Note: Please continue to send all flames about earlier or subsequent chapters as that which doesn't kill me only makes me stronger or something like that... like I said, first DW fanfic, can't keep in with Pterry's style since my world view doesn't conicide with his so I make a seemingly unretributional character with an impossible premise because although I don't dispise any of the DW characters I just thought it'd be fun to see them on the sharp end of a blunt stick for once so I apologise if I have offended all you readers and the great Pterry himself, but then its more fun if you start off high when you fall....
He had been back in this reality for two weeks now, slowly adjusting to a whole new way of life and also a new personality. All that he had went through to get here, all that he had to do and had to have been, the arrogance, the rage, all caused by a life of pain and not helped by the wolf within. Now he was someone different, yet still him for the memories of that horrible time still plagued him in his dreams every night.
He writhed in his bed, the coils of sheets rolling and sliding again his fear drenched body, soft whines coming from his throat, as he turned over and over trapped in the nightmare.
The world he had worked so hard to destroy still existed inside his head, a small bubble of reality placed there by Time for the price of his wish to change his life, for all possibilities have to exist somewhere, and in his sleep it was able to leak out.
The sky around him was dark, fear laced it with its potent smell as fires and explosions erupted beyond the walls. He was so small unable to truly understand but still too precocious to stay back where his mother had left him. He gazed out the window as he watched the assorted dark figures clashing together, fangs and claws against fist and weapons. The ground was light by fire and stained by blood as the howls went up and the bodies continued to fall. Jayson was trying hard not to answer the howl himself, to listen to the call within his young blood.
Other children cowered in the room behind him, the sound of battle and screams too much for them.
'Jayson come here.' A stern voice called out to him making him turn from the window.
He whined softly and turned to the authoritive figure, her hair in a bun and pure white, marred by a single black streak
'Yes Miss Susan.' He said softly and returned to the group of children, cowed by Miss Susan's presence.
The children eventually fell asleep amid all the turmoil, only to be woken in the early morning, the pale sunlight obscured by a thick mist and curtains of smoke, Miss Susan quickly ushering them out of the classroom, still sluggish and sleepy eyed.
Only Jayson was wide awake, the scents in the air causing him to hop excitedly.
'Is my Mum and Dad here?' he asked looked in round trying to peer through the fog to make out the tall familiar figure that was his father as Miss Susan got all the children into a close group and looked worriedly through the mist.
'No Jayson they've gone.' Miss Susan said kindly.
'They still at work?' Jayson asked confused, the other children still yawning sleepily and swaying slightly.
'No they're dead, gone for good.' Miss Susan said bluntly.
'Oh...' Jayson said softly his four year old mind aware of death what with the class pet and that strange skeletal man that came to visit sometimes. Inside he felt numb, not really sure how to feel as he fell in line.
A set of howls made him grin but caused Miss Susan to pull him in to the group.
'Okay children, let's go.' She ordered and led them away from the stricken building and keeping them from seeing the bodies that littered the streets.
The dream moved on and Jayson was older, nine years old now and looked after by the Duke and Duchess Vimes although their titles were pretty much obsolete now. He knew them from his earlier youth when he had been with his parents and spent time in the Watch House, and then the darkness had come and taken them away. They left him with those other children and never came back, never said goodbye. Admittedly he didn't dwell on them as much, life was too full of dangers to ponder on such things anymore, firstly there was Sam Junior who was three years his senior and liked to play pranks on him, and then there was the fact that the world was run by the dead.
Some vampire was in charge of the city, the previous ruler having been murdered during all the fighting. Werewolves stalked the streets playing with any helpless person they happened to come across. Most of the dwarves had fled the city in subterranean tunnels and the troll were left alone by and large, for huge mobile stones that could hit you like a ton of bricks were always left untroubled. Which left the humans cowering in their homes, afraid to walk the streets at night, more so than in the good old days.
His adopted father Sir Vimes had been allowed to live the vampire in charge somehow enjoying the anger and pain this subservience caused to Vimes. The vampire even allowed Vimes to continue running the Watch, where his biological parents had worked until they died, although there was no point, the whole thing was merely a charade, a pandering to good relations to other countries. The only rules now were to avoid being eaten. Life continued on in Ankh Morpork, the citizens well known for being able to continue on as if all was well, but inside Jayson's mind it wasn't.
He was one of the undead, a werewolf and would be taunted behind his back by the other students at Miss Susan's school as if they didn't know he could hear their every whisper. At full moon he stalked the night streets, the Vimes' unable to stop him from this and it was here he unleashed all the pent up anger and repression he suffered. Yet it wasn't on the humans he unleashed this but those he truly blamed for his problems, those like himself, the werewolves that had power and held the people by fear yet still were reviled behind their backs. Because of them he couldn't fit in either place, he was an outcast.
Through his fights he learnt control, strength, the limits of his power, how to intimidate... he worked his way up the biting order within the ranks of the wolves within a few years suffering a damaging injury to his back leg leaving him with a slight limp but that hardly stopped his brutality. Because of this Vimes was wary of him and Sybil tried to defuse the anger within to no avail whilst Sam Junior was in awe of his younger friend, now following and respecting him. Jayson cherished Junior's friendship and loyalty for it was the only true friendship he had, all he had was adversaries.
Junior became a Watchman to follow his father but Vimes had been beaten down by the years of suppression and the failed revolts that he had lost the passion for his work which merely boiled down to the confiscation of silver, garlic, holy water, holy symbols and stakes and led to more resentment that normal from the human citizens.
Jayson craved for a way to change all this, the misery all around him, the changes in the loving people around him who had seemed so happy when he was a pup. He tired of the daily struggle to simply survive, the hurtful gazes and remarks that had been branded on him all these years as he had grown up. He skulked in the Unseen University Library which was the only place he could find peace, the warm crackle of magic in the air and the rustle of pages soothing to him. It was here he found out about the past, of who his parents had been, what the world had been like before all this hatred and pain and he wished that it was all different. And someone heard that wish and came to grant it.
'Jayson...' a soft voice said, causing him to sit bolt upright in the bed.
Jayson opened his eyes and looked round wildly and found himself looking into a face from the past, moving silver stars on a dark background.
'Am I still dreaming?' he murmured to himself as Lobsang's face swam into focus at the end of his bed.
'No this is reality.' Lobsang said softly.
'Why are you here?' Jayson asked, his heart still purring wildly.
'I have a task for you.' Lobsang told him.
Jayson's brow creased in confusion. 'Wait a minute I've done what we agreed on.' He replied.
'And now I need you to do something for me... I need you to go to another reality and protect someone.' Lobsang said softly, his robe moving in an unseen breeze.
'No way! I've not long got here! Besides we had a deal, I paid the price!' Jayson snapped, pulling the covers off himself.
'And I could easily change all that, make the old world the reality.' Lobsang told him smiling benevolently.
Jayson's eyes widened in shock. 'You wouldn't...' he gasped.
'If I have to I will.' Lobsang replied his face set determined.
'Why me? Why not the Sweeper or your monks?' Jayson moaned clutching his head.
'Because you have experience and what I need you to do goes against what the monks stand for even with the Sweeper's tendency to bend the rules.' Lobsang told him.
'Besides sometimes a cold calculating bastard is needed.' A feminine voice came from the dark as a figure walked through the wall and stood beside Lobsang.
'Miss Susan?' Jayson said stunned, aware of how little he was wearing and reached for the covers.
Jayson then recovered and replied 'I'm not that person anymore... That was what the past had made me and what I needed to be back then, but now I've changed, not so angry, arrogant, I know my place, I don't need to intimidate to get what I want anymore.'
'Yet you can still call upon that if needed.' Lobsang told him.
'You're our only hope...' Susan said softly.
It was this comment that made Jayson's thoughts stop in their tracks. All his life he had known Miss Susan as a figure of certainty, of self-reliance, someone he had looked up to in the dark days and also now in the light. In both realities he had been taught by her and he guessed he owed her this at the least for what she had done for him.
'Okay... who and where?' Jayson said sighing in resignation.
'A reality similar to this one except some people aren't who you know them to be. As for who you have to protect, you'll know when you get there.' Lobsang said smiling gratefully and there was a sensation of pressure as the world started to disappear.