Chapters: 34/? Fandom: Discworld - Terry Pratchett Rating: Mature Relationships: Lord Downey/Havelock Vetinari, Lord Downey/Others (past), Havelock Vetinari/Others (past) Additional Tags: illogical use of magic - don't worry about it, Transformation, Body Horror, Illness, descriptions of the results of gun violence, or gonne violence as the case may be, Slow Burn, too much philosophical meanderings too little time, POV Alternating, Downey has a daughter who is twelve and a menace, light descriptions of torture - but it's not to any canon characters, and it's in the historic past, i want to be explicit that the body horror is not Vetinari's wound, because disability isn't body horror, etc etc - Freeform Series: Part 1 of Decreation Summary:
One blustery morning, a short note arrives on Downey's desk that says: Patrician. Sektober 13. Soon after Vetinari receives an old newspaper clipping about the death of a colleague's father that occurred forty years ago. It doesn't take long for things to go a little wahoonie shaped with a dead girl in a tree, a two hundred year old mystery, and a creature stalking the streets of Ankh-Morpork.
Of course, throughout all of this, Vetinari is fending off unsolicited advice from his aunt (buy a lint roller!) and begins to worry that he might be developing an approximation of something like maybe feelings, for a limited value of feelings, for one Master of the Assassins Guild.
Naturally, nothing is every entirely straight forward and some families have old secrets.
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Obligatory Excerpt:
‘I trust you are keeping well,’ Vetinari says, as the guards step out of the room, leaving them alone. Cooper’s eyes trail them before marking Vetinari’s position, the door, the windows. The Assassin never leaves a man once it’s sewn into him.
‘The doctor said I would live, for whatever that is worth. He stitched me up decently – wasted effort I told him, since you’re going to disappear me.’
Vetinari puts on a pretense of being mildly offended. He would never be so crass as to put it like that. No? Cooper smiles. Language may change, but the act remains the same.
‘True,’ Vetinari replies evenly. ‘But I do like to think I have manners and give some sort of nod to the correct form. Or enough of a nod that it’s believable from the outside. Language may be malleable, but that doesn’t reduce its importance. Now, I wish I could trust you enough to ask if you believe in angels as there’s a new division being created in the Watch to address the backlog of cold cases. A sort-of auditor-detective role. It is salaried,’ Vetinari reviews the job description in front of him, ‘and it comes with a hat. Very nice. You would be a natural, given your tenacity and that you figured out in a matter of weeks what no one else has ever worked out. But alas I do not believe you would let things drop.’
Cooper tilts his head in thought. While he has been provided clothes and the opportunity to bathe, the fact that he has been stuck in a cell remains evident in dirty fingernails, a certain exhaustion beneath the eyes, crumpled tunic over his doublet and hose.
‘I could be persuaded,’ Cooper finally replies. ‘Hats are nice.’
Havelock “Do you believe in angels” Vetinari does not strike this time but he really wishes he could because he loves a useful, lucky, competent person. Too bad this one stabbed his (non)boyfriend’s daughter!