This Final Point
This Final Point
R
Laurie takes on the Roche case.
Prompt is "90 North" by Randall Jarrell. Original idea from a prompt on the kinkmeme.
Contains: Violence/gore, implied child kidnapping and murder.
I see at last that all the knowledge
I wrung from the darkness-that the darkness flung me-
Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.
- "90 North" by Randall Jarrell
Dan’s voice over the phone is tired, and the vague idea of partnering up with him once Laurie makes it to New York dies at his strained greeting. She asks him anyway if he wouldn’t mind touching base with her-the girl will have gotten more coverage in New York, and she’ll be shocked if he and Rorschach haven’t talked about the case at least a little.
That night, she grips a suitcase in one hand and her stomach with the other, ready to puke as soon as Jon teleports her. He is scrutinizing her, his white eyes glowing in the darkness of their bedroom. Laurie ignores the sadness in his non-expression, dismisses it as anticipatory loneliness instead of omniscient knowledge of her failure. She cannot let herself fail this early-Blaire Roche must be alive in her mind, hurt and afraid but alive, or this whole thing is pointless.
An interview with Mrs. Roche on the news station was what drove Laurie to take the case. She rarely deals with these kinds of cases, thanks to the constant insistence of her mother that they’re terrible whether you win or lose, but Laurie doesn’t have the luxury of compartmentalizing a little girl’s life in those terms, anymore. The heartbreak in Mrs. Roche’s eyes was too similar to the way Sally looked the one time Laurie almost died- really almost died, rushed to the hospital with a concussion and a bullet lodged under her breasts. The humanity in that look, the utter vulnerability, was all the incentive Laurie needed to go from interested in Blaire’s disappearance to involved.
She hasn’t told Sally. Probably won’t, either, unless-until-Blaire makes it home safe and sound.
Jon lifts his hand.
“See you soon,” she says, tucking her doubts away.
He blinks at her once, slowly, and then she’s gone.
*
The lines on the wood, each a personal brand in her skin-the bone at the maw, cracked and white as pearls, white as eternity-arsenic in her throat-the smooth handle of an axe in her hand-tears on her cheeks, salt on her lips that is oceans away from the dry ravine inside of her, which swallows her, cracks her neck and spine and spits her out fresh with purpose.
*
Rorschach, Dan explains to her, is trapped upstairs with a wound that won’t stay closed, and Laurie’s not sure from his tone of voice if he’s more angry about the wound or about Rorschach. It’s a little out of her depth, because she never had to worry about Jon and never will-not about his physical well-being, anyway. She leans her suitcase on the table leg and sits down as Dan fiddles with the electric teapot.
“This kidnapping case is driving him nuts,” Dan adds, lowering his voice as he sits next to her. “When I told him that you called, he…he just seemed really relieved.” There are dark bags under Dan’s eyes, and he rubs under his glasses, an automatic tic.
Laurie wants to ask why he didn’t pick up the case if it mattered so much to Rorschach, but she knows she won’t be able to ask it without sounding accusatory. “How long’s he been cooped up there?”
“A few days now. When he first showed up I tried to let him go to work again, but half an hour after he left he came right back, blood all over his hands and clothes and-I don’t know what he did, but…”
Laurie nods. “And he’s won’t go to a hospital, will he.”
“Stick to Brooklyn,” a low voice says from the door. Rorschach is draped unselfconsciously in a blanket, his mask pulled down to his chin and posture straight.
Dan starts to stand as Laurie repeats, “Brooklyn.”
Rorschach turns his head to stare at Dan. His shoulders square under the blanket. “Yes. Likeliest place to find her.” For a moment, it looks like Dan is going to haul Rorschach out of the kitchen, but he changes his mind halfway through to check the kettle. “I’ve already visited the bars from sixteenth to twenty-second. Put twelve people in hospital so far. No results.”
“Somebody got results,” Dan mumbles, pouring boiling water into two mugs.
“All right,” Laurie says before Rorschach can engage. “I’ll keep working that way, then. How long did you look for her?”
Rorschach lowers his head; his bony hands tighten on the blanket. “Just a few days, before I was rendered incapacitated.” Laurie’s unsurprised by the venom in his voice; she’s sure the criminal-criminals?-who injured him are going to pay in blood.
She scoops up her suitcase, tucks it under her arm, and swings to her feet. “I should go,” she says, and Dan’s face closes up with disappointment and worry. “It’s getting close to time, y’know?” Laurie gestures to the window, where the sunlight is coming in muted, quickly dying behind the city’s spire horizon.
“Well, okay,” Dan says slowly. “Listen, Laurie, you-you take care of yourself out there.”
“Oh, I will,” she says, and grins. “Don’t you worry about me.”
*
Laurie watches the whites of his eyes roll in his head, red veins crossing over the malleable white flesh. Blood streaks the floor.
“That’s right, you fucker,” she murmurs, low and easy. He spasms under her. “Tha-at’s right.”
There are no other noises.
*
Laurie’s not used to interrogating people like this, just walking into bars and strip clubs and yelling her questions to the general public. She has no clue how Dan and Rorschach can do it without feeling like idiots, but Rorschach only gave her the name of a man who could help her, not his possible hang-outs. She’s in a gaudy, dimly-lit strip joint when the guy-Dick Carson-finally shows his face. He has greasy hair and greasy eyes and he keeps looking at her tits while licking his teeth, and he doesn’t give her any useful information until she pins him to a wall by his prick. Even then, it’s just a name that might help and a vague description of the guy.
Well. She’ll take what she can get.
She spends the rest of that night trawling through Brooklyn’s seediest bars, hunting a guy named Jack Turner. She ends up breaking a smartass’s wrist at 2 A.M. She’s mostly just frustrated at the lack of progress she’s made since Carson-things tend to go much faster with an omnipotent demigod on your side-but then a young woman in a slinky green dress surprises her: “J-jack hits up Magnolia’s at 7 every day,” she confesses, her face pale. “It’s on west sixth, yeah? Please don’t hurt him anymore.”
Laurie looks at the man, who’s on his knees, clawing at his forearm in pain. (Not just the Doc’s eye-candy now, is she?) “Okay,” she says. Her chest constricts. “Okay, yeah. Thanks.”
The walk back to her motel is long and quiet, her heels cracking with each step with the kind of violence one would expect from a kick to the stomach. No one’s out, or at least no criminals stupid enough to commit crime under her nose, and she has no idea what she’s going to do from now until seven tomorrow. Sleep, obviously. Maybe she’ll give Uncle Hollis a visit or something. She doesn’t want to go back to Dan’s.
The motel’s neon sign gleams down at her, an optimistic beacon in the early morning darkness. Laurie hangs back in the alleyway behind the motel and smokes outside, because she might hear something and have an excuse to vent her leftover aggression. She’s refilled her pipe twice before she resigns herself to the dead emptiness of the night. She’s inside and undressed before 3:30, tired, with nothing better to do than some crossword puzzles.
Laurie flicks the radio on, leaving it tuned to some late-night talk station, and sets to figuring out a six-letter word to finish “My kingdom for…” (My kingdom for prescience, she thinks.) The static from the radio is sharp, an undercurrent of white noise that she can’t get rid of no matter how much she messes with the dial.
When the sun starts to drift in her window, she straightens up and blinks away from it, squinting at the clock. It’s half after six.
Fine then. No use getting any sleep. She abandons the crossword puzzles, showers and changes, and heads out for coffee. There’s plenty of ways for her to waste time until her date with Jack.
*
The street smells like piss and smoke, the layered kind of smoke that spews from factory chimneys and sticks in the mouth, tasting of slaughterhouse hooks. Two dogs are fighting over a bone in the backyard, their snarls punctuating the low murmur of the city. Laurie ignores them.
*
Magnolia’s front is bland, the windows painted over and the door plain. Laurie anticipated a longer walk than it was, so she ends up loitering by the side of the building for half an hour, more and more angry with each passing minute. Two groups of people filter into the doors between 6:45 and seven, one of them with a guy who matches Jack’s description; Laurie puts out her pipe and stops wasting time.
The door sticks a little when she goes to open it, so she slams it in with her shoulder, impatient. The bang of the door hitting the wall shuts the smoky bar right the fuck up. Two men, seeing Laurie’s costume, stand, but they stay where they are, watching her. It takes a moment for Laurie to pick Jack out in the dim light, but when she does, she makes a beeline for him. She slams her hand on the table right next to his and curls her fingers against the wood.
“So. Jack, is it?”
It takes pulling a fistful of his hair out of his scalp to get a home address. He swears to her that Frank knows Grice-is a good buddy, and a squealer, too, been on edge ever since the girl disappeared-and that’s really all Laurie needs.
Turns out Frank isn’t home when Laurie comes to call, but his wife is, and she blurts out Grice’s address without so much as a raised voice to threaten her, which Laurie is grateful for-violence towards men is easier to justify, a taking-back for the women she’s had to save, maybe for herself.
It’s only ten, and Laurie is consumed with the adrenaline of her victory-Gerald Grice, she thinks, and his name becomes her focus-point, drives her forward, and her mouth is twisting up--but she won’t let herself feel it in her gut until the little girl is in her arms.
*
The face of the building is dark, run-down. Laurie’s skin crawls with energy. Her throat itches with Blaire’s name; she wants to shout it out, to tear the little building apart until she finds Blaire, maybe with her pigtails still in, hurt and afraid but alive, and she’s found her so quickly, there’s no way she’ll be-
*
“Blaire?” she coos in the entrance hall. “Blaire, where are you? It’s okay now-I’m here to help-Blaire? Shout if you can.”
The dogs snarl outside.
*
The smell of smoke drifts from the furnace, and Laurie pauses. Check inside, to see what’s been burned.
Her heart leaps into her throat.
*
Laurie rushes to the nearest door and throws it open. The smell of stale piss hits her nose like a fist, but it’s empty.
She checks the kitchen, checks upstairs, upends a dusty, cobweb-skirted bed. The skin of her face is tight. Dust clings at her legs, her arms, her costume, turns her into a ghost.
*
She’s not sure how she ended up back in the kitchen, but here she is, staring at a cutting board. There are deep, dark lines on the surface that she can’t see clearly, because she is crying too hard. She can’t breathe. The dogs are still fighting outside. The dogs are always fighting outside. The sound of a bone cracking arcs over the sounds of their growling.
*
Laurie opens the cupboard. Clean knives look back at her, and they are ravenous.
She touches the handle of an axe.
Who would need a knife this big? Butchers. Only butchers would, to cut up animal carcasses into manageable pieces.
Laurie stares out the window. The bone, caught between the two dogs’ slobbering maws, is nearly split from abuse.
*
She will have always been too late.
*
She breaks the kitchen window with the handle of the axe. Glass shards fall like snow around her. Her hands bleed. Her screams echo into the night.
*
Grice comes home. He plucks his gun from its holster with shaking hands. “Who’s there?”
Laurie is not crying anymore. She can see him perfectly.
*
When she is finished with him, he is just the dirty dregs of an animal carcass.
There is a gas can waiting in a corner by the furnace. She borrows a match from Grice’s ruined pants.
She does not stay to watch the building burn down.
The sound of his dogs howling follows her for blocks.
*
There are smeared drops of blood on Dan’s kitchen floor, and the lights are off. The air is too clean in here. Laurie pauses to look at the blood; when she turns away, there are new droplets, untouched, on the tile. There is one window in the living room with its curtains drawn. A street lamp’s dull glow lights her way to the stairs. She stops at the first stair to take off her shoes, one at a time, shaking dust onto Dan’s carpet.
The first door she tries must be Dan’s room. No one’s there; the bed is made; it’s perfectly still, perfectly mundane. The next door is the guest bedroom. Rorschach has his back to the door. His body swells up from the mattress, hidden by blankets up to his forehead. He doesn’t rustle when Laurie steps in and shuts the door. The carpet is soft under her feet. It’s so quiet.
Laurie climbs onto Rorschach’s bed, reveling in the way he jerks onto his back. His fist comes very close to her jaw. His mask hides his face. She hopes he is afraid of what he’s seeing.
“Silk Spectre,” he rasps, his throat clotted with sleep.
Laurie is still holding the axe as she swings her knee over his hips. He arches with tension, his open palms coming between them. It is the pose of surrender. “I found her,” she informs him, calmly.
“Silk Spectre...”
When she takes his wrist, her hand slips up, leaves shallow streaks of blood. “Do you know,” leaning in, “just how long a man can survive being cut to pieces?”
Rorschach’s surrender tightens into fists. She thinks it’s funny that he’s shaking. She touches the dark edge of the axe to his mask, and the black ink spins into the contact.
“It was actually pretty smart. The dogs-who would’ve guessed?-I mean, really, the fucking dogs.”
He lowers his free hand to the mattress and keeps it there, balled tightly against the sheets. Laurie swallows. “You wanna know what I found of her?” She sets the axe on the side table and takes his face in both of her hands, praying that he’s seeing her, that he’ll glean some of her pain, carve it away. She’s afraid she can’t be herself anymore otherwise. “I found the burnt pieces of this cute pink dress with little teddy bears printed on it. It was in the furnace, just. Teddy bears. They were so fucking cute.”
She’s crying.
“And the dogs, see, the dogs were in the backyard, and they, they...” She can’t finish. Her throat is too small.
She doesn’t stop crying until the pain has eroded into nothingness.
Rorschach’s mask studies her, silent. She thinks she knows what it is showing her.
R
Laurie takes on the Roche case.
Prompt is "90 North" by Randall Jarrell. Original idea from a prompt on the kinkmeme.
Contains: Violence/gore, implied child kidnapping and murder.
I see at last that all the knowledge
I wrung from the darkness-that the darkness flung me-
Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.
- "90 North" by Randall Jarrell
Dan’s voice over the phone is tired, and the vague idea of partnering up with him once Laurie makes it to New York dies at his strained greeting. She asks him anyway if he wouldn’t mind touching base with her-the girl will have gotten more coverage in New York, and she’ll be shocked if he and Rorschach haven’t talked about the case at least a little.
That night, she grips a suitcase in one hand and her stomach with the other, ready to puke as soon as Jon teleports her. He is scrutinizing her, his white eyes glowing in the darkness of their bedroom. Laurie ignores the sadness in his non-expression, dismisses it as anticipatory loneliness instead of omniscient knowledge of her failure. She cannot let herself fail this early-Blaire Roche must be alive in her mind, hurt and afraid but alive, or this whole thing is pointless.
An interview with Mrs. Roche on the news station was what drove Laurie to take the case. She rarely deals with these kinds of cases, thanks to the constant insistence of her mother that they’re terrible whether you win or lose, but Laurie doesn’t have the luxury of compartmentalizing a little girl’s life in those terms, anymore. The heartbreak in Mrs. Roche’s eyes was too similar to the way Sally looked the one time Laurie almost died- really almost died, rushed to the hospital with a concussion and a bullet lodged under her breasts. The humanity in that look, the utter vulnerability, was all the incentive Laurie needed to go from interested in Blaire’s disappearance to involved.
She hasn’t told Sally. Probably won’t, either, unless-until-Blaire makes it home safe and sound.
Jon lifts his hand.
“See you soon,” she says, tucking her doubts away.
He blinks at her once, slowly, and then she’s gone.
*
The lines on the wood, each a personal brand in her skin-the bone at the maw, cracked and white as pearls, white as eternity-arsenic in her throat-the smooth handle of an axe in her hand-tears on her cheeks, salt on her lips that is oceans away from the dry ravine inside of her, which swallows her, cracks her neck and spine and spits her out fresh with purpose.
*
Rorschach, Dan explains to her, is trapped upstairs with a wound that won’t stay closed, and Laurie’s not sure from his tone of voice if he’s more angry about the wound or about Rorschach. It’s a little out of her depth, because she never had to worry about Jon and never will-not about his physical well-being, anyway. She leans her suitcase on the table leg and sits down as Dan fiddles with the electric teapot.
“This kidnapping case is driving him nuts,” Dan adds, lowering his voice as he sits next to her. “When I told him that you called, he…he just seemed really relieved.” There are dark bags under Dan’s eyes, and he rubs under his glasses, an automatic tic.
Laurie wants to ask why he didn’t pick up the case if it mattered so much to Rorschach, but she knows she won’t be able to ask it without sounding accusatory. “How long’s he been cooped up there?”
“A few days now. When he first showed up I tried to let him go to work again, but half an hour after he left he came right back, blood all over his hands and clothes and-I don’t know what he did, but…”
Laurie nods. “And he’s won’t go to a hospital, will he.”
“Stick to Brooklyn,” a low voice says from the door. Rorschach is draped unselfconsciously in a blanket, his mask pulled down to his chin and posture straight.
Dan starts to stand as Laurie repeats, “Brooklyn.”
Rorschach turns his head to stare at Dan. His shoulders square under the blanket. “Yes. Likeliest place to find her.” For a moment, it looks like Dan is going to haul Rorschach out of the kitchen, but he changes his mind halfway through to check the kettle. “I’ve already visited the bars from sixteenth to twenty-second. Put twelve people in hospital so far. No results.”
“Somebody got results,” Dan mumbles, pouring boiling water into two mugs.
“All right,” Laurie says before Rorschach can engage. “I’ll keep working that way, then. How long did you look for her?”
Rorschach lowers his head; his bony hands tighten on the blanket. “Just a few days, before I was rendered incapacitated.” Laurie’s unsurprised by the venom in his voice; she’s sure the criminal-criminals?-who injured him are going to pay in blood.
She scoops up her suitcase, tucks it under her arm, and swings to her feet. “I should go,” she says, and Dan’s face closes up with disappointment and worry. “It’s getting close to time, y’know?” Laurie gestures to the window, where the sunlight is coming in muted, quickly dying behind the city’s spire horizon.
“Well, okay,” Dan says slowly. “Listen, Laurie, you-you take care of yourself out there.”
“Oh, I will,” she says, and grins. “Don’t you worry about me.”
*
Laurie watches the whites of his eyes roll in his head, red veins crossing over the malleable white flesh. Blood streaks the floor.
“That’s right, you fucker,” she murmurs, low and easy. He spasms under her. “Tha-at’s right.”
There are no other noises.
*
Laurie’s not used to interrogating people like this, just walking into bars and strip clubs and yelling her questions to the general public. She has no clue how Dan and Rorschach can do it without feeling like idiots, but Rorschach only gave her the name of a man who could help her, not his possible hang-outs. She’s in a gaudy, dimly-lit strip joint when the guy-Dick Carson-finally shows his face. He has greasy hair and greasy eyes and he keeps looking at her tits while licking his teeth, and he doesn’t give her any useful information until she pins him to a wall by his prick. Even then, it’s just a name that might help and a vague description of the guy.
Well. She’ll take what she can get.
She spends the rest of that night trawling through Brooklyn’s seediest bars, hunting a guy named Jack Turner. She ends up breaking a smartass’s wrist at 2 A.M. She’s mostly just frustrated at the lack of progress she’s made since Carson-things tend to go much faster with an omnipotent demigod on your side-but then a young woman in a slinky green dress surprises her: “J-jack hits up Magnolia’s at 7 every day,” she confesses, her face pale. “It’s on west sixth, yeah? Please don’t hurt him anymore.”
Laurie looks at the man, who’s on his knees, clawing at his forearm in pain. (Not just the Doc’s eye-candy now, is she?) “Okay,” she says. Her chest constricts. “Okay, yeah. Thanks.”
The walk back to her motel is long and quiet, her heels cracking with each step with the kind of violence one would expect from a kick to the stomach. No one’s out, or at least no criminals stupid enough to commit crime under her nose, and she has no idea what she’s going to do from now until seven tomorrow. Sleep, obviously. Maybe she’ll give Uncle Hollis a visit or something. She doesn’t want to go back to Dan’s.
The motel’s neon sign gleams down at her, an optimistic beacon in the early morning darkness. Laurie hangs back in the alleyway behind the motel and smokes outside, because she might hear something and have an excuse to vent her leftover aggression. She’s refilled her pipe twice before she resigns herself to the dead emptiness of the night. She’s inside and undressed before 3:30, tired, with nothing better to do than some crossword puzzles.
Laurie flicks the radio on, leaving it tuned to some late-night talk station, and sets to figuring out a six-letter word to finish “My kingdom for…” (My kingdom for prescience, she thinks.) The static from the radio is sharp, an undercurrent of white noise that she can’t get rid of no matter how much she messes with the dial.
When the sun starts to drift in her window, she straightens up and blinks away from it, squinting at the clock. It’s half after six.
Fine then. No use getting any sleep. She abandons the crossword puzzles, showers and changes, and heads out for coffee. There’s plenty of ways for her to waste time until her date with Jack.
*
The street smells like piss and smoke, the layered kind of smoke that spews from factory chimneys and sticks in the mouth, tasting of slaughterhouse hooks. Two dogs are fighting over a bone in the backyard, their snarls punctuating the low murmur of the city. Laurie ignores them.
*
Magnolia’s front is bland, the windows painted over and the door plain. Laurie anticipated a longer walk than it was, so she ends up loitering by the side of the building for half an hour, more and more angry with each passing minute. Two groups of people filter into the doors between 6:45 and seven, one of them with a guy who matches Jack’s description; Laurie puts out her pipe and stops wasting time.
The door sticks a little when she goes to open it, so she slams it in with her shoulder, impatient. The bang of the door hitting the wall shuts the smoky bar right the fuck up. Two men, seeing Laurie’s costume, stand, but they stay where they are, watching her. It takes a moment for Laurie to pick Jack out in the dim light, but when she does, she makes a beeline for him. She slams her hand on the table right next to his and curls her fingers against the wood.
“So. Jack, is it?”
It takes pulling a fistful of his hair out of his scalp to get a home address. He swears to her that Frank knows Grice-is a good buddy, and a squealer, too, been on edge ever since the girl disappeared-and that’s really all Laurie needs.
Turns out Frank isn’t home when Laurie comes to call, but his wife is, and she blurts out Grice’s address without so much as a raised voice to threaten her, which Laurie is grateful for-violence towards men is easier to justify, a taking-back for the women she’s had to save, maybe for herself.
It’s only ten, and Laurie is consumed with the adrenaline of her victory-Gerald Grice, she thinks, and his name becomes her focus-point, drives her forward, and her mouth is twisting up--but she won’t let herself feel it in her gut until the little girl is in her arms.
*
The face of the building is dark, run-down. Laurie’s skin crawls with energy. Her throat itches with Blaire’s name; she wants to shout it out, to tear the little building apart until she finds Blaire, maybe with her pigtails still in, hurt and afraid but alive, and she’s found her so quickly, there’s no way she’ll be-
*
“Blaire?” she coos in the entrance hall. “Blaire, where are you? It’s okay now-I’m here to help-Blaire? Shout if you can.”
The dogs snarl outside.
*
The smell of smoke drifts from the furnace, and Laurie pauses. Check inside, to see what’s been burned.
Her heart leaps into her throat.
*
Laurie rushes to the nearest door and throws it open. The smell of stale piss hits her nose like a fist, but it’s empty.
She checks the kitchen, checks upstairs, upends a dusty, cobweb-skirted bed. The skin of her face is tight. Dust clings at her legs, her arms, her costume, turns her into a ghost.
*
She’s not sure how she ended up back in the kitchen, but here she is, staring at a cutting board. There are deep, dark lines on the surface that she can’t see clearly, because she is crying too hard. She can’t breathe. The dogs are still fighting outside. The dogs are always fighting outside. The sound of a bone cracking arcs over the sounds of their growling.
*
Laurie opens the cupboard. Clean knives look back at her, and they are ravenous.
She touches the handle of an axe.
Who would need a knife this big? Butchers. Only butchers would, to cut up animal carcasses into manageable pieces.
Laurie stares out the window. The bone, caught between the two dogs’ slobbering maws, is nearly split from abuse.
*
She will have always been too late.
*
She breaks the kitchen window with the handle of the axe. Glass shards fall like snow around her. Her hands bleed. Her screams echo into the night.
*
Grice comes home. He plucks his gun from its holster with shaking hands. “Who’s there?”
Laurie is not crying anymore. She can see him perfectly.
*
When she is finished with him, he is just the dirty dregs of an animal carcass.
There is a gas can waiting in a corner by the furnace. She borrows a match from Grice’s ruined pants.
She does not stay to watch the building burn down.
The sound of his dogs howling follows her for blocks.
*
There are smeared drops of blood on Dan’s kitchen floor, and the lights are off. The air is too clean in here. Laurie pauses to look at the blood; when she turns away, there are new droplets, untouched, on the tile. There is one window in the living room with its curtains drawn. A street lamp’s dull glow lights her way to the stairs. She stops at the first stair to take off her shoes, one at a time, shaking dust onto Dan’s carpet.
The first door she tries must be Dan’s room. No one’s there; the bed is made; it’s perfectly still, perfectly mundane. The next door is the guest bedroom. Rorschach has his back to the door. His body swells up from the mattress, hidden by blankets up to his forehead. He doesn’t rustle when Laurie steps in and shuts the door. The carpet is soft under her feet. It’s so quiet.
Laurie climbs onto Rorschach’s bed, reveling in the way he jerks onto his back. His fist comes very close to her jaw. His mask hides his face. She hopes he is afraid of what he’s seeing.
“Silk Spectre,” he rasps, his throat clotted with sleep.
Laurie is still holding the axe as she swings her knee over his hips. He arches with tension, his open palms coming between them. It is the pose of surrender. “I found her,” she informs him, calmly.
“Silk Spectre...”
When she takes his wrist, her hand slips up, leaves shallow streaks of blood. “Do you know,” leaning in, “just how long a man can survive being cut to pieces?”
Rorschach’s surrender tightens into fists. She thinks it’s funny that he’s shaking. She touches the dark edge of the axe to his mask, and the black ink spins into the contact.
“It was actually pretty smart. The dogs-who would’ve guessed?-I mean, really, the fucking dogs.”
He lowers his free hand to the mattress and keeps it there, balled tightly against the sheets. Laurie swallows. “You wanna know what I found of her?” She sets the axe on the side table and takes his face in both of her hands, praying that he’s seeing her, that he’ll glean some of her pain, carve it away. She’s afraid she can’t be herself anymore otherwise. “I found the burnt pieces of this cute pink dress with little teddy bears printed on it. It was in the furnace, just. Teddy bears. They were so fucking cute.”
She’s crying.
“And the dogs, see, the dogs were in the backyard, and they, they...” She can’t finish. Her throat is too small.
She doesn’t stop crying until the pain has eroded into nothingness.
Rorschach’s mask studies her, silent. She thinks she knows what it is showing her.