Only Human - Chapter two.
I do not own any of the characters from the Discworld novels.
The reason why this chapter is so long is that when I first wrote this story, I wasn't satisfied with the result. So I started again, using bits from the old version that I liked.
I would appreiciate reviews even if you think that this chapter is really crap.
Twist is going to kill me.
* * *
Ridcully heard voices in the darkness.
"Leonard?"
"Hmm?"
"Can you talk?"
"Probably, my lord." Ridcully started swearing ferverently in his head.
"Leonard?"
"Yes, my lord?"
"What is my first name?"
Leonard appeared to pause.
"Havelock."
"Thankyou. After what happened earlier, I think you deserve the right to call me by my real name, instead of "my lord"."
They were both silent for a while.
"Leonard?"
"Yes, Havelock?"
"Where are you?"
"I don't know, my lor - Havelock."
"Well, where do I appear to be?"
"Somewhere to the left of me."
"Excuse me?" Ponder's voice rang out clear and sharp.
Leonard and Havelock went quite for some time.
"Who's that?" Leonard asked at lengh.
There was shuffling in the dark.
Mustrum Ridcully screamed as a cold clammy hand landed on his head.
The thing that the hand belonged to also screamed for a few seconds, stopped abrubtly, and said: "Who's that?"
"Is that the Patrician?"
"No."
"Is this duplicity again?"
"No."
"Well, you bloody well sound like Vetinari to me." Grumgled Ridcully, "Are you then?"
"Maybe."
"Look, whoever you are, just tell me where I am and why it's dark."
"Is that Archchancellor Ridcully?" Leonard queried, somewhere behind the wizard.
"Yes."
"Am I right in thinking that there areonly four of us here?" Ponder asked.
"Probably."
Ponder Stibbons shivered. "Probably" was not the answer he had wanted to hear.
Havelock Vetinari felt around carefully. He was sitting on something that felt rather like dry earth. Ridcully was right in front of him, Leonard to the right, but he hadn't determined where Ponder was, yet.
There was a shuffling behind him and someone kicked him in the back, hard.
"Someone just kicked me." He said, a bit reproachfully.
"Sorry sir, that would be me."
"Hmm."
Ridcully shifted slightly. "D'you think that we ought to explore a bit more?"
"Yes, definitely. That way we could all get lost, hopefully." Replyed Vetinari, sarcasm sliding neatly into the sentence.
"No need for that, I was just asking."
Leonard reached over to his left and found Vetinari's hand. The Patrician gripped it tightly and pulled the man closer to him.
"Are you all right?"
Leonard laid his head on Vetinari's shoulder and nodded.
"Good."
Ridcully stared into what he thought as the distance and was surprised to find that around what he thought was the horizon was a greyish-white hue.
"What's that grey line in front of us?" He asked.
Ponder looked towards the place that Ridcully meant. "It looks as though the sun's coming up." He replied.
"Oh." Said Ridcully flatly, disappointment ringing through his voice.
They watched it for a while.
Fifthteen minutes later, it was light enough to see that they appeared to be in a wood of some description. Low, thick fog lay between the trees.
"There's no birdsong." Ridcully remarked after a while.
It was true. The air was completely clear except for the sound of insects and their voices.
He looked behind him and blinked. Twice.
Leonard was sitting beside Vetinari, heavy head resting against the Patrician's shoulder. In turn, Vetinari's head was lolling against the side of Leonard's. Gentle snores came from the inventer's mouth and nose. The Patrician's eyes were still open, but were drooping to an extent of contradicting that statement.
Ridcully realised that he was staring and looked away quickly.
* * *
"Maybe if you got some dry grass, it would be easier." Vetinari called from where he was lying in the sun.
Ridcully growled to himself.
Currently there were two groups. After a brief, short and nasty argument, Ponder and Ridcully had gone to try and make fire whilst Leonard and Vetinari basked in the sun. Vetinari's outer robe was lying at the bottom of a tree after he found ouy that wearing three very heavy black robes and sunbathing was a very bad idea. Eventually, he stripped down to his underpants and went to find out how far the wizards had got to making fire.
Ridcully looked up with hatred at the man calmly sitting cross-legged opposite him with his chin resting in his long thin hands. He seemed to be smiling slightly.
"What're you staring at?" Ridcully demanded.
Vetinari shrugged, got up, and rummaged through his robes.
He threw something at Ridcully and lay down again in the sun.
It was a box of matches.
* * *
The fire flickered and twisted through the air, throwing off thick, acrid smoke that writhed and whirled in the chilly air, making disturbing shapes in the slight breeze that blew.
"Anyone got the time?" Ridcully said after a while.
Ponder looked at his clockwork watch. It hadn't worked since they had arrived in this place. He looked towards where the sun was meant to be.
"Four to six o' clock, at a guess."
Vetinari sat up quickly.
"Did anyone hear that?"
"What?"
"It was." He paused, "very hard to describe."
" You been hearing things old chap?" Ridcully said in his "talking-to-the- Bursar" voice.
Vetinari gave him a Look.
* * *
"I told you I heard something."
"Shutup."
"And guess what happened."
"Shut. Up. You're talking like a child."
"I can talk like a child if I bloody well want to." Vetinari said sulkily and gave the Archchancellor a "I'm more superior than you" look. With a side-order of smugness.
"What was that thing?" Ridcully asked, deciding to ignore Vetinari's satisfied smile.
"Looked like a lizard."
"If it was, then it was a bloody big one."
"With teeth." Vetinari sounded slightly fazed.
"Shutup."
"And great big sharp claws." The Patrician's eyes unfocused a bit.
"Shutup."
"Any idea what happened to the other two?" Vetinari queried inocently.
Ridcully had been trying to avoid that question so far and now he had to look it straight in the face.
"You know those great big teeth?" He started slowly.
"Yes?"
The Archchancellor shook his head quickly. *Better to forget about all that now.*
He was silent for quite some time.
"Actually, we don't know whether they actually *have* been eaten-"
"Shutup."
They sat in silence.
Ridcully decided to break it.
"Anyway," Ridcully said at lengh," how can you possibly talk about them like this?" He looked at Vetinari.
Mustrum Ridcully knew that he himself was absolutely dripping with sweat from their encounter, but the droplets of liquid running from the Patrician's eyes and down his face came continuously. Ridcully put an arm around the other man's thin shoulders and could feel that Vetinari was silently shuddering.
*He's crying*, he thought, *the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork is actually *crying*.*
Not experienced in these matters he said quietly, "D'you want to borrow my handkercheif?"
The weeping man buried his head into Ridcully's arm and, leaning on him heavily, nodded silently.
Ridcully fished into one of his various pockets and drew out something filthy and vaguely rectangular that might have once been white before it was sujected to the strain of belonging to the Archchancellor of Unseen University. He handed it over.
Lord Vetinari took the handkercheif and began to sob into it uncontrollably, gasping audibly.
Ridcully rubbed the other man on the back soothingly.
"Go on. let it all out."
Vetinari continued to sob into the poor excuse for a handkercheif for quite some time. Eventually, he looked up, passed the sopping material back, and rubbed his hands over his face.
Ridcully became aware that the way that the Patrician dealed with things like the ambush of the lizard and the loss of probably the closest thing he had to a friend was to metaphorically drive straight through them and hope not to break down on the way, like he had just done.
"Anyway, as you said before, they might have survived." The Archchancellor said softly.
* * *
Leonard woke up to find that he had a headache was a bit sore around the stomach.
He shifted slightly so that he could see what was putting so much pressure on his lower back.
Vaguely intelligent eyes blinked back at him from above, then dipped back down in order to finish it's meal.
* * *
Ponder Stibbons was in a rather difficult situation.
A strange animal had discovered him, and, incidentally, his glasses.
He groped around on the floor in front of him, calling out for help was absolutely unthinkable, since the big lizard might find him again.
"Here lizzy-lizzy-lizard." He called out softly. Something chirped in the trees above him, he looked up. All was a greenish-brown blur as the pine needlesand branches slurred togather in a puddle of colour.
An unidentified species of animal flew out of a tree above him and something big, black and heavy fell out, screaming in a high-pitched flow of various curses. It landed at Ponder's feet and thrust out a hand towards him.
The young wizard squinted, turning his head this way and that. He then plucked his glasses out of the hand that offered them.
There was silence in the trees, broken only by the heavy panting of the thing at Ponder's feet.
Finally the thing groaned humanly and rolled over to face the wizard.
"Have you ever tried to climb a tree in an ankle-lengh robe and try not to be heard at the same time?" It inquired.
"Is that Lord Vetinari?" Ponder couldn't see the face clearly for scratches, mud and leaves.
"You haven't answered my question yet, and yes."
"No, not quite. But I've been tied to trees in my childhood. What were you actually *doing* up there?"
"Trying to find young wizards." Vetinari replied primly. He whistled sharply and Ridcully came running out from the bushes, where he had been emptying his bladder.
"Right, one down, one to go." He said briskly.
"Have you seen him anywhere?" Vetinari asked Ponder in a tight voice.
"Who?"
The Patrician stared at him for fully ten seconds before he spoke.
"A very valuable man. He's an inventor, an artist, a genius," Vetinari started to sound hysterical as he went through the sentence."And, incidentally, my partner/boyfriend/lover." He drew a great shuddering breath and tried to gain control of himself again.
"No, I'm afraid that I haven't seen any of those people." Ponder said brightly.
The Patrician started to curse under his brath at these words, even the Archchancellor looked shocked. He put an arm on Vetinari's arm.
"Steady on, he's just a lad."
"I wasn't bloody well talking about him, I was cursing the fact that we're still stuck here, we haven't got any food or water, my boyfriend's still missing and I'm stuck here with two wizards, one of which is an utter twit (for want of better words) who couldn't find his arse if it was marked on a map with big easy-read letters, and another one who is so in love with mechanical things, I'm surprised that he hasn't built himself a female robot, just so that he cou-"
Ridcully had grabbed the Patrician by the lapels of his robe. He drew Vetinari up so that they were at eye level, smacked him round the mouth, just once, and dropped him unceremoniously to the floor.
"Thank you."
"My pleasure."
Vetinari looked up at them miserably from where he was lying.
"Do you think we should keep seaching for Leonard?" Said Ponder, changing the subject.
"What's the point, he's probably dead." Vetinari said in a very sober and depressed sort of voice. Ridcully Looked at him.
"So you obviously don't care about him any more?" He said nastily. Vetinari scowled at him. Ridcully sighed.
"If you ever want a chance of seeing your beloved again, I suggest you smarten your act up a bit, because you'll have no chance out here on your own and you're not coming with us unless you keep some of your stronger opinions to yourself."
"Are you saying that I'm not capable of looking after myself?"
"In a word: yes."
The Patrician hauled himself to his feet, glared at them, and walked off.
I do not own any of the characters from the Discworld novels.
The reason why this chapter is so long is that when I first wrote this story, I wasn't satisfied with the result. So I started again, using bits from the old version that I liked.
I would appreiciate reviews even if you think that this chapter is really crap.
Twist is going to kill me.
* * *
Ridcully heard voices in the darkness.
"Leonard?"
"Hmm?"
"Can you talk?"
"Probably, my lord." Ridcully started swearing ferverently in his head.
"Leonard?"
"Yes, my lord?"
"What is my first name?"
Leonard appeared to pause.
"Havelock."
"Thankyou. After what happened earlier, I think you deserve the right to call me by my real name, instead of "my lord"."
They were both silent for a while.
"Leonard?"
"Yes, Havelock?"
"Where are you?"
"I don't know, my lor - Havelock."
"Well, where do I appear to be?"
"Somewhere to the left of me."
"Excuse me?" Ponder's voice rang out clear and sharp.
Leonard and Havelock went quite for some time.
"Who's that?" Leonard asked at lengh.
There was shuffling in the dark.
Mustrum Ridcully screamed as a cold clammy hand landed on his head.
The thing that the hand belonged to also screamed for a few seconds, stopped abrubtly, and said: "Who's that?"
"Is that the Patrician?"
"No."
"Is this duplicity again?"
"No."
"Well, you bloody well sound like Vetinari to me." Grumgled Ridcully, "Are you then?"
"Maybe."
"Look, whoever you are, just tell me where I am and why it's dark."
"Is that Archchancellor Ridcully?" Leonard queried, somewhere behind the wizard.
"Yes."
"Am I right in thinking that there areonly four of us here?" Ponder asked.
"Probably."
Ponder Stibbons shivered. "Probably" was not the answer he had wanted to hear.
Havelock Vetinari felt around carefully. He was sitting on something that felt rather like dry earth. Ridcully was right in front of him, Leonard to the right, but he hadn't determined where Ponder was, yet.
There was a shuffling behind him and someone kicked him in the back, hard.
"Someone just kicked me." He said, a bit reproachfully.
"Sorry sir, that would be me."
"Hmm."
Ridcully shifted slightly. "D'you think that we ought to explore a bit more?"
"Yes, definitely. That way we could all get lost, hopefully." Replyed Vetinari, sarcasm sliding neatly into the sentence.
"No need for that, I was just asking."
Leonard reached over to his left and found Vetinari's hand. The Patrician gripped it tightly and pulled the man closer to him.
"Are you all right?"
Leonard laid his head on Vetinari's shoulder and nodded.
"Good."
Ridcully stared into what he thought as the distance and was surprised to find that around what he thought was the horizon was a greyish-white hue.
"What's that grey line in front of us?" He asked.
Ponder looked towards the place that Ridcully meant. "It looks as though the sun's coming up." He replied.
"Oh." Said Ridcully flatly, disappointment ringing through his voice.
They watched it for a while.
Fifthteen minutes later, it was light enough to see that they appeared to be in a wood of some description. Low, thick fog lay between the trees.
"There's no birdsong." Ridcully remarked after a while.
It was true. The air was completely clear except for the sound of insects and their voices.
He looked behind him and blinked. Twice.
Leonard was sitting beside Vetinari, heavy head resting against the Patrician's shoulder. In turn, Vetinari's head was lolling against the side of Leonard's. Gentle snores came from the inventer's mouth and nose. The Patrician's eyes were still open, but were drooping to an extent of contradicting that statement.
Ridcully realised that he was staring and looked away quickly.
* * *
"Maybe if you got some dry grass, it would be easier." Vetinari called from where he was lying in the sun.
Ridcully growled to himself.
Currently there were two groups. After a brief, short and nasty argument, Ponder and Ridcully had gone to try and make fire whilst Leonard and Vetinari basked in the sun. Vetinari's outer robe was lying at the bottom of a tree after he found ouy that wearing three very heavy black robes and sunbathing was a very bad idea. Eventually, he stripped down to his underpants and went to find out how far the wizards had got to making fire.
Ridcully looked up with hatred at the man calmly sitting cross-legged opposite him with his chin resting in his long thin hands. He seemed to be smiling slightly.
"What're you staring at?" Ridcully demanded.
Vetinari shrugged, got up, and rummaged through his robes.
He threw something at Ridcully and lay down again in the sun.
It was a box of matches.
* * *
The fire flickered and twisted through the air, throwing off thick, acrid smoke that writhed and whirled in the chilly air, making disturbing shapes in the slight breeze that blew.
"Anyone got the time?" Ridcully said after a while.
Ponder looked at his clockwork watch. It hadn't worked since they had arrived in this place. He looked towards where the sun was meant to be.
"Four to six o' clock, at a guess."
Vetinari sat up quickly.
"Did anyone hear that?"
"What?"
"It was." He paused, "very hard to describe."
" You been hearing things old chap?" Ridcully said in his "talking-to-the- Bursar" voice.
Vetinari gave him a Look.
* * *
"I told you I heard something."
"Shutup."
"And guess what happened."
"Shut. Up. You're talking like a child."
"I can talk like a child if I bloody well want to." Vetinari said sulkily and gave the Archchancellor a "I'm more superior than you" look. With a side-order of smugness.
"What was that thing?" Ridcully asked, deciding to ignore Vetinari's satisfied smile.
"Looked like a lizard."
"If it was, then it was a bloody big one."
"With teeth." Vetinari sounded slightly fazed.
"Shutup."
"And great big sharp claws." The Patrician's eyes unfocused a bit.
"Shutup."
"Any idea what happened to the other two?" Vetinari queried inocently.
Ridcully had been trying to avoid that question so far and now he had to look it straight in the face.
"You know those great big teeth?" He started slowly.
"Yes?"
The Archchancellor shook his head quickly. *Better to forget about all that now.*
He was silent for quite some time.
"Actually, we don't know whether they actually *have* been eaten-"
"Shutup."
They sat in silence.
Ridcully decided to break it.
"Anyway," Ridcully said at lengh," how can you possibly talk about them like this?" He looked at Vetinari.
Mustrum Ridcully knew that he himself was absolutely dripping with sweat from their encounter, but the droplets of liquid running from the Patrician's eyes and down his face came continuously. Ridcully put an arm around the other man's thin shoulders and could feel that Vetinari was silently shuddering.
*He's crying*, he thought, *the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork is actually *crying*.*
Not experienced in these matters he said quietly, "D'you want to borrow my handkercheif?"
The weeping man buried his head into Ridcully's arm and, leaning on him heavily, nodded silently.
Ridcully fished into one of his various pockets and drew out something filthy and vaguely rectangular that might have once been white before it was sujected to the strain of belonging to the Archchancellor of Unseen University. He handed it over.
Lord Vetinari took the handkercheif and began to sob into it uncontrollably, gasping audibly.
Ridcully rubbed the other man on the back soothingly.
"Go on. let it all out."
Vetinari continued to sob into the poor excuse for a handkercheif for quite some time. Eventually, he looked up, passed the sopping material back, and rubbed his hands over his face.
Ridcully became aware that the way that the Patrician dealed with things like the ambush of the lizard and the loss of probably the closest thing he had to a friend was to metaphorically drive straight through them and hope not to break down on the way, like he had just done.
"Anyway, as you said before, they might have survived." The Archchancellor said softly.
* * *
Leonard woke up to find that he had a headache was a bit sore around the stomach.
He shifted slightly so that he could see what was putting so much pressure on his lower back.
Vaguely intelligent eyes blinked back at him from above, then dipped back down in order to finish it's meal.
* * *
Ponder Stibbons was in a rather difficult situation.
A strange animal had discovered him, and, incidentally, his glasses.
He groped around on the floor in front of him, calling out for help was absolutely unthinkable, since the big lizard might find him again.
"Here lizzy-lizzy-lizard." He called out softly. Something chirped in the trees above him, he looked up. All was a greenish-brown blur as the pine needlesand branches slurred togather in a puddle of colour.
An unidentified species of animal flew out of a tree above him and something big, black and heavy fell out, screaming in a high-pitched flow of various curses. It landed at Ponder's feet and thrust out a hand towards him.
The young wizard squinted, turning his head this way and that. He then plucked his glasses out of the hand that offered them.
There was silence in the trees, broken only by the heavy panting of the thing at Ponder's feet.
Finally the thing groaned humanly and rolled over to face the wizard.
"Have you ever tried to climb a tree in an ankle-lengh robe and try not to be heard at the same time?" It inquired.
"Is that Lord Vetinari?" Ponder couldn't see the face clearly for scratches, mud and leaves.
"You haven't answered my question yet, and yes."
"No, not quite. But I've been tied to trees in my childhood. What were you actually *doing* up there?"
"Trying to find young wizards." Vetinari replied primly. He whistled sharply and Ridcully came running out from the bushes, where he had been emptying his bladder.
"Right, one down, one to go." He said briskly.
"Have you seen him anywhere?" Vetinari asked Ponder in a tight voice.
"Who?"
The Patrician stared at him for fully ten seconds before he spoke.
"A very valuable man. He's an inventor, an artist, a genius," Vetinari started to sound hysterical as he went through the sentence."And, incidentally, my partner/boyfriend/lover." He drew a great shuddering breath and tried to gain control of himself again.
"No, I'm afraid that I haven't seen any of those people." Ponder said brightly.
The Patrician started to curse under his brath at these words, even the Archchancellor looked shocked. He put an arm on Vetinari's arm.
"Steady on, he's just a lad."
"I wasn't bloody well talking about him, I was cursing the fact that we're still stuck here, we haven't got any food or water, my boyfriend's still missing and I'm stuck here with two wizards, one of which is an utter twit (for want of better words) who couldn't find his arse if it was marked on a map with big easy-read letters, and another one who is so in love with mechanical things, I'm surprised that he hasn't built himself a female robot, just so that he cou-"
Ridcully had grabbed the Patrician by the lapels of his robe. He drew Vetinari up so that they were at eye level, smacked him round the mouth, just once, and dropped him unceremoniously to the floor.
"Thank you."
"My pleasure."
Vetinari looked up at them miserably from where he was lying.
"Do you think we should keep seaching for Leonard?" Said Ponder, changing the subject.
"What's the point, he's probably dead." Vetinari said in a very sober and depressed sort of voice. Ridcully Looked at him.
"So you obviously don't care about him any more?" He said nastily. Vetinari scowled at him. Ridcully sighed.
"If you ever want a chance of seeing your beloved again, I suggest you smarten your act up a bit, because you'll have no chance out here on your own and you're not coming with us unless you keep some of your stronger opinions to yourself."
"Are you saying that I'm not capable of looking after myself?"
"In a word: yes."
The Patrician hauled himself to his feet, glared at them, and walked off.