#sorry sybill

[sugarsnappeases]

psychologically traumatising sybill today my darlings… 3.5k words of trauma so far actually and i’m not stopping i don’t think

[taffywabbit]

pseudoregalia is a really good game for lots of reasons but the most important one is that, similar to many of my other all-time favourite games, it is full of various funny lil guys.

video games with endearing and memorable enemy designs mean the world to me. i would die for that thingy with the tuba

[megafaunatic]

the night watch and friends

[theygotlost]

family iconograph at koom valley ♥

[pandemikz]

I have not posted any of my sam and max art here and it’s honestly a crime. so here’s sybil for you all goodbye 👋

[dont-fiddle-with-my-riddles]

july 1 - astrology - @jegulus-microfic - word count: 319

Regulus never believed in astrology and star signs, for it made him remember something about his family and his past. He didn’t care about what his sign was or what future he had from the way the sky was during his birth. In fact, he’d rather not get any hopes up (or have them die) with those stupid “superstitions.”

So when Pandora and her new acquaintance, Sybil Trelawney, offered to share how compatible James and he was, his initial reaction was to refuse. But James wanted to know and so happened to be there at the time, so how could Regulus deny this golden boy?

“I already know everything for Reggie, it’s you that I’m going to need to interrogate,” Pandora explained, having Sybil flip through pages in one of her books.

James began to talk nonstop about what happened on his birth, the exact time and date, and what year it was. He was a rather curious child, so asking for little bits of information from his parents as a way of getting attention was a habit of his.

After about an hour of getting James’s information, they finally found a certain page that matched the two together.

Pandora eagerly read from Sybil’s shoulders, keeping an upbeat look in her eyes. She glanced from the page to them, then looking at the girl who still read the pages in her head. “You guys are compatible!” she yelled with a smile, slamming the book before Sybil could finish.

She excitedly held the two’s hands in hers, smiling happily. Her Reggie really did find someone good. Although the future Sybil had seen..

“I knew it from the start. Cancer and Aries? I knew that was a good match.”

James and Regulus glanced at each other, both giving a stare with a little longing in it.

“It also mentions being compatible sexually so..”

And the two were off quicker than ever.

[juicesnatcher]

Was playing Pseudoregalia on a call and Sybil's hand started glowing, so I redrew it as that one biden image lmao

(Okay I didn't know until right now that this was actually an intentional thing and is in fact a visual cue for recalling the dream breaker at save crystals!! I need to learn to read item menu descriptions!!! Art is still funny though so just take it even more out of context now)

[audreyestok]

Hogwarts professors circa 1993

[direwombat]

@g0dspeeed who asked for SYB IN CROCS 🐊🐊🐊 but tumblr ate the ask when i went to save it as a draft so... posting it individually with a tag. webbed site....

they're her gardening shoes 🌱🌷🌼

[catharsis-in-a-bottle]

thoughts about vetinari and sybil?? eyes emoji

HI LIESMYTH i had to break out my laptop to answer this because i can't type fast enough on my phone...

I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS. many of them influenced by fanfiction and not actual discworld canon. i am not even sure of the extent of their dynamic in canon yet because i haven't read all of the watch novels, but regardless in all of these books sybil is either a main character One (1) time, or she is a very minor character (I Am Mad About This). as such my thoughts sort of have to be extrapolation anyway

when it comes down to it i think i have three angles on vetinari and sybil (all very personally biased):

the Old Friends Angle - they are friends from boarding school, they meet each other for tea, they generally actively talk to each other, etc. from this angle, i see vetinari and sybil as having a genuine rapport and enjoying each other's company in a platonic way, which seems closest to the scraps we get from the actual books. regardless of angle, i think sybil and vetinari get along not just well, but interestingly. vetinari would be more than happy to listen to sybil rant about dragons, sybil would be more than happy to subtly make fun of people with vetinari, and their combination of Total Frankness and Subtle Bastard create such a collision of opposites that they break through Incompatible and get to "we're going to have weird conversations but we're going to enjoy it the entire time"

the Happy Throuple Angle - the vetinari/vimes/sybil triangle works out, whether vetinari and sybil are attracted to each other or sybil gives a Stamp Of Approval on the vimes/vetinari situation, etc. i think this one feels the most unrealistic of the three. from what little of sybil's perspective we get, we know she cares about tradition to SOME extent, and we know vimes cares about maintaining ankh-morpork's idea of masculinity, so both of them would have so many hang-ups about the throuple situation that they'd hang up the whole thing in the closet and never mention it again... this situation also begs the question "what the hell is going on with vetinari's sexuality" but i think it's boring to say he must be gay in all situations. let the man fuck around. let him flirt with the duchess of ankh-morpork. anyway, i say the Happy Throuple is the least realistic situation, but it IS the most fun for me to write. (probably because it's the easiest, if i'm being honest w/ myself)

the Messy Divorce Not Talking Shitfest Angle - this once again comes from my obsession with the vimes/vetinari/sybil situation....so what if the aforementioned hangups about tradition created Catastrophic Dilemmas, or what if vetinari is gay and attracted to vimes but not to sybil but still asks for her approval on the situation... what happens when sybil is put in that tenuous position..... GOD i read the BEST fic the other week called The Old Kings of Quirm Did It Too by bissonomy (who has also written the funniest vetinari fics in the world) that put forth this dynamic and it feels so real... it's like. what if we gave genuine attention to sybil's perspective in any capacity, specifically from the standpoint of her views on tradition and desire for monogamy. i'm going to lose my goddamn mind

idk in general i like thinking about sybil's perspective because the books present her as Interesting Character who then just becomes The Main Character's Wife, and if we take that at face value we can end up with any of the above angles (the 1st basically complies with canon, in the 2nd sybil [in fanfiction] becomes the Invisible Wife who either dies so vetvimes can get together or gives blanket approval of vetvimes with no explanation, in the 3rd we comply with the nature of her marriage to vimes wherein vimes literally barely mentions her and hardly spends time with her - in that sense we can get to the Divorce just from actual canon details). BUT we can also arrive at all these angles by going beyond how sybil is presented in canon. the Old Friends dynamic becomes what i described in that paragraph, which is based more on extrapolation than canon; the Happy Throuple comes from thinking about sybil as being genuinely attracted to vetinari and/or wanting to break past vimes's views on masculinity (Putting the Commander to Bed my beloved...); the third comes from exploring sybil beyond "Yay I Got Married So Life Is Good Now" and wondering if she truly loves vimes, or if vimes truly loves her, and from perspectives like bissonomy's fic. THIS BECAME ABOUT MORE THAN JUST VETINARI AND SYBIL SORRY I GOT SIDETRACKED

this is unorganized and way too long so here are my conclusions:

vetinari and sybil should be allowed to be autistic about their respective interests together

it would be cool if they fucked

it would be cool if they wrote letters to each other

it would be cool if they had a messy love triangle and created a Divorce Situation

AND my ideal vetinari/sybil dynamic is actually the terrible transgender lesbian stressed-out love triangle that i am currently writing. i want vetinari to actively cause sybil's bisexuality crisis. peace and love on planet earth

[flowerprintundies]

The Phantom Empire (1988)

[remusbuzzcutt]

SYBILL TRELAWNEY SYBILL TRELAWNEY OMG I LOVE HER SM !!!! wait ok i'm js gna drop some of my headcanons for u to judge lmao 🤧

i imagine her as having grown up in a lower class family than most of the families, but her family still has some prestige to it, or at least they think they do, so they raise the kids as snobbish. she goes to school with an i'm-better-than-all-of-you mindset but gets bullied for it !! and she literally is a real seer like canonically so idk why people always try to skim over that fact 🤷‍♀️ imo she just got taught by terrible divination teachers who made her think she was having a vision more often than she really did. i think she has a lot of pent up resent, and even if she knew what was going to happen to the marauders and co. she wouldn't speak up, because a) no one would listen to her, and b) they used to bully her !!! unlike snake she doesn't carry this resent onto the next generation, but she's still lowkey a hater and i'm here for it !!!

i have quite a few headcanons for her but i haven’t thought of these ones but i mostly agree. to be honest, i don’t think they would be snobbish. to me, they’re like the opposite. they’re muggles (yes i’m sybill is canonically halfblood but idc) so they don’t necessarily understand sybill, but the try to if you get what i mean? i agree with the terrible divinations teacher part WHOLEheartedly because it just makes so much sense to me that she would struggle to differentiate visions from dreams and stuff like that!! i’m also using the point b to ramble about pebill because i LOVE LOVE LOVE them!! the way i see it, the marauders definitely would bully her or atleast be passive aggressive or amth like that, but eventually peter runs into her a few times (not literally) and kinda opens up to her about random shit that he feels like he cant talk to his friends about and learns that she’s actually quite understanding. i could rant about them for DAYS. i actually planned to write a fic but i haven’t gotten around to it yet

[theygotlost]

um so. here it is 👉👈 I've never written a fanfic before let alone posted one so I'm shy please be nice to me 😭

Son of Sam

After little Sammy has a disciplinary incident at school, Vimes finds a more enriching environment for his son.

G rated, 2,011 words, just vimes bein a dad :)

A rather nervous-looking young messenger was waiting at the door when Vimes got home.

“Er… Can I help you?”

The messenger startled into a stiff salute. “Your grace!” he said smartly. “I bring a message from the Primary Academy of Ankh! It has been requested that… erm…” he fumbled open the roll of parchment he had been holding. “The parents-slash-guardians of the student, er, Samuel Ramkin Vimes II, come to the office of the headmistress at once. We have a coach ready outside for you already, your grace,” he added as he rolled the parchment back up.

Vimes scoffed. ‘The Second’… Please. A title like that nearly made you forget the boy’s only eight years old. “Alright, what’s happened this time?”

“I don’t know, your grace. I’m only here to deliver the message.”

“Fine. And you really want both of us?” said Vimes, already making his way around the side of the house. “Sybillllll?” he called, in that sing-song voice used by all husbands everywhere looking for their wives.

He heard the explosion before he had even turned the corner. The backyard filled with a sharp, acrid, chemical smell that nearly would have made him retch if he wasn’t so accustomed to it already. He sighed at the charred black rosette that now decorated the lawn. Beyond it, in a wider blast radius, were… other bits of things.

A bulky figure nearly six and a half feet tall emerged from the dragon pen, decked head to toe in leather armor. “Oh dear, and he had nearly recovered from his case of slab throat…” she mumbled from behind her welding mask. She ducked back into the dragon pen for the shovel, too distracted to notice her husband on the periphery of the yard.

Vimes strode directly toward the carriage out front. “She’s busy. I’ll go by myself,” he said decisively to the messenger as he brushed past. The messenger considered protesting, but thought the better of it.

—

Vimes was ushered into a room half the size but almost as austere as the Oblong Office. Little Sam pouted in an adult-sized chair, grumpily swinging his legs back and forth. Vimes knew that look: the boy was in trouble for something. Sulking in the other chair with a bandaged nose was a boy who appeared the same age, though bigger-boned. Both of his parents were doting over him like a pair of storks brooding a rather large, and rather spoiled, egg. Vimes had been forced to socialize with these people at many a banquet or some such event, or at least this type of people, if not this particular couple. They all blended together in his mind anyway. He had yet to have a conversation with one of them that ended satisfactorily for both parties. 

The headmistress greeted him primly from behind her desk and motioned for him to sit in the chair beside his son. “Thank you for coming, your grace. Her ladyship…”

“Couldn’t make it,” Vimes responded curtly. He swore he heard the other boy’s mother exhale derisively through her nose.

“I have called you here,” the headmistress continued, “because your Samuel has gotten into an… altercation with his classmate.” She spoke as though she were handling her words like a very fragile, very expensive heirloom vase.

Vimes turned to little Sam. “You got into a fight?” he asked, more conversationally than disapprovingly.

“I should hardly call that a fair fight!” the other boy’s father interjected. “It took two teachers to pull your little devil off our Thomas! He nearly bit his nose off!” Thomas began to whimper, and his mother cradled him in her arms while staring daggers at Vimes.

Vimes raised his eyebrows as he sized up the victim. He was taller and stockier than his attacker, but apparently that hadn’t helped him much. He turned back to his son, still without any trace of anger. “Why’d you do that, Sammy?”

“It doesn’t matter why he—” Thomas’s father began, but the headmistress held up a hand. “Let him answer,” she commanded.

“He took my spelling sheets from my homework daddy, ‘n he said that my daddy’s nuthin’ but a dirty scoundrel, said I’m ruinin’ the school ‘cause I’m dirty ‘n dumb like him, ‘n then he ripped all my papers up,” little Sam explained sullenly. Thomas whimpered again.

Vimes looked up to meet the father’s eyes with hawklike focus. “He really said that, did he? I wonder where he could have possibly gotten that idea from.”

The father’s features bubbled with the kind of indignation reserved for those who have just been accused of something they actually did. “Slander!” he blurted. “Not only is your son an aggressor, but a liar as well!”

The duke of Ankh stood up. “You’re calling my son a liar, is that it?” he nearly snarled the words.

“You grace—” the headmistress began.

“No, go on,” Vimes continued. “You think Sammy made up that little story, just to make you look bad? Your precious little Thomas would never have done something like that, oh no, because you’ve raised him properly, haven’t you?” He was practically toe to toe with the boy’s father now. He squared his shoulders and drew himself up to his full height, which unfortunately was still shorter than his opponent. He cracked a few menacing knuckles.

“Daddy, mama said you’re not s’posed to fight the other grownups at school anymore,” Sammy whined from his seat.

“I won’t be threatened by the likes of you,” the man spat. He leveled a self-important finger at VImes’s nose. “I won’t tolerate it. You and your son both owe us an apology for the injuries you have caused.”

“Oh, I’ll give you some injuries to apologize for, all right.”

The bureaucratic voice of the headmistress pierced through his haze of bloodlust like a letter opener. “Your grace, that is enough. To prevent another incident like this, you need to set a good example for your son. Children learn by imitating their parents.”

“Yes, I’m sure they do,” Vimes said pointedly without breaking eye contact with the nobleman. He took his son’s hand and led him out the door. “Come on, Sammy. We’re going home.”

“This isn’t over, Sir Samuel!” he heard the father call after him. “Her ladyship will be hearing of this, and she will not be pleased!”

Don’t I know it, Vimes thought.

—

Lady Sybil was, as predicted, not very pleased. “First I have to lay poor Lord Sharptalon Brightspark Blazeworthy VI to rest this afternoon, and now I hear both of you have gotten into a scuffle,” she sighed, and idly stirred her tea.

“News travels fast,” Vimes grumbled, not looking up from his own teacup.

“The headmistress was right, you know. He takes after you. He sees his father throw a punch or kick a shin, and figures that violence will solve all his problems.”

“It usually does.”

“Sam.”

“Sorry.”

“I spoke to the boy’s mother. She swears up and down that she has no idea why young Thomas would say those things about you.”

“‘Course she did. It’s all about appearances with these people. They’ll say whatever they want behind their expensive closed doors, but none of ‘em have got the spine to say it to your face.”

“As much as I agree with you, Sam, ‘these people’ are our people, even if you hate to think of them that way.”

“Still, good to know Sammy can hold his own in a fight.”

“Dear, I don’t think you’re taking the right lesson from this.”

Vimes grunted noncommittally.

“He just needs a different outlet for his aggression,” Sybil continued. “Something more…productive. Like an organized sport. The academy offers some rather robust athletic programs he could get into.”

Yes, organized sports… Sammy could wipe the floor with all those spoiled little brats, that was for sure. He needed a sport, but perhaps one that was less, well, organized. 

—

“Daddy, you still won’t say where we’re going,” young Sam lamented.

“We’re almost there. Just a few more streets.”

After a few moments, Vimes heard the little voice from about twenty or thirty feet behind him. “Daddy, wait up! You’re going too fast!”

Vimes stopped. Damn. Without thinking, he had fallen into his normal Proceeding step.

“I’m tired of walking,” Sammy panted as he caught up.

Vimes almost laughed. Tired of walking? Then he realized. “You know, I ought to teach you how to walk properly. You swing your foot forward, like this. Get it right and you can keep going all day.”

Together they Proceeded, hand in hand this time to prevent another separation, to their destination. There it was…

Cockbill Street.

Gods, when was the last time I was here? thought Vimes. An investigation had led him back here some nine or ten years ago, but before that it must have been decades. The same peeling paint, the same worn cobbles, even the hopscotch game was still there…

“Where are we?” little Sam asked impatiently. “Looks like justa buncha ol’ houses.”

…And this was the first time the boy had ever seen it.

“Son, your old dad grew up in one of these old houses.”

“You used to live here?” Sammy looked doubtful. “They’re not as nice as our house.”

His father sighed. “Right you are. You’re awful lucky that your mother’s got a big fancy house and money to send you to a big fancy school. But you and I both know a big fancy school ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

The boy’s face looked blank. A chorus of shouts and hollers turned his attention to a particularly rough-and-tumble football match taking place down the street, mostly boys a few years older than him.

Vimes nodded toward the game. “They don’t let you play like that at the Academy of Ankh,” he explained.

Sammy considered this as more shrieks and curses echoed off the decaying edifices. “But I dunno any of ‘em,” he pointed out. 

“Doesn’t matter. Cockbill Street boys’ll toss a ball around with any little bugger who can force his way into a match. Just get in there and start running around, you’ll pick it up.”

He still looked unsure, but he ambled up to the pack as they were taking a time-out, as there looked to be some sort of hot dispute between the teams. He addressed a boy who was currently wrestling another into a headlock. “Lemme play,” he said simply. The boy in the headlock used the momentary distraction to wrench free and scamper off, sending a few other players to break off in pursuit. 

“Who’re you?”

“My name’s Sammy, ‘n I wanna join. I can kick a ball real far.”

The older boy looked incredulous. He turned around to give a consulting glance to the others, who shrugged. “I s’pose we could use another player, since STUPID JOEY’S A THIEVIN’ BASTARD!” He addressed this last comment to the direction that Joey had run. “Jus’ try to keep up, since you look pretty small,” he added. And that was that.

Vimes leaned back against a crumbling wall and, more out of habit than anything else, lit a cigar. He watched the game intently. Indeed, young Sam had ingratiated himself seamlessly, dashing and darting and hollering to keep up with the fierce competition. Once he took a nasty spill, tumbling face first onto the cobblestones, and Vimes sucked his teeth sharply. But before he could move in to help his son, the boy jumped up with an alarming fierceness, completely unbothered by his bleeding nose and scraped knees, and made a mad dash to get back into the action.

Tonight he would be brought home covered in scrapes and bruises and a tear or two in his clothes, Vimes knew. Sybil wouldn’t exactly be overjoyed, but he figured he could convince her it’s no more dangerous than herding spontaneously explosive dragons as a hobby. 

Vimes couldn’t help but smile. Whenever little Sammy got knocked down, a vengeful little gleam sparkled in his eyes, and just like a certain someone, he got right back up.

[quietpagan]

What if Vimes couldn’t go home?

AO3

In belated honor of the Discworld fandom’s ‘Feelings Day’, and in order to cause some more Feelings, I’m curious about a version where Vimes doesn’t go home. The hole opened and closed, and will stay closed; the cards are shuffled and cannot be unshuffled. The Glorious 25th of May happens and keeps happening, and Vimes lives by the skin of his teeth and sees the dawn of the less glorious 26th of May, and the cleanup of its bloody yesterday. There are six new graves to be dug up in Small Gods, and Vimes looks at the grass where the seventh should be and feels sick.

The monks are very sorry that this has happened to him, and endure his raging and his ranting with the sad patience of people who know the volcano is going to erupt and where the pyroclastic flow will have to land, and have to deal with it anyway.

And Vimes does the only thing he knows how to do, and goes to work. He weathers the punishments that come with laying his captain out and fields the rest that come with commanding a barricade against the military in a city-wide demi-revolution, and is commended for his efforts toward the future of the new administration. He stands before the newly-appointed Lord Snapcase and salutes as best he can without wincing, and leaves as soon as he’s allowed, twitchy and eyeballing every guardsman all the way back to the watchhouse. Sam Vimes the Current follows him all the way and he realizes that he has a responsibility to this boy, one that now lasts more than just a few days. The only watchman who knew his secret was dead; the monks keep to themselves. John Keel lives now, and Vimes has thirty years of knowledge to try and put things right.*

             *Or, at least, thirty years give-or-take the two decades where his memories swam in a sea of alcoholic blurr. He’d just have to fish out whatever bits he could from there.

He makes a List. There are various watchmen who die who don’t need to, crimes remembered that he can now predict, and as time goes on Sergeant Keel of the Night Watch gains a reputation for being disconcertingly there, present at just the right time. He catches a young lad before a cart runs the boy over; Sergeant Maroon doesn’t take an unfortunate dive onto the upturned pike of a belligerent thief, because Keel is there, grabbing the back of his armor just in time to haul him up. He sees the directions the city turns in before it even moves its head; Madam and her friends are fascinated with him but he denies her anything, right up until it’s suddenly five years into the past and he sees Sam take his first drink outside of the social sphere, and realizes that he’s actually allowed to change, really change things. Big things. And personal things, as well.

Vimes watches Sam like a hawk and steers him well away from the bottle when failed romances (Vimes watched with cringing sympathy, but the poor bastard had to learn somehow) or the dirty hands of the city begin weighing on him; they talk, instead, and Vimes desperately looks around for something he had never seemed to have time to acquire before: a hobby. It leads him to Schoone Avenue where, upon the notice of the death of Lord Ramkin and the beginnings of the dragon sanctuary, Vimes drags Sam along to inquire about getting a watch-dragon for Treacle Mine Road. He’s worked hard to see to it that watchmen are no longer back-door visitors, but he shines Sam up just the same.

Sybil looks so young; at twenty-five she already towers over Sam Vimes the Younger and Older both, and hasn’t quite acquired that middle-aged forthrightness of someone who knows it’s late and is determined not to care. Sam is enthralled, and Vimes takes the opportunity to volunteer him to help at the sanctuary, extracting himself as quickly as he can before anybody notices his eyes getting red.

He’s built up the reputation as a dedicated husband; everybody knows that his cigar case was a present from his wife, and he’d mentioned once that when he’d arrived she was about to have a baby. But there are no letters, no notes saying how the baby is and when is he coming home and what the big city is like. Ol’ Sarge didn’t like to talk about his wife, and looked rather wretched when she was brought up. So the men decide that Mrs. Keel had died in childbirth, and that ol’ Sarge was still too heartbroken to tell about it. Vimes has to go up to his room and sit in the dark for a very long time upon hearing that rumor, clutching the silver cigar case until his hands ache.  

Carcer is a problem. He’s stuck, same as Vimes, and has no compunctions whatsoever about doing absolutely anything he wants to anybody who gets in his way. Vimes works and works and works, night and day until he nearly collapses, trying to find something to pin the bastard with, something to tear him down from the pillar of terror he’s affixed himself to, and can’t. The city isn’t ready for a watchman who can arrest the unnerving head of the remains of the Particulars, even when the man comes up for murder. Nobody cares about murders; certainly not when an Authority is doing them, and particularly not when said Authority is known for making people disappear. But the Particulars, though they’d been granted another base and were endorsed by Snapcase, were just as much afeared of Sergeant Keel as they were Captain Carcer, and when the time comes and it’s Sam, of all people, who manage to arrest Carcer for murder, nobody stands to speak for him. Poor Constable Battock exits life almost twenty years too early during that mess, but they have Carcer for his murder and for an attempted murder on Vimes himself, and Snapcase, who is insane but at least could read the mood of a mob, sentences the man to swing.

Sam the Younger is making rather some headway into his gentle Understanding with Lady Ramkin the Younger when she introduces him and his mentor to her very good friend, the bastard himself: Havelock Vetinari, fresh from his Grand Sneer and ready to grab Ankh-Morpork by the horns or, knowing Vetinari, to gently steer it by way of a sharp instrument on a more sensitive body part.

Vimes isn’t expecting the black-clad kid in front of him to watch him with an admiring eye, and he certainly isn’t ready for him to call Vimes ‘sir’. And Havelock and Sam get along, all under the smiling eye of Sybil, who’s looking entirely too smug at what’s supposed to be a friendly tea and chat. And Vimes knows the boy now as Havelock, because that’s what Sam keeps calling him. His new friend. It’s eerie.

And there’s the good bits about being stuck in the past, and the bad bits too – and then there’s the very bad bits. Sam wheedles and huffs and side-eyes Vimes until the man finally gives in and lets Sam drag him to Cockbill Street for dinner, under the aching need to put the horrible rumor of him being Sam’s runaway father to rest, and the even more painful ache of getting to see his mum for the first time in nearly twenty years. The familiarity is awful; Vimes had moved out of Cockbill Street when he’d first taken the badge and had only visited briefly over the years, in the bare, somewhat put-upon dutifulness of a son who didn’t realize that his mum wouldn’t be around forever. His mother – younger now than Vimes is, and isn’t that just the worst realization – serves everything that he’d been dying to taste just one more time, and it all turns to ash in his mouth. Young Sam is visibly disappointed to find that Sarge is completely unknown to his mum, and Old Sam finds that lack of recognition distressing for another reason entirely. He urges the boy to take better care of his mother, and sees that he visits her at least once a week.

It's about this time, or a little while afterward, that the silver cigar case disappears. Vimes had built a nervous habit of patting his pocket, and took it out just to look at it often. Twelve years through the past runs by and Rust has finally seen to boot (Vimes’s cardboard-soled boot, to be specific. He’d caught the bastard having indecent and altogether unwilling relations with a maid in the man’s manor, and Vimes had worked very, very hard to impress upon the city that being a nob didn’t mean you were free to fuck around and not find out. Rust, being nobbier than most, wasn’t arrested, Ankh-Morpork just wasn’t there yet, but he was encouraged to leave the city in disgrace, and Vimes supposed that it would just have to do for now). The office upstairs is Vimes’s once more, and has already accumulated a familiar forest of paperwork. It’s late, and he’s alone, and that’s what makes it hit so hard. If he’d been on the street, or even downstairs in company, and the possibility of the case being pinched was even fractionally available, he would have kept hope. He would have grabbed that possibility with both hands, treading red-eyed through the city year after year, holding onto the notion that he’d eventually find it. But he’s in his office alone, and when he habitually reaches down to pat it he feels the solid weight of it disappear under his hand. He checks his pocket, checks all of his pockets, nearly tears his trousers checking, and then throws up. He pulls on his cloak and runs into the night without a lantern, dodging the hustle of the city with unseeing eyes as he lets his feet walk him up to Schoone Avenue, where Sam is having dinner with young Sybil. Vimes can see only vague shadows in the windows from his spot on the distant street, only hear muffled laughter, and feel only lint and broken pencil lead in his pocket, and that’s it. That’s the only future now, up in the huge house ahead. The anchor that Vimes had held onto, even after Sweeper had told him that he could never go back…that one shining, delicate thread connecting him to his world, is gone. It’s all gone.

Vimes walks. He walks over the bridges, across the streets, and the shadows welcome him home. He notices nothing of the city around him; a thief from the newly appointed Guild hops in front of him, waves a knife, and then says ‘Er…sorry, wrong person,’ and hops all the way to the other side of the street; Vimes has pulled the night in around him, let it seep into his bones, and it shows on his face.

Everything is gone. Sybil, the baby, Detritus, Carrot, Vetinari, Angua…even Dorfl and his slowly-growing army of free golems, even Buggy and Cheery and Willikins and the little old lady who brought them biscuits on Hogswatch because they’d carried her husband to the hospital after he’d fallen, it was all gone gone gone. Was it all disappeared? Was everybody dead, an entire future erased as if it had never been? Or was Sybil waiting for him in a distant dimension, alone in that house with the baby, telling it stories about a father who disappeared into a storm, never to return? He doesn’t want to know. Each is as horrible as the other, and it doesn’t matter now because it’s all gone…

Sergeant Keel returns to the watch house at noon, several hours after he was supposed to have signed out for the day, and when he returns the watchmen note that he’s missing something, like a layer of skin has been flayed away. And in the cemetery of Small Gods, the tiniest plot has been paid for. It’s nothing but a small box, empty and the size of his hand and damn had Leggy First objected, but it was there, filled with the remains of Sam Vimes the Elder, and the future he had left behind.

He digs in, the way he had held off digging in before, because what else was there, now? Captain John Keel becomes nearly a force of nature. Thieves walk on the other side of the street, licenses clearly visible. The Assassin’s Guild raises his fee to over a half-million dollars, after the incident with the last fellow and the ornamental topiary. The Watch opens its arms to its first dwarf officer several years before Cuddy’s time, and with it comes the call for a troll officer, and though it’s not Detritus yet Vimes feels something slot into place. A female officer (human) follows, and it’s like the opening of a floodgate; suddenly the Watch isn’t just some rude men, but your neighbor Thor Thorsson’s in uniform now, and your daughter’s making noises about getting some chainmail. Vimes feels the familiar headache that comes with new recruit chittys coming in every week, but this time without Carrot here to prod him into organizing the files. And Havelock takes power far earlier than he had originally; Lord Snapcase had yet to commit something that Vimes could stick him with without getting nailed to a dungeon wall by his ears, but the guild leaders and even some of the nobs could sense how the wind was blowing through the streets, away from the idea of a cruel, insane tyrant who deplored upon a city that was opening its doors to new people and new ideas and, most importantly, all the money that they brought in. Havelock took up the robe of office nearly ten years ahead of time, right from the cooling body of its previous occupant, backed by the majority of the guilds and, for the first time, the surprisingly reputable City Watch.

Things are going well for Sam. There’s no way to avoid being torn down, when you’re a person with such an open heart and all the anger required to want to kick the gods for trespassing, but in this time he has a support system and a mentor who don’t let him do it alone. Vimes feels like he’s given the young man a proper education on all the reasons why the nobility as a whole is a festering parasite on the populace, and now he’s marrying one and is, uh, very good friends with another. Very good friends. Vimes wouldn’t have noticed except that he went to pick up Sam from the big house a bit early one shift, and noticed Havelock there, just relaxing in the sitting room with a cup of tea and a book, in the middle of the settee with Sybil on one side and a recently-vacated spot on the other. Vimes tried and failed to work his way around the question of ‘Are you and your wife fucking the Patrician, Sam?’ and instead spent the entirety of his patrol examining every ‘Ah, Vimes’, and every covered smile or invitation to stare thoughtfully out of the window and that one time where Vetinari had called him ‘my dear Vimes’ and how often he’d visited with Sybil and – and – how to possibly compute all of that while remembering this Havelock asking him, Sam Vimes/John Keel, for tips on how to disappear better into the shadows. He still takes in their invitations to dinner or tea on the regular and little details suddenly start to make sense, especially when Sybil looks at him over her teacup the next day and simply remarks that it was about time. Her and Sam have a baby well ahead of Vimes and his Sybil, and the little boy is dark-haired like neither of his parents, at opposites to his fair-haired sister, who comes a few years after. Vimes is named godfather to both, to his proud disquiet, his heart wrenching somewhere in the region of his stomach as he holds the children that, if not for a freak storm, would have been his own.

It all comes to a head, of sorts, when it’s been twenty-five years and Sybil says ‘Sam, dear?’ and Sam and Vimes both answer. He’s about two weeks from retirement, everybody knowing full well that ‘retirement’ for Ol’ Sarge will actually mean remaining exactly where he is, just with helping the new Commander Vimes (and doesn’t that just stab his proud, proud heart) with the paperwork instead of wrestling with it himself, and being less shy about falling asleep in his chair. He’s pushed it off for as long as possible, but even Havelock has started to become gentle in his persistence, and Vimes is…tired. Policing is hard on a body and soul, and Vimes has policed Ankh-Morpork for sixty damn years. Completely incognito, too, until that one tiny little misstep, and now Sam’s looking at him funny. It should be an easy enough mistake to attribute to age and familiarity, but Vimes knows the look of having Figured It Out when he sees it on his own blasted, blasted face, and Sam is coming up to it fast. The mannerisms. The voice. The way they look like father and son, if father and son happened to look and age and smile and frown exactly alike, with the same color of eyes and hair, the same hands, the same knob on their right pinky from a broken finger in childhood. Sam’s mother hadn’t recognized it but Sarge looked so stricken when he’d met her, like he’d seen a ghost. Sam had sneaked a look at Sarge’s cigar case once, had seen the writing and never made sense of it. Sarge had introduced him to Sybil. Sarge had met Havelock without surprise, Sarge had figured out that whole Leshp business before anybody could even organize an army, Sarge knew things. Sarge had nearly started weeping when they swore in Sergeant Detritus, and had made friends with him instantly. Sarge was the only one not surprised by Captain Carrot’s indelible manner, or by young Cheery’s fashion choices. Sybil and Havelock sometimes looked between Sam and Sarge like they were waiting for either to answer a question, like the answer would be the same no matter which man it came from, and Sam realized – probably thirty years behind everybody else, dammit, that it really wouldn’t matter which man the answer came from, because they were the same. Damn. Man.  

Sam corners Sarge in his little room above the watchhouse, shoves a chair under the door, and asks him what his name is.

And Sam Vimes, after a very long, long moment, sighs, and answers him.

[theleakypen]

am rereading Men At Arms for the first time in a while & I think Sybil Ramkin is trying to dress Sam Vimes up as Dandelion from Witcher 3

[sugarsnappeases]

what’s ur fav marauders era ship?

i mean of course the answer is quillkiller always and forever but i've been pondering sybillily a bit today so please allow me to hit you some thoughts <3

the main thing that's been sticking w me today is the way they're kind of opposites in the way they connect w the world around them but w each other this can be complementary and sort of balanced out.

like w lily, she's so in tune to what other people think and the expectations that they might have of her and the way that she is Perceived and she uses this to make herself into something Perfect and something that fits onto the pedestal that she's been put on, in a way that i think makes her a lot less able to Define herself and what she wants and who she is when she isn't operating within these bounds that other people have imposed on her (and that she has then perpetuated bc it's easy and comfortable and she knows how she's meant to behave when she follows these rules even if she can't quite ignore the itch to break out of those bounds).

sybill on the other hand has no conception of these things, she can't anticipate people's thoughts and reactions in the way that lily does and she doesn't think before she speaks or even try much at all in her social interactions, she's clumsy w her words, tactless, telling people that she's seen them die bc she's trying to help them avoid that fate but not clocking at all how that could be a horrifying thing to hear, how that could be something that's easier to ridicule than actually properly listen to. and the way she functions is kinda boundless in that it slides so smoothly between her dreams and her visions and her mind and actual reality that she also struggles to fully define herself and tether herself to anything absolute.

but i think together they can find a bit of a middle ground. bc sybill has no expectations for lily, she doesn't have any pre-made notions of what lily should say or do or be, doesn't try to project anything onto her. she lets lily exist in this kind of boundless space with her. but at the same time, lily is something absolute, something who exists fully and tangibly and she can kinda bind sybill more fully into reality with her, ground her, she's so vividly and brightly Alive and Present that she can help sybill to connect just by being there.

like idk i just think they complement each other so nicely. i think this idea of the way they interact w the world around them and the way this is affected by their relationship w each other is at the crux of all of the aus i have about them, especially for sybill, bc she's kinda more malleable as a person so she's naturally more affected by the sort of unrestrained, altering nature of their love. also there's something to be said about the both of them and the idea of Responsibility that i won't go into here bc this is already super long....