Disclaimer: I most definitely do not own anything Discworld related. Especially since I have my suspicions that Terry Pratchett might actually be God Himself come on Earth to have a little fun and teach us a few things about the world.

Author's Note: It sure took me long enough to delve into this fandom. One reason is because I didn't feel I was good enough for Pratchett readers quite yet and if you are going to write a Discworld fan fiction, you better do it as right as possible. The books are just so full of everything that there's not much room for fantasizing. The person I owe my change of heart to is Moist von Lipwig so thank you Moist. To me he seems much more approachable from a fan fic writer's point of view than the other characters and therefore his appearance in the novels is what got this ball rolling.

With this fic I am breaking the recent promise I made to only post stuff that is finished but since this story will be written in segments rather than proper chapters, I beg to be forgiven. In the spirit of 'Inner Angels and Guardian Demons' which turned out to be my most popular work, I got a list of prompts from the internet and I'm currently working my way through them, trying to weave a plot in between the not-short-enough-to-be-drabbles pieces. I did want to finish first and then post but this first 'chapter' could technically be read on its own and it's been finished for so long that I thought it would be better to get it out in the open rather than let it get stale.

If you're kind enough to review, chances are that I will get the kick I need to dust off and edit other parts that are already done and post them. You will find the list of prompts I'm using at the end of this chapter.

Also, I find having to scroll down in order to read a footnote rather troublesome so my footnotes are inside the text in bold. Feel free to skip them if you like.

And now, enjoy!

Making Futures

#1

2 a.m.

It wasn't unusual for Moist von Lipwig to be awake at 2 a.m. What was really unusual, however, was for him to be awake in his bed at 2 a.m.

Beds and wakefulness were two things Moist had very rarely experienced together. Even after he had given up his criminal career, he always tried to make sure that by the time he managed to drag himself to a bed, there would be no question of not sleeping in it. Lying awake at night encouraged idle thinking and that was one bad habit he had outgrown. He had had sleepless nights as a boy. What had kept him awake then was not the monster under the bed (there was a Lipwigzer there, so the monster under Moist's bad was more real than most but not as scary) but the merciless approach of Tomorrow.

His parents were dead. What awaited him tomorrow? Would he get bullied at school? Would his grandfather still be alive to feed him? Would he get caught for forging sick notes and selling them to the whole class? Everything that happened Today made something else happen Tomorrow. For Moist, the future mainly consisted of Consequences. And what really irked him was that not all of them were even brought on by his own actions.

So, as soon as he was old enough, he decided that when his future arrived, he wouldn't be there to meet it.

And that was how it had begun.

He had been running his whole life but not from his past, as one might assume. No, Moist von Lipwig had been running from the future. Any sort of future. He started fresh every time, with a new persona in a new town, making a new beginning that would never see an end or even a middle.

And here he was now – a man with a job, a home, social recognition… Bloody hell, he was even engaged! But how long would it last? He knew himself. He would grow restless and he would do something stupid. He almost wished it would happen now because waiting for himself to snap was unbearable. The bank was a temporary distraction. It still provided enough challenge for the time being but any day now he would be getting that awful feeling again – the feeling that things were getting ordinary and… stale.

Of course, there was Spike, and the gods knew she was challenge enough for three men. But she often travelled. And, in any case, it wasn't a healthy relationship when one partner was hanging all of his sanity on the other.

Then what?

The Patrician had mentioned something about collecting taxes. Moist had managed to look resentful while a part of him had grasped at the idea like a fish in the middle of a desert who had suddenly seen a fish tank within reach. A goldfish. A fitting metaphor indeed. And Vetinari was the one offering the tank. It wasn't freedom but it was better than the alternative. Another task, a little more time… He liked this life. He wanted to keep it for as long as he could. And that depended on how dangerously he could live it without completely giving it up. As much as he resented himself for even thinking it, he was grateful to Vetinari, damn the man to hell, for filling the proverbial fish tank with piranhas twice already. But he knew he was here to serve a purpose. The Patrician would eventually run out of things for him to fix and then he would leave him to his own devices. And then the goldfish would drown alone in its own tank. He knew he didn't have it in him to live like a normal man.

As much as he loved both Spike and having an actual life… in the end that may not be enough.

Three minutes before Moist arrived at that unfortunate conclusion, another clock struck two.

In a less presentable but just as lively (or deadly, if we insist on accuracy) part of the city, the Guild of Seamstresses was bustling with activity. This was hardly a surprise – the house was bustling with activity every night and that was, after all, its purpose. The difference was that this time there was not a single man inside.

Before the reader begins to speculate that it was some sort of special holiday devoted to less common sexual preferences, we would like to clarify. On that particular night, the Guild of Seamstresses was hosting a send-off party for one of its members. Miss Melrose Primms, 27, also known as Little Rosie, was getting married the next week and leaving the guild.

Just like with all of her girls who took the road of holy matrimony, or for some other reason left the guild while remaining on friendly terms with it, Mrs. Palm, the Head Seamstress, had made sure to give Melrose a proper goodbye. That was why there were only girls present in the house that night. While bachelorette parties with exotic male dancers did indeed happen in Ank-Morpork, that sort of thing held little appeal for someone who had seen their fair share of naked men as part of their daily job. So instead, the atmosphere could be described as most un-erotically jovial and even somewhat domestic. Girls of all ages were sitting on plush chairs in the salon and talking about wedding gowns and decorating houses and babies. There was a lot of giggling going on and Rosie Palm lost count of the times she heard the phrase 'when I get married' from various girls. They were all sure they would leave. All of the young ones and even some of the older ones. They all thought a comfortable home and a little family awaited them somewhere down the road. She thought that was nice. After all, there was no reason for her girls to be deprived of domestic happiness just because they happened to be in the business of negotiable affection.

Melrose though - she hadn't expected it from her. Little Rosie had gotten her nickname for a reason – everyone thought she was the next Rosemary Palm. The Head Seamstress herself had secretly marked her as her protégé and possible successor. And yet here she was, getting married, and to a rather peculiar gentleman no less.

Dr. Gideon Longstar was generally referred to as a dwarf but that was simply a physical description rather than his actual race. If Captain Carrot of the Watch was considered a very tall dwarf, Gideon was just an uncommonly short man. He was 1.25 m with his shoes on. But if you overlooked that insignificant (small is not an appropriate word to use here) detail, he was rather handsome and his medical practice provided him with a good income. On the whole, Melrose had chosen well. But Mrs. Palm couldn't help but feel a little stab at the prospect of losing her. She was really quite attached to the girl, almost to an extent of feeling motherly. But that was just the thing about children - however much you want them to follow in your footsteps, you have to let them make their own choices…

Did she want to keep the girl for herself? No, the real problem was that Little Rosie's marriage had made her question why she herself was still alone. She had never asked herself such things before – she thought she wasn't meant for family life and she had seen nothing wrong with that. After all, there were some older seamstresses who had never married and they weren't doing badly at all. They were respected and well provided for. The Guild had a reasonable pension plan for those of its members who reached an age when they couldn't work anymore. But now she looked at the beautiful dimpled creature in front of her and it was like seeing herself in a scene that had somehow gone missing from her life. Little Rosie even made similar hand gestures as she spoke! The resemblance was quite stunning, if not entirely physical. Until now Rosemary had thought they were both made of the same stuff – beauty, charm and ambition all combined together to form a woman who was mostly self-sufficient. And a force to be reckoned with. Family was not supposed to fit in the picture. But Rosie Primms had evidently found a way to fit it somewhere. Could Rosie Palm have done that as well? Probably not. Because for all of their ambition, they were both women who would only marry for love. And here Little Rosie had just gotten luckier than her mentor. Because the man she loved would give up anything for her. And the only man Rosie Palm felt she could love already had a life-long commitment.

Across town, according to the rather peculiar clock in the Patrician's waiting room, it was more or less 2 a.m. as well.

Lord Vetinari was at his desk, which could have served as proof for the popular theory that he never slept. The theory wasn't quite correct but it wasn't completely wrong either. The Patrician used some of his nights to think. Of course, he used most of the days for the same purpose, but this just goes to show how much thinking a man must do in order to be a proper (not to mention living) tyrant.

Still, as it had turned out, thinking wasn't always enough to keep you alive.

Strange, but Havelock Vetinari had never imagined he would die from an illness. Despite the apparent success of his efforts to discourage attempts on his life, at the back of his mind he had still expected an assassination at some point.

Of course, he was generally good at avoiding being murdered and even when his own skills had failed to protect him, Commander Vimes had. So he had to admit it had always been a reasonable possibility that he might actually die from something other than a killer's hand. Yet the image of himself wasting away in a bed because his own body had betrayed him was… disconcerting.

He had checked, of course. He wasn't the kind of man to assume his own doom without making sure. It could have been just another case of poisoning…

But this time it wasn't.

It had all started rather innocently with Drumknott asking if his Lordship was all right and cautiously commenting that he looked tired. The same day two more people in the Palace had made similar comments and Vetinari had started to realize that he did indeed feel tired. He had felt slightly worse the next day. After this had continued for a week, he had felt there was enough reason for concern and conducted a discreet investigation in the Palace for any possible poison. They had found nothing. He had considered notifying the Watch but he knew it was unlikely that he was being poisoned again. He wasn't getting sick - he simply tired faster than normal.

The next thing he had done was to call Dr. Loan whom he trusted more than any other physician. The doctor had examined him and couldn't find anything particularly wrong so he had suggested his Lordship should go easier on himself. Starting to actually eat would also be a good idea. Vetinari had scorned the notion that he was overexerting himself and had asked what diseases would not have been discovered during the exam and if any of them caused constant fatigue. Loan had sighed and given him a list of conditions – some relatively harmless, some dangerous, some lethal. All were very hard for a doctor to diagnose during a physical exam and some blood tests would have to be run. The doctor stressed that he thought it a much better course of action for the Patrician to simply take a holiday. The suggestion was, naturally, ignored.

Vetinari had then summoned Cheery Littlebottom who was probably one of the best alchemists Ankh-Morpork had and could be trusted to give an honest expert's opinion. He had provided her with an 'anonymous' blood sample and all the equipment she requested and asked her to do some tests under strict confidentiality. He explained the job was of political importance. The tests eventually revealed that 'the poor bloke' had a tumor disease and about a year to live. (She secretly wondered if he was a Head of some guild.) Vetinari had politely thanked her for her service to Ankh-Morpork and sent her home. Then he had sat at his desk, deep in thought.

That had been at 8 pm yesterday evening. He hadn't left the desk since. Much like Moist, he was thinking about the future. But it wasn't his own future he was contemplating. It was the future that would befall Ankh-Morpork when its ruler ran out of it. Ran out of future, that is, not the city. Strange as it was, people didn't run out of Ankh-Morpork – they ran towards it.

A year could be a long time if used properly but it wasn't long enough to ensure the fate of such a large city when it was left without its ruler. Why he cared what would happen after he was gone was a complicated question. Part of it was because a man like him didn't like to leave a mess. But there were other reasons. Factors he had, uncharacteristically, failed to anticipate years ago when he had taken the post.

What he had not expected was getting so attached.

Oh, he had been interested in the job from the beginning. And he had always tried to do it well. But the idea of actually starting to care for this stinking pit of a city had not crossed his mind until he realized he already did and it was too late to change that. That was the one thing he had in common with Vimes – the Commander loved Morporkia almost as much as he loved his wife and child. Vetinari had no one else to love (with the exception of Wuffles and then Mr. Fusspot) so Morporkia had become everything.

Of course, if he had been a king, he would have had some kind of heir. Thankfully, he wasn't. He rather agreed with Vimes on his views about kings. And he had never gone trough the trouble of having children. Whatever for? Being the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork was like being married to a woman who gave birth all the time. And there were always those younglings (be it people or whole government projects) who weren't quite ready to leave the nest yet and you had to constantly push them, prod them, encourage them… The annoying thing about death was that it always caught you in the middle of something.

True, this city was like a rapidly evolving virus – it could change but it could not be killed. It would survive without him as it had before. But somehow seeing that everyone he had involved in his politics would survive as well was... desirable, if not compulsory.

After another minute Lord Vetinari sighed and started on the paperwork for the day. Thinking about the future was necessary and he would have to find more time for that but in the present there was a city to run.

In a basket at the Patrician's feet, a peculiar little creature was dreamily chewing on a rubber toy and growling quietly from time to time. Technically, the creature was classified as a dog but we have to take that term very loosely. It's hard these days to tell a dog apart from a bat, an alien or, in this case, a cross between a baby blanket and a goldfish, combining the soft texture and cuddly qualities of the first with the bulging eyes and not-so-complicated thought processes of the second. *We owe the existence of creatures like that to one J. P. Wagger - the inventor of the lap dog. It is debatable to this day whether he was uncommonly gifted with breeding and selection or he was a complete idiot who tried to cross everything with everything in the hopes of obtaining an interesting result. It's also debatable whether there's any difference between the two. In any case, Wagger was actually successful in creating a number of new breeds of canines. Impossible as it may seem, most of them have somehow managed to survive to this day despite being utterly unfit for life outside of someone's bedroom. These creatures depend solely on a rather unreliable resource - people's kindness. Which they are, however, inexplicably well-equipped for obtaining. So maybe Wagger was a genius after all.*

Either way, Mr. Fusspot was, for lack of a better word, a dog, and he was famous for his talents to lift the spirits of any audience. Sensing a certain amount of tension from his current benefactor (if not exactly owner), the Chairman of the Royal Bank got up and began purposefully chasing his toy around the room. Lord Vetinari managed to hold his own against the amusing noise for a whole of twelve seconds before he finally glanced up and burst in a fit of chuckles. And that was one of the qualities the Patrician liked about dogs – they didn't take it as a death threat if they heard him laugh.

As 2 a.m. approached at the Assassins Guild, in one of the student bedrooms a pencil was carefully adding detail to a sketch. The pencil was held by long, aristocratic-looking fingers and with their direction it was moving with great precision over the paper. The drawing could definitely be called art but the slow, deliberate motions of its author somehow lacked the passion of an artist. He was a man in his mid-twenties with dark curls and icy blue eyes, currently narrowed and fixed on his work. His gaze was dissecting, calculating, and if anyone had thought to look, they just might have seen a brain working on overdrive behind the seemingly placid pools of blue. His head was slightly cocked to one side and his mouth was curled into a tiny tight-lipped smile that seemed forced even though there was no one else in the room.

The man was Leopold, Lord Diddit. He had just inherited the title and a small fortune after his father's death and he was in his final year at the Academy. This was one of the reasons for the concern that completely failed to be evident on his face. His future had become a rather pressing matter. He did not want to be an assassin - that was far too ordinary for a man like Leopold. He was disgusted at the thought of serving someone. He thought of himself as… free-spirited. The problem was, it was almost impossible to serve no one. You always had to answer to someone. So what did a man have to do in this town to make his own rules? Leopold had given this matter a lot of thought and just like the patient lines on the sheet were promising to become a painting, the vague ideas in his head had been carefully aligning to form a plan. Maybe now was the time…

A chime somewhere announced that it was two after midnight.

And still at about 2 a.m. the autumn mist was creeping over the streets of the city. And muttering to itself. Since the city was Ankh-Morpork, passers-by paid it no heed. If you had a river you could walk on, the chances that a talking mist would rise from it were surprisingly good. And when you looked closer and realized that it was really a small scruffy dog doing the talking, things looked even more normal.

The angry mutterings were a little muffled by the damp piece of paper the dog was holding in his teeth. Gaspod, Ankh-Morpork's resident talking dog, was on his way to the Palace with a complaint. He had just barely gotten out of a horror scenario a few hours ago. Someone had tried to poison him. While that was not such a rare occurrence in itself, he had never expected it to happen at the Assassins' guild.

They were having meatballs that night. As a result of all the tail-wagging, one of the students had come out to bring the nice little doggie some leftovers. The young assassin had even patted the mutt on the head – a rather brave feat, seeing that any part of Gaspod was more swarming with rare diseases than a tropical forest during the wet season. Come to think of it, the student's smile had looked a little forced but he hadn't smelled unusual. In fact… he had hardly smelled of anything at all, except for ink and paper and the meatballs. Only moments before sinking what teeth he had left in said meatballs, Gaspod had sensed a very faint smell of WRONG.

You don't survive long in this city if you are a dog and you can't smell poison. Actually, smelling poison raises your chances of survival even if you are a human. But the assassins were not supposed to kill unless there was at least a 4-digit sum involved. The notion that someone would pay that much to dispose of Gaspod was ridiculous, if flattering. Which meant that Gaspod had just met a Very Bad Man. What was this city coming to if a dog couldn't even feel safe when he was surrounded by assassins? He had already left a message for the Watch but now he intended to alert the Patrician as well. He turned the corner and the Palace came into view just as a distant clock struck two.

Rufus Drumknott checked his watch and was dismayed to find that it was almost 2 in the morning. He had always had an impeccable regime and yet tonight he had not been able to fall asleep. It was most disconcerting, especially since he had to be at work early the next morning. What would Lord Vetinari say if he overslept? But then again, His Lordship was the very reason for Drimknott's current distress. The clerk had sensed that his employer was hiding something from him and this was an unwelcome novelty. For some years now he had prided himself in being Lord Vetinari's trustee. He had been in on all of the plans, all of the carefully constructed political maneuvers. He hadn't understood half of what he knew but he knew. The Patrician had trusted in him because he would never consider using the information or sharing it. He was simply doing his job, keeping files in order. He had never revealed a single secret, never done anything wrong, and yet now His Lordship was finding it necessary to keep him in the dark for some reason.

He had heard that most people started wondering about their future as soon as they found themselves in Vetinari's presence but he himself had never felt this way until tonight. Something was going to happen and for the first time Drumknott was not sure it would not affect him.

He looked at his watch again. The hands showed exactly 2 now. He rolled over and tried to sleep again.

By now you may have gotten the impression that not a single citizen of Ankh-Morpork, human or otherwise, was actually asleep at 2 a.m. and that they were all seized by an urgent need to gloomily contemplate their futures. In order to disprove such a notion, let us take a look at one large house on Scoone Avenue just a few minutes before 2 a.m.

A man tiptoes into a room, his skinny figure silhouetted against the cheerful background of little clouds painted on the wall, and stops next to a small bed. He bends down and kisses the sleeping three-year-old in the bed, then sneaks out again and enters the master bedroom. By the time he's reached the large bed, the various pieces of his guard's uniform are already rolling on the floor. He's completely exhausted and can't be bothered to pick them up now. Willikins will take care of it anyway, and as much as he resents having servants, sometimes it comes in handy. Right now he really needs some sleep but on the whole, it hasn't been a bad they. To his surprise, they rarely are recently. He slips in bed in his shirt and shorts and snuggles next to his wife. It's Young Sam's third birthday in three days and he should really pick a present tomorrow. Not a wooden sword just yet because Sybil would kill him, but maybe a ball? Vimes had liked balls when he was little but there had rarely been any really good ones…

Minutes later everyone in the house is peacefully asleep and for once the future looks quite bright for Sam Vimes.

And the clock strikes 2 a.m.

End Note: Please do leave a comment. You will get a virtual biscuit. ;)

List of prompts:

1. 2 a.m.
2. metaphor

3. sky

4. lost scene
5. degrees
6. seize the day
7. opposite

8. passions run
9. connection
10. lull and storm
11. animal
12. children
13. we all float on
14. chess
15. duty
16. rip
17. missing time
18. crest
19. itch
20. explode
21. rise
22. crumble
23. range
24. fight/flight
25. acid
26. color
27. give
28. needle
29. locks
30. slope
31. correspondence
32. linger
33. charm
34. roads
35. hunger
36. reciprocity
37. kind
38. fruity
39. half-life
40. comedy of errors
41. tragedy
42. hope is the thing with feathers
43. empire
44. turpentine kisses and mistaken blows
45. rings
46. dust
47. every you, every me
48. project
49. adore
50. murmur
51. above
52. below
53. incalculable
54. wire
55. landslide
56. the beginning is the end is the beginning
57. door
58. enemy gate
59. stone
60. bright
61. stories
62. chime
63. laugh
64. hold