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[mm_adiva]

Comment with your pup and mine, and I will tell you:

1) Why they don't get along.
2) How my pup's opinion of yours has changed over time.

Or possibly I'll just ramble at you about interactions. You know how it goes.

Milliways, present and past
Nita Callahan (nita_callahan)
Charles Wallace Murry (thisfatefulhour)
Carmela Rodriguez (i_grenfelz)
Valerie (evryinchbut1)
Tom (re_mybrains)
Kim Merrill (cant_kimNirupam

Comments

[adiva_calandia]

Okay, by rights, Nita and Havelock shouldn't get along. He kills people for money. She values life over everything else.

And it gives me great pleasure to be able to say TOGETHER, THEY FIGHT CRIME.

... Okay, I have more coherent thoughts than that, I swear, but every time I reread it I end up in giggles again.

If I'm remembering right, their first interaction was on the Oberon takedown, so Nita's impression of Havelock started off as, and continued to be for a long time, Puck's boyfriend. So. *shrug* Puck's boyfriend. Puck's considerably saner, unreadable boyfriend.

It's been very slow and very subtle, and Nita would have to think about it to even realize it, but he's become more of a true friend since then. There was the knife fighting lesson, for one; there was the cool, logical approach to her prophetic dreams, for another; and there was, of course, the fact that he would come to her world -- maybe he thought of it as protecting her, but she thought of it as protecting her universe. If she knew about the way he took care of her while she was unconscious and recovering, she'd be touched.

She knows that there's a fundamental disconnect in the way they think, though, and not just in their philosophies of when it's okay to kill. I don't know if they'll ever resolve their differing ideas on when it's okay to die (thoughts from your end? *curious*). But Nita believes that the Havelock she knows is basically a good person, and differing philosophies don't change that.

I think it'd be interesting to see how Vetinari and Nita interact, but I'm afraid it would ruin Nita's relationship with Havelock at this juncture. *rueful grin* Maybe I'll rewrite that "Nita at the Assassin's Guild" ficlet with her being escorted by the Patrician, one day.

(There was something inherently disturbing, Vimes thought, about the Patrician with a young woman on his arm. You got used to the fact that the black-clad, calculating leader of the city kept a scruffy dog named Wuffles, and then wham, he turned around and did something expected like entertaining a pretty young woman. He wondered vaguely if the Seamstresses' Guild was charging the Patrician something exorbitant for it, or if she was one of those types who had decided the way to a ruler's pocket was through his heart, or other associated organs.

Which still begged the question of what the hells she was doing with Vetinari, or rather what the hells he was doing with her.

On second thought, Vimes didn't want to know.)

[rowanberries]

They do have an interesting and basically clashing morality there. *Grins*

Havelock has no problem with her defense of life - he canonically isn't quite as casual about his killing as the average assassin in any case - but he is quite unable to understand her feelings on when to die. He knows that it is human nature to struggle to live, and thus her willingness to give up her life when (as he sees it) it isn't totally necessary is completely incomprehensible. It's also a side-effect of the Discworld gods being far more hands-on but also far less caring, and the apparent lack of an afterlife. He believes that the only changes possible are those that are made by the living, and thus anyone with power to change things for the better (Nita, in this case) must be kept alive as long as possible. It's a very cold, logical process.

Just... strangely convenient, that she's a friend, too. His emotional side is always hardest for me to work out. :S

Yeah. Old!Vetinari is very odd, and just a little scary, at times. He's had a lot burned out of him, and of course he visits Milliways very infrequently, and thus the network of friends and almost-family he had in his youth is gone. Although he no longer assassinates people himself, he's a lot more ruthless and dispassionate, and that would make him hard to relate to. (Not to mention harder to play. QED: My reason for bringing in the younger version in the first place.)

(Waugh! Oh, Vimes.

Now I'm tempted to do a follow-up where he shows up with young/teenage Aria and Adrian and several Morporkians' brains explode.)