FIC: Mirrors to Windows
Sep. 11th, 2009 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
etheratiTitle: Mirrors to Windows
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairings: Rorschach, Dan(kind of?)
Date Written: 2009
Summary: Turning mirrors to windows, we stop seeing ourselves and see other people instead. What if there's nothing there?
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Notes: For the kinkmeme, prompt was that Dan was a figment of someone's imagination. AU. Edited slightly. Thought I was all out of sad, but I guess not.
*
They meet in 1965. He is lying spread-eagle across a fire escape’s wire mesh grating, arm broken in two places and bleeding, badly. He may be delusional in that moment, pain clouding his vision and the fever of quickly-settling shock distorting his perception and swinging the world out around him in a wide, dizzying arc, but one thought is clear: this is a two-man job, this deep into the thick of things, this far into the blood and filth. He needs someone at his back.
Blood drips to patter onto the pavement below, abnormally loud and distinct against the backdrop of city noise. He really should get up, move. The ability is there but the will is not; if he can just rest for a moment –
Then there is a face hanging in his field of vision, mouth turned down in worry even though he has never seen its owner before, given him any particular cause to be concerned. It doesn’t matter; he’s part of the brotherhood and that invokes its own loyalties. More than that, really, he’s an injured man down and that’s enough, enough for a good man who is in this for the right reasons, who is here to help.
Rorschach doesn’t quite remember the man in the owl suit helping him to his feet and guiding him to the street, but he must have; there’s no way he could have managed it alone.
*
Their patrols coincide and cross paths more and more as the months go on, to the point that it seems beyond the possibility of coincidence. It’s possible their territories just overlap but the timing is just too good, too perfect. They take it as a sign and start arranging the meetings ahead of time, sweep out the city’s darkest places, together, with a ferocity that blisters like the sun.
‘Nite Owl’, the man calls himself, and it’s not very original, but it’s exactly what Rorschach had thought he would be called, remembering the way the streetlights had glowed around the black silhouette of his face that first night, casting him as a thing that belonged in the shadows, belonged to the night. Just like him.
They are an untouchable whirlwind of justice, dancing in the space between the blows in a way that he never managed to alone. It is as if having an ally in these things, someone who fights the same fights and spurns the same wicked, weak excuses for humanity and the city to be the way it is, has freed him to become himself.
They fight and they win and he only ever feels the bruises later, curled into his bed, black and blue and sore in more places than he remembers being struck.
*
The other crimefighters in the city look at him oddly, at that first failed meeting and later, whenever he and Nite Owl cross their path on patrol. He is sure it is because of his mask; it’s terrifying to criminals but still unnerving even to good, civil men. It’s meant to be. He takes their awkward, sideways glances in stride, and lets Nite Owl do most of the talking.
One morning, an achey miserable bruised pastiche of sunrise and pain and gratification, Nite Owl takes off his goggles and his cowl, calls himself Daniel. For a moment, Rorschach is too busy remembering another Daniel he’d known – a shy, quiet boy at the home who’d always seemed more in need of a friend than even Walter himself – to realize that Daniel is waiting expectantly, hand out, hoping for a return gesture of trust.
And he almost does it – because he does trust Nite Owl, trusts him with his life, so it follows that he trusts Daniel as well, but when his fingers catch the edge of the mask he panics; gets the jumbled and nonsensical impression of an endless corridor of mirrors reflecting in mirrors reflecting in mirrors reflecting in mirrors, back and back and back, and the sudden upswell of terror is enough to choke him.
So he lifts it above his nose instead, coughing; accepts the hand on his back, bracing him against the fit until it’s worked itself free. That is as high as the mask will ever go, because he cannot bear the thought of revealing his eyes to the eyes across from him, and he doesn’t know why. But the fear feels like falling, like tumbling into himself, like going deeper and deeper and finding out there’s nothing there.
*
When he is tired or injured Daniel tells him to stay in his basement, on a cot he has set up; the cot is uncomfortable, lumpy, like it’s stuffed with newspapers and wood chips, but he doesn’t complain. It’s warm and dry and safe and when Daniel disappears into what must be the upper stories of the house, he doesn’t wonder where he’s gone or have any inclination to follow. It’s irrelevant; out of his mind almost as soon as Daniel’s out of his sight.
Sometimes he wakes in the middle of the night and he cannot remember where he is; the shadows lurch and leer as cars go by outside and the surroundings keep trying to become warehouses, tenement basements, flophouses – the places he used to stay, hurt and cold and miserable, before Daniel. Before Daniel.
Then it all comes back and the shadows rearrange themselves until the friendly shape of Archie’s windows sit glinting nearby, and the slow arch of the basement stairs, and the hollow blackness of the tunnel, leading off into the dark, unwelcoming city.
And if he wakes up damp and shivering like he’s spent the night under a cold leaking roof, he has no explanation, but it’s not important.
*
They hover over the city, whipping through its airways and down over boulevards, skimming traffic, and Daniel laughs. The view through these curved windows is more than he’s ever seen, more than he ever hoped he would see, the city spinning out under them for miles like a field of incandescent poppies. And the ship makes patrol much simpler; they fly in low and easy, drop from its belly, take care of the disturbance – giftwrap the offenders for the police and get back on their way.
His feet are still inexplicably sore in the light of every morning, as if he’s walked miles and miles, as he perches on the edge of his bed and works the blisters and calluses and deep bruises under his fingers. The wallpaper curls and the ceiling is cracked and the smell of ripe filth is thick in his nostrils. He is back in the dirt where he should be, and that clean and sharp and brilliant spangled nightscape is someone else’s rightful domain, belongs to someone who deserves it.
Somewhere else in the complex, a child is shrieking, and a mother is screaming, and it feels familiar. He should do something about it.
But he’s tired.
*
His coat bleeds, and the fire climbs into the sky, and he will never be tired again. He will never be hungry again. He will never need anything again.
The city howls. He understands its language, now.
Daniel doesn't, and stops meeting him for patrols, and he knows that it is because the other man has grown squeamish, has grown afraid of what they have bec– of what Rorschach has become. Justice falters in the face of compromise. No staying power. No dedication. Nothing.
Worthless.
Watching through a maze of glass, Nite Owl begins to fade.
*
Some nights, he feels like he should be remembering something, something important, as if his attention is required to keep whatever it is whole and real. He catches a glimpse of a crescent moon low over a line of buildings, reflecting in cracked and broken windows, and it almost connects.
*
When the Keene Act is announced, Rorschach finds him on a rooftop – the roof of the building where they had first met, and he hadn’t had to search. He’d known.
Nite Owl – Daniel – says exactly what Rorschach knows he will say, always knew he would eventually say. It feels like betrayal but it also feels like they’re acting out a play, running from a script somewhere up in his head; he hears the lines almost before they hit the air. Legality. Consequences. A normal life, and something in the phrase stings, cuts him somewhere familiar and resonating. The words sound like they are trying to convince themselves. Rorschach has no time for them.
*
Daniel disappears, evaporates like fog through graven glass, and Rorschach continues on alone – and somehow, it does not feel as though anything has changed.
*
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairings: Rorschach, Dan(kind of?)
Date Written: 2009
Summary: Turning mirrors to windows, we stop seeing ourselves and see other people instead. What if there's nothing there?
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Notes: For the kinkmeme, prompt was that Dan was a figment of someone's imagination. AU. Edited slightly. Thought I was all out of sad, but I guess not.
*
They meet in 1965. He is lying spread-eagle across a fire escape’s wire mesh grating, arm broken in two places and bleeding, badly. He may be delusional in that moment, pain clouding his vision and the fever of quickly-settling shock distorting his perception and swinging the world out around him in a wide, dizzying arc, but one thought is clear: this is a two-man job, this deep into the thick of things, this far into the blood and filth. He needs someone at his back.
Blood drips to patter onto the pavement below, abnormally loud and distinct against the backdrop of city noise. He really should get up, move. The ability is there but the will is not; if he can just rest for a moment –
Then there is a face hanging in his field of vision, mouth turned down in worry even though he has never seen its owner before, given him any particular cause to be concerned. It doesn’t matter; he’s part of the brotherhood and that invokes its own loyalties. More than that, really, he’s an injured man down and that’s enough, enough for a good man who is in this for the right reasons, who is here to help.
Rorschach doesn’t quite remember the man in the owl suit helping him to his feet and guiding him to the street, but he must have; there’s no way he could have managed it alone.
*
Their patrols coincide and cross paths more and more as the months go on, to the point that it seems beyond the possibility of coincidence. It’s possible their territories just overlap but the timing is just too good, too perfect. They take it as a sign and start arranging the meetings ahead of time, sweep out the city’s darkest places, together, with a ferocity that blisters like the sun.
‘Nite Owl’, the man calls himself, and it’s not very original, but it’s exactly what Rorschach had thought he would be called, remembering the way the streetlights had glowed around the black silhouette of his face that first night, casting him as a thing that belonged in the shadows, belonged to the night. Just like him.
They are an untouchable whirlwind of justice, dancing in the space between the blows in a way that he never managed to alone. It is as if having an ally in these things, someone who fights the same fights and spurns the same wicked, weak excuses for humanity and the city to be the way it is, has freed him to become himself.
They fight and they win and he only ever feels the bruises later, curled into his bed, black and blue and sore in more places than he remembers being struck.
*
The other crimefighters in the city look at him oddly, at that first failed meeting and later, whenever he and Nite Owl cross their path on patrol. He is sure it is because of his mask; it’s terrifying to criminals but still unnerving even to good, civil men. It’s meant to be. He takes their awkward, sideways glances in stride, and lets Nite Owl do most of the talking.
One morning, an achey miserable bruised pastiche of sunrise and pain and gratification, Nite Owl takes off his goggles and his cowl, calls himself Daniel. For a moment, Rorschach is too busy remembering another Daniel he’d known – a shy, quiet boy at the home who’d always seemed more in need of a friend than even Walter himself – to realize that Daniel is waiting expectantly, hand out, hoping for a return gesture of trust.
And he almost does it – because he does trust Nite Owl, trusts him with his life, so it follows that he trusts Daniel as well, but when his fingers catch the edge of the mask he panics; gets the jumbled and nonsensical impression of an endless corridor of mirrors reflecting in mirrors reflecting in mirrors reflecting in mirrors, back and back and back, and the sudden upswell of terror is enough to choke him.
So he lifts it above his nose instead, coughing; accepts the hand on his back, bracing him against the fit until it’s worked itself free. That is as high as the mask will ever go, because he cannot bear the thought of revealing his eyes to the eyes across from him, and he doesn’t know why. But the fear feels like falling, like tumbling into himself, like going deeper and deeper and finding out there’s nothing there.
*
When he is tired or injured Daniel tells him to stay in his basement, on a cot he has set up; the cot is uncomfortable, lumpy, like it’s stuffed with newspapers and wood chips, but he doesn’t complain. It’s warm and dry and safe and when Daniel disappears into what must be the upper stories of the house, he doesn’t wonder where he’s gone or have any inclination to follow. It’s irrelevant; out of his mind almost as soon as Daniel’s out of his sight.
Sometimes he wakes in the middle of the night and he cannot remember where he is; the shadows lurch and leer as cars go by outside and the surroundings keep trying to become warehouses, tenement basements, flophouses – the places he used to stay, hurt and cold and miserable, before Daniel. Before Daniel.
Then it all comes back and the shadows rearrange themselves until the friendly shape of Archie’s windows sit glinting nearby, and the slow arch of the basement stairs, and the hollow blackness of the tunnel, leading off into the dark, unwelcoming city.
And if he wakes up damp and shivering like he’s spent the night under a cold leaking roof, he has no explanation, but it’s not important.
*
They hover over the city, whipping through its airways and down over boulevards, skimming traffic, and Daniel laughs. The view through these curved windows is more than he’s ever seen, more than he ever hoped he would see, the city spinning out under them for miles like a field of incandescent poppies. And the ship makes patrol much simpler; they fly in low and easy, drop from its belly, take care of the disturbance – giftwrap the offenders for the police and get back on their way.
His feet are still inexplicably sore in the light of every morning, as if he’s walked miles and miles, as he perches on the edge of his bed and works the blisters and calluses and deep bruises under his fingers. The wallpaper curls and the ceiling is cracked and the smell of ripe filth is thick in his nostrils. He is back in the dirt where he should be, and that clean and sharp and brilliant spangled nightscape is someone else’s rightful domain, belongs to someone who deserves it.
Somewhere else in the complex, a child is shrieking, and a mother is screaming, and it feels familiar. He should do something about it.
But he’s tired.
*
His coat bleeds, and the fire climbs into the sky, and he will never be tired again. He will never be hungry again. He will never need anything again.
The city howls. He understands its language, now.
Daniel doesn't, and stops meeting him for patrols, and he knows that it is because the other man has grown squeamish, has grown afraid of what they have bec– of what Rorschach has become. Justice falters in the face of compromise. No staying power. No dedication. Nothing.
Worthless.
Watching through a maze of glass, Nite Owl begins to fade.
*
Some nights, he feels like he should be remembering something, something important, as if his attention is required to keep whatever it is whole and real. He catches a glimpse of a crescent moon low over a line of buildings, reflecting in cracked and broken windows, and it almost connects.
*
When the Keene Act is announced, Rorschach finds him on a rooftop – the roof of the building where they had first met, and he hadn’t had to search. He’d known.
Nite Owl – Daniel – says exactly what Rorschach knows he will say, always knew he would eventually say. It feels like betrayal but it also feels like they’re acting out a play, running from a script somewhere up in his head; he hears the lines almost before they hit the air. Legality. Consequences. A normal life, and something in the phrase stings, cuts him somewhere familiar and resonating. The words sound like they are trying to convince themselves. Rorschach has no time for them.
*
Daniel disappears, evaporates like fog through graven glass, and Rorschach continues on alone – and somehow, it does not feel as though anything has changed.
*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 06:27 pm (UTC)And, I dono, I didn't want to go over-the-top angst with it, which I think discovering your bestest friend of the last ten years is not real, has never been real, would probably result in; and Ror's so broken that I could see him just honestly never QUITE figuring it out.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 06:40 pm (UTC)But seriously great. Whenever you post something my world lights up. Now I'm going to leave before I use more love note-style sentences. xD
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 07:00 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 07:01 pm (UTC)The real answer is: Roche changed him so much that he basically 'outgrew' Dan, or his need for him, in much the same way kids outgrow their imaginary friends. And in much the same way Ror actually did in canon. :(
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 07:23 pm (UTC)*icon*
D:
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 07:33 pm (UTC)(;D)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 08:24 pm (UTC)D:
D:
*sad*
What makes this the most depressing is the fact that it has more than a grain of truth in it.
And argh, the last line. Are you trying to kill me with all this angst recently?
(but srsly, I love it)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 08:30 pm (UTC)But yeah. Could have been true; so much could be explained away. Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 08:42 pm (UTC)The words sound like they are trying to convince themselves.
Why do I feel like some part of Rorschach is trying to convince himself that he doesn't really want to let go of Dan, despite everything? Or am I being sentimental and that line only applies to Dan's halfhearted excuses? Or am I overanalyzing and should go sit in a corner now?
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 09:03 pm (UTC)So no, you're not overanalyzing; I was trying to explore all the sort of conventional sentiments in regards to Ror and Dan(the 'you quit' bitterness in this case), with this surreal spin on them. Mirrors reflecting in mirrors reflecting in mirrors. The words convince themselves. ;)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-12 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-12 03:40 am (UTC)Still a brutal concept though, I totally agree. And thank you. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-12 04:27 am (UTC)In that sense, the ending is probably the happiest part of the story :(
no subject
Date: 2009-09-12 04:53 am (UTC):'( Ror, you just keep getting sadder and sadder.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-12 05:08 am (UTC)This anon is slowly coming to the rather logical realization that I will never be as good at writing as you. Really, I should set my sights on a more achievable goal because you and your themes are just like - shwoo! - right over my head with their awesome. All I manage to do is outfit plot events with fluffy filler and keep the characters consistent. Oh, and grammar. I'm pretty good at that.
I think I need to go write fanfiction of your fanfiction where a man Rorschach has never seen before, in a lumpy suit betraying a wealthy sedentary lifestyle, meets him pounding the pavement and refuses to let Rorschach go on this way. And takes him to a brownstone he has never before seen the *outside* of and lets him eat up all his sugar cubes. Y'know, post-comedian's death and mask-killer investigations wearing him down to the bone.
But without Archie, how does he get to Antarctica to die in the snow? Perhaps, he doesn't? But, hell, it's almost unkinder to this manifestation of Rorschach to let him live. Maybe he imagines the whole Antarctica thing and he just... dies... alone in the snow? It's November, it'd be snowy. And he would be imagining Daniel watch him die (Does Jon even exist?), so that he could prove to him that he is doing the right thing, dying for some abstract concept of justice... And hell, I can totally see him doing that, and I'm almost sobbing again and now I have to go to sleep and I'm gonna have really sad dreams and I really should stop reading things that make me b'awww, but it's like a fucking drug and I just should absolutely stay away from hallucinogens because obviously, I wouldn't be able to control myself.
And this is why unknown-author-anons should not be allowed access to the Interwebs at 1am on Fridays. This public service announcement brought to you by Captcha, who says, sourly David. Dunno what that means, but hey. It's all meaningless anyway, isn't it? Worse than Daniel being dead, he was never there. D': (And he was my favorite character, too.)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-12 11:38 pm (UTC)Thank you so much and, please, do keep writing; I have no idea if I've ever read any of your stuff but, really, I get discouraged by people's skills constantly and it's really a useless thing. Just keep writing. :D
no subject
Date: 2009-09-13 01:52 am (UTC)All right then, I shall.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-12 06:10 pm (UTC)You've done buildup just right again. The denial is handled so well, with the truth always being at the edge of his consciousness but he always veers away at the last second, right up until the part where he lifts up his mask and almost falls over that edge.
I like the very small mention of the boy at Charlton--that he spun all of this out of that possibly missed chance.
Sad of course, but--would it have been sadder for him to really know all along that he was completely alone? The illusion seems like a small mercy here.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-12 11:35 pm (UTC)Yeah, the building and the subtlety were the most important things I thought. And I agree that the illusion was definitely better than nothing, even if it was violently unhealthy.
I hadn't thought of that, with the boy at Charlton - I was mostly just coming up with an excuse for why his brain came up with that name specifically when Dan introduced himself - but you're right, yeah, that mighta been something significant. As usual, your commentary makes me think deeper than I otherwise might have! :3
Thank you so much. <3
no subject
Date: 2009-09-13 08:00 pm (UTC)Yay for thinking! ♥
no subject
Date: 2009-09-13 08:04 pm (UTC)I am completely talking out my ass at this point, but whatever heh. XD
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Date: 2009-09-15 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-13 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-13 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-16 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-16 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-24 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-19 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-19 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-19 03:57 pm (UTC)