Summary: Because I'm maybe a little insane and completely in love with little Nobby Nobbs from Nightwatch. AU; Hand wavy reason, Sam Vimes never got back to his future, everything got changed too much and no he's stuck in his own past, watching himself grow up and trying so very hard not to mess up so badly that he (that is the younger him) never gets the future he should. Because Sam Vimes loves Sybil, with all that's left of his heart after the job, and he wants himself to feel that again, or for the first time (whichever doesn't give him the biggest headache). In the meantime he seems to have found himself the unwilling (but not entirely uncaring) caretaker for one Cecil Wormsborough St. John "Nobby" Nobbs.

Notes: Son't ask me, it got stuck in my head, what with Vimes being all gruffly, adorably, almost fatherlike to Nobby in the Nightwatch book, making sure he's fed and whatnot. I just wanted more of that, and Nobby is one of my favourite characters in the Guards Books, catapulted there over even Detritius and Cheery (who were tied for second place after Sybil Ramkin) after I read Jingo. I felt for him during that book, and now Nightwatch has slayed me!

What didn't happen

Chapter 1

He was John Keel now.

It was his own damn fault of course, he'd gone and changed History a little too much and now he was stuck in a world that was his own and yet wasn't. He wasn't getting home, he'd spent too many depressing days being told such by the History Monks. His only momento of that time that no longer was, his cigar case. He traced the words inside often, running careful fingers across "Your Sybil" and feeling his heart pang in his chest painfully.

He'd been made Captain, how or why he didn't even begin to guess at, but he was and he resigned himself to it, to this life now.

With nothing else to lose he was doing his damndest to turn himself, his younger self, into a man Sybil could truly be proud of in the future, not that she wouldn't be proud whatever, but he had always felt that she saw him as something else, something more than he was. In his own way he has aspired to that view, but he wanted young Sam to be so much more than he was, a better husband. He was careful, he had to be, but he pushed for it still.

The other major change (on top of just about everything else), was the constant sight of young Nobby Nobbs around the watch house. In Vime's past Nobby Nobbs hadn't come into any real exsistance until he'd joined the watch at 15, scraggly and ugly and Fred Colon, had taken him under his wing. Sam had been 26 then and was starting to becme disillusioned with the world. Now Nobby was always around, underfoot. Vimes' had decided, after the third time the petty cash went missing to give the boy a whole dollar a week to run messages for the watch. If he could break Nobby of his habit of nicking the petty cash early he would. It seemed to be working, his new hiding place remained undisturbed so far.

Nobby showed up as the Watch was getting on duty and would tell Vimes everything that had been going on out on the streets that day, he'd stay for a while to see if there was any food going, stay for a while more if there was, asking questions about what they did and their weapons and any other thing that popped into his head. He was bright. It was easy to forget that sometimes, but he was frightenly bright. Vimes had occassionally found him curled up in the stables sleeping the night away, but he didn't say anything, just covered him up with a blanket and made sure to have an extra bowl of porriage ready in the morning.

Things went on like this for a long while, and Vimes found himself settling into the life he had carved out as John Keel, getting back into the rythym of life as just a copper, trying to forget what he could no longer have. He did his best to help Young Sam along, but sometimes it got to be much, sometimes he had to take a step back, bury himself in whatever work he could and block out the harsh reality that was his life now, to grieve for everything he's lost.

It was after one such 'black mood' as the others put it, that Vimes' noticed something missing.

"Where's Nobby?" he asked, glancing around the room.

"He hasn't been in for nearly a week sir." Young Sam answered promptly.

"Figure he got bored Captain, you know what kids like him are like." Colon piped in.

Vimes frowned, he didn't really think that a kid like Nobby would give up a dollar a week, more than he's ever managed doing the other odd jobs he did. He made a note to ask around, see if anything had happened he'd need to take care of, but for now he pushed it aside to worry about later, he had a watch house to get back into order.