teh_bug, I think you suggested this, oh, ages ago? And then I said it wasn't ever going to be finished, but apparently I lied. Although I didn't actually refer to the source material at any point, so it is quite possibly all ooc and non-canonical.1. His mother
She’s a princess only by courtesy: her father was a miller and her husband was born in exile. No crowns for them or thrones or robes made from the pelts of small, ferocious, furry animals. They live out of a cart, except when someone offers them a bed in exchange for labor. It’s a hard life, but better than the one she left behind; she doesn’t regret saying ‘yes’ to the sober-eyed young man who’d mended all the fences in town and sleeps always with sword in hand. There’s kindness between them, at least, and affection, which is more than she had before.
A child is worth the price of all this, she tells herself, no matter how much she dreads giving birth. (She’s sat in on too many births-turned-deaths, known too many parents and children who despised each other—been one such child.) And it is, once the pain is over and her husband smiles at her like she’s given him the world.
But oh, she did not expect the way her son would feel in her arms, or the odd flip of her stomach the first time he yawns. The dull ache of her heart when she hands him back to his father. He will be great someday—she knows it, sure as sunrise or springtime.
2. Minty Rocksmacker
Love, she will realize later, is a flexible concept and easily confused with infatuation. It is his otherness that fascinates her, not his good temper or encyclopaedic knowledge of the mine and its inhabitants. He is tall and clean-shaven and—despite the previous fact—definitely male, and nothing like any of the other dwarves her age in any of the ways that matter to her now. He attends to her, as though she is some rich vein to be carefully mined, a treasure still being found. It makes her giddy even when she’s not around him, or as close to it as a dwarf can manage.
Later, she will realize that her parents were right, and love—giddiness—is not a strong enough foundation to build a partnership on. But she is young now, and heartbroken (or as close to it as a dwarf can manage), and were she and Carrot (both) human, their story would likely be romantic, tragic, and very stupid.
They’re not, though, so she obeys her parents and goes to her room and locks the door and cries.
3. Angua
She’s finally settled into this: she’s his, but he’s also hers, and she’ll rip out the throat of anyone who interferes. He wouldn’t want her to, but wolves do one of two things when faced with a threat, and she’s through with running.
4. The curator @ the dwarf bread museum
It’s not love, exactly, but it’s nice to have someone else who appreciates the craftsmanship and fine details of dwarf bread. No one else does, not even the dwarves (which is baffling, but perhaps just as well).
5. Ankh-Morpork
She belonged to him the moment he set foot in her, although neither realized it then and they still haven’t now. Oh, a few of her citizens suspect, but that’s fine—they also know that nothing will come of it if either Carrot or the city herself has any say in the matter.
(But this is false; reality shapes itself to Carrot whether he would it did or not, and he believes Ankh-Morpork is good, beneath her patina of grime and hard-learned cynicism. Good. And so wherever he goes, she unknowingly twists ever so slightly in the attempt to become what he thinks she already is—and he walks the length and breadth of her many times in a year.)
