Kitubah
Title: Kitubah
Pairing: Rorschach/Nite Owl
Author: Brancher
Summary: The entire saga of Wanda Kovacs' difficult pregnancy and even more difficult motherhood and marriage. Dan is there too. Originally posted to kinkmeme circa 2008-2010; the fic that gave the fandom "Charlie." Of all the crazy shit I wrote in this fandom this was the only one I didn't claim publicly -- until now. Text in grey is by other anons -- my siblings in smut, my aiders and abettors. I love you all.
Warnings: .
ObDisclaim: not mine, theirs.
1967: Prelude
It takes her three months to notice. It's not as if her periods have ever been that regular to begin with. It's actually humiliating that Daniel is the first one to bring up the possibility, but even that is only after the scent of coffee has made her heave all over Archie's wall.
Daniel being Daniel, he just sits her down in the pilot's seat and cleans it up. Then he kneels on the floor in front of her and gently walks her through the possible reasons for such a thing, striking them out one by one until they're left with the knowledge of what they've done.
She isn't really sure how to feel. I one way, it's proof that she's a whore just like her mother, and it sickens her. But as she looks down into Daniel's earnest face, she feels something in her soften. Some of it is his obvious guilt, even though this is something they did together, and it's not as if they weren't careful. Daniel answers her thoughts with a rueful, "Yeah, I guess we won the lottery."
Her mask is as inscrutable as ever, but she can hear the plaint in her voice. "What should I do?"
"That's up to you. I mean, it's my kid too, but it's your body..." He shrugs helplessly. "I'll support it if you want to keep it, and if you want an abortion, I'll find someone who knows what they're doing and pay for that, too."
As soon as he says it, she shakes her head. "I have to keep it." She doesn't even know that her hand has fanned protectively over her abdomen. "No abortion. No orphanages."
Daniel takes her hands and kisses them, and she can tell he's crying. "We don't have to get married if you don't want, but I definitely love you enough."
1967: Kitubah
It's the first time she's worn a dress since she was 16. She sewed it herself, a simple white linen sheath. She means to do this properly, for Dan's sake, even if they're already ruined.
When he sees her in it, his throat closes up. Her arms are bare and pale, freckles standing out like burns, and the dress is beautifully sewn but it doesn't fit her right, boxing up around her thin hips and stretched too taut across her swelling belly. She's the homeliest woman he's ever seen, and he wants her, and he loves her, and makes him want to weep.
It's the first time Dan has seen her in daylight. It's also, he thinks as they ride in the cab towards City Hall, the longest he's ever spent around her without the mask. Awake, anyway. He watches her from the corner of his eye, afraid to look directly. He doesn't want to embarrass her, and yet he can't get enough of her: her short, limp hair, scrubbed with plain soap and ridiculously red in the sunlight; the harsh planes of her pale face, the deep lines around her mouth, the small scar he's never noticed before on her chin. He has always thought her eyes were blue, but in the sunlight he sees they are grey-green.
He can tell from the set of her shoulders how tense she is, knows what an ordeal this is for her, and he wishes he could have spared her from it. But she has insisted on this. The cab lurches and he puts his hand on hers, feels her thin strong fingers curl tight around his thumb.
In the judge's chamber her rough voice rasps the formulaic words; Daniel repeats them after her, and she wants to kiss them from his mouth.
Back home, after she puts the trench back on and leaves through the basement, he touches the fragile piece of paper, running his fingers over the names.
Daniel. Wanda.
1968: Birth
The pain is like nothing she has imagined. It's tearing her apart, turning her inside out.
She has insisted that he not take her to a hospital; she doesn't want doctors injecting their chemicals into her. He knows her well enough not to argue, and so now they are alone: just him, her, and the pain.
After a while he slides into bed behind her and holds her to his chest while she gasp and sweats. He mutters encouragement, but she can see the anxiety in his brown eyes. She has trangressed, she thinks, and now, now she is being punished; it is almost comforting.
Some hours of mindless agony later Daniel is crouched between her legs, and suddenly there is something else in the room with them: a thin, piercing wail. For a moment she thinks it is coming from her own throat.
1968: Post-Partum
Two days later, the female parts of Wanda's body still hurt her. She hides them under Rorschach's skin. Then the city opens around her and takes her under, and she goes to it, gratefully.
Dan lets her go. He knows, in a way he can't give words to, that Rorschach is not his, that she is barely even her own; that without the night and the city and the impact of her fist against some thug's face, he'll lose her altogether. He has to trust she'll come back to them.
He cradles their daughter, still nameless, still whimpering, against his chest.
Then he goes to the phone.
Sally arrives the next evening. "I'm sorry," Dan says as soon as he opens the door. "I didn't know who else to call."
She kisses his cheek. "Sweetheart," she says, "shut up. We knocked-up masks gotta stick together."
He makes coffee in the kitchen as she examines the baby. "Wow," Sally says, raising an eyebrow. "She takes after you. Let's hope she doesn't get your shnoz."
"Thanks," he says mildly. Exhaustion is flickering behind his eyelids. Sally gives him a shrewd glance. "Ok, kid, take five," she tells him. "I can take care of your love child for an hour or two." She puts her hand between his shoulder blades and steers him to the couch, and he drops onto it and into a deep unconsciousness.
Somewhere in the city, Rorschach is disarming a mugger, breathing deeply through her nose, ignoring the pain between her legs and the tenderness in her bound breasts.
***
Sally goes shopping, returning with an ungodly amount of stuff Daniel never knew babies needed. He discovers she's signed him up for a laundry service -- "You never got puked on so much in your life, honey, believe me, you're going to need it" -- and there are frozen dinners in the freezer and what looks like a lifetime supply of diapers in the pantry closet. Also a crib. Also a high chair, a stroller, and a goddamn owl mobile.
"Honestly. You did know you were having a baby?" she asks.
"Sorry, Sally, I missed that. I was too busy reading up on birthing procedures."
She laughs at him. They haven't talked about when -- if -- Rorschach is coming back.
At night he takes the paper out from the drawer in the bedside table and reads it over again. Wanda Kovacs. Does that person exist? he wonders. Who signed that paper?
Sally leaves after the second week, ignoring his faintly desperate invitation to stay longer. "You can handle yourself, doll," she says in the doorway. "You're the goddamn Nite Owl."
"You're a goddess, Miss Jupiter," he tells her, and she pats him on the tush and is gone. The house is horribly empty around him, as he stands in the hallway. The nameless infant buries her small soft head into his armpit.
He's dozing, sliding between sleeping and waking, when some quality of silence jolts him fully awake. For a minute he doesn't know what it is. Then he realizes: silence. The baby's not cradled against his chest. She's not in the crib. Nite Owl sits up, his heart hammering in his ribs.
There's a light on in the kitchen. He tries not to make any noise on the stairs.
***
It doesn't look the way she remembers: it's dryer, less red and raw. It didn't make a sound when she picked it up, in Dan's bedroom, holding it out away from her body in her gloved hands. It's so light.
She's not sure what she can be to this child. She doesn't want to be a mother; that means damage, means contamination. She only knows she feels for it the same deep, wild pull she feels for Daniel, and that it scares her and confuses her even more than he does.
She brings it closer to her face, and it reaches out one tiny hand and bats at the latex. She almost drops it in surprise; then she draws it close, for the first time, nestles it against the trench's folds of bloody leather.
She hears Daniel creep into the room behind her, doubtless believing he's making no noise. She holds still, waiting for him to come up behind her and put his large hands on her shoulders.
She says, "Charlie."
"Hunh?"
"Her name."
"Um. Charlie's a boy's na--"
"CHARLIE."
"...Ok."
1968: Suckle
Every inch of her is taut, almost vibrating with suppressed movement. It's costing her to stay here, costing her to hold still. Dan has seen her like this before; the first time she let him touch her, and so many times thereafter.
"It's ok," he says, trying to pitch his voice low and soothing, the way you'd talk to panicked animal.
"It hurts," she rasps.
"It's ... you know, it's natural. It's ok," he repeats.
In her crib, Charlie is crying, that hiccuping infant squall that's so agonizing to listen to, and in a minute or two Dan's nerve is going to break and he'll go for the bottle of formula, but somehow, he feels like this is important.
Rorschach doesn't move, doesn't say a word, but some quality of her silence softens minutely, and Dan feels bold enough to put his fingertips on her shoulder.
She allows the touch, sits still and silent with her head bowed as he slides the dress shirt off her thin shoulders, unhooks the butterfly clip, slowly unwinds the bandage. She makes one sound, in the back of her throat, as it comes undone completely. The inner layer is dark with moisture.
He pushes on her shoulder to turn her towards him, and she follows, her eyes shut tight against her shame. Her breasts are full, swollen with milk, crisscrossed with red lines where the bandage bit into the flesh.
Dan feels the weight in his throat of all the endearments he does not dare say to her: sweetheart, darling, honey.
"Why does it scare you so much?" he whispers.
"Ehhhnnk. Weak. Liability. Disgusting," she mutters, and she's still muttering as Daniel bends his head to her take her nipple in his mouth, and the words turn into a gasp. Thin hard fingers come up and dig into the back of his head, neither pressing him forward nor tearing him away, and the taste of her milk is the sweetest thing, like the milk left at the bottom of a bowl of sugary cereal, flooding his mouth as he suckles.
She makes a noise like a sob.
Finally he breaks off and moves up to her mouth so she can taste herself; she opens to him, burying her hands in his hair as he kisses her, her sharp knees pressing against his side, a trickle of milk running down her breast.
"It's ok," he breathes into her mouth. "You're her --" He stutters and swallows the forbidden word, mother. "She's your daughter, it's all right. You're not going to hurt her."
Her hands on him tighten and she holds him still against her for a long moment, and then he can feel her nod against his neck.
Dan pulls her to her feet, leads her by the hand to crib where Charlie is thrashing and wailing. The baby quiets a little when he picks her up, and Rorschach takes her from him gingerly, as if either of them could break at any moment.
"What do I --"
"Uh, I think you just -- hold her. Like that. Yeah, just in the crook of your -- like that."
Charlie twists in her arms, blindly searching, and Rorschach looks at him with an almost comical expression of terror. "Daniel, I don't --"
Then Charlie finds her, latches on, and Rorschach's expression doesn't grow any less terrified but it takes on another emotion altogether, shadowing the fear: wonder.
1970: Milestones
Dan is worried for a while that Charlie's not talking soon enough. He's been reading baby books and fretting about milestones. But Rorschach knows not to worry: Charlie is perfect.
When she does start to talk, she calls Dan "Dada," and Rorschach "Rorschach," or something as close to it as she can manage. Dan is relieved; he had never discussed with Rorschach what Charlie would call her, but he was sure it could not be mother or mama or anything close; and now Charlie has solved the problem herself.
She prattles, stringing together nonsense syllables into a complicated narrative Dan can't make out. He likes listening to her while she plays on the concrete floor of the basement and he tunes up Archie.
He hasn't been going out at night, but working on Archie is an end in itself.
Rorschach goes out at night. Some mornings, she shows up at Dan's smelling of blood and wet concrete and sweat, and she staggers upstairs, shedding her layers until she slips into Dan's bedroom to the sound of his soft snores and curls up awkwardly around his bulk in the bed. She never keeps away for more than a few days at a time, but she can't bring herself to stay for too long either. It's not that she doesn't want to; she's afraid to let the dark jagged edge of herself touch them.
Sometimes she spends hours holding Charlie while she naps, running her rough fingertips through Charlie's wispy baby hair. It's coming in reddish, which Rorschach regrets, but it's silky under her hands. She remembers someone touching her this way, when she was a child, but she doesn't remember who it was.
After one of these times, she usually stays gone for a day and a night.
One evening she shows up in the basement, meaning to check on Dan and Charlie before patrol, and Nite Owl is there waiting for her. Her first response is shock, and then, quickly, anger.
"What are you doing?" she rasps. "You can't leave her here alone."
"I'm not," he says mildly. "You're staying with her tonight."
"What? No."
"It'll be fine."
"No." She's never been in the house with the baby without Dan there. She feels panic rising in her chest.
"Rorschach. You'll be fine. You can radio me if anything happens. I'll stay close." He puts his hands on her shoulders. "I trust you."
She's shaking her head numbly, and she feels paralyzed when Nite Owl kisses her on the forehead, through the mask, and he's already hopping up into Archie's hatch before she can think to tell him this is a bad idea, very, very bad idea.
***
When Dan comes back in the morning, sweaty and bruised and half-hard and buzzing with energy, the brownstone is silent.
There's baby food all over the kitchen, including the ceiling. Sugar cube wrappers litter the table and the floor. A stack of unused diapers seems to have exploded in the hallway, and the toilet is clogged where Rorschach has tried to flush a used one. Dan rubs his face and cracks the door to the bedroom.
Rorschach is asleep, curled up across the foot of the bed with Charlie, the trenchcoat wrapped around them both.
Dan smiles and goes in to his wife and child.
He carries Charlie, limp and exhausted, to her crib and lays her down without waking her up. Then he tugs at Rorschach's hand.
"Mm ... Daniel...?"
"Come on," he whispers, and leads her half-asleep down the hall to the guest bedroom. He needs her, would rather have woken her up in their bed with his hand between her legs, but Rorschach won't let him touch her if Charlie's in the room with them.
In the guestroom, he pushes her back onto the bed and goes to work on her trousers and shirt, but stops her when she tries to take off the coat.
"No," he says. "Leave it on."
She makes a rough noise and gets her fist in his hair, and lets him worry her nipples until she's gasping and open; then she rolls him over, straddling him with the trenchcoat draped over them both, smelling like violence, like Rorschach, and takes him in slowly, her hard hands on his hips holding him still.
"You -- you did good tonight," he gasps as she starts to move.
She shakes her head, her eyes squeezed shut.
"You did," he insists, trying and failing to push his hips up into her. "Just don't -- don't ever try to flush -- a diaper again."
"Not stupid Daniel," she grates, and bends to bite his neck as he laughs breathlessly in her ear.
1972: Secrets
When Dan comes to pick her up, Charlie is covered in snot and blood. Again.
She's not crying anymore by now, only glaring, and Dan doesn't know whether to laugh or scream: he knows that expression so well.
"Ok, kiddo," he says, hefting her onto his hip and shooting an apologetic glance at Mrs. Akers. "Let's get you out of here." Charlie's still quivering with anger, but he can feel her small body start to relax as he puts distance between them and Friendly Akers Daycare.
Dan digs into a pocket, finds his handkerchief, and hands it to her. She takes it and starts to clean her face. "What happened, honey?" Dan asks. It's not the first time Charlie's been in a fight. He supposes it's to be expected. She's not your run-of-the-mill kid, and she has a hell of a temper.
She comes by it honestly.
"Omar called me a liar," she growls. It's a very high-pitched growl. "He said Rorschach can't be my mom. He said because everyone knows Rorschach's a man. And Maya said Rorschach doesn't exist. People just made her up, like Mister T. But she said him. And I kicked her."
Dan sighs. "Did you try using your words, like we talked about?"
"...no."
"Charlie, violence is a last resort. You use it when you can't use anything else."
"...are you mad?"
"I'm not mad, Charlie, I'm just very disappointed. You're better than that."
They walk in silence for a block or so.
"Oof, you're getting heavy," Dan says at last. He swings her to the sidewalk, and they walk a little more, hand in hand, before Dan says, "Honey, you know what Rorschach does when she's not around, right?"
"Beats up bad guys."
"Right. And she keeps her mask on when she does that, right? Just like Nite Owl does."
"But Rorschach's mask is better."
"Yes, Rorschach's mask is better." He's not about to argue the point with a 4-year-old. "So no one knows who she really is, because no one knows what she looks like without her mask. No one but us. You and me."
Charlie digests this as they walk the rest of the way home. At the corner, Dan digs out some change and buys her a Good Humor bar, and she eats it silently and methodically, her eyes getting the same concentrated distant look that Rorschach's get when she consumes a certain amount of sugar.
She goes off to draw for a while before dinner, but while he's chopping up vegetables for the stir-fry he feels her small arm wrap around his knee. "What's up, kiddo?"
"Dada, is she sad?"
"Is who sad?"
"Rorschach. If no one knows who she is."
Dan kneels and tussles her frizzy red hair. "She doesn't want people to know, honey. It's a secret."
"What about Nite Owl?"
"Nite Owl has to be scary when he's fighting bad guys. And if people knew Nite Owl was really just me underneath they wouldn't be scared, would they? So that's a secret too."
She considers this, frowning. "Why's Rorschach a secret?"
"Well, Rorschach's different. She only likes to take the mask off when she's with people she really trusts."
"Like us. Because she loves us."
"Right."
"So she's happy."
Dan pulls her into a hug. "Of course she is."
And he thinks: I hope so. I hope.
1975: Saturday
In the end it is Daniel's careful forensics that break the Sawicki murders open, after Rorschach has spent weeks breaking fingers to no avail; so Rorschach knows she owes him. He hasn't said so, but it's there in the tally she keeps in her head.
So she spends the night, and the following morning she puts on her civilian clothes and eats pancakes and drinks orange juice, and when Daniel says "Why don't you come with us?" she only hesitates for a moment before stepping out the front door onto the stoop, in the late-morning sunlight.
The park is two blocks south; Dan carries Charlie on his shoulders, holding securely to her skinny ankles, so Rorschach doesn't have to worry about whether to take his hand. When they reach the playground, Charlie takes off for the pirate ship, her favorite. Her parents stand by one of the benches, in the shade of an oak, and watch her play in companionable silence.
Dan keeps stealing glances at Rorschach. She bathes more often than she used to, and she eats better, but she still dresses like she shops at Goodwill, and it's clear that she's still washing her hair with bar soap. He loves to see it in sunlight; it blazes like copper wire. Seeing Rorschach in sunlight is like sighting a rare bird, miles out of its natural range.
He looks around at the park: the small swarm of kids, the parents kibbitzing on the sidelines. It's a nice neighborhood. Dads in polos and khakis, mothers in summer shifts and sandals. Rorschach is wearing a man's button-down workshirt, and a pair of low-heeled boots.
Dan's aware they are being observed. He knows the mothers are squinting at them from the other side of the playground, trying to guess what the nice Jewish man in the sweater vest is doing with the apparently homeless lesbian. The weary part of him that will never be completely Nite Owl wonders about that, too. Not for the first time, Dan wishes that Rorschach could be someone easier, simpler; someone who could wear sandals and vote Democrat, someone he could take with him to Ornithology Society benefits and family seders.
He steals another glance at her; this time she catches him looking and frowns, and looks away; then she steels herself and looks back at him again, the sun lighting up her remarkably green eyes, and tries a little smile.
Something hot and liquid comes boiling up from his solar plexus, and before he can think about it he's moving, boxing her in against the trunk of the oak tree, his hands on her shoulders, and she has time to rasp "What are you--" before he has his mouth to hers and his fingers in her hair, kissing and kissing her.
Her lips are thin and chapped and familiar, and when he wraps his other hand in the folds of her workshirt the fabric is worn to silky softness. He kisses her until he feels her give, relaxing against him, her hands resting tentatively at his hips, and then he nuzzles at her mouth for a few seconds more, because he wants to and he can.
Rorschach looks at him steadily as he draws back. She wants to tell him never, ever to do that again, not in public, but this day is still her gift to him, so instead she just says, "Why?"
He smiles, the smile that always undid her, and brushes a strand of hair away from her forehead. "I wanted people to know," he says, and he doesn't have to say any more. She studies him for a minute: his warm brown gaze, the first white hairs at his temple, the smile lines at the corners of his eyes and the worry lines around his mouth. Her Nite Owl. Her Daniel. She nods, once, the way she does when they're in battle and his eyes have told her he'll cover her back.
Then Charlie runs up, her hands cupped around a beetle, which she demands they admire before Dan can persuade her to let it go free.
On the way home Rorschach slides her hand into his.
Dan makes tuna fish salad for lunch; Rorschach rebraids Charlie's hair while she glances over Dan's copy of the Times. On page 3 of the metro section a small item catches her eye, and she frowns.
"Will you stay tonight?" he asks.
She shakes her head, slides the paper across the table to him.
"Can't. Will be working a new case. A kidnapping."
1985: Anniversary
When he sees her sitting in his kitchen, he forgets to breathe.
When he saw the broken lock, he had hoped, madly, that it would be her. To find that it is seems too good, too much of a blessing, and for a second it's as if none of it ever happened, as if he's just a man coming home to his --
Then she turns her head, and says his name. Her voice sounds as if she's no longer accustomed to using it.
There's flecks of bean juice on her chin and her collar, and one of the epaulettes on her coat has come loose. That disturbs him more than anything else, to think that she wouldn't have sewn it back down. She used to be so good with needle and thread.
"Rorschach. Are you -- how are you?"
He knows the question is inane. He wants to go to her, badly. He's afraid to touch her. He can smell her, her old smell of sweat and concrete layered over with something fouler.
She pushes the can away and wipes her mouth on the back of her sleeve.
"Still alive. So far. Came to warn you, Daniel."
"What --?"
"The Comedian's dead. Think someone's hunting masks. You and Charlie have to leave city. Not safe here."
For a second he doesn't understand what she's saying, and then anger comes gushing up out of the place where he keeps it safe. "Rorschach, jesus. I haven't seen you in ten months. And today is -- Is that all you came for? To tell me some, some paranoid bullshit about --"
She stands up, and he can see her fists tightening. "Paranoid? That's what you think?"
"I want you to come back," he blurts, and it's the worst thing he could have said. "Daniel," she says, choked, furious, and takes a step toward him. Somehow they end up pressed against each other as tightly as pages in a book.
He can feel her heart pounding against his ribs, can smell the sourness of her. Just to have her in his arms is enough for a minute; then she lets out a broken noise and he's kissing her. There's a memory in his head, fleetingly, of kissing her like this under a tree, somewhere, in the sunshine; but that's impossible, when did Rorschach ever go anywhere with him where there were trees and sunshine?
Her mouth tastes horrible. "Come upstairs," he whispers.
She shakes her head. "Charlie."
"She's a sound sleeper."
"No."
So they end up like teenagers, on the couch. Rorschach is struggling to get through his belt, his pants, and he whispers "no no no" and tries to still her hands, tries to make it slower and gentler even though he knows she cannot stand it.
He unknots the scarf, unbuttons her shirt, unwinds her bindings. She is shaking as he puts his mouth to her flattened nipple, mouthing it like a word he doesn't dare speak.
When he gets his cock inside her, it feels like a relief. She looks up at him, the inkblots high and trembling on the mask. She's always so surprised, he thinks, when this doesn't hurt her. He starts to laugh, just out of joy, and she closes her mouth and grinds into him, hard, to make him moan instead.
He comes with her riding him, fucking him fiercely, her mouth at his, not kissing him, just close: breathing the air from his lungs as he gasps her name.
When he can move again he leans her back against the armrest, holding each of her wrists in the crushing grip he knows she needs for this, and tastes himself in her until she comes. She holds her breath through it, so that she will not scream.
Afterwards, they lie holding each other. He thinks of how she has marked him, the scars she has left on him. He strokes her cheek through the mask, as if none of that matters. As if it all could be undone.
"Just promise me," she says at last. "Keep her safe."
"Of course I will," he says. "I --"
"If anything happens to her," she says, "I will end your life."
"Wanda," he says, gently. "You wouldn't have to."
1985: A Better Son/Daughter
"I know. The Comedian died and you think it's a serial killer. Dad already told me all about it."
So -- that was how it was. He hadn't believed her. If she hadn't been sure in the tunnels, it was abundantly clear now: Nite Owl did think she was paranoid, hadn't taken her warning seriously. Had additionally, and inappropriately, complained about the situation to Charlie, standing at her window with an impatience in her voice that hadn't been there three, two years before.
"Important to stay on guard, to keep yourselves safe. Try." Rorschach swallows. Charlie's gaze is blank, her expressionless hostility both strange and familiar. "Please try to convince your father. Vital to both of you to be wary." Both of you, she thinks again, but doesn't repeat aloud.
Both of them. Daniel has gone soft, and Charlie has -- grown. Her face is painted, her hair straightened somehow and glossier than Rorschach remembers it. Her room is filled with tacky, inconsequential clippings. The sweater she is wearing displays her body to, if not the point of danger, at least indecency. She is turning into a woman.
But the print on Charlie's bedside table is the same. As far as Rorschach knows, it's the only photographic evidence of Wanda Kovacs' existence, unless the Charlton Home's record-keeping was assiduous beyond reason, and it had taken Daniel, years ago, a considerable amount of effort to convince Rorschach not to destroy it. The picture is a surveillance cap of her and Charlie in the Owl's Nest, blown up so that it's only discernible as a woman with a small child in her lap, both sleeping in a shapeless dark place. She is wearing her uniform, but not her mask. Charlie is two, perhaps three, nestled into Rorschach's coat. Her own face is slack, unfamiliar. One hand holds Charlie to her and the other cups the back of Charlie's neck as Charlie buries her face into Rorschach's throat, small fingers twisted in the fabric of Rorschach's shirt even in sleep.
"What are you looking -- oh." If Charlie's voice trembles, Rorschach does her best to pretend she doesn't notice; she remembers that Charlie doesn't like for Rorschach to see her cry.
"Nice, huh?" There's a terseness to the words that makes Rorschach stiffen in anticipation. "Those were some really great times. Wonder what happened to them?" She runs a finger down the frame and suddenly her mouth twists; the ugly look that's been drifting under the girl's face bursts to the surface. "Oh, yeah," Charlie spits, finally turning to look Rorschach in the face, "you quit."
No matter how many times she comes back -- not many, but enough by now that she knows what to expect -- Rorschach has never managed to prepare herself for the rage. Her daughter's or her own. She struggles to remain still as both roar through her, the anguished shock of rejection and the accompanying urge to slap some sense into the girl, to somehow make her understand the enormity of what Rorschach is protecting her from. Her throat is bursting: she is going to scream, she is going to grab the girl's shoulders and shake her until the hate drops off her face and she listens when Rorschach explains to her that she's done what she's done for her, because Charlie is the most important, her most precious thing --
"Here." Charlie has taken something from the nightstand, and is standing with hand outreached, looking straight down at whatever she's holding. She's refusing again to meet Rorschach's eyes, and something about that, about the hopelessness of the girl's posture, diffuses the anger so quickly it leaves Rorschach feeling scooped out. Hollow. She suddenly wants to take the girl's face in her hands, draw her close again like she was five years old.
She gestures it forward. "It's the new key? Dad told me to give you a copy."
More passive aggression. It doesn't suit Daniel; filtered through the child, it's even worse. Rorschach reaches out to take the key anyway, and her fingers brush Charlie's, battered gloves against unmarked skin. Some emotion moves across Charlie's face and for a fragment of a second it seems like the girl is simply going to drop forward into Rorschach's arms. In a flash, Rorschach can feel it. Charlie will let go of her alien, maddening resentment. Rorschach will be able to hold her without feeling the knowledge of bones and all of it, all of it will be washed away.
But as quickly as it came, the moment flickers and is gone. Rorschach draws back and Charlie whirls around, fists clenched, shoulders stiff. She smacks the photograph down onto its face, then draws her hand back as though it's burned her. She reaches for it again as though she's afraid she's hurt it, as if it's a living thing, and strokes the cardboard backing with her fingertips.
When Charlie turns back to the window, her mother is gone.
1985: Not Made of Steel
Charlie's safely in California with Sally -- he doesn't believe Rorschach's little theory, but just in case -- so they're alone in the house, and Laurie is kissing him.
He can't say he hasn't always wanted her. And now she's here; so close, so beautiful, so utterly unlike Rorschach, except for their shared brutality. It's this last thing that attracts him the most. He has always wanted women who can hurt him. Her strong small hands pluck at his shirt; her hair, glossy and liquid, spills over his shoulders.
But she's touching him gently, and something seems wrong. Too gentle. Her hands are too gentle. And she smells too good.
God damn it.
"Laurie -- Laurie. I can't."
"What's wrong?"
"I just can't. I -- I'm a married man, Laurie."
"Dan, jesus. She left you years ago." She bites her lip. "Sorry. I'm sorry. That was --"
"Hey, it's ok, look, I'd think the same thing. She -- it's ok."
They kneel there together in silence, frozen in a tableau, until Laurie laughs and kisses his forehead. "You're a good man, Dan Dreiberg. And she's luckier than she knows."
He shakes his head, capturing her hands and holding them in his own. "I -- Laurie, I know what she is. I know. It's not even -- I can't save her."
And her eyes fill with tears, horribly, and even as he's trying to figure out what he did wrong, she half-smiles and chokes out, "I know the feeling."
And then he has to kiss her, and he means for it to be friendly and tender but she changes it, and it comes out angry and violent and everything he needs. They're wrestling more than touching, Laurie biting and scratching at his skin, at her own, until he pins her to the floor and thrusts in.
She gasps, "yes," and rises to meet him. He comes almost painfully, her teeth marking his shoulder.
"Not such a good man," he whispers afterwards, and she laces her fingers in his and whispers "Maybe I don't need a good man," and they sleep.
When she finds him in the basement, he turns to her and says, "I'm going to break my wife out of jail."
Laurie looks at him a long moment.
"What the hell," she says. "Let me get my costume."
1985: Police are Seeking Information
Omar is fifteen. He's a quiet kid, just started a job as a minimart clerk, reads a lot of pirate comics. He dreams about being a pirate sometimes, swooping down on the ships of the Imperial Navy and boarding with an impressive swing of the rope and brandish of his cutlass. But in real life, he's very law-abiding. He doesn't even jaywalk, not since his kid sister got knocked down by a car and broke her leg. Comes home by eleven, and sits up with his mother to watch the late news, sometimes have a soda. He's the man of the house now, has been three years. He takes his responsibilities seriously. A good citizen. All the more appreciative for his mom's stories about how it was back in Afghanistan. He thinks when he's old enough, he's going to join the police.
The news about Rorschach comes in the middle of a string of days with nothing but news about the Soviet advances. His mother frets and prays a lot. She has relatives in Afghanistan, but none living near the border. Still, in a time like this, no one is safe. The freckles on the unexpected face seem oddly familiar, and Omar stares hard as the newscaster drones on. He's glad Rorschach is off the streets. Vigilantes have no place in a civilized society. Maybe once they did, but not now. Order. Law and order. Police are asking anyone with information to come forward.
He's kept awake by his thoughts half the night. Around three in the morning, he remembers. Akers Daycare was eleven years ago, but Omar has a good memory, and that girl was pretty distinctive. She said her mother was Rorschach and he said Rorschach was a man, and how the hell did she know?
No. She didn't say her mother was Rorschach, she said Rorschach was her mother.
Omar's mother keeps everything. He's often thought it silly. But the next day after breakfast, he takes down the old albums and leafs through them, looking for a certain photo. A group photo, taken for their silly little summer celebration. She's on the far right side, in a t-shirt that's too big for her. Her freckles stand out and her hair is flying everywhere. She's not smiling. She stares right at the camera like she's daring it to make a move. Charlie, that was her name. Charlie Dreiberg.
Omar skips school that day for the first time in three years, and goes straight to the police station. The officer's eyebrows rise a little at the photo, and he takes Omar's information stolidly. Shakes his hand and thanks him for his assistance, for being a good citizen. Omar nods, says it was his duty. Says he wants to join the police someday. The officer nods and says he's got good observational skills, he might make a fine detective. Omar's heart swells with pride.
Two days later, the evening news says that Rorschach's husband - husband! - and child had been identified, but when police went to their house, it was abandoned. They show a school photo of Charlie. She's staring into the camera, her wild red hair more or less tamed, a touch of a defiant grin. She looks nothing like Omar remembers. He shuts off the television over his mother's protest, and goes to bed, and sleeps without dreams.
1985: Underwater
He remembers:
She smells like smoke and moves like a machine. There's blood all over her, but he can tell it's not her own; for some reason that scares him even more. She stops at the bottom of the basement stairs, standing too still, like she was painted on the dark air.
He says her name, but she puts out her hand when he reaches for her, and drops something into his palm.
He looks down. Doesn't understand what he's seeing: a simple object, a little band of plain gold. It takes him a minute to attache a meaning to it.
"Regret to inform you," and he opens his mouth so that even as she says "Your wife died tonight in a fire," he's saying, "No," he's saying "No, no don't you goddamn dare."
"Very sorry," she says, "for your loss," still in that horrible grating monitone, like it's something she memorized, a pre-recorded message, and Dan suddenly knows what happened. He says "It was that little girl. Wasn't it? The kidnapping case."
She stares at him, the mask moving fitfully, and Dan raises the ring in his fist and blurts almost shrilly, "What is this then? What's this for? Are you -- do you want a divorce?"
She says, "Thought you would want it back. Sentimental value," and Dan's gorge rises.
Rorschach is intoning something about dogs and kerosene, but none of the words are getting through because it's finally here, this moment he's always known was coming, this moment when she walks out on them, and Dan -- Dan has spent so much, has given up so much of what he wanted, has never asked more of her than he thought she could give, and a black rage boils up in him. She doesn't flinch when he grabs her shoulders and slams her against the wall.
"No," he says. "No, I don't care whose kid died tonight, you've got -- we've got a kid upstairs and she needs you, and you do not get to just fucking disappear --"
But she shakes her head and says almost gently, "There was nothing left of her," and he doesn't know if she means the girl or --
"No," he says, "You come with me," and she lets him drag her up the stairs. It's only as they pass the second landing that she suddenly comes alive in his grip and starts to struggle, hissing, and if she weren't exhausted he wouldn't be able to keep hold of her. As it is, they fight each other silently down the hall, nothing of the grace which which they've sparred or fucked before, just angry and feral, and Dan pins her to the doorframe and flings Charlie's door open and flicks on the light.
"NO," Rorschach is growling, "DO NOT DISTURB HER -- ONLY A CHILD" and Dan hears himself roaring back that Charlie has a right to be disturbed if her goddamn mother is walking out on her, that Rorschach does not, does not have a fucking corner on suffering, is not at liberty to check out just because the world is a shitty place -- other people's dead kids cannot be more important than her own -- and Charlie's sitting up, blinking and confused and starting to cry in her little unicorn pjs, Rorschach struggling and clawing against him, covered in soot and blood, and it's a mess, a total mess.
That's all he remembers of that night; if Rorschach stopped struggling and fell sobbing into his arms, if together they soothed their daughter and made their peace for the night, he can't recall any of it. Just that much burned into his brain, just the bad parts. He knows Rorschach stayed, that he woke up with his face pressed to her tense shoulders the next morning. He knows it wasn't Blair Roche who undid them.
No, he thinks, it's never the big traumatic moments of high drama. It's the little betrayals that come one by one, so quietly, until they've torn everything apart and you never noticed.
So Dan won; Rorschach stayed. And Charlie grew.
***
note: I never wrote more of this, but I assure you that Charlie survives the Squidocalypse and so do her parents. They're really ok. They love each other.
Pairing: Rorschach/Nite Owl
Author: Brancher
Summary: The entire saga of Wanda Kovacs' difficult pregnancy and even more difficult motherhood and marriage. Dan is there too. Originally posted to kinkmeme circa 2008-2010; the fic that gave the fandom "Charlie." Of all the crazy shit I wrote in this fandom this was the only one I didn't claim publicly -- until now. Text in grey is by other anons -- my siblings in smut, my aiders and abettors. I love you all.
Warnings: .
ObDisclaim: not mine, theirs.
1967: Prelude
It takes her three months to notice. It's not as if her periods have ever been that regular to begin with. It's actually humiliating that Daniel is the first one to bring up the possibility, but even that is only after the scent of coffee has made her heave all over Archie's wall.
Daniel being Daniel, he just sits her down in the pilot's seat and cleans it up. Then he kneels on the floor in front of her and gently walks her through the possible reasons for such a thing, striking them out one by one until they're left with the knowledge of what they've done.
She isn't really sure how to feel. I one way, it's proof that she's a whore just like her mother, and it sickens her. But as she looks down into Daniel's earnest face, she feels something in her soften. Some of it is his obvious guilt, even though this is something they did together, and it's not as if they weren't careful. Daniel answers her thoughts with a rueful, "Yeah, I guess we won the lottery."
Her mask is as inscrutable as ever, but she can hear the plaint in her voice. "What should I do?"
"That's up to you. I mean, it's my kid too, but it's your body..." He shrugs helplessly. "I'll support it if you want to keep it, and if you want an abortion, I'll find someone who knows what they're doing and pay for that, too."
As soon as he says it, she shakes her head. "I have to keep it." She doesn't even know that her hand has fanned protectively over her abdomen. "No abortion. No orphanages."
Daniel takes her hands and kisses them, and she can tell he's crying. "We don't have to get married if you don't want, but I definitely love you enough."
1967: Kitubah
It's the first time she's worn a dress since she was 16. She sewed it herself, a simple white linen sheath. She means to do this properly, for Dan's sake, even if they're already ruined.
When he sees her in it, his throat closes up. Her arms are bare and pale, freckles standing out like burns, and the dress is beautifully sewn but it doesn't fit her right, boxing up around her thin hips and stretched too taut across her swelling belly. She's the homeliest woman he's ever seen, and he wants her, and he loves her, and makes him want to weep.
It's the first time Dan has seen her in daylight. It's also, he thinks as they ride in the cab towards City Hall, the longest he's ever spent around her without the mask. Awake, anyway. He watches her from the corner of his eye, afraid to look directly. He doesn't want to embarrass her, and yet he can't get enough of her: her short, limp hair, scrubbed with plain soap and ridiculously red in the sunlight; the harsh planes of her pale face, the deep lines around her mouth, the small scar he's never noticed before on her chin. He has always thought her eyes were blue, but in the sunlight he sees they are grey-green.
He can tell from the set of her shoulders how tense she is, knows what an ordeal this is for her, and he wishes he could have spared her from it. But she has insisted on this. The cab lurches and he puts his hand on hers, feels her thin strong fingers curl tight around his thumb.
In the judge's chamber her rough voice rasps the formulaic words; Daniel repeats them after her, and she wants to kiss them from his mouth.
Back home, after she puts the trench back on and leaves through the basement, he touches the fragile piece of paper, running his fingers over the names.
Daniel. Wanda.
1968: Birth
The pain is like nothing she has imagined. It's tearing her apart, turning her inside out.
She has insisted that he not take her to a hospital; she doesn't want doctors injecting their chemicals into her. He knows her well enough not to argue, and so now they are alone: just him, her, and the pain.
After a while he slides into bed behind her and holds her to his chest while she gasp and sweats. He mutters encouragement, but she can see the anxiety in his brown eyes. She has trangressed, she thinks, and now, now she is being punished; it is almost comforting.
Some hours of mindless agony later Daniel is crouched between her legs, and suddenly there is something else in the room with them: a thin, piercing wail. For a moment she thinks it is coming from her own throat.
1968: Post-Partum
Two days later, the female parts of Wanda's body still hurt her. She hides them under Rorschach's skin. Then the city opens around her and takes her under, and she goes to it, gratefully.
Dan lets her go. He knows, in a way he can't give words to, that Rorschach is not his, that she is barely even her own; that without the night and the city and the impact of her fist against some thug's face, he'll lose her altogether. He has to trust she'll come back to them.
He cradles their daughter, still nameless, still whimpering, against his chest.
Then he goes to the phone.
Sally arrives the next evening. "I'm sorry," Dan says as soon as he opens the door. "I didn't know who else to call."
She kisses his cheek. "Sweetheart," she says, "shut up. We knocked-up masks gotta stick together."
He makes coffee in the kitchen as she examines the baby. "Wow," Sally says, raising an eyebrow. "She takes after you. Let's hope she doesn't get your shnoz."
"Thanks," he says mildly. Exhaustion is flickering behind his eyelids. Sally gives him a shrewd glance. "Ok, kid, take five," she tells him. "I can take care of your love child for an hour or two." She puts her hand between his shoulder blades and steers him to the couch, and he drops onto it and into a deep unconsciousness.
Somewhere in the city, Rorschach is disarming a mugger, breathing deeply through her nose, ignoring the pain between her legs and the tenderness in her bound breasts.
***
Sally goes shopping, returning with an ungodly amount of stuff Daniel never knew babies needed. He discovers she's signed him up for a laundry service -- "You never got puked on so much in your life, honey, believe me, you're going to need it" -- and there are frozen dinners in the freezer and what looks like a lifetime supply of diapers in the pantry closet. Also a crib. Also a high chair, a stroller, and a goddamn owl mobile.
"Honestly. You did know you were having a baby?" she asks.
"Sorry, Sally, I missed that. I was too busy reading up on birthing procedures."
She laughs at him. They haven't talked about when -- if -- Rorschach is coming back.
At night he takes the paper out from the drawer in the bedside table and reads it over again. Wanda Kovacs. Does that person exist? he wonders. Who signed that paper?
Sally leaves after the second week, ignoring his faintly desperate invitation to stay longer. "You can handle yourself, doll," she says in the doorway. "You're the goddamn Nite Owl."
"You're a goddess, Miss Jupiter," he tells her, and she pats him on the tush and is gone. The house is horribly empty around him, as he stands in the hallway. The nameless infant buries her small soft head into his armpit.
He's dozing, sliding between sleeping and waking, when some quality of silence jolts him fully awake. For a minute he doesn't know what it is. Then he realizes: silence. The baby's not cradled against his chest. She's not in the crib. Nite Owl sits up, his heart hammering in his ribs.
There's a light on in the kitchen. He tries not to make any noise on the stairs.
***
It doesn't look the way she remembers: it's dryer, less red and raw. It didn't make a sound when she picked it up, in Dan's bedroom, holding it out away from her body in her gloved hands. It's so light.
She's not sure what she can be to this child. She doesn't want to be a mother; that means damage, means contamination. She only knows she feels for it the same deep, wild pull she feels for Daniel, and that it scares her and confuses her even more than he does.
She brings it closer to her face, and it reaches out one tiny hand and bats at the latex. She almost drops it in surprise; then she draws it close, for the first time, nestles it against the trench's folds of bloody leather.
She hears Daniel creep into the room behind her, doubtless believing he's making no noise. She holds still, waiting for him to come up behind her and put his large hands on her shoulders.
She says, "Charlie."
"Hunh?"
"Her name."
"Um. Charlie's a boy's na--"
"CHARLIE."
"...Ok."
1968: Suckle
Every inch of her is taut, almost vibrating with suppressed movement. It's costing her to stay here, costing her to hold still. Dan has seen her like this before; the first time she let him touch her, and so many times thereafter.
"It's ok," he says, trying to pitch his voice low and soothing, the way you'd talk to panicked animal.
"It hurts," she rasps.
"It's ... you know, it's natural. It's ok," he repeats.
In her crib, Charlie is crying, that hiccuping infant squall that's so agonizing to listen to, and in a minute or two Dan's nerve is going to break and he'll go for the bottle of formula, but somehow, he feels like this is important.
Rorschach doesn't move, doesn't say a word, but some quality of her silence softens minutely, and Dan feels bold enough to put his fingertips on her shoulder.
She allows the touch, sits still and silent with her head bowed as he slides the dress shirt off her thin shoulders, unhooks the butterfly clip, slowly unwinds the bandage. She makes one sound, in the back of her throat, as it comes undone completely. The inner layer is dark with moisture.
He pushes on her shoulder to turn her towards him, and she follows, her eyes shut tight against her shame. Her breasts are full, swollen with milk, crisscrossed with red lines where the bandage bit into the flesh.
Dan feels the weight in his throat of all the endearments he does not dare say to her: sweetheart, darling, honey.
"Why does it scare you so much?" he whispers.
"Ehhhnnk. Weak. Liability. Disgusting," she mutters, and she's still muttering as Daniel bends his head to her take her nipple in his mouth, and the words turn into a gasp. Thin hard fingers come up and dig into the back of his head, neither pressing him forward nor tearing him away, and the taste of her milk is the sweetest thing, like the milk left at the bottom of a bowl of sugary cereal, flooding his mouth as he suckles.
She makes a noise like a sob.
Finally he breaks off and moves up to her mouth so she can taste herself; she opens to him, burying her hands in his hair as he kisses her, her sharp knees pressing against his side, a trickle of milk running down her breast.
"It's ok," he breathes into her mouth. "You're her --" He stutters and swallows the forbidden word, mother. "She's your daughter, it's all right. You're not going to hurt her."
Her hands on him tighten and she holds him still against her for a long moment, and then he can feel her nod against his neck.
Dan pulls her to her feet, leads her by the hand to crib where Charlie is thrashing and wailing. The baby quiets a little when he picks her up, and Rorschach takes her from him gingerly, as if either of them could break at any moment.
"What do I --"
"Uh, I think you just -- hold her. Like that. Yeah, just in the crook of your -- like that."
Charlie twists in her arms, blindly searching, and Rorschach looks at him with an almost comical expression of terror. "Daniel, I don't --"
Then Charlie finds her, latches on, and Rorschach's expression doesn't grow any less terrified but it takes on another emotion altogether, shadowing the fear: wonder.
1970: Milestones
Dan is worried for a while that Charlie's not talking soon enough. He's been reading baby books and fretting about milestones. But Rorschach knows not to worry: Charlie is perfect.
When she does start to talk, she calls Dan "Dada," and Rorschach "Rorschach," or something as close to it as she can manage. Dan is relieved; he had never discussed with Rorschach what Charlie would call her, but he was sure it could not be mother or mama or anything close; and now Charlie has solved the problem herself.
She prattles, stringing together nonsense syllables into a complicated narrative Dan can't make out. He likes listening to her while she plays on the concrete floor of the basement and he tunes up Archie.
He hasn't been going out at night, but working on Archie is an end in itself.
Rorschach goes out at night. Some mornings, she shows up at Dan's smelling of blood and wet concrete and sweat, and she staggers upstairs, shedding her layers until she slips into Dan's bedroom to the sound of his soft snores and curls up awkwardly around his bulk in the bed. She never keeps away for more than a few days at a time, but she can't bring herself to stay for too long either. It's not that she doesn't want to; she's afraid to let the dark jagged edge of herself touch them.
Sometimes she spends hours holding Charlie while she naps, running her rough fingertips through Charlie's wispy baby hair. It's coming in reddish, which Rorschach regrets, but it's silky under her hands. She remembers someone touching her this way, when she was a child, but she doesn't remember who it was.
After one of these times, she usually stays gone for a day and a night.
One evening she shows up in the basement, meaning to check on Dan and Charlie before patrol, and Nite Owl is there waiting for her. Her first response is shock, and then, quickly, anger.
"What are you doing?" she rasps. "You can't leave her here alone."
"I'm not," he says mildly. "You're staying with her tonight."
"What? No."
"It'll be fine."
"No." She's never been in the house with the baby without Dan there. She feels panic rising in her chest.
"Rorschach. You'll be fine. You can radio me if anything happens. I'll stay close." He puts his hands on her shoulders. "I trust you."
She's shaking her head numbly, and she feels paralyzed when Nite Owl kisses her on the forehead, through the mask, and he's already hopping up into Archie's hatch before she can think to tell him this is a bad idea, very, very bad idea.
***
When Dan comes back in the morning, sweaty and bruised and half-hard and buzzing with energy, the brownstone is silent.
There's baby food all over the kitchen, including the ceiling. Sugar cube wrappers litter the table and the floor. A stack of unused diapers seems to have exploded in the hallway, and the toilet is clogged where Rorschach has tried to flush a used one. Dan rubs his face and cracks the door to the bedroom.
Rorschach is asleep, curled up across the foot of the bed with Charlie, the trenchcoat wrapped around them both.
Dan smiles and goes in to his wife and child.
He carries Charlie, limp and exhausted, to her crib and lays her down without waking her up. Then he tugs at Rorschach's hand.
"Mm ... Daniel...?"
"Come on," he whispers, and leads her half-asleep down the hall to the guest bedroom. He needs her, would rather have woken her up in their bed with his hand between her legs, but Rorschach won't let him touch her if Charlie's in the room with them.
In the guestroom, he pushes her back onto the bed and goes to work on her trousers and shirt, but stops her when she tries to take off the coat.
"No," he says. "Leave it on."
She makes a rough noise and gets her fist in his hair, and lets him worry her nipples until she's gasping and open; then she rolls him over, straddling him with the trenchcoat draped over them both, smelling like violence, like Rorschach, and takes him in slowly, her hard hands on his hips holding him still.
"You -- you did good tonight," he gasps as she starts to move.
She shakes her head, her eyes squeezed shut.
"You did," he insists, trying and failing to push his hips up into her. "Just don't -- don't ever try to flush -- a diaper again."
"Not stupid Daniel," she grates, and bends to bite his neck as he laughs breathlessly in her ear.
1972: Secrets
When Dan comes to pick her up, Charlie is covered in snot and blood. Again.
She's not crying anymore by now, only glaring, and Dan doesn't know whether to laugh or scream: he knows that expression so well.
"Ok, kiddo," he says, hefting her onto his hip and shooting an apologetic glance at Mrs. Akers. "Let's get you out of here." Charlie's still quivering with anger, but he can feel her small body start to relax as he puts distance between them and Friendly Akers Daycare.
Dan digs into a pocket, finds his handkerchief, and hands it to her. She takes it and starts to clean her face. "What happened, honey?" Dan asks. It's not the first time Charlie's been in a fight. He supposes it's to be expected. She's not your run-of-the-mill kid, and she has a hell of a temper.
She comes by it honestly.
"Omar called me a liar," she growls. It's a very high-pitched growl. "He said Rorschach can't be my mom. He said because everyone knows Rorschach's a man. And Maya said Rorschach doesn't exist. People just made her up, like Mister T. But she said him. And I kicked her."
Dan sighs. "Did you try using your words, like we talked about?"
"...no."
"Charlie, violence is a last resort. You use it when you can't use anything else."
"...are you mad?"
"I'm not mad, Charlie, I'm just very disappointed. You're better than that."
They walk in silence for a block or so.
"Oof, you're getting heavy," Dan says at last. He swings her to the sidewalk, and they walk a little more, hand in hand, before Dan says, "Honey, you know what Rorschach does when she's not around, right?"
"Beats up bad guys."
"Right. And she keeps her mask on when she does that, right? Just like Nite Owl does."
"But Rorschach's mask is better."
"Yes, Rorschach's mask is better." He's not about to argue the point with a 4-year-old. "So no one knows who she really is, because no one knows what she looks like without her mask. No one but us. You and me."
Charlie digests this as they walk the rest of the way home. At the corner, Dan digs out some change and buys her a Good Humor bar, and she eats it silently and methodically, her eyes getting the same concentrated distant look that Rorschach's get when she consumes a certain amount of sugar.
She goes off to draw for a while before dinner, but while he's chopping up vegetables for the stir-fry he feels her small arm wrap around his knee. "What's up, kiddo?"
"Dada, is she sad?"
"Is who sad?"
"Rorschach. If no one knows who she is."
Dan kneels and tussles her frizzy red hair. "She doesn't want people to know, honey. It's a secret."
"What about Nite Owl?"
"Nite Owl has to be scary when he's fighting bad guys. And if people knew Nite Owl was really just me underneath they wouldn't be scared, would they? So that's a secret too."
She considers this, frowning. "Why's Rorschach a secret?"
"Well, Rorschach's different. She only likes to take the mask off when she's with people she really trusts."
"Like us. Because she loves us."
"Right."
"So she's happy."
Dan pulls her into a hug. "Of course she is."
And he thinks: I hope so. I hope.
1975: Saturday
In the end it is Daniel's careful forensics that break the Sawicki murders open, after Rorschach has spent weeks breaking fingers to no avail; so Rorschach knows she owes him. He hasn't said so, but it's there in the tally she keeps in her head.
So she spends the night, and the following morning she puts on her civilian clothes and eats pancakes and drinks orange juice, and when Daniel says "Why don't you come with us?" she only hesitates for a moment before stepping out the front door onto the stoop, in the late-morning sunlight.
The park is two blocks south; Dan carries Charlie on his shoulders, holding securely to her skinny ankles, so Rorschach doesn't have to worry about whether to take his hand. When they reach the playground, Charlie takes off for the pirate ship, her favorite. Her parents stand by one of the benches, in the shade of an oak, and watch her play in companionable silence.
Dan keeps stealing glances at Rorschach. She bathes more often than she used to, and she eats better, but she still dresses like she shops at Goodwill, and it's clear that she's still washing her hair with bar soap. He loves to see it in sunlight; it blazes like copper wire. Seeing Rorschach in sunlight is like sighting a rare bird, miles out of its natural range.
He looks around at the park: the small swarm of kids, the parents kibbitzing on the sidelines. It's a nice neighborhood. Dads in polos and khakis, mothers in summer shifts and sandals. Rorschach is wearing a man's button-down workshirt, and a pair of low-heeled boots.
Dan's aware they are being observed. He knows the mothers are squinting at them from the other side of the playground, trying to guess what the nice Jewish man in the sweater vest is doing with the apparently homeless lesbian. The weary part of him that will never be completely Nite Owl wonders about that, too. Not for the first time, Dan wishes that Rorschach could be someone easier, simpler; someone who could wear sandals and vote Democrat, someone he could take with him to Ornithology Society benefits and family seders.
He steals another glance at her; this time she catches him looking and frowns, and looks away; then she steels herself and looks back at him again, the sun lighting up her remarkably green eyes, and tries a little smile.
Something hot and liquid comes boiling up from his solar plexus, and before he can think about it he's moving, boxing her in against the trunk of the oak tree, his hands on her shoulders, and she has time to rasp "What are you--" before he has his mouth to hers and his fingers in her hair, kissing and kissing her.
Her lips are thin and chapped and familiar, and when he wraps his other hand in the folds of her workshirt the fabric is worn to silky softness. He kisses her until he feels her give, relaxing against him, her hands resting tentatively at his hips, and then he nuzzles at her mouth for a few seconds more, because he wants to and he can.
Rorschach looks at him steadily as he draws back. She wants to tell him never, ever to do that again, not in public, but this day is still her gift to him, so instead she just says, "Why?"
He smiles, the smile that always undid her, and brushes a strand of hair away from her forehead. "I wanted people to know," he says, and he doesn't have to say any more. She studies him for a minute: his warm brown gaze, the first white hairs at his temple, the smile lines at the corners of his eyes and the worry lines around his mouth. Her Nite Owl. Her Daniel. She nods, once, the way she does when they're in battle and his eyes have told her he'll cover her back.
Then Charlie runs up, her hands cupped around a beetle, which she demands they admire before Dan can persuade her to let it go free.
On the way home Rorschach slides her hand into his.
Dan makes tuna fish salad for lunch; Rorschach rebraids Charlie's hair while she glances over Dan's copy of the Times. On page 3 of the metro section a small item catches her eye, and she frowns.
"Will you stay tonight?" he asks.
She shakes her head, slides the paper across the table to him.
"Can't. Will be working a new case. A kidnapping."
1985: Anniversary
When he sees her sitting in his kitchen, he forgets to breathe.
When he saw the broken lock, he had hoped, madly, that it would be her. To find that it is seems too good, too much of a blessing, and for a second it's as if none of it ever happened, as if he's just a man coming home to his --
Then she turns her head, and says his name. Her voice sounds as if she's no longer accustomed to using it.
There's flecks of bean juice on her chin and her collar, and one of the epaulettes on her coat has come loose. That disturbs him more than anything else, to think that she wouldn't have sewn it back down. She used to be so good with needle and thread.
"Rorschach. Are you -- how are you?"
He knows the question is inane. He wants to go to her, badly. He's afraid to touch her. He can smell her, her old smell of sweat and concrete layered over with something fouler.
She pushes the can away and wipes her mouth on the back of her sleeve.
"Still alive. So far. Came to warn you, Daniel."
"What --?"
"The Comedian's dead. Think someone's hunting masks. You and Charlie have to leave city. Not safe here."
For a second he doesn't understand what she's saying, and then anger comes gushing up out of the place where he keeps it safe. "Rorschach, jesus. I haven't seen you in ten months. And today is -- Is that all you came for? To tell me some, some paranoid bullshit about --"
She stands up, and he can see her fists tightening. "Paranoid? That's what you think?"
"I want you to come back," he blurts, and it's the worst thing he could have said. "Daniel," she says, choked, furious, and takes a step toward him. Somehow they end up pressed against each other as tightly as pages in a book.
He can feel her heart pounding against his ribs, can smell the sourness of her. Just to have her in his arms is enough for a minute; then she lets out a broken noise and he's kissing her. There's a memory in his head, fleetingly, of kissing her like this under a tree, somewhere, in the sunshine; but that's impossible, when did Rorschach ever go anywhere with him where there were trees and sunshine?
Her mouth tastes horrible. "Come upstairs," he whispers.
She shakes her head. "Charlie."
"She's a sound sleeper."
"No."
So they end up like teenagers, on the couch. Rorschach is struggling to get through his belt, his pants, and he whispers "no no no" and tries to still her hands, tries to make it slower and gentler even though he knows she cannot stand it.
He unknots the scarf, unbuttons her shirt, unwinds her bindings. She is shaking as he puts his mouth to her flattened nipple, mouthing it like a word he doesn't dare speak.
When he gets his cock inside her, it feels like a relief. She looks up at him, the inkblots high and trembling on the mask. She's always so surprised, he thinks, when this doesn't hurt her. He starts to laugh, just out of joy, and she closes her mouth and grinds into him, hard, to make him moan instead.
He comes with her riding him, fucking him fiercely, her mouth at his, not kissing him, just close: breathing the air from his lungs as he gasps her name.
When he can move again he leans her back against the armrest, holding each of her wrists in the crushing grip he knows she needs for this, and tastes himself in her until she comes. She holds her breath through it, so that she will not scream.
Afterwards, they lie holding each other. He thinks of how she has marked him, the scars she has left on him. He strokes her cheek through the mask, as if none of that matters. As if it all could be undone.
"Just promise me," she says at last. "Keep her safe."
"Of course I will," he says. "I --"
"If anything happens to her," she says, "I will end your life."
"Wanda," he says, gently. "You wouldn't have to."
1985: A Better Son/Daughter
"I know. The Comedian died and you think it's a serial killer. Dad already told me all about it."
So -- that was how it was. He hadn't believed her. If she hadn't been sure in the tunnels, it was abundantly clear now: Nite Owl did think she was paranoid, hadn't taken her warning seriously. Had additionally, and inappropriately, complained about the situation to Charlie, standing at her window with an impatience in her voice that hadn't been there three, two years before.
"Important to stay on guard, to keep yourselves safe. Try." Rorschach swallows. Charlie's gaze is blank, her expressionless hostility both strange and familiar. "Please try to convince your father. Vital to both of you to be wary." Both of you, she thinks again, but doesn't repeat aloud.
Both of them. Daniel has gone soft, and Charlie has -- grown. Her face is painted, her hair straightened somehow and glossier than Rorschach remembers it. Her room is filled with tacky, inconsequential clippings. The sweater she is wearing displays her body to, if not the point of danger, at least indecency. She is turning into a woman.
But the print on Charlie's bedside table is the same. As far as Rorschach knows, it's the only photographic evidence of Wanda Kovacs' existence, unless the Charlton Home's record-keeping was assiduous beyond reason, and it had taken Daniel, years ago, a considerable amount of effort to convince Rorschach not to destroy it. The picture is a surveillance cap of her and Charlie in the Owl's Nest, blown up so that it's only discernible as a woman with a small child in her lap, both sleeping in a shapeless dark place. She is wearing her uniform, but not her mask. Charlie is two, perhaps three, nestled into Rorschach's coat. Her own face is slack, unfamiliar. One hand holds Charlie to her and the other cups the back of Charlie's neck as Charlie buries her face into Rorschach's throat, small fingers twisted in the fabric of Rorschach's shirt even in sleep.
"What are you looking -- oh." If Charlie's voice trembles, Rorschach does her best to pretend she doesn't notice; she remembers that Charlie doesn't like for Rorschach to see her cry.
"Nice, huh?" There's a terseness to the words that makes Rorschach stiffen in anticipation. "Those were some really great times. Wonder what happened to them?" She runs a finger down the frame and suddenly her mouth twists; the ugly look that's been drifting under the girl's face bursts to the surface. "Oh, yeah," Charlie spits, finally turning to look Rorschach in the face, "you quit."
No matter how many times she comes back -- not many, but enough by now that she knows what to expect -- Rorschach has never managed to prepare herself for the rage. Her daughter's or her own. She struggles to remain still as both roar through her, the anguished shock of rejection and the accompanying urge to slap some sense into the girl, to somehow make her understand the enormity of what Rorschach is protecting her from. Her throat is bursting: she is going to scream, she is going to grab the girl's shoulders and shake her until the hate drops off her face and she listens when Rorschach explains to her that she's done what she's done for her, because Charlie is the most important, her most precious thing --
"Here." Charlie has taken something from the nightstand, and is standing with hand outreached, looking straight down at whatever she's holding. She's refusing again to meet Rorschach's eyes, and something about that, about the hopelessness of the girl's posture, diffuses the anger so quickly it leaves Rorschach feeling scooped out. Hollow. She suddenly wants to take the girl's face in her hands, draw her close again like she was five years old.
She gestures it forward. "It's the new key? Dad told me to give you a copy."
More passive aggression. It doesn't suit Daniel; filtered through the child, it's even worse. Rorschach reaches out to take the key anyway, and her fingers brush Charlie's, battered gloves against unmarked skin. Some emotion moves across Charlie's face and for a fragment of a second it seems like the girl is simply going to drop forward into Rorschach's arms. In a flash, Rorschach can feel it. Charlie will let go of her alien, maddening resentment. Rorschach will be able to hold her without feeling the knowledge of bones and all of it, all of it will be washed away.
But as quickly as it came, the moment flickers and is gone. Rorschach draws back and Charlie whirls around, fists clenched, shoulders stiff. She smacks the photograph down onto its face, then draws her hand back as though it's burned her. She reaches for it again as though she's afraid she's hurt it, as if it's a living thing, and strokes the cardboard backing with her fingertips.
When Charlie turns back to the window, her mother is gone.
1985: Not Made of Steel
Charlie's safely in California with Sally -- he doesn't believe Rorschach's little theory, but just in case -- so they're alone in the house, and Laurie is kissing him.
He can't say he hasn't always wanted her. And now she's here; so close, so beautiful, so utterly unlike Rorschach, except for their shared brutality. It's this last thing that attracts him the most. He has always wanted women who can hurt him. Her strong small hands pluck at his shirt; her hair, glossy and liquid, spills over his shoulders.
But she's touching him gently, and something seems wrong. Too gentle. Her hands are too gentle. And she smells too good.
God damn it.
"Laurie -- Laurie. I can't."
"What's wrong?"
"I just can't. I -- I'm a married man, Laurie."
"Dan, jesus. She left you years ago." She bites her lip. "Sorry. I'm sorry. That was --"
"Hey, it's ok, look, I'd think the same thing. She -- it's ok."
They kneel there together in silence, frozen in a tableau, until Laurie laughs and kisses his forehead. "You're a good man, Dan Dreiberg. And she's luckier than she knows."
He shakes his head, capturing her hands and holding them in his own. "I -- Laurie, I know what she is. I know. It's not even -- I can't save her."
And her eyes fill with tears, horribly, and even as he's trying to figure out what he did wrong, she half-smiles and chokes out, "I know the feeling."
And then he has to kiss her, and he means for it to be friendly and tender but she changes it, and it comes out angry and violent and everything he needs. They're wrestling more than touching, Laurie biting and scratching at his skin, at her own, until he pins her to the floor and thrusts in.
She gasps, "yes," and rises to meet him. He comes almost painfully, her teeth marking his shoulder.
"Not such a good man," he whispers afterwards, and she laces her fingers in his and whispers "Maybe I don't need a good man," and they sleep.
When she finds him in the basement, he turns to her and says, "I'm going to break my wife out of jail."
Laurie looks at him a long moment.
"What the hell," she says. "Let me get my costume."
1985: Police are Seeking Information
Omar is fifteen. He's a quiet kid, just started a job as a minimart clerk, reads a lot of pirate comics. He dreams about being a pirate sometimes, swooping down on the ships of the Imperial Navy and boarding with an impressive swing of the rope and brandish of his cutlass. But in real life, he's very law-abiding. He doesn't even jaywalk, not since his kid sister got knocked down by a car and broke her leg. Comes home by eleven, and sits up with his mother to watch the late news, sometimes have a soda. He's the man of the house now, has been three years. He takes his responsibilities seriously. A good citizen. All the more appreciative for his mom's stories about how it was back in Afghanistan. He thinks when he's old enough, he's going to join the police.
The news about Rorschach comes in the middle of a string of days with nothing but news about the Soviet advances. His mother frets and prays a lot. She has relatives in Afghanistan, but none living near the border. Still, in a time like this, no one is safe. The freckles on the unexpected face seem oddly familiar, and Omar stares hard as the newscaster drones on. He's glad Rorschach is off the streets. Vigilantes have no place in a civilized society. Maybe once they did, but not now. Order. Law and order. Police are asking anyone with information to come forward.
He's kept awake by his thoughts half the night. Around three in the morning, he remembers. Akers Daycare was eleven years ago, but Omar has a good memory, and that girl was pretty distinctive. She said her mother was Rorschach and he said Rorschach was a man, and how the hell did she know?
No. She didn't say her mother was Rorschach, she said Rorschach was her mother.
Omar's mother keeps everything. He's often thought it silly. But the next day after breakfast, he takes down the old albums and leafs through them, looking for a certain photo. A group photo, taken for their silly little summer celebration. She's on the far right side, in a t-shirt that's too big for her. Her freckles stand out and her hair is flying everywhere. She's not smiling. She stares right at the camera like she's daring it to make a move. Charlie, that was her name. Charlie Dreiberg.
Omar skips school that day for the first time in three years, and goes straight to the police station. The officer's eyebrows rise a little at the photo, and he takes Omar's information stolidly. Shakes his hand and thanks him for his assistance, for being a good citizen. Omar nods, says it was his duty. Says he wants to join the police someday. The officer nods and says he's got good observational skills, he might make a fine detective. Omar's heart swells with pride.
Two days later, the evening news says that Rorschach's husband - husband! - and child had been identified, but when police went to their house, it was abandoned. They show a school photo of Charlie. She's staring into the camera, her wild red hair more or less tamed, a touch of a defiant grin. She looks nothing like Omar remembers. He shuts off the television over his mother's protest, and goes to bed, and sleeps without dreams.
1985: Underwater
He remembers:
She smells like smoke and moves like a machine. There's blood all over her, but he can tell it's not her own; for some reason that scares him even more. She stops at the bottom of the basement stairs, standing too still, like she was painted on the dark air.
He says her name, but she puts out her hand when he reaches for her, and drops something into his palm.
He looks down. Doesn't understand what he's seeing: a simple object, a little band of plain gold. It takes him a minute to attache a meaning to it.
"Regret to inform you," and he opens his mouth so that even as she says "Your wife died tonight in a fire," he's saying, "No," he's saying "No, no don't you goddamn dare."
"Very sorry," she says, "for your loss," still in that horrible grating monitone, like it's something she memorized, a pre-recorded message, and Dan suddenly knows what happened. He says "It was that little girl. Wasn't it? The kidnapping case."
She stares at him, the mask moving fitfully, and Dan raises the ring in his fist and blurts almost shrilly, "What is this then? What's this for? Are you -- do you want a divorce?"
She says, "Thought you would want it back. Sentimental value," and Dan's gorge rises.
Rorschach is intoning something about dogs and kerosene, but none of the words are getting through because it's finally here, this moment he's always known was coming, this moment when she walks out on them, and Dan -- Dan has spent so much, has given up so much of what he wanted, has never asked more of her than he thought she could give, and a black rage boils up in him. She doesn't flinch when he grabs her shoulders and slams her against the wall.
"No," he says. "No, I don't care whose kid died tonight, you've got -- we've got a kid upstairs and she needs you, and you do not get to just fucking disappear --"
But she shakes her head and says almost gently, "There was nothing left of her," and he doesn't know if she means the girl or --
"No," he says, "You come with me," and she lets him drag her up the stairs. It's only as they pass the second landing that she suddenly comes alive in his grip and starts to struggle, hissing, and if she weren't exhausted he wouldn't be able to keep hold of her. As it is, they fight each other silently down the hall, nothing of the grace which which they've sparred or fucked before, just angry and feral, and Dan pins her to the doorframe and flings Charlie's door open and flicks on the light.
"NO," Rorschach is growling, "DO NOT DISTURB HER -- ONLY A CHILD" and Dan hears himself roaring back that Charlie has a right to be disturbed if her goddamn mother is walking out on her, that Rorschach does not, does not have a fucking corner on suffering, is not at liberty to check out just because the world is a shitty place -- other people's dead kids cannot be more important than her own -- and Charlie's sitting up, blinking and confused and starting to cry in her little unicorn pjs, Rorschach struggling and clawing against him, covered in soot and blood, and it's a mess, a total mess.
That's all he remembers of that night; if Rorschach stopped struggling and fell sobbing into his arms, if together they soothed their daughter and made their peace for the night, he can't recall any of it. Just that much burned into his brain, just the bad parts. He knows Rorschach stayed, that he woke up with his face pressed to her tense shoulders the next morning. He knows it wasn't Blair Roche who undid them.
No, he thinks, it's never the big traumatic moments of high drama. It's the little betrayals that come one by one, so quietly, until they've torn everything apart and you never noticed.
So Dan won; Rorschach stayed. And Charlie grew.
***
note: I never wrote more of this, but I assure you that Charlie survives the Squidocalypse and so do her parents. They're really ok. They love each other.