Author's Note: I'd decided to put all my one-shots in one fic, for housekeeping, but I must admit that on a whole the format and the idea was pretty ghastly. And it's more fair to this fic that it gets its own space (instead of having to play second fiddle to Seamstresses) Sorry to Guardian Demon and Tinuviel, whose lovely reviews will be left behind on Seamstresses. Oh, damnit, all this administration is really quite tiresome.
I own nought: The Times and its people belong to Pratchett, and some acknowledgement for the inspiration for this is due to Guardian Demon's Ottofic Third Wheel.
After writing this, I feel very strongly that Otto needs a girl (which is where Maladicta comes in, but not here, though, helas)
Wedding IconographerSometimes, dark light can show you the good things.
Otto spends most of the day in his cellar, unless he is out on an assignment. He develops his iconographs, experiments with colour, pigments – and with dark light, when no one is looking. Down in the cellar, no one looks.
But come evening, and he begins to notice more than feel the cold, not the cold of an Ankh-Morpork winter, but the cold of an empty, dark space underground. So on cold, lonely evenings, he climbs up to the press room, the hot, stuffy, busy press room that is never silent and forever charged with the crunching sound of the presses as they churn out the paper, and the excitement of journalists when they have a new story. Otto sits in the corner, unconcernedly polishing his equipment, and watching the world of the Times spin past.
Today, however, is the weekend, and the press room is more peaceful, somehow. Several of the reporters are off on holiday or on sick leave for catching hypothermia from staking out spots for interviews. The dwarfs are watching the presses print their leisurely way through the pages, while they puff away at pipes and make small talk about 'back home'. William is out on a story, and Sacharissa has taken the chance to yet again invade his deskspace and clear out all the stuff he never gets around to throwing away. She has organised it more or less into her trademark neat stacks, when the door swings open and admits a lot of snow and William.
Boddony hastily pulls a stool out of the way as William stumbles through the crowd of dwarfs and plonks himself into his chair, scattering snow over some of Sacharissa's filing. Sacharissa watches him eagle-eyed. "Did you get the story?" she inquires.
William nods, peeling off his snow-laden coat and extracting the well-worn notebook from a deep pocket. "Stood outside their office for an hour, waiting for them to come out. It's bloody cold out there, too."
Otto observes that after nearly a year of working with the Times, Sacharissa hardly blinks at the use of words like 'bloody' and 'damn'. Occasionally she employs the former when she feels it truly pertinent.
"Would you like a cup of tea?" suggests Sacharissa tactfully.
"It's okay." William scrabbles around on his desk, searching for a pen, and then spots the new formation. Skeptically he points it out. "Sacharissa, have you been messing around with my desk again?"
Sacharissa contrives to look innocent, fails, and settles for righteousness. "I have not been messing. Contrary to your belief I have been striving to make it look less like a mess."
William picks up a stack in concern. "Where's the report from last Monday?"
"Which one?"
"Alchemists' Guild explosion."
"There were three. Anyway, they're both in the third stack from the left."
"And my pens? Where's all the stationery?"
"Bottom right-hand drawer. Your quills were scattered all over the place, I'll have you know, and it took me ages to find them all……"
"Well, you didn't have to……"
"Well, someone had to do it eventually, and since you weren't going to……"
Otto half-listens to their quarrel – a frequently-played tune on the daily soundtrack of the Times workplace – while he cleans the filters and slots them in and out to check they don't stick. The dwarfs seem to decide that this argument between their editors is run-of-the-mill, and go back to discussing the latest output of Shaft Seventeen in Second Cousin Something's mine.
"……and I can't find my stuff now you've rearranged it……"
"It's a wonder how you could locate anything in the first place!"
"Why do you keep clearing my desk, Sacharissa?"
Sacharissa folds her arms and stares William, who is a full head taller than her, down. "You've got to admit it, you work better when things are organized."
"And how do you know that?"
Sacharissa sighs. "I work with you. Of course I know how you work."
William sits down again. He leans over and pulls out the bottom right-hand drawer. All his quills are neatly arranged in a small mug, the fibres pulled and teased out to form a perfectly circular halo of white feathers. Slowly he takes it out and lays it in the centre of the cleared deskspace.
Sacharissa watches his movements, her lips clearly longing to move into a pithy comment, her mind clearly restraining them.
William, having replaced his mug, leans back in his chair, looks up at his co-editor and sighs. "Sometimes, Sacharissa, I don't know what I'd do without you."
The remark hits Sacharissa by surprise, and caught off-guard, it elicits a rare smile from her last-century-vogue lips. Argument forgotten, she beams at William, who grins back. In his tired, nervous, polite way, he can be quite captivating sometimes.
Otto looks up, his interest piqued by the unusual silence. His photographer's eye notes the perfect lighting, the dying sunbeams of mid-winter leaving a soft glow around the scene, illuminating William's upturned face, picking out the colour in Sacharissa's trim chignon. By intrinsic instinct the iconograph comes up, and he waits for the flash to come……
……but he's forgotten that the iconograph is still affixed to the land eels' jar, and still in dark light mode. Once more the room is filled with the roaring sound of darkness and time and shadow, but this time, overriding the ominous whispers of the dark light, there comes the clear, high sound of a child's laugh.
And then it all clears, and leaves a roomful of stunned people. Gunilla recovers first, and bellows in exasperation, "Otto! Not the dark light again!"
"Sorry, very sorry," mutters Otto, and amidst grumbling from the dwarfs he hastily packs up his equipment and retreats to the cellar. Sometimes, he thinks, people like him, photographers, they're very good at spoiling the mood.
When night has fallen, he goes back to developing pictures. When he has the time to take a good look at the iconograph he took just now with the dark light, he stares at it for a long while, then walks up into the press room to examine it in the brighter light.
It's late now, and the office is emptying. William is at his desk packing up, getting ready to go home. Otto walks up to him and wordlessly shows him the iconograph.
William opens his mouth to say something, and then the full implications of the picture hits him. He stares at it in silence.
Dark light shows what isn't there. It shows what some people see that others don't, and it shows what isn't present yet, but sometime in the future, will be.
Sacharissa sees the two of them bending over a piece of paper, and goes over inquisitively. "What's that?"
"Sacharissa," says William in an odd tone of voice, "I think you'd better take a look at this."
Sacharissa takes the iconograph from him. Her eyes grow suddenly large, and she says, "But…" and then she falls silent, her eyes flicking from the iconograph to William's face to the iconograph.
"Two?" she says, hesitantly.
William stares back at her, clearly still astonished.
Otto coughs in the background. "The boy, he really looks a lot like Villiam."
Their gazes do not shift. William leans forward, hand searching for Sacharissa's hand. She lets him take it.
"You see," says he quietly, "it has to be. It's going to be." He falls silent, searching her eyes for an answer, a reaction. Suddenly he bursts out, "Sacharissa! Let's get married."
Sacharissa blinks. Her lips move, forming words, but all she manages is a half-croaked "Why?"
William smiles, in his tired way. "Because I don't know what I'd do without you."
And Otto becomes part of the background again, part of the backdrop of a kiss. He's used to it, and so he smiles to himself, a little sadly, and heads back to his cellar, leaving the two of them in the firelight of the press office. As an afterthought, he takes the iconograph with him.
Years later, Otto likes to look back and remember that evening in the Times office. He still keeps the iconograph, filed with the rest of the pictures in the wedding albums, to remind the others that sometimes dark light isn't all that bad a thing.
He grins a little grin to himself, and Rupert Jr., who is poking in curiosity at the iconograph, asks why Uncle Otto is smiling. Otto expands the grin and tells Rupert to leave off annoying the imps. Over at the table, Sacharissa is teaching little Wilhelmina her letters from yesterday's edition: "…and here's that word we read yesterday, fracas. How do we spell fracas? F-R-A – no, Mina, it's a C, not a K……"
The door swings open, and simultaneously both children untangle themselves from their respective occupations and run to their father, disregarding the snow on his greatcoat. William ruffles Rupert's hair and bends down to scoop an insistent Mina up, and with Rupert trailing behind him, goes over to his desk, where Sacharissa has risen and is waiting, a smile playing across her features. William adjusts Mina's weight, in order to lean over and kiss his wife.
They pull apart, and Sacharissa is primly business-like again. "Did you get the story?"
William nods. He puts Mina down to turn to his desk, and then eyes the latter with skepticism. "Sacharissa, you've been tidying again, haven't you?"
"William, it was messy."
William narrows his eyes. "This is beginning to sound familiar."
Sacharissa folds her arms and looks down at him. "Of course. I've been cleaning your desk for seven years, dear. No, even before that. Put up with it, William."
William sits down, opens a drawer and extracts the mug of quills, which he carefully arranges in the middle of the desk. Mina toddles over, pushing on her father's knee and demanding to be lifted into his lap. William looks up at Sacharissa and grins.
And again the lighting is just right, and the pure photogenic quality of the scene has Otto's fingers itching to bring the iconograph up and capture it. But he doesn't, because he knows he already has the picture.
Sometimes, Otto likes to think that it was all his doing.
End.