Who Saw That Coming?

(I’m sorry if you’re the avoiding spoilers type, but I’d mostly been figuring most of you weren’t Wild Cards readers anyway, but just in case, SPOILERS follow. The other excerpts I’ve posted won’t particularly spoil the story (and posting them helps keep me motivated to keep going, mash that like button, folks), but this definitely gives something major away.)

17,793. Aigh! My story just took a turn that was really NOT what I had planned, and I think it may be a subversion of the whole Jeeves-Wooster trope, or maybe people have been writing Jeeves/Wooster slash all along and I just didn’t know it, but my character appear to be determined to be madly in love at the climax of this story, and sometimes there’s nothing an author can do except get out of the way and let it happen…

*****

“Rupa?” Because there she was, in front of me, standing at her window, looking out at the lights of the city below. She turned at the sound of my voice, and there was a sight I never thought I’d see – a trembling lip, and eyes that welled with tears. Could this be the same woman who had so confidently given me advice and guidance from my toddling days? “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I love you.”

“What?” The sentence was simple enough, declarative and clear, but the sense of it was completely lost on me.

“I love you, kunju. And I know you don’t love me, and so I sent you away to marry that idiot –”

“He’s not an idiot – “ I protested, although I had been thinking exactly that not long ago, but she had kept talking, so I fell silent, not wanting to miss a word of this.

“ – so you’d be safely on the other side of the planet, and I could get over all this, get over you, get on with my life…”

“Oh, my rasathi!” My princess! The scales had fallen from my eyes, all was clear. I loved Rupa with every fiber of my being!

*****

I mean, who saw that coming? Not me!

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