Categories > Books > Discworld > I Owe You A Love Song
I Owe You A Love Song - Epilogue
Vimes rose from the clouds of pink fog that had enveloped his sleep and blinked owlishly, caught in the nanoseconds before his brain caught up with his body. He looked over and saw her. His heart did that peculiar little leap as he watched her wreathed in the depths of sleep, but something was scrawling its grafitti on the wall of his subconscious. Sliding his arm around Sybil's waist, he pressed up against her, parts of his body eagerly preparing for an encore. The grafitti was getting bigger in his minds eye. Really, really large. And finally the message his brain was trying to convey finally broke through.
Under his breath Vimes muttered "any of them get out?"
"Shit! Shit, shit, shit..."
Vimes sat bolt upright, thoughts whirling. There was no time to waste. He leaped out of bed, climbing hastily into his breeches and yanking on his hastily discarded shirt.
Sybil... she was sleeping on, undisturbed. Vimes did a mad little dance in the middle of the small room - alternately moving towards the bed, and then towards the door in an agony of indecision.
Finally he made himself wrench open the door, and he cast a sorrowful look at the sleeping woman in the bed.
Traitorous thoughts piped up in his mind as he descended the steps from his lodgings.
"As if you'd ever be able to make anything with Sybil," they jeered. "It never meant anything, no matter what she said. It's just post-coital anyway, everyone talks rubbish after sex."
Post-what? Vimes groaned. After sex, you know? When you're feeling all silly and cuddly? Vimes glowered. Women get like that. He really tried not to think of Sybil's face when she realised she was alone. He really hoped she wouldn't track him down and kill him, although he wouldn't blame her if she did. She didn't seem to be the kind of person who would let an absconding man get away without comment.
At the moment, Vimes' future was looking to be short and painful. He had a choice of an angry dragon or an angry Sybil, and at the moment Vimes was favouring his chances with the dragon.
As he careered towards the Patrician's Palace, Vimes let his rage build. Rage at the destruction to his city, rage at the impotence of the Watch, rage at the arrogance of the city leaders, rage at his interrupted time with Lady Ramkin. The one time something really bloody good happens... he clamped down on that thought. The bastard dragon's even going to have that, he thought, glaring at the sky.
"Any of them get out?"
Stretching, Lady Ramkin nuzzled deeper into her pillow. Her eyes drifted back closed and a small, happy smile played about the corners of her mouth. Hanging on to the last tendrils of sleep, she murmured, "Sam?"
Slightly louder, she tried again. "Sam?"
Frowning slightly, she rolled over. And found herself facing a brown, peeling, bedroom wall. The thin bedclothes were bunched up on one side, the cold spot indicating that the other occupant of the bed had risen some time ago.
She was alone. After the emotional roller coaster of the last day and night, Lady Ramkin gave in to her feminine side. She began to cry.
"What?!"
"Ooook."
"Not in my bloody city! You hear?"
"Ooook."
"Ah. Sorry."
A man who can lift a 300lb Orangutan and not notice, is a man with too much on his mind.
Lady Ramkin lay awake staring at the ceiling, tracing the faint cracks that she had memorised long ago in her girlhood. Surely she hadn't been such a colossally bad judge of character...? Had she? Was she simply an old fool, what most of her contemporaries thought anyway? Was she that desperate that the first man she felt attracted to was automatically 'the one?' No, she vehemently shook her head. That wasn't it. She'd seen Sam in his most unguarded moments last night, and she knew she wasn't wrong. Something else must have made him leave so quickly. The way he looked at her, as if he was seeing her for the very first time, the way he literally worshipped her as he kissed her and held her, the way they joined together. She knew instinctively that was true.
Suddenly, Lady Ramkin sat upright. Something wasn't right. It was too quiet. Lady Ramkin's bedroom looked out over the dragon pens and she was used to sleeping with the slightly rasping sound of scales and the occasional flaming of a gravid female. What she wasn't used to was complete silence. It had the same effect as an alarm clock. Slipping out of bed, ignoring the nightdress she was wearing, she padded downstairs and out towards the pens. The little dragons were all staring intently at the roof of their pens.
Lady Ramkin sighed. As much as she loved her dragons, she felt...preoccupied. Worried. Despite her own reassurances that Sam wouldn't have been deliberately cruel, she needed to see him. Needed to know. Know that he was...real. True. Who was she kidding? She needed to know that the person she had given all of herself to last night was not discarding her after he had had what he wanted. She couldn't trivialise it, it ran too deep within her. She knew some women gave themselves without much thought, as far as she was concerned people could live their lives how they pleased, but she was in her mid forties. It was a huge thing she had done, and she needed to know that it was not for nothing. Sighing again, Lady Ramkin shook herself out of her reverie. Glancing at the door at the end of the pens, she saw the outline of a guards uniform. Sam! Her heart leapt in her chest and she trembled with nerves. Silly, considering what they had done last night. But her heart was pounding, her stomach churned and her palms were sweaty. Quickly, she ran upstairs in the dark and grabbed her best wig, and fumbled on the dressing table for a bottle of long-forgotten perfume. In her haste, she sprayed on far too much. Coughing, she made her way to the front door. Wait...she twitched the neckline of her sensible nightie into a more revealing position and smiled winsomely as she opened the door.
"Why Captain, this is a...who the hell are you!"
Vimes was very nearly swept off his feet by the sea of people swarming towards the Plaza of Broken Moons. Here and there he heard snatches of conversation. There was a feeling in the air, not excitement, but expectation, and a strong under current of primal fear. Surely they wouldn't condone... Not here, not Ankh-Morpork...
Approaching the plaza he craned over the heads of the crowd. It looked like a...a... huge rock... Gods only knew where they'd got it from, Ankh-Morpork was built on loam. Not in my city, he growled low in his throat. Dragon or no dragon, no one was going to be sacrificed on Vimes' watch. Waving his cleaver, he started running through the crowd towards the plaza, expecting at any point to feel his spine reaching the vaporising point of iron. Shouldering his way through the crowd, he felt his legs moving as if in slow motion as he saw the identity of the woman chained to the rock.
His heart hammered in his chest, and it had nothing to do with the imminent arrival of the dragon and everything to do with Lady Ramkin who was, at that moment, training a murderous look upon him.
"You!"
"You!"
Lady Ramkin was tethered at ankle and wrist, splayed over the rock. Her nightie was flapping in the soft breeze and the fact that she was very nearly giving the crowd a free show due to the rips and the torn neck line, was making it very difficult for Vimes to concentrate.
He stood and waved the cleaver ineffectually as he struggled for something to say. He really should try to apologise, he decided.
"I, er, that is, er..."
"Captain Vimes, you will kindly oblige me by putting that cleaver to its proper use!"
Whump.
Vimes felt his blood turn to ice.
Hurriedly he began hacking at the chains.
Whump.
The sound was felt, rather than heard. It was literally a wall of sound.
Both wrists done.
Whump.
The down wind almost knocked him to his knees.
One ankle done.
Whump.
A hissing noise percolated through Vimes' consciousness. It sounded like something large, say, a dragon, taking a deep breath. He swallowed.
Second ankle done.
Run.
Suddenly a small dragon shaped bullet screeched over the heads of the crowd.
The great dragon, momentarily distracted, focused on the intruder.
Pushing through the crowd, legs like jelly, Vimes guided Lady Ramkin out of the Plaza and down a quiet street. He knew he needed to do some explaining, and, well, it was important wasn't it? When he felt that they had run far enough, he paused for breath.
Squinting, realised that they were only a few minutes from his lodgings. In an unusually acquiescent moment, Lady Ramkin allowed him to take her arm and lead her down another street, stopping by a candlemakers shop that looked familiar. She smiled as she saw his uneasy glance in her direction. She wondered if he knew how adorable he looked. She doubted he would appreciate being told that, she mused as they ascended the narrow, dark stairs to Vimes' lodgings. Sitting on his bed, watching him run his fingers through his hair as he tried to compose himself, Lady Ramkin allowed the memories to surface. His first tentative kisses, gaining in confidence and urgency as he was reassured of her utter compliance, hands ghosting over every curve of her body and making her soul sing like it had never done before. Oh yes, she was in no way regretting her encounter. She shifted slightly on the bed as a now familiar ache began to call for attention.
On the other side of the room, Vimes was staring intently at her. Behind the intense stare, unbeknownst to Lady Ramkin, Vimes was having a serious argument with himself.
Apologise. You ran out on her, left her alone, the morning after! Like every other scumbag that runs out on women!
"I, um, about. Er. This morning. Very. Er." He coughed urgently as he felt the burn of shame and embarrassment collect its well overdue payload. He tried again. "I didn't, um." He licked suddenly dry lips as his mouth felt like parchment. Lady Ramkin was doing nothing to assist the situation as her torn nightie was revealing parts of her figure that Vimes had seen before his mind's eye for the entire day and was eager to get reacquainted with.
"It's ok, Sam," Lady Ramkin murmured.
"It's not!" Vimes exploded. He clutched his head. "I ran out, it's inexcusable, I left you, but I didn't want to, I had to arrest Wonse..." his voice tailed off.
"Come here." Lady Ramkin patted the space next to her on the still unmade bed. Vimes walked slowly across the room, pulling off his boots as he sat down. Lady Ramkin turned to him.
"I know you wouldn't have gone if you didn't have to. I thought about it all day, and I just knew you weren't like that, Sam." She smiled gently. "That's why i'm still here."
Vimes stared at her. What had he done in his pathetic life to deserve such as her? Before his addled brain could think of any new way to humiliate him, her lips were suddenly on his and interesting parts of her anatomy were making thinking suddenly impossible.
Vimes pushed her back gently and repositioned himself so he was looking down upon her softly smiling face.
With a quirk of her lips, she asked "are you planning to stay this time?"
Smiling back, he slid his hand lightly over the curve of her hip, underneath the remains of the nightdress. "Oh yes," he murmured, delighting in her unconscious shiver. "A lifetime."
Fin.
Vimes rose from the clouds of pink fog that had enveloped his sleep and blinked owlishly, caught in the nanoseconds before his brain caught up with his body. He looked over and saw her. His heart did that peculiar little leap as he watched her wreathed in the depths of sleep, but something was scrawling its grafitti on the wall of his subconscious. Sliding his arm around Sybil's waist, he pressed up against her, parts of his body eagerly preparing for an encore. The grafitti was getting bigger in his minds eye. Really, really large. And finally the message his brain was trying to convey finally broke through.
Under his breath Vimes muttered "any of them get out?"
"Shit! Shit, shit, shit..."
Vimes sat bolt upright, thoughts whirling. There was no time to waste. He leaped out of bed, climbing hastily into his breeches and yanking on his hastily discarded shirt.
Sybil... she was sleeping on, undisturbed. Vimes did a mad little dance in the middle of the small room - alternately moving towards the bed, and then towards the door in an agony of indecision.
Finally he made himself wrench open the door, and he cast a sorrowful look at the sleeping woman in the bed.
Traitorous thoughts piped up in his mind as he descended the steps from his lodgings.
"As if you'd ever be able to make anything with Sybil," they jeered. "It never meant anything, no matter what she said. It's just post-coital anyway, everyone talks rubbish after sex."
Post-what? Vimes groaned. After sex, you know? When you're feeling all silly and cuddly? Vimes glowered. Women get like that. He really tried not to think of Sybil's face when she realised she was alone. He really hoped she wouldn't track him down and kill him, although he wouldn't blame her if she did. She didn't seem to be the kind of person who would let an absconding man get away without comment.
At the moment, Vimes' future was looking to be short and painful. He had a choice of an angry dragon or an angry Sybil, and at the moment Vimes was favouring his chances with the dragon.
As he careered towards the Patrician's Palace, Vimes let his rage build. Rage at the destruction to his city, rage at the impotence of the Watch, rage at the arrogance of the city leaders, rage at his interrupted time with Lady Ramkin. The one time something really bloody good happens... he clamped down on that thought. The bastard dragon's even going to have that, he thought, glaring at the sky.
"Any of them get out?"
Stretching, Lady Ramkin nuzzled deeper into her pillow. Her eyes drifted back closed and a small, happy smile played about the corners of her mouth. Hanging on to the last tendrils of sleep, she murmured, "Sam?"
Slightly louder, she tried again. "Sam?"
Frowning slightly, she rolled over. And found herself facing a brown, peeling, bedroom wall. The thin bedclothes were bunched up on one side, the cold spot indicating that the other occupant of the bed had risen some time ago.
She was alone. After the emotional roller coaster of the last day and night, Lady Ramkin gave in to her feminine side. She began to cry.
"What?!"
"Ooook."
"Not in my bloody city! You hear?"
"Ooook."
"Ah. Sorry."
A man who can lift a 300lb Orangutan and not notice, is a man with too much on his mind.
Lady Ramkin lay awake staring at the ceiling, tracing the faint cracks that she had memorised long ago in her girlhood. Surely she hadn't been such a colossally bad judge of character...? Had she? Was she simply an old fool, what most of her contemporaries thought anyway? Was she that desperate that the first man she felt attracted to was automatically 'the one?' No, she vehemently shook her head. That wasn't it. She'd seen Sam in his most unguarded moments last night, and she knew she wasn't wrong. Something else must have made him leave so quickly. The way he looked at her, as if he was seeing her for the very first time, the way he literally worshipped her as he kissed her and held her, the way they joined together. She knew instinctively that was true.
Suddenly, Lady Ramkin sat upright. Something wasn't right. It was too quiet. Lady Ramkin's bedroom looked out over the dragon pens and she was used to sleeping with the slightly rasping sound of scales and the occasional flaming of a gravid female. What she wasn't used to was complete silence. It had the same effect as an alarm clock. Slipping out of bed, ignoring the nightdress she was wearing, she padded downstairs and out towards the pens. The little dragons were all staring intently at the roof of their pens.
Lady Ramkin sighed. As much as she loved her dragons, she felt...preoccupied. Worried. Despite her own reassurances that Sam wouldn't have been deliberately cruel, she needed to see him. Needed to know. Know that he was...real. True. Who was she kidding? She needed to know that the person she had given all of herself to last night was not discarding her after he had had what he wanted. She couldn't trivialise it, it ran too deep within her. She knew some women gave themselves without much thought, as far as she was concerned people could live their lives how they pleased, but she was in her mid forties. It was a huge thing she had done, and she needed to know that it was not for nothing. Sighing again, Lady Ramkin shook herself out of her reverie. Glancing at the door at the end of the pens, she saw the outline of a guards uniform. Sam! Her heart leapt in her chest and she trembled with nerves. Silly, considering what they had done last night. But her heart was pounding, her stomach churned and her palms were sweaty. Quickly, she ran upstairs in the dark and grabbed her best wig, and fumbled on the dressing table for a bottle of long-forgotten perfume. In her haste, she sprayed on far too much. Coughing, she made her way to the front door. Wait...she twitched the neckline of her sensible nightie into a more revealing position and smiled winsomely as she opened the door.
"Why Captain, this is a...who the hell are you!"
Vimes was very nearly swept off his feet by the sea of people swarming towards the Plaza of Broken Moons. Here and there he heard snatches of conversation. There was a feeling in the air, not excitement, but expectation, and a strong under current of primal fear. Surely they wouldn't condone... Not here, not Ankh-Morpork...
Approaching the plaza he craned over the heads of the crowd. It looked like a...a... huge rock... Gods only knew where they'd got it from, Ankh-Morpork was built on loam. Not in my city, he growled low in his throat. Dragon or no dragon, no one was going to be sacrificed on Vimes' watch. Waving his cleaver, he started running through the crowd towards the plaza, expecting at any point to feel his spine reaching the vaporising point of iron. Shouldering his way through the crowd, he felt his legs moving as if in slow motion as he saw the identity of the woman chained to the rock.
His heart hammered in his chest, and it had nothing to do with the imminent arrival of the dragon and everything to do with Lady Ramkin who was, at that moment, training a murderous look upon him.
"You!"
"You!"
Lady Ramkin was tethered at ankle and wrist, splayed over the rock. Her nightie was flapping in the soft breeze and the fact that she was very nearly giving the crowd a free show due to the rips and the torn neck line, was making it very difficult for Vimes to concentrate.
He stood and waved the cleaver ineffectually as he struggled for something to say. He really should try to apologise, he decided.
"I, er, that is, er..."
"Captain Vimes, you will kindly oblige me by putting that cleaver to its proper use!"
Whump.
Vimes felt his blood turn to ice.
Hurriedly he began hacking at the chains.
Whump.
The sound was felt, rather than heard. It was literally a wall of sound.
Both wrists done.
Whump.
The down wind almost knocked him to his knees.
One ankle done.
Whump.
A hissing noise percolated through Vimes' consciousness. It sounded like something large, say, a dragon, taking a deep breath. He swallowed.
Second ankle done.
Run.
Suddenly a small dragon shaped bullet screeched over the heads of the crowd.
The great dragon, momentarily distracted, focused on the intruder.
Pushing through the crowd, legs like jelly, Vimes guided Lady Ramkin out of the Plaza and down a quiet street. He knew he needed to do some explaining, and, well, it was important wasn't it? When he felt that they had run far enough, he paused for breath.
Squinting, realised that they were only a few minutes from his lodgings. In an unusually acquiescent moment, Lady Ramkin allowed him to take her arm and lead her down another street, stopping by a candlemakers shop that looked familiar. She smiled as she saw his uneasy glance in her direction. She wondered if he knew how adorable he looked. She doubted he would appreciate being told that, she mused as they ascended the narrow, dark stairs to Vimes' lodgings. Sitting on his bed, watching him run his fingers through his hair as he tried to compose himself, Lady Ramkin allowed the memories to surface. His first tentative kisses, gaining in confidence and urgency as he was reassured of her utter compliance, hands ghosting over every curve of her body and making her soul sing like it had never done before. Oh yes, she was in no way regretting her encounter. She shifted slightly on the bed as a now familiar ache began to call for attention.
On the other side of the room, Vimes was staring intently at her. Behind the intense stare, unbeknownst to Lady Ramkin, Vimes was having a serious argument with himself.
Apologise. You ran out on her, left her alone, the morning after! Like every other scumbag that runs out on women!
"I, um, about. Er. This morning. Very. Er." He coughed urgently as he felt the burn of shame and embarrassment collect its well overdue payload. He tried again. "I didn't, um." He licked suddenly dry lips as his mouth felt like parchment. Lady Ramkin was doing nothing to assist the situation as her torn nightie was revealing parts of her figure that Vimes had seen before his mind's eye for the entire day and was eager to get reacquainted with.
"It's ok, Sam," Lady Ramkin murmured.
"It's not!" Vimes exploded. He clutched his head. "I ran out, it's inexcusable, I left you, but I didn't want to, I had to arrest Wonse..." his voice tailed off.
"Come here." Lady Ramkin patted the space next to her on the still unmade bed. Vimes walked slowly across the room, pulling off his boots as he sat down. Lady Ramkin turned to him.
"I know you wouldn't have gone if you didn't have to. I thought about it all day, and I just knew you weren't like that, Sam." She smiled gently. "That's why i'm still here."
Vimes stared at her. What had he done in his pathetic life to deserve such as her? Before his addled brain could think of any new way to humiliate him, her lips were suddenly on his and interesting parts of her anatomy were making thinking suddenly impossible.
Vimes pushed her back gently and repositioned himself so he was looking down upon her softly smiling face.
With a quirk of her lips, she asked "are you planning to stay this time?"
Smiling back, he slid his hand lightly over the curve of her hip, underneath the remains of the nightdress. "Oh yes," he murmured, delighting in her unconscious shiver. "A lifetime."
Fin.
Sign up to rate and review this story