DISCLAIMER: I was once asked seriously if I owned Jeeves & Wooster, and was able to reply "yes"- unfortunately, this was a hallucination caused by blood loss after a drive at my school and was completely false.

Wa-hey! It's my first attempt to write a fanfiction worth (?) posting on this site from BERTIE'S perspective! You must bear with me on this. I LOVE to go off on long rambles and try to use words as cleverly and adroitly -cough- as I can, however successful that is. Therefore, I can only apologise if my Bertie is lacking in voice, because I can't do so much with the too-long sentences with him that I so madly hoard. And me trying to use Bertie's mannerisms... pfeh.

I've borrowed from Shakespeare again, as well, because I CAN. (Well, more because I like to, really.)

Kindly read and review, as always, and many MANY thanks to those who reviewed my last chapter, giving me the will to press on through this difficult part. =3

Bobbie was really great to help me find a scheme. Really great. She always knows what to do, to make a man feel better in the circs., when one's feeling low.

Jeeves was acting awfully gloomy just then, and I didn't know what I could do to cheer the fellow. Wouldn't take any of the things I offered him to make him his old joyous self, really... it made a Wooster feel rightly nervous. So, at this most recent of my golfing exploits, Bobbie told me to give him something creative or interesting to do, to take his great mind off whatever was causing the old m. to be so g. She's really a good egg, she is, young Bobbie. But I've no views to marry her anymore, really. That red hair can tempt the most stony of the human race, but her extreme larkiness has quite had me off the scent since I and Mister Fungy-Fipps were put to puncturing one-another's water bottles in the middle of the night on the very same evening. Still, this bit isn't about the birds, and, anyway, Miss Wickham was plainly wonderful to think of some way to help- I put her plan into work the next day. It couldn't fail, from what I could see. Sighing that I longed to impress someone who caught my gaze with a bit of birdsong... it was not only a dashed good scheme, but one that didn't make me play the fool, which was, perhaps, the best bit of the whole thing.

So, I proposed the thought to my man the next day, that I should require some music. If I'm right in my study of Jeeveses, - which I can fairly well say that I am, - he was totally animated when I suggested that he translate this bit of Italian I'd requested from the man at the counter in the music shop. On seeing one of the more famous Drones, my friendly shopkeep already had got all of his show tunes and friendly, lightly thoughtful melodies that Jeeves would take a tone to laid out over the front table- it was a shame to disappoint a fellow with the words "ancient love song" on one's lips, but there it is.

Anyhow, the way my man's eyes lit up and the way his lips twitched an eighth of an inch to the left on presentation gave me great promise. He was going to be as happy as he could be again... and I was to be the cause of it. I'd had to use a scheme, of course, but it still gave a charming bit of warmth. Doing well by one's fellow man, and all that. The very thought of forcing my non-existent thespiary (assuming that's what I mean to say) abilities forward for this lie about the music had made me awfully hesitant about the proposal in the first place, and, at the time, I was quite gratified to see that he believed me- I think I can say that I've some idea why he believed me, now, and it steals whatever bit of pleasantness there is to be had in thinking that I had the ability to fool a great mind just by my own front.

My man gave me my piece back in just a day, and, to continue on with my believability- for it is a trial, to scheme against a Jeeves, the undisputed master of the scheme- I had to play it for him, too. It really was quite bouncy and lyrical, not greatly unlike what I usually like to depress upon the ivories. I could see the Drones appreciating that piece for their efforts at charming in the ever-popular sport of beazel-hunting.

I don't even remember what I said, now, as I was thinking of the success of my guise, but that I asked a reasonably friendly question to my man about how he would like the song, if someone sang it to him. It seemed understandable to me, really. One sings a song, and asks someone if they think it is charming- it shouldn't have any deepermeaning, no matter what situation one's in, unless one plans to jump up and shout "I jolly well love you!" within the moments after. But things went deeper than a question for Jeeves- I could tell immediately after I asked him, though it was a moment before anything really 'happened'. Said f. q. was taken much, much too far, and I do recall what exactly he said to me. I really was glued to my spot as he sat beside me and took my hands with such peculiar strength. My heart was unbearably loud all around me, and I knew I was dreaming a bally odd dream.

"'It is a wonder that your lips were made as much for the madness of music as the madness of kisses.'" His normally stone map smiled at me, smiled fully in a way that put a squirm in my stomach, and my hands pulled weakly against his as I tried to figure everything out. Nothing came, and nothing made sense- least of all, my feelings on the matter past the blinding shock. Whatever the case was, I wanted to be released.

Before one could say they'd had a proper pause to think, he was out the door, and I was really still on about my own fear inside my head. I sat in my favorite chair, forgetting that I now had to get my brandy for myself before I could take a comfortable seat to make myself suitably tight. Halfway into this session, my hands had come over my face unwillingly, and I was shaking my head into them, a gesture of despair I didn't consciously put out- anyone with any inkling of a Wooster's mind will certainly tell you that this is not at all normal for the last of his line. But I remember it, because of its close relation to the strongest pull of dread I had all that night, not numbed enough to forget, but just sauced enough to heighten everything to nearly unbearable levels of feeling.

If the moonlight did not sleep sweetly upon this bank, as I've heard Jeeves say, no night was so clear and calm. I was angry because of it. The circs. being what they were, I wanted the anger and gnawing fear... rolling? Rocking? Ah, yes... the gnawing fear roiling inside me to come out in the sky, so the whole dashed world could hear how Bertram Wilberforce Wooster had been wronged by his man. The m's s-ing was just frustrating to look up at in the black sky, and no one else knew, - or could know, - of this crime but the perpetrator.

And what a crime it was... One couldn't be unaware of that sort of thing when it was illegal in the most public way possible,- that his words could have been condemning, if I had wanted that,- and people of 'that sort' were all the same, devious, underhanded, and of a disposition to breaking the law in more ways than that one. My notions of the concept of what are called 'inverts'and Jeeves were so totally separate in my mind that I found it better to try to forget that it all had happened... at least, where that all was concerned. It was trouble enough considering the two in the same sphere, as Jeeves encompassed all that was intellectual- the polar opposite of those creatures of base physical extremity one was,- and is,- practically threatened with in some effort to forcibly sway into close relations with the fair sex.

It took until the next, suitably grey morning through a raging headache for me to think that, maybe, what Jeeves had done was not really 'wrong'. Surely I had been told how awful those types are in school, and when men are taken away, but... Jeeves wasn't really like that. Not from what they say, anyway, or the lurid descriptions of prisoners for gross indecency. Of course it was disturbing, to think that a man like that was dressing me and attending me in the bath, but it wasn't like anything untoward had occurred, but maybe too much lingering on fixing my tie, which could even have been imagined due to this revelation, or just Jeeves' professional perfectionism. Things became simpler as I grew the guess that, by my knowledge of Jeeves to this point, it really must have been a strain of love instead of that degenerate feeling I had supposed it was immediately at the outset... but that was, I think, even more perverse, in my considerations (just because I couldn't guess at the beginning or end of such a thing- the love of two coves, I mean). And he was so intellectual, too, apart from that one outburst... I pondered- worried?- over what ever I'd done to make him think that he had any sort of chance with charming me in that way.

That day was an awful one I spent in trying to take my bath and will the headache away myself, which was a miserable failure even with aspirin, and, what was worse, I couldn't stop thinking of my man, his black-suited form hovering silently about the flat, shimmering in and out of doors with that impeccably stoic white face and even hand. Wondering where ever he went after I'd give him such a bad rejection. What would I have felt, if I were really over the moon for someone like that, that I could just start reciting sighing lines of love-struck poetry to express myself?

But, then, I had no inkling of what Jeeves could have felt, since I hardly think the man feels anything. I've never seen him act towards me with much of anything really strong until the day before, and some instances in which I was placed in really mortal danger. Maybe he was clutching himself and moaning in a dank pit of despair the likes of which are known only to those deep down the rings... but, then, by the same token, he may have already forgotten about good old Bertram. Given love a try and decided that it wasn't right for him. It wasn't like there were any tears on his departure...

Now, one doesn't like to sound selfish, but I really was thinking more of my last point when I called on the Junior Ganymede Club to glean Jeeves' whereabouts. What if he had forgotten me already? I don't know if I could have borne that thought, that the paragon who informed me that "there is a tie that binds" could have lost his last master without a backward glance. I feared that I'd given him too much reason to want to do so for me to be content without action. The man in the foyer greeted me with a cool, "Can I help you, sir?"- what, to me, sounded like a cruel impersonation of my man himself, even a parody, with its less-than-perfect grammar- and I briefly lost my ability to form real words. Once my lips and tongue had slunk back into place through a moment of harsh, critical staring from the grey little man before me, my voice was quiet and groaning, like the sound of an old iron gate. A small one, mind you.

"Jeeves." I cleared my throat into my hand with the tone of an angry rhinoceros seething at the ground, and started again. "I am looking for a Mister Jeeves. I... released him from my service last evening and should like to speak to him." The man eyed me with all the air of an Alsatian considering a cat across an open field, but, - probably because of my he- hemorrhage... Helios... ah! My hysterical way, he went to the back door across the room, after muttering "I'll see if I can find him" under his breath irritably.

When Jeeves was presented to me, disregarding all pretenses, I rushed forward and looked him over. Jeeves has never looked so little like the sight for sore eyes he is than that moment. His face was pale, his cheeks burning red, and his eyes moving unprofessionally about the room in a way that convinced me it must have been my own producing an illusion, because I never imagined I would see my man in such a great state of disc-... state of worry. When he cleared his throat, while still less offensive than my own hacking boorishly into my hand, it was rather in the way of a racing stud standing nobly across the room from you than a placid old ram on a hillside. It put that ill-feeling I got when he'd taken my hands back in me, to see he was still dressed as the day before, his jacket slightly wrinkled and his hair without its brilliantine sheen sitting over his brow.

'So,' the Wooster brain said to itself, 'this is Jeeves after a crisis. One would like to see him after a great joy.'

"Good Morning, Mister Wooster." He was whispering to me! I was halfway to offense before the mind calmed itself by the conclusion that it was some kind of bodily strain that caused the change in voice, the kind that happens when you're awake all night or really worried about something, so much that the tiring sands have no effect whatsoever (which one could only say by the very same act on oneself at the same moment, of course). I nodded; I could see that I needed to say something after a few moments of awful silence, or else he would retreat into what I deemed his currently pale existence again with all the other willingly or unwillingly idle butlers and valets. Pity welled within the thin Wooster chest, a feeling I really never thought possible of feeling about the ever-dignified Jeeves. But, then, I never thought I would be in this dashed awkward position, anyway.

"Hello, Jeeves... it's good to see you again," I returned as warmly as I could, nodding the man who fetched Jeeves away as my former man himself gazed directly up at me for the first time, his eyes wide and quite shocked- in my learned opinion, anyway. He didn't believe how really glad I was to see him. After my hurt from the night before, I wasn't entirely sure why I could be so relieved to come into his presence, either. "How are you, this morning?"

"Most well, thank-you, Mister Wooster. Your concern is deeply appreciated." At this, I finally did have some good reason to take offense- rather than taking what I said to heart, believing that I had genuine care for him to be well, he was jolly well practicing his valet's mask on me! So I guessed in a moment, anyway. The truth about it all is that I wanted a reason to be frustrated with him that didn't come from what he'd done the night before. That would have just crippled our friendship even further, and it was already sent limping down the dirt path away from home. Still, looking to the way he held his face, and thinking of the previous evening, I could not help feeling guilty for the fact that I was probably one of the only ones, if not the only (even I can't deny pleasure at this last thought), to receive a full Jeevesian smile, and how it would never come before my eyes again because I told him to be away with such things. Not in words, of course, but by what I did. Before I could get any of my burning thoughts to my tongue, though, Jeeves had begun again more quietly, so that I could hardly hear him from several feet across the room. "May I speak frankly for a moment, Mister Wooster?"

"Go right ahead, Jeeves. I am truly agog to learn what you have to say, to make use one of your own wheezes." I don't know what came over me when I said such a thing to him, as I still felt my mind rebelling against a companionable manner with him. But... Jeeves was still Jeeves, that man who I genuinely considered my greatest ally before I released him. Rashness is a quality we Woosters don't pride, but, then, we Woosters are redeemed through our ability to see that we've spoken or acted too soon almost immediately after we've made the mistake. The stiff figure before me straightened his jacket, looking like a dead man making a particularly clever impersonation of life, and started in the sort of deepened voice that he had reserved in the past for grave dissatisfaction with the young master, but whose unease was now directed somewhere besides myself.

"I believe that we both might consider that there were... mistakes executed yesterday afternoon and evening. So I surmise by your appearance here to find me, that is, sir." The eyes were back downward, and one could see why- it was so uncommon for Jeeves to make any sort of discernible mistake that it had to be awfully shaming (though, I don't really think that he was looking away for that reason. Just a thought. I can't imagine that, were I so much a mental marvel as that, I could tolerate being told once that I was most definitely wrong, let alone tell it to others). "One's were worse than the other's, certainly." I felt my mouth smile involuntarily at this- Jeeves' refusing to place the blame exactly. Made it easier for both of us in avoiding the reality of everything, and, for once, after all those long spouts of information that I can't recall for my life, his knowledge of the psychology of the individual could finally come into good use. "I shall not request to be your valet again- that would be taking a liberty far beyond my bounds. Yet I can allow myself enough disregard for your impenetrably higher position to request that we might exchange correspondence once I have found a new permanent address."

I hated the fact that, again, my rashness urged me onto yelling against this idea- or, at least, sparking a good argument against it. And why? His proposal was perfectly reasonable, and, anyway, the only reason I'd come to the Ganymede Club was to be sure that Jeeves was well, not to even say we would exchange letters like old friends, and much less to beg him to come back. Still, embarrassing as it was, I could only find a surge of comfort when I considered this last option. One did not like to be dependent upon a man who held too much care... but it had to be a better posish than having a man with no care at all, as that had almost literally been the death of young Bertram from some time back, with the blighter Mister Bingely. After a rather rude noise through my lips, my hands through my hair, and a lightly puzzled "Mister Wooster?" from the other side of the room, I came forward and started with him straight.

"Look, Jeeves, I don't want to just... send letters to you like some schoolboy chum I've not seen in years." The foolishness was unbearable, and I was convinced that a man so intelligent as my old valet wouldn't be able to come back to me just because of the one word... stupidity, but with a "fat" at the beginning... fatuous, - if that's the word I'm looking for- because of the fatuousness of my having told him to go, and then asking him to come back immediately after, he wouldn't be able to come back after seeing such an idiotic display of mental negligence. It all made me squirm when I had to try to talk again, but it was all needed, if I was to get him back against the brain's objection. "Really, if you'd have me, I... would like you to come back. Be the man of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster again, for the sake of friends and whatsits."

He seemed to consider this, - so I figured, as he was still not looking at me, but I could swear I heard the minute buzzing of his mind working furiously behind his currently soft-looking black hair and high, noble forehead, - and did so for some time. It was a moment of the old deja, if you know what I mean, having the exact same experience twice. This quiet was just the echo of what I'd given to him the night before, except that, today, no one was smiling.

Finally, after some time, a promising twitch of the lips came through his face, with something in the gesture that I couldn't put my finger on, another feeling to make me nervous about his acceptance, but, - good old Jeeves, and all, - I didn't have reason to worry.

"I would be honored to return to your employment, Mister Wooster. It is magnificent of you to forgive so easily." His eyes still didn't come up, but I could tell his truthfulness, and so clapped a hand to his shoulder when he was finished and felt him give a great start that I guessed was from nervous exhaustion, the same as what I suffered from in those moments, the kind to loosen one's tongue and one's actions.

"Good man, Jeeves." I was grinning most like the Cheshire as I ever had to prove my truth in gladness to him- and it really was deserved. I imagined that the worst thing to do in the circs. would be to make him think that I wasn't entirely grateful for his coming back to me, and, so, I went out of my way to show that Bertram was quite lost even hours without him. "Things are going to be better when we go back home again, Jeeves. The larks will sing at daybreak, the grey doves in the day, and the nightingales before evensong, if all goes as planned. Beauty every moment for this pair of blue-eyed chaps, so long as you're back."

I couldn't say where all of this waxing-Bassett came from- this speech about it all being beautiful and good, for "us", when I had so recently destroyed one of the least-formal uses of that word that could be put to our state together. I really was being purely optimistic in the face of a terrible end- anything, no matter how soppy and loathsome, to make it look as if we would never have to speak of the incident in the future, near or far. I suppose the speech was at least partly stemmed from the great rattle I got from seeing Jeeves as devastated as he was- so much that I felt I was leading a man on the brink of some mortality-inducing crisis from the Junior Ganymede. (One shudders to think, but I have the bitter feeling on penning this that such upset could have been what I wanted out of Jeeves. Hadn't I gone to the Club just to remind him that I existed before he biffed off to parts unknown, after all?) I guess that one has to suffer some sickness by too much sugar when one's being nursed back from near-starvation- it's what I was doing with my man. I can't really give any more good reason. It would be appreciated if you, my ever-vigilant reader, would simply accept my utter change in speech just because I say it happened.

My lines of thinking and assurance kept with me into the raven-dark cab set for Berkeley Mansions,- just the colour of the clear evening sky,- and I was soon running my mouth off once more.

"You see, Jeeves, Bertram Wooster is looking towards being forgiven. I like to think that there is... some kind of balance in us, you see, that runs through people. An equation, I suppose. I just want to make things up to you for the bit of a rift we had. You'll see. It will all be in order between master and man again before days are out, so long as the last of the Woosters has mind with which to keep his promise."

A/N: Poorness! 8D

I say this mostly because I lost the page that had the 'real' ending to this chapter (I tend to print my work and hand-write stuff away from the computer, see), and got so fed up with trying to find it after days that, much like in my other work, Lord of the Fries, I simply stitched on a quasi-modo ending that is only the general idea of what I really had, and it makes me feel sad and disappointed with what I've posted. Maybe I'll post the real one if I find it- for now, I just feel like posting this so I can get on with forgetting this attempt to write as Bertie, and come back to my ideas in Jeeves' mind. XP (And the lovely poem If Music Be the Food of Love, which will be making an appearance shortly).

Read and review? I would appreciate a review very much, if you are willing to give one, and hope that you can bear with me through this chapter onto my next Jeeves-narrated one, as I think the next will be significantly improved in voice.

I don't even know WHAT categories to put this story in... Sorry if you don't think the pair I have right now is appropriate. But I'm going to try to make it fit, or else change it once I finish.

Cheers, all!

-Raven