[fic] Watchmen; Moonless Night, Chapters 1-4; Dan/Rorschach
Title: Moonless Night
Fandom: Watchmen
Pairing: Eventual Dan/Rorschach
Rating/Warnings: R, no warnings
Summary: Post-Keene, Pre-GN. A patrol gone wrong leaves Rorschach blinded and badly injured; he seeks out his old partner and lives through the consequences. Complete, ~22000 words. (With art by radishface and now jackiemei ! Thank youuu)
Originally written on the kinkmeme from 8/2/09 to 11/17/09.
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
MOONLESS NIGHT
Chapter 1
Cello music winds up from downstairs, dark and slow. It echoes through the flimsy floorboards, resonating in wood and tugging at his heart like something out of a dark dream. Seductive.
Downstairs neighbor should be more considerate.
Whether it is a record or whether it is the real thing didn't matter. Judging by the black against the insides of his eyelids, it is still well before sunrise. The few people left in the building who manage to pull themselves away from self-indulgent lifestyles and put in a good day's work would be inconvenienced by these early morning musical preferences. No matter how beautiful.
Maybe he will speak with the man later: mid-thirties, glasses. Perpetually bemused expression.
Doesn't particularly remind him of anyone.
As for himself, he'd put in a good night's work, working for the city. He deserves his rest.
There were knot-tops; he doesn't like them. Too fluid, too young, too fast. Care little about their city, their society, or their country: only aim is to gratify their very basest human desires. Run in packs, like dogs. Have nothing but seething violence at the core, and must be tamed with fists. It had been a hard night, as it usually was now that he was on his own. Not impossible. He still has his wits, his training. He still has the experience of walking these same filthy streets for years. He still has the relentless drive in his gut that never, ever lets him rest.
There is no use in wishing for sleep which won't come. Many things need to be done today; rent is coming due soon, and by the subtle ache lancing the inside of his skull, he knows he'll need nutrition soon as well. Both require money. Money requires creativity.
He sits up, and the first thing he notices is how dizzy he feels.
The second thing he notices is that everything is completely dark.
The end. Nuclear winter. Heavy clouds coating the sky until plants wither and humans die underneath, choking for food, only cockroaches left to pick over the rubble-
No. No one would play Bach's Cello Suite #1 during the apocalypse. Fiddle, maybe. Cello doesn't fit.
His stomach feels leaden.
Maybe he'd gone to sleep with his face on: reduced visibility reduced even further by low light.
But he already knows his fingers will touch human skin a second before he feels his own protruding cheekbone. His fingers scramble up, tracing the hollows beneath his eyes, skirting lightly around his own eyelids to confirm what his muscles are already telling him but what his brain is struggling to understand.
His eyes are open.
He can't see.
///
Chapter Two
He's pacing across the room, one two three turn. One two three turn. He has to work to quiet his fingers; they keep twitching up to touch his eyes, sweep across the lids, remove by instinct the obstruction that must be there-must-
Isn't.
He has no idea what happened.
A jewelry store, he remembers suddenly. He was at a jewelery store last night. It's easy to picture now, the wide street-facing window with carefully stenciled letters (the owner has a foreign name but is not a tax cheat). He's admired it before, delicate chains and strong matrimonial bands glinting metallic and remote beyond the city's degrading touch, painted over with reflections from the street but safely separate beyond glass.
The clustered gang of knot-tops intended to break it. It made him angry. He underestimated the size of their group. And then-
Nothing. His consciousness skims around the edge of it, a vast emptiness from then to now, as dark as-
Music downstairs stops. His pacing stops.
He's left abruptly without grounding for his senses, only the floor beneath his feet a reassuring presence. Not reassuring enough. His hands twitch, move, slide to press against his own body in superstitious confirmation of his own existence.
It's wrong. What he feels is wrong.
This (70/30 wool-cotton blend, coarse) is the jacket to his day-suit; these (50/50 cotton-silk blend, smooth) are the trousers to his evening suit.
He did not put his clothes in their proper place last night. He is disturbed to realize that he is half-in, half-out of costume. Stupid. Slipping.
No matter.
He walks, careful and slow, until the bed frame bumps his knees-sooner than he expected. His hands skim along the mattress, the bed post, the floor. They're here: both pairs of shoes, his coat, the other halves of both outfits strewn across the floorboards like so much discarded trash, disgorged. That is also disturbing. He folds his clothing carefully beside the bed. Two separate piles. The grappling gun (he is relieved to find it) is placed neatly between them.
When he rises the world lurches around him, he doesn't need to see it he can feel it and the wall collides with his shoulder and his arms stagger out in frightened instinct and this is more than confusion from loss of sight, more than lightheadedness from lack of nutrition, something's been done to him and he can't remember-
First they pump in barbiturates, then they pump in amphetamines, and then you cannot lie-
His legs tremble as he braces against the wall, his fingers scrambling for the buttons to his cuffs, shoving up his sleeves, feeling over and over again the length of his arms for the IV entry points.
The skin is smooth. It's smooth but who knows how long he's been asleep, days, weeks, (months?) it could have healed and he could be under control, a single word bringing him to heel and he cannot look to see if there are scars-
His breath shudders in his throat. No. No. Control yourself. Be reasonable. Only one city has left who still cares to fight, who isn't a government lapdog (yet), who isn't insane (the picture of Mothman being carted away, raving mad, was six columns wide in the Gazette-"What madness took thee? Do there crawl Live Things of Evil from the deep To leap on man?"). No.
Gradually calming, he pulls down his sleeves. Straightens them. Fixes the cuffs closed. He will be calm.
The possibility is remote, yet still a possibility. He will need someone to check his arms.
Only problem: there is no one trustworthy left in the city.
Except one.
The concept of visiting him again, standing in his kitchen again, makes his stomach perform a queasy turn, makes him clench his teeth down onto his tongue, unforgiving. Betrayed and unforgiving.
Nonetheless: he will go.
Chapter Three
It would be better to wear his disguise, better in case he loses consciousness (he won't) or becomes lost (he won't) or needs help (he won't); but he's already shucking off his day-jacket, folding it carefully before bending to find the rest of his Rorschach clothes. He rolls his shoulders under the familiar cut of fabric, comforted by the unchanging dignity of a men's business suit.
His face is not in his coat pocket.
It's not in this pocket, or that pocket, it's not underneath his remaining clothing, it's not anywhere on the bed, or beneath it (his head hits the bed frame when he kneels), or on the floor, or anywhere within reach of his sweeping hands. Gone.
Who took it-
He remembers blood in his mouth, heavy and cuprous; he remembers his stomach heaving, and having to wrench up the skin of his face so urgently the seams ripped. He remembers vomiting in the thick black shadows beside a dumpster.
It is not a good thought, the possibility that his face is somewhere out there, lost in the city where any katiehead can touch it with filthy, disgusting fingers-but if the seams ripped, the fluid must have bled out in a pool of ink and liquid pearl, leaving his face as translucent and anonymous as a cast-off reptile's skin. That's a better thought.
There is a spare face. He hasn't seen it in many years. It lies in its shallow grave: an empty compartment beneath his loose floorboard, secret and safe. That compartment is easy enough to find again by the dull and hollow thud it makes compared to the rest of the floor (he hears it every time he goes to the window: a dark reminder). When he pulls up the board, there is a smell of must and old blood. His face is buried deep beneath his old outfit.
He wore this the last night he was Walter Kovacs. Wore this the night he cauterized pustulent rot with fire and released a little girl from the bellies of dogs, ashes streaming up into the night, black on black forever. After, he had made a new face and new clothes. Clothes make the man.
Running his fingers along the inside of it gives him an unearthly chill, like touching a funeral shroud.
No choice.
It slides down against his skin, seams aligned over his ears and pulling at the discomfort in his scalp. Slick texture familiar, but something is unsettlingly off, so tight across his mouth and nose he has to pinch the latex forward for breathing room-
Backward. He's got it backward.
He clamps down on a strange laugh bubbling up sickly in his chest. Can picture himself: a pathetic figure hunched on the edge of his mattress with eyes in the back of his head. (Used to happen as a child. Getting dressed in the dark, it was easy to get shirts inside out or buttons mismatched and the other children would screech and point golly golly, lookit Wally like jackals and his stomach would grow hot and tight and terrible.)
No. No memories. No regrets. Walter is gone.
He holds his head between his hands until serene blankness fills his (remaining) senses. It will be easy. He will go to Dreiberg's. From there, he will plan what to do next. Simple.
Face straight. Hat pulled down. Shoes, ascot, coat. Grappling gun, map, pen, flashlight, matches: everything he will need is here.
(He does not think of his neat stacks of the New Frontiersman, carefully annotated in spidery red; the single framed photograph beside his bed; the doomsday fliers he only finished last week; his good scissors; his old article clippings of more triumphant times. He does not consider the fact that once he leaves he may never find his way back.)
As soon as his hands meet the cracked window, muscle memory carries him through the window frame, up, twisting, balancing on the ledge and hauling himself up to the roof as the window closes beneath with a snap. Easy.
There is residual heat under his fingers. Is it mid-morning? Is it evening now, the roof releasing warmth at end of day like a weary sigh?
Doesn't matter.
The trip across the roof to his fire escape should take seconds.
Raw instinct is halting him, forcing him to spread his arms, splay his fingers, walk with the hobbled half-steps of an old man. He's walked this roof a thousand times, but now his mind is balking at the possibility of obstacles which don't exist. Disorienting. Stupid.
He'll move slowly.
The roof's edge looms up in his mind's eye, bringing his footsteps slower and slower until he crouches where he knows it should be, feeling for it. (There is a whole city beneath, waiting for him to fall.)
The fire escape ladder finally presents itself to his hands, and then he's descending into New York's chaotic belly. He ignores the way his bones rattle and head aches when he jumps the last distance.
He will take his Tuesday patrol route, the one which winds through aboveground alleyways and back streets, the one which reaches its apex at the Owl's Nest, the one he never saw fit to discard.
So many times he's walked it. It leads him onward.
It should be no different than any other night, any night without a moon and any night with black sliding symmetrically over his eyes, but it is. (The black is still sliding over his eyes, but now it is invisible to him.) The distances seem wrong, his judgment off. His sense of smell, hearing, touch are muted by his choice of costume, and the very strongest sensations to him are now the workings of his own body: inescapable. An ache in his hip, sore places he will ignore, needle-sharp throbbing in his head, his own circulatory and muscular and digestive systems. It is unpleasant.
When he hits a wall at full force, he is forced to conclude two things: that he cannot walk anymore with hands in pockets, and that he veers inexplicably to the right when deprived of any visual guideposts. Disturbing.
The city is a riot of sound.
It has never been quiet, never will be, but he has never been forced to listen as closely as this.
A soft scurrying whisper is a rat clambering over disused refuse in the gutter. Surreal beats pounding through a wall are work of the latest Vietnamese pop star. Laughter brays from the mouth of a young man, embarrassingly loud. A homeless man mumbles an insane screed, an abandoned newspaper scrapes along concrete, a spark hydrant hums in satisfaction with its stored power.
Someone-a woman, slurring and loose-limbed and warm from whatever indecent acts bring her to this section of town-collides with him and accuses him of being a stumbling drunkard. Hypocrisy, it seems, never goes out of style.
Horns blare at him when he crosses streets, electric cars deceptively silent until the last moment. He is screamed at, cursed at, but he has long since become accustomed to ingratitude. They all manage to avoid hitting him; couldn't have been too much trouble.
There is a point where he has to roll up his face to use his sense of smell and regain bearings. It smells of lamb and ginger. It is the alley behind Gunga Diner. (This is just a few blocks from his apartment-he has not come as far as he thought.) His stomach turns hopefully, recognizing his last-ditch meal place. The smell is strong. Must be just past midnight, when the restaurant's excess food is thrown out carelessly like so many things in this city, waste tossed away as the byproducts of an engorged society. The overspiced meat will already be going rancid, but noodles and rice will still be good for many hours and the dumpsters are easy to access for a man who is in shape.
He fixes his face and ignores the hunger: now is not the time. And he does not scavenge without his disguise.
He's beginning to recognize his path in this strange new world, but the poisons which undoubtedly run through his bloodstream are beginning to take their effects. The sidewalks tilt and sway like wooden bridges over chasms. Awareness of his surroundings beginning to extend too far, a distant shout making him flinch as if it were in front of him. The saliva in his mouth is viscous and acrid. The pain in his head feels as though it will pierce his skull from the inside. His own heartbeat pulses in his ears. ("And the city breathes Heavy with incense, heavy with dim prayer And shrieks to affright the Slayer.")
No fear.
When he next regains consciousness, he's face-down on the ground. There's grit beneath his hands and the stench of garbage. Another alley. One of thousands. His head feels stuffed with cotton batting, but the pain is only a ghost of itself now.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Just above him. Something's watching, he can feel it, what-
Tap-tap-tap-tap. Rrl?
A cat. A stray cat turning around and around on the metal lid of a garbage can, looking down at him. He can picture it: ragged and orange. Clawing its survival out on the streets. Fearless.
He rises again, this time drawn by a steel thread of determination. He will not stop again. Rorschach does not know weakness.
When sound begins to recede, he knows he's approaching the correct neighborhood. Police respond to noise complaints when the one complaining is one of the moneyed elite. There is a particular neon sign advertising alcoholic substances he passes every time, the last one before the tide of advertisements must give way to respectable homes. This electric hum beside him, on then off then on again, must be it.
Even so, it feels like a small miracle when the wall he thinks must be the right one has a drainpipe with a sunken dent (Daniel had slammed his fist into it the night they lost control of a sex trafficking case). He runs his hand along it for a single moment of relief. On top of this warehouse is the maintenance hatch which will deposit him in the owlship's tunnel.
The tunnel's complete darkness sometimes disturbs him. It does not tonight.
Any moment he expects to run into the owlship-any moment-
He cannot find it. He cannot find the stairs to the door. He cannot find anything he recognizes. This table, was it against the East wall or West wall? Where is the trophy case and the work desk? Owl's Nest has always been a disgraceful mess, undoubtedly more so now that it's been left to rot away in disrepair. Half-finished projects litter every surface, including the floor. Something finally catches him in the shin and sends him tumbling with a resounding metal crash.
It does not escape him that he's successfully navigated the city's hellish maw only to become lost in a basement.
He kicks whatever lies beside him and is partially satisfied to hear an injured-sounding clang.
The soft click of a lock being undone echoes throughout the abandoned basement and he freezes, considers for one absurd second whether he should leave this place before Daniel can see him.
"Hello?"
Daniel sounds worried, nervous, afraid. Like a regular person. Something about that makes him feel even sicker then before. Fluorescent bulbs buzz to life above him.
"Rorschach?"
Chapter Four
Any second there should be the clatter of an improvised weapon hitting the floor: a baseball bat, a curtain rod. There isn't. Trust Daniel to believe he can still take on a potential home invader with his bare fists. Someone should disabuse him of that notion before he gets hurt.
(Nite Owl used to cut through the scum of the streets, movements sharp and clean, a blade of justice. Nite Owl is gone.)
"Hello, Daniel." The conversational tone would have been an intentional and darkly humorous counterpoint to the way he's currently sprawled across the floor and the years of silence which have spread between them. Would have been if it hadn't come out even rustier than his usual Rorschach voice, unintentional. His throat is dry and sticks to itself.
No one will stop him if he decides to leave once more. Turn around and return home.
He finds his hat with only a minimum of searching and restores it to his head, rising to his feet. Dignified. Daniel's voice has helped him locate the basement door by sound-must have been searching the South wall this whole time by mistake-and makes his way by memory toward it. Owlcar should be just to his right as he turns (the windshield was a smooth, curved glass and he had felt both exhilarated and uncomfortable at riding in something so expensive).
If he moves a little more slowly than usual, no one will notice. Especially not Daniel.
"Uh, Rorschach." Clearly Daniel wants to ask what are you doing here, but has always been too polite for that. Always avoids what he wants to say unless given the correct provocation. "What's, uh, what's going on?"
"Paying a social visit."
Daniel says nothing, waiting for him to get to the real root of things. Most likely has that mistrustful, analyzing look he started developing years ago. Before quitting.
He's glad for once he can't see that look.
The stairs seem unsteady despite the fact that he's got a harder grip on the railing than he should need. When they begin to tilt and sway like the sidewalk did outside, he focuses all of his determination, leaning forward and seeking out he next step each time with the ball of his foot. He feels like a scarecrow, head too light and legs as uncooperative as stiff pegs.
"Rorschach?" The suspicion is tinged with worry now. The worry has always been worse than the suspicion-there has been no reason to worry about him since he became Rorschach. "You're acting..." drunk, he's going to say, going to accuse him of disgusting intemperance, but apparently thinks better of it: "punch-drunk."
Of course. Of course, he's boxed, has followed the careers of Sugar Ray Robinson and Floyd Patterson, has fought nightly, knows the effects of head blows by heart. Should have thought of that first. Has not been hit enough to be true boxer's dementia-always protects his head, they're always reaching for his face-but the descriptor is close enough. Must have happened during the fight last night (or is it days ago by now?). Effects will wear off, like everything else.
"Don't drink punch, Daniel." Ha.
They must be standing face-to-face now. Daniel hasn't moved, is standing in the doorway of his home like a protective guardian. Walling off his civilian life with his broad shoulders. Not welcome inside anymore.
Doesn't matter.
Only hit in the head. Has been hit in the head before. Slept it off. No need to worry.
But what if-
The insides of his arms itch and he can't tell the difference between real sensation or whether his brain is creating this. Like a child whose skin crawls after he sees a spider. His tongue slides around the inside of his mouth in nervous habit, skimming over the gap of his missing tooth, flickering out to the dry and cracking corner of his mouth.
What if.
He's stripping off his good gloves and transferring them to his pocket. He's pushing up his sleeves now, slowly, not bothering to explain anything until the supple fabric bunches at his elbow.
"Do you see anything..." Daniel is too closed-minded to accept his suspicions at face value, he's certain. Would not even be asking if it wasn't important. "...unusual."
"Uh-hold on, let me put on my glasses here. You know I'm blind as hell without them."
Funny.
He tries not to flinch when he feels hands enclosing around his wrists without warning. The pressure is light, but Daniel's hands are dry and hot. No one has touched him outside of combat for years. No one has touched his bare skin for longer. He has forgotten what it feels like, how much it makes his nerves flare and jump, feels both repulsive and vital. There is an old scar in the hollow of Daniel's palm. The sensation momentarily paralyzes him while his arms are carefully stretched out for a better look.
"Jesus," Daniel breathes, and he feels a chill pricking his skin all the way up to his scalp, it must be there, he was right, there are IV scars and he doesn't know who did it, "these bruises. All this blood... what the hell happened to you?"
Just bruises. Only bruises. Daniel is overreacting: typical. Daniel does not remember how violent the world can be. Does not remember that bruises are not unusual for either of them. Or at least shouldn't be.
"Doing my job." He bites off the word bitterly, on purpose, and lets the silent accusation hang as long as Daniel lets it. All he can hear is a soft huff of breath. What does his face look like? Angry? Hurt?
No one says anything for a long time. He feels somehow both triumphant and sickened and does not withdraw his arms. (Nite Owl used to fight back.)
"Certain you don't see anything else?"
His wrists are released, again without warning. "There's nothing. What exactly am I supposed to be looking for?" That suspicious look is bleeding into Daniel's tone now and it makes him press his hands into his pockets and lower his head. He will leave. No point in staying. (There is an entire city in between and he aches.)
He's on the fifth step before Daniel sighs again and shifts position, speaks reluctantly. "How long's it been since you ate?"
The offer is implicit. Pure reflex makes him turn his head even though it's pointless without being able to see. The tendon and muscle have been standing out more prominently in his limbs lately, and now he can imagine that Daniel looked all the way down the length of his arms when he held them, probing without touching. Analyzing. He has unintentionally exposed something about himself and it is not comfortable knowledge. He wants to eye Daniel's body language. Is this grudging pity?
Daniel never used to pity him.
Nonetheless. Even the hunger pangs have ceased gnawing at his insides, and this means he has not eaten in a very long time. His silence confirms that by default.
"Come on. I was just about to warm up some leftovers." A blatant lie.
He can eat, just a little. He can eat and then he will throw himself back into the gaping jaws of the city.
Through the unguarded doorway now, and the kitchen air feels warm on the backs of his hands.
Fumbling for the kitchen chair is beneath him; he will simply stand and wait until Daniel sits down, so he can locate the table by sound. His memory of this room is disturbingly faded for all the times he's been here. Kitchen table used to be the only space left after his morass of notes and strategies filled his own apartment table, then the work table in the Owl's Nest, and finally here.
"Protein, protein," Daniel's muttering, the refrigerator's soft yawning hum muffling his words as he rummages. The urge to tell him to shut the door-wasting energy-rises and passes. "Egg drop soup. That's good for a start. Add some rice..."
It occurs to him suddenly that Daniel's behaving somewhat like an eager host who hasn't had a guest for a very long time. Forgetting not to talk to himself. Scrambling to serve even the least welcome guest. It is embarrassing and pitiable. His fingers clench and unclench inside his pockets.
"...I apologize for waking you." Isn't sure why he says it.
The lower-voiced whine of a microwave oven. When did he purchase a microwave oven? What other tools of safe convenience with flashy marketing has he fallen prey to? It takes great effort to keep himself from telling Daniel he does not like his food irradiated.
"Oh." Daniel pauses, as if he isn't sure how to respond, and eventually settles on coolly distant and self-deprecating. The former is not familiar, but the latter is. "Well. It's two o'clock in the afternoon, I really should be awake anyway."
No. It was evening when he left, he's sure of it. Should only be just past midnight.
He spends so long thinking about it that the tinny ding! partially startles him.
"Okay. I just kinda threw some stuff together. Didn't think you'd mind." Two containers hit the table. Two pieces of silverware. From the sound of it, the table is still where it should be, very close to his right. (They'll be sharing the same meal.)
The chair's back comes beneath his hand with only two subtle sweeps of his arm. Same with spoon and cup. Isn't difficult at all.
Irritating when he has to find them again after rolling up the skin of his face. But not difficult. Bending his head makes his jaw and neck ache, but this is easily ignored. A wave of warmth greets the exposed bottom half of his face, steam bringing with it the oversalted flavor of chicken stock. (He is very, very hungry.)
More irritating when his first attempt at spoon-to-mouth is imperfectly done. Not that table manners will ever hold importance to him. They are for people who believe themselves civilized in a world where there is no civilization left.
Rice and chicken and slippery egg white slide over his tongue, nearly scalding. Warm. Warm food. The only warm item he allows himself is coffee, and that is justified by the new sharpness it lends to his senses. Rare reward for good work done. Anything else is a dangerous luxury leading down the path to sybaritic wallowing and self-indulgence. (He had to pawn the single-burner three years ago.)
There is the feeling of someone watching him. Most likely culprit is sitting across the table. He grunts with spoon in mouth.
No response. This time he swallows the spoonful and tilts his head as if looking up.
"How many fingers am I holding up." It's hardly even spoken as a question, as if vision damage is already the foregone conclusion and Daniel simply wants to inform him that he knows. There's something disappointed in the softness of his voice, but he cannot figure out what Daniel has to be disappointed about.
He won't answer until he's certain there's no more soup to be dredged from the bottom of the cup, even though his stomach hurts a little from being full. "None. Trying to be clever. Aren't holding up hand."
"Should have known you could guess that," Daniel mutters. (Doesn't remember that they've pulled that routine on each other a few times before, as a joke.)
For a moment it seems as if the matter will be dropped. A spoon scrapes against styrofoam.
"What I am wearing?" This time it's purposefully inescapable.
His fingernails scrape against the table where he puts down his spoon, drawing crescents while he tries to remember what Daniel was wearing last he saw. Somewhere around sixtieth and... and where?
"Argyle." Safe guess. "Black slacks." No, that's not right, Daniel doesn't sleep in his clothes-
"Not even close." The disappointment is stronger now, heavier.
It's time to return home.
"Rorschach?" The voice follows him as he turns and hits his knee on the table leg, as he stands with an abrupt scuff of his chair. "How little can you see?"
Once again, his silence answers the question for him. Past time to go home how.
"Look," now Daniel sounds somehow desperate, somehow unhappy, "you'd let me examine your arms but not your eyes? Come on."
It is a good point, no matter how little he likes it. Eyes should be examined. Could be a sign of what happened. Effects from chemical or acid attack could be reversed if caught soon enough.
Has never removed his face with Daniel, even when it was still only a mask worn by the foolish man beneath. Never needed to. (It isn't about trust. Nite Owl once held the entirety of his trust, earned night after thunderous night of combat. If he would have asked to see his face, he would have allowed it. Never did.)
Even then, he knew Rorschach was better. Wanted to be him even when he wasn't. Couldn't stand to see his own face, why would anyone-
(Rorschach cannot live without eyes.)
It wasn't that he ever made a promise not to remove it. Just never had the opportunity.
No. This was Daniel who had looked at him with blood spattered across his cheek, staring across the dim distance at him like he was a monster, like they weren't cut from the same cloth. "Christ, Rorschach, what's happening to us all?"
(Daniel who let him watch the '68 Olympics on his color television-good year, USA beat the Soviet medal count by 16. "Anything in the kitchen's yours, buddy.")
He pulls it up and off like a shed insect husk, clenching it in his fists to keep from losing it.
At least he doesn't have to know Daniel's expression, though he has always been curious what it would be. Most likely mixed equally between pity and disgust. Neither matters to him anymore.
Daniel is moving toward him, slowly. "Okay." There's a rush of breath, as if he'd been holding it. "Okay. Um. Let me see." Draws near and makes a faint ulf he doesn't understand.
The touch lands on his hair this time. Being surprised is unpleasant and he recoils, but it's not enough to dislodge Daniel's hand. "Rorschach, this wound is serious. You were hit in the head?"
He will not confirm yes or no, because he doesn't remember. "Eyes, Daniel."
"Uh, right." Fingers under his chin, tilting his head up. Heat resonates against his face, puffs of air against his nose, smelling of chicken. Their faces must be very close now.
Art by radishface
"Oh. Oh goddamnit, your pupils are blown." A thumb lands against his cheek, pulls the lower lid down. There is no more disappointment. He thinks he would rather have that back than this half-disguised panic. His stomach twists around his meal like a woken snake.
"You need to go to a hospital."
"No."
"Rorschach. Don't be-"
"No. Bureaucracy. Records. Not weak. Can take care of self."
Daniel is thinking 'obviously not' so hard he might as well say it.
He's never been to a hospital, not before Charlton and Charlton had a nurse even though he avoided her too and after Charlton couldn't afford and didn't want to, nurses piercing trapped patients with needles, medications, who knows what's in-
"Look. Look, just-let me clean out the wound. Okay?"
Doesn't believe for a second that Daniel has given up, but it is a retreat.
"Can do myself."
"I've seen you stitch up a lot of things, but not the top of your own head." A compliment is buried in there, a reminder of his capabilities, and it is disgusting how he is nearly taken in by the obvious ploy to make him more compliant.
But once again, he cannot argue. Wound needs cleaned and closed. Infection could render him incapable of doing his work. He nods, though it sends a stinging pang down his neck and a sloshing sensation to his head.
After an indecisive pause and half-swallowed question, Daniel is leading him away by the arm, and he cannot argue that either.
Wood creaks below the combined weight of two men traversing through the living room. Footfalls in front of him are uneven, heavier every other step; Daniel has limped since the broken ankle in 1969, so subtle now that no one could notice but him.
Tile below. Bathroom, the one with the shower/tub combination and useless guest towels that no one has touched since Daniel put them there himself. Guestless towels.
Three squeaks before water pressure responds and the shower snaps to life. Has always been a clean bathroom. Not the one at home he has to share with drug pushers and harlots and undesirables, grime corroding every formerly white surface, grey.
"Probably gonna be easier this way. If you could just, uh. Kneel down."
(It makes the skin burn hot on the back of his neck somehow, sound of water roaring in his ears.)
He kneels.
True face is still twisted between his hands, smooth as the porcelain that must be just below him. Comforting. Won't lose this one. Can't lose his face.
Daniel corrects his position, brings him forward until his head is directed into the stream, hot, stinging, burning, and tilts his head when he splutters, tilts his head so he doesn't drown.
"It's okay. You're not gonna drown." How does he know?
His chest comes to rest against the bathtub's thick edge. Solid. The floor bites into his knees and his ribs groan in protest but there is one hand on his shoulder and a cloth pulling away at caked blood. He remembers now. He remembers wondering that night why it was raining on his neck but it must have been blood coursing down from his scalp.
The touch on his head is delicate, unhurried, teasing away clots in his hair, tender on the swelling he can now feel and careful of the ragged edges where his skin must have split. Rubs against his scalp, brings cupped handfuls of water to pour down in small cascades that he feels all over his head, rocks his body by fractions back and forth when he scrubs his neck, Daniel won't let him drown.
Blood must be streaming down with the water, old and new. He imagines it blossoming out in clouds on the bottom of the tub beneath him; he puts down one hand so it has to rill on both sides, symmetrical.
Red on white
Daniel won't
Next
Fandom: Watchmen
Pairing: Eventual Dan/Rorschach
Rating/Warnings: R, no warnings
Summary: Post-Keene, Pre-GN. A patrol gone wrong leaves Rorschach blinded and badly injured; he seeks out his old partner and lives through the consequences. Complete, ~22000 words. (With art by radishface and now jackiemei ! Thank youuu)
Originally written on the kinkmeme from 8/2/09 to 11/17/09.
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
MOONLESS NIGHT
Chapter 1
Cello music winds up from downstairs, dark and slow. It echoes through the flimsy floorboards, resonating in wood and tugging at his heart like something out of a dark dream. Seductive.
Downstairs neighbor should be more considerate.
Whether it is a record or whether it is the real thing didn't matter. Judging by the black against the insides of his eyelids, it is still well before sunrise. The few people left in the building who manage to pull themselves away from self-indulgent lifestyles and put in a good day's work would be inconvenienced by these early morning musical preferences. No matter how beautiful.
Maybe he will speak with the man later: mid-thirties, glasses. Perpetually bemused expression.
Doesn't particularly remind him of anyone.
As for himself, he'd put in a good night's work, working for the city. He deserves his rest.
There were knot-tops; he doesn't like them. Too fluid, too young, too fast. Care little about their city, their society, or their country: only aim is to gratify their very basest human desires. Run in packs, like dogs. Have nothing but seething violence at the core, and must be tamed with fists. It had been a hard night, as it usually was now that he was on his own. Not impossible. He still has his wits, his training. He still has the experience of walking these same filthy streets for years. He still has the relentless drive in his gut that never, ever lets him rest.
There is no use in wishing for sleep which won't come. Many things need to be done today; rent is coming due soon, and by the subtle ache lancing the inside of his skull, he knows he'll need nutrition soon as well. Both require money. Money requires creativity.
He sits up, and the first thing he notices is how dizzy he feels.
The second thing he notices is that everything is completely dark.
The end. Nuclear winter. Heavy clouds coating the sky until plants wither and humans die underneath, choking for food, only cockroaches left to pick over the rubble-
No. No one would play Bach's Cello Suite #1 during the apocalypse. Fiddle, maybe. Cello doesn't fit.
His stomach feels leaden.
Maybe he'd gone to sleep with his face on: reduced visibility reduced even further by low light.
But he already knows his fingers will touch human skin a second before he feels his own protruding cheekbone. His fingers scramble up, tracing the hollows beneath his eyes, skirting lightly around his own eyelids to confirm what his muscles are already telling him but what his brain is struggling to understand.
His eyes are open.
He can't see.
///
Chapter Two
He's pacing across the room, one two three turn. One two three turn. He has to work to quiet his fingers; they keep twitching up to touch his eyes, sweep across the lids, remove by instinct the obstruction that must be there-must-
Isn't.
He has no idea what happened.
A jewelry store, he remembers suddenly. He was at a jewelery store last night. It's easy to picture now, the wide street-facing window with carefully stenciled letters (the owner has a foreign name but is not a tax cheat). He's admired it before, delicate chains and strong matrimonial bands glinting metallic and remote beyond the city's degrading touch, painted over with reflections from the street but safely separate beyond glass.
The clustered gang of knot-tops intended to break it. It made him angry. He underestimated the size of their group. And then-
Nothing. His consciousness skims around the edge of it, a vast emptiness from then to now, as dark as-
Music downstairs stops. His pacing stops.
He's left abruptly without grounding for his senses, only the floor beneath his feet a reassuring presence. Not reassuring enough. His hands twitch, move, slide to press against his own body in superstitious confirmation of his own existence.
It's wrong. What he feels is wrong.
This (70/30 wool-cotton blend, coarse) is the jacket to his day-suit; these (50/50 cotton-silk blend, smooth) are the trousers to his evening suit.
He did not put his clothes in their proper place last night. He is disturbed to realize that he is half-in, half-out of costume. Stupid. Slipping.
No matter.
He walks, careful and slow, until the bed frame bumps his knees-sooner than he expected. His hands skim along the mattress, the bed post, the floor. They're here: both pairs of shoes, his coat, the other halves of both outfits strewn across the floorboards like so much discarded trash, disgorged. That is also disturbing. He folds his clothing carefully beside the bed. Two separate piles. The grappling gun (he is relieved to find it) is placed neatly between them.
When he rises the world lurches around him, he doesn't need to see it he can feel it and the wall collides with his shoulder and his arms stagger out in frightened instinct and this is more than confusion from loss of sight, more than lightheadedness from lack of nutrition, something's been done to him and he can't remember-
First they pump in barbiturates, then they pump in amphetamines, and then you cannot lie-
His legs tremble as he braces against the wall, his fingers scrambling for the buttons to his cuffs, shoving up his sleeves, feeling over and over again the length of his arms for the IV entry points.
The skin is smooth. It's smooth but who knows how long he's been asleep, days, weeks, (months?) it could have healed and he could be under control, a single word bringing him to heel and he cannot look to see if there are scars-
His breath shudders in his throat. No. No. Control yourself. Be reasonable. Only one city has left who still cares to fight, who isn't a government lapdog (yet), who isn't insane (the picture of Mothman being carted away, raving mad, was six columns wide in the Gazette-"What madness took thee? Do there crawl Live Things of Evil from the deep To leap on man?"). No.
Gradually calming, he pulls down his sleeves. Straightens them. Fixes the cuffs closed. He will be calm.
The possibility is remote, yet still a possibility. He will need someone to check his arms.
Only problem: there is no one trustworthy left in the city.
Except one.
The concept of visiting him again, standing in his kitchen again, makes his stomach perform a queasy turn, makes him clench his teeth down onto his tongue, unforgiving. Betrayed and unforgiving.
Nonetheless: he will go.
Chapter Three
It would be better to wear his disguise, better in case he loses consciousness (he won't) or becomes lost (he won't) or needs help (he won't); but he's already shucking off his day-jacket, folding it carefully before bending to find the rest of his Rorschach clothes. He rolls his shoulders under the familiar cut of fabric, comforted by the unchanging dignity of a men's business suit.
His face is not in his coat pocket.
It's not in this pocket, or that pocket, it's not underneath his remaining clothing, it's not anywhere on the bed, or beneath it (his head hits the bed frame when he kneels), or on the floor, or anywhere within reach of his sweeping hands. Gone.
Who took it-
He remembers blood in his mouth, heavy and cuprous; he remembers his stomach heaving, and having to wrench up the skin of his face so urgently the seams ripped. He remembers vomiting in the thick black shadows beside a dumpster.
It is not a good thought, the possibility that his face is somewhere out there, lost in the city where any katiehead can touch it with filthy, disgusting fingers-but if the seams ripped, the fluid must have bled out in a pool of ink and liquid pearl, leaving his face as translucent and anonymous as a cast-off reptile's skin. That's a better thought.
There is a spare face. He hasn't seen it in many years. It lies in its shallow grave: an empty compartment beneath his loose floorboard, secret and safe. That compartment is easy enough to find again by the dull and hollow thud it makes compared to the rest of the floor (he hears it every time he goes to the window: a dark reminder). When he pulls up the board, there is a smell of must and old blood. His face is buried deep beneath his old outfit.
He wore this the last night he was Walter Kovacs. Wore this the night he cauterized pustulent rot with fire and released a little girl from the bellies of dogs, ashes streaming up into the night, black on black forever. After, he had made a new face and new clothes. Clothes make the man.
Running his fingers along the inside of it gives him an unearthly chill, like touching a funeral shroud.
No choice.
It slides down against his skin, seams aligned over his ears and pulling at the discomfort in his scalp. Slick texture familiar, but something is unsettlingly off, so tight across his mouth and nose he has to pinch the latex forward for breathing room-
Backward. He's got it backward.
He clamps down on a strange laugh bubbling up sickly in his chest. Can picture himself: a pathetic figure hunched on the edge of his mattress with eyes in the back of his head. (Used to happen as a child. Getting dressed in the dark, it was easy to get shirts inside out or buttons mismatched and the other children would screech and point golly golly, lookit Wally like jackals and his stomach would grow hot and tight and terrible.)
No. No memories. No regrets. Walter is gone.
He holds his head between his hands until serene blankness fills his (remaining) senses. It will be easy. He will go to Dreiberg's. From there, he will plan what to do next. Simple.
Face straight. Hat pulled down. Shoes, ascot, coat. Grappling gun, map, pen, flashlight, matches: everything he will need is here.
(He does not think of his neat stacks of the New Frontiersman, carefully annotated in spidery red; the single framed photograph beside his bed; the doomsday fliers he only finished last week; his good scissors; his old article clippings of more triumphant times. He does not consider the fact that once he leaves he may never find his way back.)
As soon as his hands meet the cracked window, muscle memory carries him through the window frame, up, twisting, balancing on the ledge and hauling himself up to the roof as the window closes beneath with a snap. Easy.
There is residual heat under his fingers. Is it mid-morning? Is it evening now, the roof releasing warmth at end of day like a weary sigh?
Doesn't matter.
The trip across the roof to his fire escape should take seconds.
Raw instinct is halting him, forcing him to spread his arms, splay his fingers, walk with the hobbled half-steps of an old man. He's walked this roof a thousand times, but now his mind is balking at the possibility of obstacles which don't exist. Disorienting. Stupid.
He'll move slowly.
The roof's edge looms up in his mind's eye, bringing his footsteps slower and slower until he crouches where he knows it should be, feeling for it. (There is a whole city beneath, waiting for him to fall.)
The fire escape ladder finally presents itself to his hands, and then he's descending into New York's chaotic belly. He ignores the way his bones rattle and head aches when he jumps the last distance.
He will take his Tuesday patrol route, the one which winds through aboveground alleyways and back streets, the one which reaches its apex at the Owl's Nest, the one he never saw fit to discard.
So many times he's walked it. It leads him onward.
It should be no different than any other night, any night without a moon and any night with black sliding symmetrically over his eyes, but it is. (The black is still sliding over his eyes, but now it is invisible to him.) The distances seem wrong, his judgment off. His sense of smell, hearing, touch are muted by his choice of costume, and the very strongest sensations to him are now the workings of his own body: inescapable. An ache in his hip, sore places he will ignore, needle-sharp throbbing in his head, his own circulatory and muscular and digestive systems. It is unpleasant.
When he hits a wall at full force, he is forced to conclude two things: that he cannot walk anymore with hands in pockets, and that he veers inexplicably to the right when deprived of any visual guideposts. Disturbing.
The city is a riot of sound.
It has never been quiet, never will be, but he has never been forced to listen as closely as this.
A soft scurrying whisper is a rat clambering over disused refuse in the gutter. Surreal beats pounding through a wall are work of the latest Vietnamese pop star. Laughter brays from the mouth of a young man, embarrassingly loud. A homeless man mumbles an insane screed, an abandoned newspaper scrapes along concrete, a spark hydrant hums in satisfaction with its stored power.
Someone-a woman, slurring and loose-limbed and warm from whatever indecent acts bring her to this section of town-collides with him and accuses him of being a stumbling drunkard. Hypocrisy, it seems, never goes out of style.
Horns blare at him when he crosses streets, electric cars deceptively silent until the last moment. He is screamed at, cursed at, but he has long since become accustomed to ingratitude. They all manage to avoid hitting him; couldn't have been too much trouble.
There is a point where he has to roll up his face to use his sense of smell and regain bearings. It smells of lamb and ginger. It is the alley behind Gunga Diner. (This is just a few blocks from his apartment-he has not come as far as he thought.) His stomach turns hopefully, recognizing his last-ditch meal place. The smell is strong. Must be just past midnight, when the restaurant's excess food is thrown out carelessly like so many things in this city, waste tossed away as the byproducts of an engorged society. The overspiced meat will already be going rancid, but noodles and rice will still be good for many hours and the dumpsters are easy to access for a man who is in shape.
He fixes his face and ignores the hunger: now is not the time. And he does not scavenge without his disguise.
He's beginning to recognize his path in this strange new world, but the poisons which undoubtedly run through his bloodstream are beginning to take their effects. The sidewalks tilt and sway like wooden bridges over chasms. Awareness of his surroundings beginning to extend too far, a distant shout making him flinch as if it were in front of him. The saliva in his mouth is viscous and acrid. The pain in his head feels as though it will pierce his skull from the inside. His own heartbeat pulses in his ears. ("And the city breathes Heavy with incense, heavy with dim prayer And shrieks to affright the Slayer.")
No fear.
When he next regains consciousness, he's face-down on the ground. There's grit beneath his hands and the stench of garbage. Another alley. One of thousands. His head feels stuffed with cotton batting, but the pain is only a ghost of itself now.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Just above him. Something's watching, he can feel it, what-
Tap-tap-tap-tap. Rrl?
A cat. A stray cat turning around and around on the metal lid of a garbage can, looking down at him. He can picture it: ragged and orange. Clawing its survival out on the streets. Fearless.
He rises again, this time drawn by a steel thread of determination. He will not stop again. Rorschach does not know weakness.
When sound begins to recede, he knows he's approaching the correct neighborhood. Police respond to noise complaints when the one complaining is one of the moneyed elite. There is a particular neon sign advertising alcoholic substances he passes every time, the last one before the tide of advertisements must give way to respectable homes. This electric hum beside him, on then off then on again, must be it.
Even so, it feels like a small miracle when the wall he thinks must be the right one has a drainpipe with a sunken dent (Daniel had slammed his fist into it the night they lost control of a sex trafficking case). He runs his hand along it for a single moment of relief. On top of this warehouse is the maintenance hatch which will deposit him in the owlship's tunnel.
The tunnel's complete darkness sometimes disturbs him. It does not tonight.
Any moment he expects to run into the owlship-any moment-
He cannot find it. He cannot find the stairs to the door. He cannot find anything he recognizes. This table, was it against the East wall or West wall? Where is the trophy case and the work desk? Owl's Nest has always been a disgraceful mess, undoubtedly more so now that it's been left to rot away in disrepair. Half-finished projects litter every surface, including the floor. Something finally catches him in the shin and sends him tumbling with a resounding metal crash.
It does not escape him that he's successfully navigated the city's hellish maw only to become lost in a basement.
He kicks whatever lies beside him and is partially satisfied to hear an injured-sounding clang.
The soft click of a lock being undone echoes throughout the abandoned basement and he freezes, considers for one absurd second whether he should leave this place before Daniel can see him.
"Hello?"
Daniel sounds worried, nervous, afraid. Like a regular person. Something about that makes him feel even sicker then before. Fluorescent bulbs buzz to life above him.
"Rorschach?"
Chapter Four
Any second there should be the clatter of an improvised weapon hitting the floor: a baseball bat, a curtain rod. There isn't. Trust Daniel to believe he can still take on a potential home invader with his bare fists. Someone should disabuse him of that notion before he gets hurt.
(Nite Owl used to cut through the scum of the streets, movements sharp and clean, a blade of justice. Nite Owl is gone.)
"Hello, Daniel." The conversational tone would have been an intentional and darkly humorous counterpoint to the way he's currently sprawled across the floor and the years of silence which have spread between them. Would have been if it hadn't come out even rustier than his usual Rorschach voice, unintentional. His throat is dry and sticks to itself.
No one will stop him if he decides to leave once more. Turn around and return home.
He finds his hat with only a minimum of searching and restores it to his head, rising to his feet. Dignified. Daniel's voice has helped him locate the basement door by sound-must have been searching the South wall this whole time by mistake-and makes his way by memory toward it. Owlcar should be just to his right as he turns (the windshield was a smooth, curved glass and he had felt both exhilarated and uncomfortable at riding in something so expensive).
If he moves a little more slowly than usual, no one will notice. Especially not Daniel.
"Uh, Rorschach." Clearly Daniel wants to ask what are you doing here, but has always been too polite for that. Always avoids what he wants to say unless given the correct provocation. "What's, uh, what's going on?"
"Paying a social visit."
Daniel says nothing, waiting for him to get to the real root of things. Most likely has that mistrustful, analyzing look he started developing years ago. Before quitting.
He's glad for once he can't see that look.
The stairs seem unsteady despite the fact that he's got a harder grip on the railing than he should need. When they begin to tilt and sway like the sidewalk did outside, he focuses all of his determination, leaning forward and seeking out he next step each time with the ball of his foot. He feels like a scarecrow, head too light and legs as uncooperative as stiff pegs.
"Rorschach?" The suspicion is tinged with worry now. The worry has always been worse than the suspicion-there has been no reason to worry about him since he became Rorschach. "You're acting..." drunk, he's going to say, going to accuse him of disgusting intemperance, but apparently thinks better of it: "punch-drunk."
Of course. Of course, he's boxed, has followed the careers of Sugar Ray Robinson and Floyd Patterson, has fought nightly, knows the effects of head blows by heart. Should have thought of that first. Has not been hit enough to be true boxer's dementia-always protects his head, they're always reaching for his face-but the descriptor is close enough. Must have happened during the fight last night (or is it days ago by now?). Effects will wear off, like everything else.
"Don't drink punch, Daniel." Ha.
They must be standing face-to-face now. Daniel hasn't moved, is standing in the doorway of his home like a protective guardian. Walling off his civilian life with his broad shoulders. Not welcome inside anymore.
Doesn't matter.
Only hit in the head. Has been hit in the head before. Slept it off. No need to worry.
But what if-
The insides of his arms itch and he can't tell the difference between real sensation or whether his brain is creating this. Like a child whose skin crawls after he sees a spider. His tongue slides around the inside of his mouth in nervous habit, skimming over the gap of his missing tooth, flickering out to the dry and cracking corner of his mouth.
What if.
He's stripping off his good gloves and transferring them to his pocket. He's pushing up his sleeves now, slowly, not bothering to explain anything until the supple fabric bunches at his elbow.
"Do you see anything..." Daniel is too closed-minded to accept his suspicions at face value, he's certain. Would not even be asking if it wasn't important. "...unusual."
"Uh-hold on, let me put on my glasses here. You know I'm blind as hell without them."
Funny.
He tries not to flinch when he feels hands enclosing around his wrists without warning. The pressure is light, but Daniel's hands are dry and hot. No one has touched him outside of combat for years. No one has touched his bare skin for longer. He has forgotten what it feels like, how much it makes his nerves flare and jump, feels both repulsive and vital. There is an old scar in the hollow of Daniel's palm. The sensation momentarily paralyzes him while his arms are carefully stretched out for a better look.
"Jesus," Daniel breathes, and he feels a chill pricking his skin all the way up to his scalp, it must be there, he was right, there are IV scars and he doesn't know who did it, "these bruises. All this blood... what the hell happened to you?"
Just bruises. Only bruises. Daniel is overreacting: typical. Daniel does not remember how violent the world can be. Does not remember that bruises are not unusual for either of them. Or at least shouldn't be.
"Doing my job." He bites off the word bitterly, on purpose, and lets the silent accusation hang as long as Daniel lets it. All he can hear is a soft huff of breath. What does his face look like? Angry? Hurt?
No one says anything for a long time. He feels somehow both triumphant and sickened and does not withdraw his arms. (Nite Owl used to fight back.)
"Certain you don't see anything else?"
His wrists are released, again without warning. "There's nothing. What exactly am I supposed to be looking for?" That suspicious look is bleeding into Daniel's tone now and it makes him press his hands into his pockets and lower his head. He will leave. No point in staying. (There is an entire city in between and he aches.)
He's on the fifth step before Daniel sighs again and shifts position, speaks reluctantly. "How long's it been since you ate?"
The offer is implicit. Pure reflex makes him turn his head even though it's pointless without being able to see. The tendon and muscle have been standing out more prominently in his limbs lately, and now he can imagine that Daniel looked all the way down the length of his arms when he held them, probing without touching. Analyzing. He has unintentionally exposed something about himself and it is not comfortable knowledge. He wants to eye Daniel's body language. Is this grudging pity?
Daniel never used to pity him.
Nonetheless. Even the hunger pangs have ceased gnawing at his insides, and this means he has not eaten in a very long time. His silence confirms that by default.
"Come on. I was just about to warm up some leftovers." A blatant lie.
He can eat, just a little. He can eat and then he will throw himself back into the gaping jaws of the city.
Through the unguarded doorway now, and the kitchen air feels warm on the backs of his hands.
Fumbling for the kitchen chair is beneath him; he will simply stand and wait until Daniel sits down, so he can locate the table by sound. His memory of this room is disturbingly faded for all the times he's been here. Kitchen table used to be the only space left after his morass of notes and strategies filled his own apartment table, then the work table in the Owl's Nest, and finally here.
"Protein, protein," Daniel's muttering, the refrigerator's soft yawning hum muffling his words as he rummages. The urge to tell him to shut the door-wasting energy-rises and passes. "Egg drop soup. That's good for a start. Add some rice..."
It occurs to him suddenly that Daniel's behaving somewhat like an eager host who hasn't had a guest for a very long time. Forgetting not to talk to himself. Scrambling to serve even the least welcome guest. It is embarrassing and pitiable. His fingers clench and unclench inside his pockets.
"...I apologize for waking you." Isn't sure why he says it.
The lower-voiced whine of a microwave oven. When did he purchase a microwave oven? What other tools of safe convenience with flashy marketing has he fallen prey to? It takes great effort to keep himself from telling Daniel he does not like his food irradiated.
"Oh." Daniel pauses, as if he isn't sure how to respond, and eventually settles on coolly distant and self-deprecating. The former is not familiar, but the latter is. "Well. It's two o'clock in the afternoon, I really should be awake anyway."
No. It was evening when he left, he's sure of it. Should only be just past midnight.
He spends so long thinking about it that the tinny ding! partially startles him.
"Okay. I just kinda threw some stuff together. Didn't think you'd mind." Two containers hit the table. Two pieces of silverware. From the sound of it, the table is still where it should be, very close to his right. (They'll be sharing the same meal.)
The chair's back comes beneath his hand with only two subtle sweeps of his arm. Same with spoon and cup. Isn't difficult at all.
Irritating when he has to find them again after rolling up the skin of his face. But not difficult. Bending his head makes his jaw and neck ache, but this is easily ignored. A wave of warmth greets the exposed bottom half of his face, steam bringing with it the oversalted flavor of chicken stock. (He is very, very hungry.)
More irritating when his first attempt at spoon-to-mouth is imperfectly done. Not that table manners will ever hold importance to him. They are for people who believe themselves civilized in a world where there is no civilization left.
Rice and chicken and slippery egg white slide over his tongue, nearly scalding. Warm. Warm food. The only warm item he allows himself is coffee, and that is justified by the new sharpness it lends to his senses. Rare reward for good work done. Anything else is a dangerous luxury leading down the path to sybaritic wallowing and self-indulgence. (He had to pawn the single-burner three years ago.)
There is the feeling of someone watching him. Most likely culprit is sitting across the table. He grunts with spoon in mouth.
No response. This time he swallows the spoonful and tilts his head as if looking up.
"How many fingers am I holding up." It's hardly even spoken as a question, as if vision damage is already the foregone conclusion and Daniel simply wants to inform him that he knows. There's something disappointed in the softness of his voice, but he cannot figure out what Daniel has to be disappointed about.
He won't answer until he's certain there's no more soup to be dredged from the bottom of the cup, even though his stomach hurts a little from being full. "None. Trying to be clever. Aren't holding up hand."
"Should have known you could guess that," Daniel mutters. (Doesn't remember that they've pulled that routine on each other a few times before, as a joke.)
For a moment it seems as if the matter will be dropped. A spoon scrapes against styrofoam.
"What I am wearing?" This time it's purposefully inescapable.
His fingernails scrape against the table where he puts down his spoon, drawing crescents while he tries to remember what Daniel was wearing last he saw. Somewhere around sixtieth and... and where?
"Argyle." Safe guess. "Black slacks." No, that's not right, Daniel doesn't sleep in his clothes-
"Not even close." The disappointment is stronger now, heavier.
It's time to return home.
"Rorschach?" The voice follows him as he turns and hits his knee on the table leg, as he stands with an abrupt scuff of his chair. "How little can you see?"
Once again, his silence answers the question for him. Past time to go home how.
"Look," now Daniel sounds somehow desperate, somehow unhappy, "you'd let me examine your arms but not your eyes? Come on."
It is a good point, no matter how little he likes it. Eyes should be examined. Could be a sign of what happened. Effects from chemical or acid attack could be reversed if caught soon enough.
Has never removed his face with Daniel, even when it was still only a mask worn by the foolish man beneath. Never needed to. (It isn't about trust. Nite Owl once held the entirety of his trust, earned night after thunderous night of combat. If he would have asked to see his face, he would have allowed it. Never did.)
Even then, he knew Rorschach was better. Wanted to be him even when he wasn't. Couldn't stand to see his own face, why would anyone-
(Rorschach cannot live without eyes.)
It wasn't that he ever made a promise not to remove it. Just never had the opportunity.
No. This was Daniel who had looked at him with blood spattered across his cheek, staring across the dim distance at him like he was a monster, like they weren't cut from the same cloth. "Christ, Rorschach, what's happening to us all?"
(Daniel who let him watch the '68 Olympics on his color television-good year, USA beat the Soviet medal count by 16. "Anything in the kitchen's yours, buddy.")
He pulls it up and off like a shed insect husk, clenching it in his fists to keep from losing it.
At least he doesn't have to know Daniel's expression, though he has always been curious what it would be. Most likely mixed equally between pity and disgust. Neither matters to him anymore.
Daniel is moving toward him, slowly. "Okay." There's a rush of breath, as if he'd been holding it. "Okay. Um. Let me see." Draws near and makes a faint ulf he doesn't understand.
The touch lands on his hair this time. Being surprised is unpleasant and he recoils, but it's not enough to dislodge Daniel's hand. "Rorschach, this wound is serious. You were hit in the head?"
He will not confirm yes or no, because he doesn't remember. "Eyes, Daniel."
"Uh, right." Fingers under his chin, tilting his head up. Heat resonates against his face, puffs of air against his nose, smelling of chicken. Their faces must be very close now.
Art by radishface
"Oh. Oh goddamnit, your pupils are blown." A thumb lands against his cheek, pulls the lower lid down. There is no more disappointment. He thinks he would rather have that back than this half-disguised panic. His stomach twists around his meal like a woken snake.
"You need to go to a hospital."
"No."
"Rorschach. Don't be-"
"No. Bureaucracy. Records. Not weak. Can take care of self."
Daniel is thinking 'obviously not' so hard he might as well say it.
He's never been to a hospital, not before Charlton and Charlton had a nurse even though he avoided her too and after Charlton couldn't afford and didn't want to, nurses piercing trapped patients with needles, medications, who knows what's in-
"Look. Look, just-let me clean out the wound. Okay?"
Doesn't believe for a second that Daniel has given up, but it is a retreat.
"Can do myself."
"I've seen you stitch up a lot of things, but not the top of your own head." A compliment is buried in there, a reminder of his capabilities, and it is disgusting how he is nearly taken in by the obvious ploy to make him more compliant.
But once again, he cannot argue. Wound needs cleaned and closed. Infection could render him incapable of doing his work. He nods, though it sends a stinging pang down his neck and a sloshing sensation to his head.
After an indecisive pause and half-swallowed question, Daniel is leading him away by the arm, and he cannot argue that either.
Wood creaks below the combined weight of two men traversing through the living room. Footfalls in front of him are uneven, heavier every other step; Daniel has limped since the broken ankle in 1969, so subtle now that no one could notice but him.
Tile below. Bathroom, the one with the shower/tub combination and useless guest towels that no one has touched since Daniel put them there himself. Guestless towels.
Three squeaks before water pressure responds and the shower snaps to life. Has always been a clean bathroom. Not the one at home he has to share with drug pushers and harlots and undesirables, grime corroding every formerly white surface, grey.
"Probably gonna be easier this way. If you could just, uh. Kneel down."
(It makes the skin burn hot on the back of his neck somehow, sound of water roaring in his ears.)
He kneels.
True face is still twisted between his hands, smooth as the porcelain that must be just below him. Comforting. Won't lose this one. Can't lose his face.
Daniel corrects his position, brings him forward until his head is directed into the stream, hot, stinging, burning, and tilts his head when he splutters, tilts his head so he doesn't drown.
"It's okay. You're not gonna drown." How does he know?
His chest comes to rest against the bathtub's thick edge. Solid. The floor bites into his knees and his ribs groan in protest but there is one hand on his shoulder and a cloth pulling away at caked blood. He remembers now. He remembers wondering that night why it was raining on his neck but it must have been blood coursing down from his scalp.
The touch on his head is delicate, unhurried, teasing away clots in his hair, tender on the swelling he can now feel and careful of the ragged edges where his skin must have split. Rubs against his scalp, brings cupped handfuls of water to pour down in small cascades that he feels all over his head, rocks his body by fractions back and forth when he scrubs his neck, Daniel won't let him drown.
Blood must be streaming down with the water, old and new. He imagines it blossoming out in clouds on the bottom of the tub beneath him; he puts down one hand so it has to rill on both sides, symmetrical.
Red on white
Daniel won't
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