Chapter 4 -- homecoming and breakdown....
Angua was almost silent on the walk back, fighting a thousand questions that were all jostling for attention in her head. Carrot had plenty to say to fill the space, and proceeded to do so as they ticked away the blocks back to Pseudopolis Yard.
"...and Leonard's penance is to paint the entire world on the ceiling of the Temple of Small Gods," he said, shaking his head. "He only has ten years."
"Perhaps he'll view it as a challenge," Angua said distantly.
"Yes... he does seem to be doing a lot of sketching. It'll take time to prepare." As they rounded a corner, Carrot glanced up at the sky, smiling suddenly. Angua followed his gaze up into the dense smog. "Oh, it's so good to feel the sun again!"
She peered at him, a little dazed, then turned a look at Vimes, who just rolled his eyes a little. Somehow, despite all the evidence stacked against him, Carrot managed to stay idealistic, even down to the gritty details of day to day life.
Then again, he'd just gone up against the gods -- and won....
She looked at him again and shivered a little. Maybe it was a win, anyway. If Leonard had such a task in front of him, what did they have in mind for Carrot?
He returned her look, noticed the shivering, and then he frowned, seeing the way she twitched away from the tension that created in her side. "Angua, are you hurt?"
She shook her head to try to dismiss it, but couldn't help but rub the bandaged area once. Vimes, seeing her fight with the words, broke in with, "She had a bit of a run-in last night with a man with a knife...."
Carrot stopped where he stood. "What happened? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Igor took care of me the next morning. I'll be good as new."
Carrot let out a sigh of relief. "Well, that's good. Igor does such marvelous work, doesn't he?"
Again, she couldn't help but give Carrot a look. Some men, on hearing news like this, would hassle and fuss and repeatedly ask if she was sure she was all right. Carrot jumped right ahead to believing her. She wasn't sure if that was more or less annoying.
He started walking again, then stopped and turned, frowning just a little. "Wasn't last night a full moon?"
Her voice went quiet. "Day after...."
"Didn't you stay, you know, changed after? Because I thought it would heal faster if --"
"Never mind, Carrot," she said, trying to push down a shudder.
Vimes once again heard the irregularity in her voice and turned to the younger man, trying to guide him off the subject. Angua ducked her head, silently thanking him several times over. "Captain, I imagine you're going to want to wind down once you get back...."
"Yes." He looked a little sheepish. "I hate to ask, but I'd been wondering, since you said we were back on the clock, if I really needed to --"
"Oh, gods, no, not today. Go back to the Watch house and rest. The two of you need to --" He waved his hand in some indeterminate, all-encompassing direction."You know. Talk."
That was the plan, such as it was, but it didn't go easily. As soon as they got in, Carrot was bombarded with greetings and questions. Angua found a seat and perched awkwardly on it, watching the spectacle, as Carrot began to modestly recount the tale for everyone at once. She noticed he kept glancing at her, though, and couldn't shake the feeling that he was editing.
"I'm sure there's more to this," she muttered to Vimes, who was standing next to her again. "He's still leaving bits out."
"If you were in his position, with this audience...."
She cracked a smile, watching Nobby as he posed a colorful version of the question of just how a privy works in zero gravity. *
[ *Someone ALWAYS asks. ]
Before Carrot was subjected to giving the technical explanation, Vimes stepped forward to face the crowd. "Listen, folks," he said loudly. "As fascinating as this story is, since the world has obviously failed to come to a screeching stop, we've still got work to do out there. Where's my taskforce on the Draper case?"
With some reluctance, the crowd began to disperse and reform into normal workday activity. Carrot gave Vimes a grateful look, which he acknowledged with a short nod. Angua noticed as he did so that Vimes looked oddly revitalized, as if the thought of ordinary, everyday disasters, the sort he knew how to deal with, had refocused his energies.
She, on the other hand, just wanted to go collapse.
"Come on," Carrot said, supporting her arm with one hand. "Let's go upstairs."
Angua shut Carrot's door behind her after they'd entered his room, and leaned back against it as he shed his bag and assorted gear onto the floor. Her eyes lingered on the bag, a frown pricking at her lips. There was that dusty smell again....
She forgot it as Carrot gently pulled her down to sit beside him on the bed, and they spent a comfortable few minutes proving to each other how glad they were to be sharing the other's company, under a sky that no longer threatened to fall in on everything.
It lasted until Carrot had to break off a kiss for a long yawn, and then an embarrassed laugh. Angua smiled a little at his apology and helped ease him into the bed. He was asleep within moments.
She sat on the chair beside the bed, watching him breathe, and before she realized what she was doing, she'd closed her eyes and dropped off to sleep as well.
Moonlight woke her later, like a gentle kiss on the cheek, a subtle, seductive hand over her hair.
She blinked her eyes open, wincing at the stiffness in her limbs. She'd been asleep for hours, in a chair hardly comfortable enough for a brief sit-down. Gingerly she tried to rise, feeling utterly ill at ease in her own body.
Carrot still slept as well, but he appeared completely comfortable. His face looked so gentle in this light, she thought; his skin nearly glowed. She reached forward to trace the line of his jaw with two fingers, watching him smile and shift slightly under her touch.
And then she saw her nails glinting like claws.
She gasped and pulled her hand away, shaking it fiercely as if she could make the incongruity just fall away. Her head had begun to throb with pain. Why, she thought, why now....
She took a few deep breaths. Calm descended slowly, and she held herself utterly still, trying to center herself. It was harder than it should have been. Her senses, somehow, felt filled with dust. She closed her eyes and saw clouds of it, a storm of gray, sweeping plains of pock-marked emptiness....
She stepped back, and bumped into Carrot's bag.
The sack tipped over. She looked at the spill, eyes growing wide. She saw nothing that unusual, and yet she wanted to recoil from it: notepads, clothes, what looked like a banana peel that had been stuffed in by mistake....
And something else, there at the bottom.
Angua knelt on the floor, reaching out with trembling fingers.
It was small. Nondescript. A lump of gray, dry rock, rough on the surface, flaking bits of dust away....
A rock, that's all it was. A small, plain stone. Yet she stared at it with a mix of terror and temptation, and her hand shook fiercely as it hovered above the... thing.
Her blood pounded in her ears, shutting out all other sound. Her sight blurred down to the narrow image of the stone. And she watched in a distant sort of horror as her fingers bent and clenched around it.
Just a stone.
But the sudden, horrible shock at contact jerked her head back, making her roar out in primal agony.
Her body shuddered forward, fighting for its shape; muscles clenched and spasmed, fangs erupted, claws stretched out, too long, too long. The wolf howled out, demanding release. But the hand -- the hand gripped tighter, breaking off bits of the rock, refusing to release --
She felt something grip her from behind, and she snarled, striking out as hard as she could; but it was all instinct, no thought, and she could barely control her actions. A leg kicked out, smashing the chair. Snatches of sight gave her a shattered window. And then she spun and slashed back, and there was blood, too much blood....
But the hands just held her tighter.
She wanted to scream, but that was a human thing, and whatever she was, that wasn't an option. She was in that horrible in-between, not woman or wolf, and her thoughts couldn't center on either....
One hand let go of her right shoulder. Some sort of sound rose from her throat, and her own hand whipped up in a deadly arc, like the punch last night, but fiercer, with no restraint at all --
A hand clenched around her forearm before it could hit its target. Her muscles strained against it, but it -- he -- was too strong....
"Let go," someone said.
Her human self knew the voice, and wanted to cry. The rest of her, still spitting and snarling, fought back, finding a reserve of strength nearly enough to break the man's arm....
The man. This man. Thought intruded on the roaring in her head, trying to give him a name. Not an attacker, not fighting her, not at all -- just holding her.
"Angua. Let go."
Her hand, still clenched into a fist, shook so badly below his grip that the fingers began to loosen. Crumbled rock drifted down through silver light, drifted into gleaming motes of dust, infintesimal fragments of the moon.
His grip loosened just a fraction. Her breath came back in short, terrified gulps; she choked on the dust, spitting flecks of gray and red, the latter from human gums split by canine teeth. She felt like a beast, something too horrible to contemplate. But the touch now was almost tender, pulling her close.
She had to stop; she had to think....
Realization came back like a shock of lightning. Her fingers uncurled.
The moon rock fell to the floor. Carrot swiftly lifted Angua, in human form now and sobbing, into his arms, and carried her out of the room and past the concerned Watchmen in the halls, not saying a word.
Just holding her.
## concluded in chapter 5.... ##
