The Trousers of Time

Disclaimer: The characters in this story, and some of the events, belong to the C. S. Forester estate and A&E Productions.

Description: A sort of verbal doodle exploring the area of might-have-beens. Part One is a pre-series AU, Part Two yet another take on a familiar scenario. This piece turned out a bit darker than I'd intended, but that's what happens when you write stories with Jack Simpson in them. Therefore:

Warning: This story contains references to child abuse and rape of minors.

To history, choices are merely directions. The Trousers of Time opened up....

Terry Pratchett, Jingo

Prologue

One chilly spring night, a boy stood, hesitant, in the grounds of a plain building with that indefinable quality that hangs around places devoted to the study of education. To put through his plan he would need to scale the wall that ran around the grounds by means of clinging ivy and descend into the road outside. It was that, and not the thought of the world beyond the wall, that caused his hesitation now, for the wall looked very high. Perhaps he should go back after all. Perhaps he should obey his father's wishes. The school life, though unhappy, was surely not unendurable, and though he could see little purpose in his studies it was always possible that he was wrong. Perhaps....

For long years afterwards he would remember that moment, and how long he hesitated, how nearly the decision reached might have been different. For a long time he would wonder over how different his life might have been.

At long last, he started forward, and for a brief moment had the most strange sensation of being two people. One beginning, with dogged determination, to scale the wall, the other trailing back towards his hard bed in the dormitory. Two boys, launched upon irrevocably different futures....