i hope alan moore's smiting power stops at the border
Written ages ago and posted rather belatedly, in part because I forgot it existed.
For vinylroad! Curse you and your insidious hints, etc.
juliet
the comedian/laurie jupiter (movie-verse), r, 3,269 words.
She's known superheroes her whole life. On the playground in elementary school, she'd catch glimpses of the other kids' comic books, colorful worlds and stupid dialogue and stories that always had neat endings, at least until the bad guy came back in the next issue, or until the good guy, Superman or Spiderman or whoever, got too close to the kryptonite. Even then, it was only for a little while, because they always had to recover before it was time to introduce the newest villain, the newest threat to the world as she knew it.
When she was ten, she got suspended for stealing a comic book from some kid (Brian? Brandon? Something like that). Or maybe for breaking his nose after she refused to give it back, after he called her a sympathizer, said she'd probably get down on all fours and give it up for one of those masks, and that was when she realized that when he read the comics, he wasn't cheering for Superman, he was cheering for the villain. That he wanted to see Superman knocked down, destroyed.
Back then, she didn't know why.
When her mom came to pick her up from the principal's office, Laurie didn't tell her what he'd said. Even then, she figured that her mom had heard a lot worse, but that didn't mean she needed to hear this, too.
Lee and Kirby were fucking hacks, the way they mythologized everything. Her mom never told her which one of the originals sold out, sat down with Stan and Jack and told them his whole life story, let them pull it apart and sell it on the corner, all cheap and shiny-bright and useless.
She hates them for it, not because whoever it was sold out (because that's the American dream, after all, make enough money so you can forget how you got it), but because the stories are lies and now everybody believes them, believes that was how good the heroes had it, like life was all epic battles and sidekicks and not anything about trying to scrape together enough money to pay the rent or whether her parents were going to stop screaming at each other before dawn, because she had a test first period and needed to study and she was sure the neighbors could hear and Mrs. Kusnick was going to give her that sick sympathetic look the next time she passed by in the hall.
The costumes, though. She has to admit, they got that part right. The way she can become someone else, like just by wearing it, it makes being herself okay. All of the things, the dangerous things she's meant to keep hidden, suddenly it’s okay to let them show.
She's sixteen the first time she tries on her mother's costume, eighteen by the time she convinces her mom to let her go to the meetings. Her mom says she can wear the old costume, take on the Silk Spectre ID, all that history, but in the end it's easier to have a new one made, latex fitting smooth and tight in all the right places. Silk Spectre II, first child of the next generation.
First, and only. She's never asked why there were no others. It's obvious with some of them - even if it's physically possible, Doctor Manhattan seems much more likely to go off and create a new species of space-time entities - and for the others, she just figured they'd never met the right person.
That was, of course, back when she believed in things like true love and soulmates. That was when, even after all of her parents' arguments, all of the fights and the references to things before her time, things she didn't understand, she still believed that, deep down, they loved each other.
Her mother never comes to the meetings. She says they're cliche, jokes, that it's a part of her life that she's long since left behind, but Laurie knows that's a lie. After all, Sally still has the shrine, doesn't she? Right over the television set. And she still drinks herself to sleep some nights, looking through the photo albums and telling Laurie half-remembered stories about the things she's done, the things she used to do, the people who've loved her, men throwing themselves at her feet, how many marriage proposals she used to get.
Even the Silhouette, Sally said once. Though that one wasn't marriage, of course. Can you imagine the scandal that would have caused? She laughed. We were both very young then.
Her mother's stories always end the same way, always end with growing old and losing everything that made her special, that made her a hero. The other people in her stories always die, sometimes tragically (the Silhouette and her lover and her mother always cries at that time of year) and sometimes in stupid, ridiculous ways (Dollar Bill and his cape and her mother always cries at that time of year, too), and Laurie wonders if that's why she gave it up, if the Silk Spectre finally decided that all of the attention wasn't worth watching her comrades get shot down, year after bloody year.
Laurie, her mother says on the bad nights, you're my reason for living, you make it all worthwhile.
I love you too, Mom, Laurie says, and sometimes it's enough.
Her mother never talks about the Comedian much. Less than the others, anyway. Laurie knows that his name is Edward Blake and that he's been there since the beginning, that he was in Vietnam. She thinks that he's one of the good ones, that there's something special about him, because her mother speaks about him with something like reverence.
When she sees him for the first time, she's too shy to say anything. Instead, after Dan introduces her to the others, after everyone smiles and welcomes her (except for Rorschach, but Dan says that's just a thing he has and really she shouldn't take it personally), she spends the rest of the meeting matching them to the stories her mother's told.
Most of them fit. Some of them don't. Some of them are missing, long since dead, or institutionalized, and she still has nightmares about that, about Moth Man, about what could happen to any of them. Sometimes she thinks maybe she should visit him, tell him somebody still cares, somebody still thinks about him, but he never knew her, so maybe there's no point. Her mom says he's under heavy sedation, anyway, is barely able to get out of bed most days.
It takes her two weeks to work up the nerve to speak to the Comedian. A week later and her mom catches her talking to him, drags her home and grounds her, like she's a kid, like any of those rules still apply.
She thinks about him, after that. She steals one of her mother's photographs, figures her mother will just assume it got lost. She stares at in the quiet of her bedroom, traces the lines of his face.
The Comedian. He doesn't seem that funny, but maybe he used to be, the same way that, at least as her mother tells it, the Silk Spectre was such a femme fatale. Of all the heroes Laurie knows, the Comedian's the most like the ones in the comic books. Tragic and broken, sure, but with all of his flaws on the inside, rather than bleeding out across his face like Rorschach or coloring his every action, every breath, like Ozymandias. Veidt. Whoever he is these days.
If she were gonna get down on all fours and beg, she thinks it'd be for a mask like him.
She follows him, once, after a meeting. Not all the way home, because he's too good. Because he turns, unexpectedly left instead of right and she has to scramble to catch up, not to lose him. By the time she does, turns into the alley she swears he just went down, he's gone.
She's wondering how she missed him when he steps out from behind her, looks her up and down. She feels herself start to blush, small secret burn of satisfaction, and he says, "Your mom know you're following me?"
"Should she?"
He grins, dangerous and wide. "You planning on telling her?"
She lifts her chin, braces her hands on her hips. It's a ridiculously adolescent gesture, a stupid teenage pose, and she regrets it immediately. She holds it, though, feeling his eyes sweep up and down her body again, the curves and angles, and she doesn't flinch. "Why? Do you want me to?" she asks.
Two costumed heroes standing like this in an alley. A good thing it's night or there'd be a crowd, watching. Waiting. It's funny, nobody even stops if it's one of their own bleeding, some kid, an old man, a mother on welfare stabbed to death in the rain, her blood pooling in the water, swirling into gutter muck (and Laurie took care of that one herself, found the cocksucker who'd done it, and she didn't know what to do with him after, which is when Rorschach showed up and said she should probably leave. She didn't ask why.).
If it's one of their own, a civilian, they don't stop, but if there's a chance a mask might die, they'll stand there all goddamn day.
The Comedian laughs, once, sharp and gruff and maybe, somehow, approving. Which she didn't expect. He turns away, after that, heads down the alley. He leaves her there, like she's a kid, like she's not a threat, like she's nothing.
The second time she follows him, they don't get that far. Veidt mentions the original Silk Spectre, says something about repeating mistakes, echoing the past, and the Comedian slams his chair back against the wall and shoves open the door, his heavy boots thudding down the hallway like he's trying to jar the foundations, bring the whole place down. Laurie goes after him.
She's the only one, but none of the others move to stop her.
"Stop following me," the Comedian says when she catches up. He turns on his heel, faster than she can react, shoves her back against the wall. She flushes, wondering if the others can hear them, can hear him. He's so loud, thoroughbred anger of his breath, his heartbeat, but maybe it's just because he's so close, his mouth next to her ear, his breath hot on her skin. He smells like smoke, like tobacco.
"You care about my mother that much, shouldn't you stay to defend her?" she asks.
He tightens his grip on her shoulder. "You don't know half as much as you think."
"So tell me," she says. She looks up at him, swallows, and leans in. Brush of her mouth against his and he lets her go, takes a step back. His eyes are feverbright, surrounded by the mask, and he wipes the back of his hand across his mouth.
"You got a thing for costumed heroes, kid?"
She licks her lips. "Maybe I do," she says.
He looks her over again. "Maybe you should be careful who you set your sights on next time."
There's not gonna be a next time, she thinks.
He doesn't go back to the meeting, and neither does she. She doesn't follow him, though. She doesn't need to.
He's in the phone book. Edward Blake. His address printed in fading ink just below.
When she shows up at his door, he almost looks surprised. Almost, but he's still wearing his costume, like he knew. Like he knows what she wants, why she's here.
"What do you want?" he asks.
"You," she says. He makes a noise like a laugh and kisses her, sudden and hard and sloppy. He smells like whiskey and sweat, like the press of skin, and the stubble lining his jaw scratches her cheek when he turns away.
"No, you don't," he says. He's drunk, his eyes focusing too slowly, his hands curled into unsteady fists. Now or never, she thinks, and she will get what she wants, because in some ways, she is entirely her mother's daughter.
The Silk Spectre's daughter. She wonders if there's a difference right now. If it matters.
She swallows. "Yes," she says. "I do." She reaches for him and he doesn't pull away.
He's not her first. He's not her first but he might as well be, the way she breaks under him, unsure. The way it's strange and new and not like it should be. He's surprisingly gentle, kinder than she expected, like he's holding something back, like he's afraid of hurting her. Like he thinks she could be so easily broken.
"Come on," she says, and she wants to cry. "We're superheroes, goddamn it."
"We wear masks," he says. "Big fucking difference," and then he bends his neck, mouths at her nipple. He's a little rougher after that, muscle and friction, a little more like she expected, but it's still not right. They're off balance, colliding and crashing in all the wrong places, all the wrong ways.
"Baby," he says when he comes, burying his face in the curve of her shoulder, and she keens, cresting on the edge of some apocalypse curve.
He watches her get dressed, after, zip up the latex like she's erasing her skin, erasing the vulnerable human parts of her body. Her hand's on the doorknob when he looks away and says, "Don't come here again."
She doesn't say anything. She doesn't tell him she wasn't planning to.
She doesn't talk to him again at the meetings, and then one day he just stops coming. She talks to Dan, after that, and he's sweet and kind and gentlemanly. Eventually she works up the nerve to talk to Doctor Manhattan, crackling terrifying omniscience, and ends up falling in love with Jon.
If her mother ever notices the missing photograph, she doesn't say anything.
Laurie doesn't burn it, though. She tucks it in her costume, presses it against the skin over her heart. Like a reminder of all the people she used to be, of everyone who's made her who she is.
She doesn't believe in superheroes anymore.
She thinks she might thank him for that, someday.
As it turns out, that's not the last time. It's after Jon, after the first dizzying rush of Jon kissing her on the roof, after Janie's moved out and Laurie's moved in. It's after Congress passes the Keene Act, makes them all the same. Reckless vigilante urges sparking at the back of her brain, but now acting on them will mean life in prison. If she makes it that far. Her mother's name in the papers, too.
Her mother, living on the opposite side of the country. Sunshine and orange juice and vodka-flavored nostalgia. It's never night, when Laurie goes to see her. When Jon teleports her. Always day, an endless drift of days, flawless and perfect, beautiful blue span of the ocean.
There are things Laurie does now, proper grown-up things. She's not married to Jon, but she might as well be. He doesn't need her to take care of him, but she tries. Little things, like asking about what the government has him doing now, because even though she doesn't understand on the quantum level, the ideas, she gets those. The way he explains them to her, careful and deliberate as though she's a child.
Jon's the only hero left, really the only one that ever existed, and he's helping the government, working with Veidt. She thinks about asking him why, sometimes, what stake he has, but she's not sure what would happen if she did. If he would say he's only doing it for her, or if he would say he's doing it for the bettering of the human race, for the good of the planet, and she is nothing compared to that.
The way he looks at her sometimes. Like he's tearing her apart, reducing her to atoms, like he's trying to figure out how she works. How he could make her better.
So she goes for walks. Late at night, when the city's still screaming. It's not advisable (not in the current political climate, says the woman on the television. Things are tense all over. The Reds have the bomb and Jon might be the only thing that stops them from using it), but she does it anyway.
It's about as dangerous as her life gets, these days. And it's not even dangerous, because she still trains. Because she's still strong.
She's waiting for the chance to prove it.
If Jon knows that's why she goes out (and of course he does, because Jon knows everything), he never says anything, never asks or comments. He just . . . looks at her. Indecipherable blue stare, wise and cold as the universe.
There's not much traffic in this part of the city. Too much gang activity for most people to want to spend more time than they have to outside.
Someone's following her, heavy boots down the sidewalk. Not even trying to be quiet. She smiles. She turns.
It's the Comedian. Edward Blake, these days, but he's wearing his costume. And that shouldn't set her off, the illicitness, the familiarity, but. She remembers peeling it back. Flat cold metal of the button against her palm.
Her own ridiculous adult shoes, all heel and curve, put them at the same height. Eye to eye as she says, "You could get in a lot of trouble for wearing that."
He grins. "Heard as much from the cop down the street." He curls his hands into fists. Flash of his teeth. She can't tell if his knuckles are bloody, bruised, or if it's just the way the shadows fall.
"So you're following me, now."
"Coincidence, kid." There's a burst of gunfire in the distance. Neither of them flinch.
"I can take care of myself."
"I know."
She licks her lips. "So you can fuck off now."
He laughs. She remembers that sound. Surprised and approving and satisfied. "Don't need your permission."
"I could make you."
"You don't wanna try," he says, and something about it sounds like a dare. Schoolyard taunt, but she's not a kid anymore and the bully's all grown up.
"Don't I?" she asks.
She raises a hand and he catches her wrist, twists it towards his chest, pulling her close. She could break his grip, easy. She doesn't. He looks older than she remembers. Of course. It's been years. She's sure she does, too.
"Watch out for yourself," he says, low, like it's a secret, like he's afraid to speak any louder. Afraid of who will hear or of what it might mean, which is ridiculous because the Comedian isn't afraid of anything.
She lifts her chin. Instant of deja vu, startling recognition. "Isn't that why you're here?"
Breathless moment when she thinks he's going to kiss her, his mouth centimeters from hers. Remembering. She thinks he wouldn't be so nice anymore, that something's changed. That she has. Grown up, maybe, and how similar they are now. This need, cresting impossible cliff-edge sensation that none of the others talk about. Like falling, like the potential of the city, potential in her, in him. How much they could do. Like it's in her blood, like it's who she is.
She wonders if her mother ever felt it. Somehow, she doesn't think so. She wonders if this is what Jon sees when he looks at her. Subatomic possibilities, infinite futures.
The Comedian drops her hand, lets her go. Turns away into the night, bleeding into the black, and the city's still screaming, and she'll have bruises around her wrist in the morning.
She walks for hours after that. Almost until dawn, her feet blistering and her eyes burning. She doesn't find him again.
-
end
For vinylroad! Curse you and your insidious hints, etc.
juliet
the comedian/laurie jupiter (movie-verse), r, 3,269 words.
She's known superheroes her whole life. On the playground in elementary school, she'd catch glimpses of the other kids' comic books, colorful worlds and stupid dialogue and stories that always had neat endings, at least until the bad guy came back in the next issue, or until the good guy, Superman or Spiderman or whoever, got too close to the kryptonite. Even then, it was only for a little while, because they always had to recover before it was time to introduce the newest villain, the newest threat to the world as she knew it.
When she was ten, she got suspended for stealing a comic book from some kid (Brian? Brandon? Something like that). Or maybe for breaking his nose after she refused to give it back, after he called her a sympathizer, said she'd probably get down on all fours and give it up for one of those masks, and that was when she realized that when he read the comics, he wasn't cheering for Superman, he was cheering for the villain. That he wanted to see Superman knocked down, destroyed.
Back then, she didn't know why.
When her mom came to pick her up from the principal's office, Laurie didn't tell her what he'd said. Even then, she figured that her mom had heard a lot worse, but that didn't mean she needed to hear this, too.
Lee and Kirby were fucking hacks, the way they mythologized everything. Her mom never told her which one of the originals sold out, sat down with Stan and Jack and told them his whole life story, let them pull it apart and sell it on the corner, all cheap and shiny-bright and useless.
She hates them for it, not because whoever it was sold out (because that's the American dream, after all, make enough money so you can forget how you got it), but because the stories are lies and now everybody believes them, believes that was how good the heroes had it, like life was all epic battles and sidekicks and not anything about trying to scrape together enough money to pay the rent or whether her parents were going to stop screaming at each other before dawn, because she had a test first period and needed to study and she was sure the neighbors could hear and Mrs. Kusnick was going to give her that sick sympathetic look the next time she passed by in the hall.
The costumes, though. She has to admit, they got that part right. The way she can become someone else, like just by wearing it, it makes being herself okay. All of the things, the dangerous things she's meant to keep hidden, suddenly it’s okay to let them show.
She's sixteen the first time she tries on her mother's costume, eighteen by the time she convinces her mom to let her go to the meetings. Her mom says she can wear the old costume, take on the Silk Spectre ID, all that history, but in the end it's easier to have a new one made, latex fitting smooth and tight in all the right places. Silk Spectre II, first child of the next generation.
First, and only. She's never asked why there were no others. It's obvious with some of them - even if it's physically possible, Doctor Manhattan seems much more likely to go off and create a new species of space-time entities - and for the others, she just figured they'd never met the right person.
That was, of course, back when she believed in things like true love and soulmates. That was when, even after all of her parents' arguments, all of the fights and the references to things before her time, things she didn't understand, she still believed that, deep down, they loved each other.
Her mother never comes to the meetings. She says they're cliche, jokes, that it's a part of her life that she's long since left behind, but Laurie knows that's a lie. After all, Sally still has the shrine, doesn't she? Right over the television set. And she still drinks herself to sleep some nights, looking through the photo albums and telling Laurie half-remembered stories about the things she's done, the things she used to do, the people who've loved her, men throwing themselves at her feet, how many marriage proposals she used to get.
Even the Silhouette, Sally said once. Though that one wasn't marriage, of course. Can you imagine the scandal that would have caused? She laughed. We were both very young then.
Her mother's stories always end the same way, always end with growing old and losing everything that made her special, that made her a hero. The other people in her stories always die, sometimes tragically (the Silhouette and her lover and her mother always cries at that time of year) and sometimes in stupid, ridiculous ways (Dollar Bill and his cape and her mother always cries at that time of year, too), and Laurie wonders if that's why she gave it up, if the Silk Spectre finally decided that all of the attention wasn't worth watching her comrades get shot down, year after bloody year.
Laurie, her mother says on the bad nights, you're my reason for living, you make it all worthwhile.
I love you too, Mom, Laurie says, and sometimes it's enough.
Her mother never talks about the Comedian much. Less than the others, anyway. Laurie knows that his name is Edward Blake and that he's been there since the beginning, that he was in Vietnam. She thinks that he's one of the good ones, that there's something special about him, because her mother speaks about him with something like reverence.
When she sees him for the first time, she's too shy to say anything. Instead, after Dan introduces her to the others, after everyone smiles and welcomes her (except for Rorschach, but Dan says that's just a thing he has and really she shouldn't take it personally), she spends the rest of the meeting matching them to the stories her mother's told.
Most of them fit. Some of them don't. Some of them are missing, long since dead, or institutionalized, and she still has nightmares about that, about Moth Man, about what could happen to any of them. Sometimes she thinks maybe she should visit him, tell him somebody still cares, somebody still thinks about him, but he never knew her, so maybe there's no point. Her mom says he's under heavy sedation, anyway, is barely able to get out of bed most days.
It takes her two weeks to work up the nerve to speak to the Comedian. A week later and her mom catches her talking to him, drags her home and grounds her, like she's a kid, like any of those rules still apply.
She thinks about him, after that. She steals one of her mother's photographs, figures her mother will just assume it got lost. She stares at in the quiet of her bedroom, traces the lines of his face.
The Comedian. He doesn't seem that funny, but maybe he used to be, the same way that, at least as her mother tells it, the Silk Spectre was such a femme fatale. Of all the heroes Laurie knows, the Comedian's the most like the ones in the comic books. Tragic and broken, sure, but with all of his flaws on the inside, rather than bleeding out across his face like Rorschach or coloring his every action, every breath, like Ozymandias. Veidt. Whoever he is these days.
If she were gonna get down on all fours and beg, she thinks it'd be for a mask like him.
She follows him, once, after a meeting. Not all the way home, because he's too good. Because he turns, unexpectedly left instead of right and she has to scramble to catch up, not to lose him. By the time she does, turns into the alley she swears he just went down, he's gone.
She's wondering how she missed him when he steps out from behind her, looks her up and down. She feels herself start to blush, small secret burn of satisfaction, and he says, "Your mom know you're following me?"
"Should she?"
He grins, dangerous and wide. "You planning on telling her?"
She lifts her chin, braces her hands on her hips. It's a ridiculously adolescent gesture, a stupid teenage pose, and she regrets it immediately. She holds it, though, feeling his eyes sweep up and down her body again, the curves and angles, and she doesn't flinch. "Why? Do you want me to?" she asks.
Two costumed heroes standing like this in an alley. A good thing it's night or there'd be a crowd, watching. Waiting. It's funny, nobody even stops if it's one of their own bleeding, some kid, an old man, a mother on welfare stabbed to death in the rain, her blood pooling in the water, swirling into gutter muck (and Laurie took care of that one herself, found the cocksucker who'd done it, and she didn't know what to do with him after, which is when Rorschach showed up and said she should probably leave. She didn't ask why.).
If it's one of their own, a civilian, they don't stop, but if there's a chance a mask might die, they'll stand there all goddamn day.
The Comedian laughs, once, sharp and gruff and maybe, somehow, approving. Which she didn't expect. He turns away, after that, heads down the alley. He leaves her there, like she's a kid, like she's not a threat, like she's nothing.
The second time she follows him, they don't get that far. Veidt mentions the original Silk Spectre, says something about repeating mistakes, echoing the past, and the Comedian slams his chair back against the wall and shoves open the door, his heavy boots thudding down the hallway like he's trying to jar the foundations, bring the whole place down. Laurie goes after him.
She's the only one, but none of the others move to stop her.
"Stop following me," the Comedian says when she catches up. He turns on his heel, faster than she can react, shoves her back against the wall. She flushes, wondering if the others can hear them, can hear him. He's so loud, thoroughbred anger of his breath, his heartbeat, but maybe it's just because he's so close, his mouth next to her ear, his breath hot on her skin. He smells like smoke, like tobacco.
"You care about my mother that much, shouldn't you stay to defend her?" she asks.
He tightens his grip on her shoulder. "You don't know half as much as you think."
"So tell me," she says. She looks up at him, swallows, and leans in. Brush of her mouth against his and he lets her go, takes a step back. His eyes are feverbright, surrounded by the mask, and he wipes the back of his hand across his mouth.
"You got a thing for costumed heroes, kid?"
She licks her lips. "Maybe I do," she says.
He looks her over again. "Maybe you should be careful who you set your sights on next time."
There's not gonna be a next time, she thinks.
He doesn't go back to the meeting, and neither does she. She doesn't follow him, though. She doesn't need to.
He's in the phone book. Edward Blake. His address printed in fading ink just below.
When she shows up at his door, he almost looks surprised. Almost, but he's still wearing his costume, like he knew. Like he knows what she wants, why she's here.
"What do you want?" he asks.
"You," she says. He makes a noise like a laugh and kisses her, sudden and hard and sloppy. He smells like whiskey and sweat, like the press of skin, and the stubble lining his jaw scratches her cheek when he turns away.
"No, you don't," he says. He's drunk, his eyes focusing too slowly, his hands curled into unsteady fists. Now or never, she thinks, and she will get what she wants, because in some ways, she is entirely her mother's daughter.
The Silk Spectre's daughter. She wonders if there's a difference right now. If it matters.
She swallows. "Yes," she says. "I do." She reaches for him and he doesn't pull away.
He's not her first. He's not her first but he might as well be, the way she breaks under him, unsure. The way it's strange and new and not like it should be. He's surprisingly gentle, kinder than she expected, like he's holding something back, like he's afraid of hurting her. Like he thinks she could be so easily broken.
"Come on," she says, and she wants to cry. "We're superheroes, goddamn it."
"We wear masks," he says. "Big fucking difference," and then he bends his neck, mouths at her nipple. He's a little rougher after that, muscle and friction, a little more like she expected, but it's still not right. They're off balance, colliding and crashing in all the wrong places, all the wrong ways.
"Baby," he says when he comes, burying his face in the curve of her shoulder, and she keens, cresting on the edge of some apocalypse curve.
He watches her get dressed, after, zip up the latex like she's erasing her skin, erasing the vulnerable human parts of her body. Her hand's on the doorknob when he looks away and says, "Don't come here again."
She doesn't say anything. She doesn't tell him she wasn't planning to.
She doesn't talk to him again at the meetings, and then one day he just stops coming. She talks to Dan, after that, and he's sweet and kind and gentlemanly. Eventually she works up the nerve to talk to Doctor Manhattan, crackling terrifying omniscience, and ends up falling in love with Jon.
If her mother ever notices the missing photograph, she doesn't say anything.
Laurie doesn't burn it, though. She tucks it in her costume, presses it against the skin over her heart. Like a reminder of all the people she used to be, of everyone who's made her who she is.
She doesn't believe in superheroes anymore.
She thinks she might thank him for that, someday.
As it turns out, that's not the last time. It's after Jon, after the first dizzying rush of Jon kissing her on the roof, after Janie's moved out and Laurie's moved in. It's after Congress passes the Keene Act, makes them all the same. Reckless vigilante urges sparking at the back of her brain, but now acting on them will mean life in prison. If she makes it that far. Her mother's name in the papers, too.
Her mother, living on the opposite side of the country. Sunshine and orange juice and vodka-flavored nostalgia. It's never night, when Laurie goes to see her. When Jon teleports her. Always day, an endless drift of days, flawless and perfect, beautiful blue span of the ocean.
There are things Laurie does now, proper grown-up things. She's not married to Jon, but she might as well be. He doesn't need her to take care of him, but she tries. Little things, like asking about what the government has him doing now, because even though she doesn't understand on the quantum level, the ideas, she gets those. The way he explains them to her, careful and deliberate as though she's a child.
Jon's the only hero left, really the only one that ever existed, and he's helping the government, working with Veidt. She thinks about asking him why, sometimes, what stake he has, but she's not sure what would happen if she did. If he would say he's only doing it for her, or if he would say he's doing it for the bettering of the human race, for the good of the planet, and she is nothing compared to that.
The way he looks at her sometimes. Like he's tearing her apart, reducing her to atoms, like he's trying to figure out how she works. How he could make her better.
So she goes for walks. Late at night, when the city's still screaming. It's not advisable (not in the current political climate, says the woman on the television. Things are tense all over. The Reds have the bomb and Jon might be the only thing that stops them from using it), but she does it anyway.
It's about as dangerous as her life gets, these days. And it's not even dangerous, because she still trains. Because she's still strong.
She's waiting for the chance to prove it.
If Jon knows that's why she goes out (and of course he does, because Jon knows everything), he never says anything, never asks or comments. He just . . . looks at her. Indecipherable blue stare, wise and cold as the universe.
There's not much traffic in this part of the city. Too much gang activity for most people to want to spend more time than they have to outside.
Someone's following her, heavy boots down the sidewalk. Not even trying to be quiet. She smiles. She turns.
It's the Comedian. Edward Blake, these days, but he's wearing his costume. And that shouldn't set her off, the illicitness, the familiarity, but. She remembers peeling it back. Flat cold metal of the button against her palm.
Her own ridiculous adult shoes, all heel and curve, put them at the same height. Eye to eye as she says, "You could get in a lot of trouble for wearing that."
He grins. "Heard as much from the cop down the street." He curls his hands into fists. Flash of his teeth. She can't tell if his knuckles are bloody, bruised, or if it's just the way the shadows fall.
"So you're following me, now."
"Coincidence, kid." There's a burst of gunfire in the distance. Neither of them flinch.
"I can take care of myself."
"I know."
She licks her lips. "So you can fuck off now."
He laughs. She remembers that sound. Surprised and approving and satisfied. "Don't need your permission."
"I could make you."
"You don't wanna try," he says, and something about it sounds like a dare. Schoolyard taunt, but she's not a kid anymore and the bully's all grown up.
"Don't I?" she asks.
She raises a hand and he catches her wrist, twists it towards his chest, pulling her close. She could break his grip, easy. She doesn't. He looks older than she remembers. Of course. It's been years. She's sure she does, too.
"Watch out for yourself," he says, low, like it's a secret, like he's afraid to speak any louder. Afraid of who will hear or of what it might mean, which is ridiculous because the Comedian isn't afraid of anything.
She lifts her chin. Instant of deja vu, startling recognition. "Isn't that why you're here?"
Breathless moment when she thinks he's going to kiss her, his mouth centimeters from hers. Remembering. She thinks he wouldn't be so nice anymore, that something's changed. That she has. Grown up, maybe, and how similar they are now. This need, cresting impossible cliff-edge sensation that none of the others talk about. Like falling, like the potential of the city, potential in her, in him. How much they could do. Like it's in her blood, like it's who she is.
She wonders if her mother ever felt it. Somehow, she doesn't think so. She wonders if this is what Jon sees when he looks at her. Subatomic possibilities, infinite futures.
The Comedian drops her hand, lets her go. Turns away into the night, bleeding into the black, and the city's still screaming, and she'll have bruises around her wrist in the morning.
She walks for hours after that. Almost until dawn, her feet blistering and her eyes burning. She doesn't find him again.
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end