Original (Jeeves) [Week 1 - prompt 1] Title: Exile by Choice Author:trio Rating: G Warnings: Fantasy Word Count: 347 Summary: Where all worlds meet, the butler regrets. Author's Notes: The concept of the house was from a place that a friend and I made up to play in. I have changed it up some, to properly support the angst.
There is a house in the small space where all worlds connect. Doors in hallways and walls open onto a infinite number of possibilities, and the doors change constantly, flicker through ever-expanding realities. A person could get lost in this house, and after three days, a door someone steps through closes and the flickering continues. If he waits long enough, the person might just find his way home... but it's unlikely.
Some visitors go crazy like that, wandering the halls like babbling fools. Others find ways to end their pain and anger.
One man chose to stay.
His hair is white, neatly trimmed and combed. The house supplies everything its occupants could possibly need. He wears a three piece suit, complete with vest, and his comportment is stiff. He even has a gold pocketwatch, the chain hanging neatly from his pocket to where it is attached. He has made himself into the butler, the majordomo, the person who knows everything there is to know about the house. He wakes promptly at six, according to his watch, and retires at eleven, and from eight in the morning until ten at night, he is so careful about what he does and who he is, how he acts. He has forgotten his own name, has resorted to the laughable Jeeves, and for those fourteen hours, he is fastidious in his job.
He takes two hours for his personal toilette, one in the morning and one at night. Those are the times when he puts on the façade, carefully affixing it over his natural disposition.
But over breakfast, from seven to eight, he leaves a door open, watching the world beyond through painful eyes. He is an exile by choice, but he is still an exile, and in years not one of these places, flickering past at high speed when the door is closed and lingering for curious eyes when open, not a single one has looked like home. And he has figured out the one thing he never really understood when he made his choice.