had long since been forgotten by humans. Afterward, whenever Bartimaeus had a lenient master or a bit of free time, he liked to visit the catacomb. It pleased him to see Ptolemy's form again in something other than a mirror, and drawn from the hand of one of the few humans Bartimaeus cared for.
09. Nathaniel never cared much for the snow. It was cold and wet. It held up traffic, and sometimes led to him needing to work from home. But somehow, he forgot all of that when a certain djinni threw a snowball at his face and the most important thing became finding a way to return the favor.
10. Bartimaeus pretended not to notice how hurt Nathaniel was when yet another master, Jessica Whitwell failed to stand by him. Nathaniel, in turn, pretended not to notice when his djinni left his side and moments later his second master managed to fall into the Thames.