Susan vs. Vetinari.
The First Chapter:
This is my very first fanfic so please, please go easy on me and please don't sue me.
"G'night"
"Goodnight."
The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork shut the door with a barely audible sigh and stared at the woodwork for quite some time.
He thought about the incredible amount of attention the six year old needed, now that she was becoming interested in the question: Exactly what did her father do as a job? Vetinari had always seemed so busy and worked- up about things to her and she just didn't understand a single word he was saying when he tried to answer her question.
He sighed again. It was probably for the best that she didn't know anyway, he thought to himself.
For some reason beyond his understanding, a vision of her mother came to him suddenly and he remembered....
She had been a lot like him in appearance: pale skin, high cheekbones, thin bodied and dark-haired, but, as Lord Havelock Vetinari found out a year ago; she was so unlike him, deep down inside that it made him shudder to think that he had once loved her.
Another vision came back to him, of how sweetly she had smiled on the night before her demise, and how she had told him that unless he really wanted to be truly recognised in the world of politics then they would have to get rid of what was holding him back....
Vetinari licked his dry lips and thought about how his partner had not only been planning, but also putting into practice her own child's death.
She had told him on that very night what she'd been doing to Jessica.
Jessica had been ill for the few weeks running up to her mother's execution, on the night that she was at her worst, running a high fever with projectile vomiting, her mother couldn't help boasting to her partner exactly what she'd been putting into her own daughter's meals.
Havelock Vetinari hadn't even hesitated to sign the death warrant for her execution the next day.
Now, with her mother gone, Jessica was getting more and more demanding of her father.
Her father, on the other hand, was starting to wonder what had made him want to have a child in the first place.
The Patrician had been musing about all this whilst he had walked back to the Oblong Office and sat down at his desk.
Ah well, he thought, back to work.
He was aware that he was feeling slightly tired, a sensation that the Patrician wasn't well orientated towards. He looked at the grandfather clock that stood against the opposite wall, between the two identical doors that led to his office.
It was only half nine!
He stared at the clock with his head to one side and with his mouth slightly open. He blinked, turned his head straight, closed his mouth and told himself to not look so stupid in the future and to suppress the huge yawn that built up inside him, trying to escape.
You'd better stop that, he told himself as his eyelids noticeably drooped, you've still got at least another two hours of this.
However, body overruled mind, and, in the end, Lord Havelock Vetinari slumped forwards onto a pile of paperwork and, ten minutes later, started to snore gently.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Vetinari awoke abruptly to the feel of someone shaking him awake.
He sat up and peeled a piece of paper that had somehow got stuck to his face off.
The Patrician clapped his hands to his sensitive ears as the usual chorus of "Daddy, wake up" being repeated over and over again bounced off the insides of he skull and threatened to give him a headache.
He pushed his chair back and sat Jessica on his lap, put a finger to his lips and said "Shhhh, I'm awake now, can you please stop it?"
Jessica brushed a hand up the side of her father's head.
"Your hairs all funny."
"Mmmm." Comes of sleeping with your head on a table. He said in the privacy of his head.
"Can we play a game?"
"Not now."
"Please?"
"No." Said Vetinari firmly.
"PLEASE???"
"NO." The Patrician raised his voice slightly above his daughter's.
Jessica stared at him with big blue eyes filled with water and her bottom lip quivering slightly.
"No." Said her father, much more gently.
More puppy-dog eyes followed, but now one of the eyes were leaking tears.
"But you said yesterday...."She started in a quavery voice.
"I don't recall any promises." The Patrician said icily, and immediately regretted it.
Jessica slipped off his lap and wandered over to one of the doors leading to and from the Oblong Office. Before she opened it, she turned back towards her father, sniffed sadly and then opened the door and meandered away sorrowfully.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
"An' then he shouted at me." Jessica was recalling the events that had just happened in her own special way*
*That means to say that calling it "slightly biased" was the underestimate of the century. All small children do this. One day, the scientists working on the project may find out why.
She had started telling it to the first person she had met on the way to the gardens. In this case, it had been Rosemary Palm of the Seamstresses Guild.
"And what did your daddy do then?" She asked kindly.
"Nothin', I ran away." Which was more or less part of the true story.
"Awww, you poor thing. Anyway, I'm just going to see your daddy now, so I'll talk to him about it." Mrs Palm said in her "talking to adorable children" voice.
"Are you going to tell him off for being such a naughty boy?" Mrs Palm nodded.
Jessica skipped of to the gardens.
Mrs Palm sighed and made her way to his Lordship's office.
"You have two very important jobs at the moment. One is first priority and the other...........Isn't." Mrs Palm said in her "complaining to the authorities" voice. "Can you guess which one goes where?" She snapped.
"Ohhh...Um..."Vetinari pretended to think for a moment. "I suppose you're going to tell me that I should look after my daughter first and look after the city in the gaps that my daughter leaves?" Vetinari changed mid- sentence from "sarcastic son of a bitch" to "sweet as honey but deadlier than Djelibeybian asps".
Mrs Palm nodded.
The Patrician switched back to sarcasm. "Well, in case you haven't noticed, but it seems to me that Jessica doesn't leave any gaps for me to do anything else."
"Why don't you put her in a school, or hire a childminder." The Gods know you can afford it, she added silently.
Vetinari opened his mouth, closed it, put his head to one side and said, "I didn't think of that..."
It was Mrs Palm's turn to let her jaw drop now. "You mean to say......" She said faintly, "that the greatest political genius of all time, who always thinks of everything, didn't think of that?" She said, disbelief ringing through her every word.
The Patrician snorted.
He suddenly became thoughtful. "Do you think that you could possibly find me some suitable candidates for the job?"
Rosemary fell silent with misunderstanding of what the Patrician was asking her to do, "Are we still on the subject of Great Plans and Political Geniuses?" She asked politely.
"No. I've gone back to childminding and schooling." He said sharply.
"Well..." Mrs Palm bit her lip thoughtfully. "You do understand that this isn't exactly in my field of expertise, don't you?"
"I am fully aware of that, yes." His Lordship's face was carefully immobile. "Just this one little favour..."
"I suppose...I could fish around for a bit of information...you know...ask some of the gels...." She trailed off.
"If you could do that for me, I would be very much pleased." The Patrician said, sincerity radiating off him.
Mrs Palm stopped and hesitated at the sudden silence that bloomed upon them. "Is this meeting finished then?" She asked.
Oh, yes, of course. I was forgetting myself for a minute there, sorry. Please do not let me detain you from your new-found job as a childminder and teacher searcher."
Mrs Palm gratefully left the office.
Ende of Parte thee firste.
This is my very first fanfic so please, please go easy on me and please don't sue me.
"G'night"
"Goodnight."
The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork shut the door with a barely audible sigh and stared at the woodwork for quite some time.
He thought about the incredible amount of attention the six year old needed, now that she was becoming interested in the question: Exactly what did her father do as a job? Vetinari had always seemed so busy and worked- up about things to her and she just didn't understand a single word he was saying when he tried to answer her question.
He sighed again. It was probably for the best that she didn't know anyway, he thought to himself.
For some reason beyond his understanding, a vision of her mother came to him suddenly and he remembered....
She had been a lot like him in appearance: pale skin, high cheekbones, thin bodied and dark-haired, but, as Lord Havelock Vetinari found out a year ago; she was so unlike him, deep down inside that it made him shudder to think that he had once loved her.
Another vision came back to him, of how sweetly she had smiled on the night before her demise, and how she had told him that unless he really wanted to be truly recognised in the world of politics then they would have to get rid of what was holding him back....
Vetinari licked his dry lips and thought about how his partner had not only been planning, but also putting into practice her own child's death.
She had told him on that very night what she'd been doing to Jessica.
Jessica had been ill for the few weeks running up to her mother's execution, on the night that she was at her worst, running a high fever with projectile vomiting, her mother couldn't help boasting to her partner exactly what she'd been putting into her own daughter's meals.
Havelock Vetinari hadn't even hesitated to sign the death warrant for her execution the next day.
Now, with her mother gone, Jessica was getting more and more demanding of her father.
Her father, on the other hand, was starting to wonder what had made him want to have a child in the first place.
The Patrician had been musing about all this whilst he had walked back to the Oblong Office and sat down at his desk.
Ah well, he thought, back to work.
He was aware that he was feeling slightly tired, a sensation that the Patrician wasn't well orientated towards. He looked at the grandfather clock that stood against the opposite wall, between the two identical doors that led to his office.
It was only half nine!
He stared at the clock with his head to one side and with his mouth slightly open. He blinked, turned his head straight, closed his mouth and told himself to not look so stupid in the future and to suppress the huge yawn that built up inside him, trying to escape.
You'd better stop that, he told himself as his eyelids noticeably drooped, you've still got at least another two hours of this.
However, body overruled mind, and, in the end, Lord Havelock Vetinari slumped forwards onto a pile of paperwork and, ten minutes later, started to snore gently.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Vetinari awoke abruptly to the feel of someone shaking him awake.
He sat up and peeled a piece of paper that had somehow got stuck to his face off.
The Patrician clapped his hands to his sensitive ears as the usual chorus of "Daddy, wake up" being repeated over and over again bounced off the insides of he skull and threatened to give him a headache.
He pushed his chair back and sat Jessica on his lap, put a finger to his lips and said "Shhhh, I'm awake now, can you please stop it?"
Jessica brushed a hand up the side of her father's head.
"Your hairs all funny."
"Mmmm." Comes of sleeping with your head on a table. He said in the privacy of his head.
"Can we play a game?"
"Not now."
"Please?"
"No." Said Vetinari firmly.
"PLEASE???"
"NO." The Patrician raised his voice slightly above his daughter's.
Jessica stared at him with big blue eyes filled with water and her bottom lip quivering slightly.
"No." Said her father, much more gently.
More puppy-dog eyes followed, but now one of the eyes were leaking tears.
"But you said yesterday...."She started in a quavery voice.
"I don't recall any promises." The Patrician said icily, and immediately regretted it.
Jessica slipped off his lap and wandered over to one of the doors leading to and from the Oblong Office. Before she opened it, she turned back towards her father, sniffed sadly and then opened the door and meandered away sorrowfully.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
"An' then he shouted at me." Jessica was recalling the events that had just happened in her own special way*
*That means to say that calling it "slightly biased" was the underestimate of the century. All small children do this. One day, the scientists working on the project may find out why.
She had started telling it to the first person she had met on the way to the gardens. In this case, it had been Rosemary Palm of the Seamstresses Guild.
"And what did your daddy do then?" She asked kindly.
"Nothin', I ran away." Which was more or less part of the true story.
"Awww, you poor thing. Anyway, I'm just going to see your daddy now, so I'll talk to him about it." Mrs Palm said in her "talking to adorable children" voice.
"Are you going to tell him off for being such a naughty boy?" Mrs Palm nodded.
Jessica skipped of to the gardens.
Mrs Palm sighed and made her way to his Lordship's office.
"You have two very important jobs at the moment. One is first priority and the other...........Isn't." Mrs Palm said in her "complaining to the authorities" voice. "Can you guess which one goes where?" She snapped.
"Ohhh...Um..."Vetinari pretended to think for a moment. "I suppose you're going to tell me that I should look after my daughter first and look after the city in the gaps that my daughter leaves?" Vetinari changed mid- sentence from "sarcastic son of a bitch" to "sweet as honey but deadlier than Djelibeybian asps".
Mrs Palm nodded.
The Patrician switched back to sarcasm. "Well, in case you haven't noticed, but it seems to me that Jessica doesn't leave any gaps for me to do anything else."
"Why don't you put her in a school, or hire a childminder." The Gods know you can afford it, she added silently.
Vetinari opened his mouth, closed it, put his head to one side and said, "I didn't think of that..."
It was Mrs Palm's turn to let her jaw drop now. "You mean to say......" She said faintly, "that the greatest political genius of all time, who always thinks of everything, didn't think of that?" She said, disbelief ringing through her every word.
The Patrician snorted.
He suddenly became thoughtful. "Do you think that you could possibly find me some suitable candidates for the job?"
Rosemary fell silent with misunderstanding of what the Patrician was asking her to do, "Are we still on the subject of Great Plans and Political Geniuses?" She asked politely.
"No. I've gone back to childminding and schooling." He said sharply.
"Well..." Mrs Palm bit her lip thoughtfully. "You do understand that this isn't exactly in my field of expertise, don't you?"
"I am fully aware of that, yes." His Lordship's face was carefully immobile. "Just this one little favour..."
"I suppose...I could fish around for a bit of information...you know...ask some of the gels...." She trailed off.
"If you could do that for me, I would be very much pleased." The Patrician said, sincerity radiating off him.
Mrs Palm stopped and hesitated at the sudden silence that bloomed upon them. "Is this meeting finished then?" She asked.
Oh, yes, of course. I was forgetting myself for a minute there, sorry. Please do not let me detain you from your new-found job as a childminder and teacher searcher."
Mrs Palm gratefully left the office.
Ende of Parte thee firste.