(no subject)
Fandom: WatchmenTitle: Small
Characters/Pairings: Dan/Laurie, mentions of Dr. Manhattan and squint-hints of Dan/Ror
Summary: Something make you feel huge, others make you insignificant
Rating/Warnings: PG
Notes: Not the intended Valentine's Day piece. Will post something happier soon. Also, I imagine some people will hate me for this story.
It's been six months and Utopia isn't anything like Laurie would think fits the dictionary definition. It isn't all peace and joy; there's still punks on the streets and malcontents in closed rooms, people looking for ways to take advantage of the changing system and people just enjoying the confusion.
The world again has need for their masks and uniforms, and maybe they're taking advantage of the situation too, dressing up and going out like old times- like it's technically not still illegal. She's as happy as she's ever been though, feeling useful on the streets again, once more appreciated by the people, who have realized with sudden terror that they need all the help they can get. Before it was like playing dress up, but now… well, now it's like something from a comic book, dashing into danger with full knowledge and looking only for the satisfaction of doing something- not about publicity or gratitude, just the pleasure of seizing the moment, making the judgment, and acting.
It's all so different than it had been before. There is no one to tell her not to worry because he knows she'll be safe. No one to tell her he's seen the end of the night and everything is all right. No omnipotent distance, no soft blue eyes curiously exploring her face, no gently furrowed brow begging her to understand some metaphysical construct of sentimentality he's trying to represent.
All things considered, she thinks about Jon more than she should. She is perhaps a little guilty, perhaps a little angry. He had proven his love for her, at least for a moment- sacrificing his sanctuary for her to come back to Earth on her whim. To him, she knows, a whim is all it was- a girl's fancy of saving a world that couldn't be saved. And she had done- well, what? She can't call it betrayal, because that implies doing something unexpected, hurting someone, and Jon is all-knowing, un-aging rock; he knew what she would do when she saw Daniel looking so broken (and it was not a pity fuck, nothing so vulgar) and he had smiled when he saw them. Smiled, and went on his way.
Six months since she's seen him, six months since Adrian made his attempt at slicing through the Gordian knot of cold war, six months since the birth of his 'Utopia'. Six months, and the world is pregnant once again with bottled hostilities and violence, giving slow birth to newly emboldened criminals and needing them, the way any pregnant woman needs doctors.
When she describes this feeling to Daniel, she is surprised by the stern frown that twists his lips, the flash of something like pain and bitterness in his eyes. "Don't get self-righteous about this," he'd warned in a low grumble, turning away from her. It was the shortest, haughtiest thing he'd ever said to her, and maybe it was the tone, or maybe it the way he turned away from her, but it made her angry, the grim rebuke to her harmless metaphor.
It's not fair for her to stay mad at him though, because she's as happy with him, because of him, as she's ever been in her life. She can't just forgive him for the perceived slight, but she can and does put it behind her, and life goes on- and it's so simple, so simple for life to carry on.
Weeks pass, and she tries not to take his body language as further insult. His quiet 'doing-things-my-way-at-my-own-pace-in-my-own-broken-down-vehicle' behavior, his intense focus when they go on patrol; his rolling away from her at night, his polite but meaningless chit-chat throughout the day. None of this means anything; it's just some manly form of PMS or something. Easy to distract herself throughout the evenings with the workout provided, cleaning the city with him only a half step behind, just as excited, just as eager, just as breathless. Just as in love with the night and all its promises of justice and action.
On the streets with him, she feels they are both larger than life; stretched into insane proportions like (Jon) something out of a myth. But as he becomes more business-like about their evenings, she feels him shrinking in her mind, becoming more mundane as he seeks some kind of normalcy in their life. She can't understand why he's behaving like this, but (she doesn't think it's petty) she refuses to ask what his problem is.
Then comes one early morning when she rolls over, seeking the warmth of his back, and finds his space cold and vacant. Part of her, a big part, want to just roll back the other way, curl up against the cold, and go back to sleep- fuck him and his damn moods- but the rest of her is tired of this dance. She hisses against the cold of the bare wood floor, padding softly into the hall. She can see a light on downstairs, probably the kitchen, and huffs a sigh.
She can't explain the instinctive urge to slip down the stairs, to skip the places on the floor that will creak and give her away. It doesn't matter where the impulse comes from, she obeys it when it rises up on the second stair. Slinking down into shadow, wishing for not the first time that she was just a little less pale, and edging down the hall. It feels silly, like a child sneaking up on some fond relative, but at the same time, it's exactly right.
Something about the pale light eking from the kitchen doorway speaks of private moments and willful loneliness, and she pauses a step away. There's an emotion building up in her stomach, crawling up her throat like fear or doubt, and she thinks for a moment that maybe she doesn't want to see what Daniel's doing, doesn't want to interrupt, doesn't want to know.
But she's the goddamn Silk Spectre, and she's learned enough about fear to know better than to just give into it. Stealing herself, wondering at the sharpness of her apprehension, she eases far enough to peer around the corner, feeling childish again.
At first she thinks maybe Daniel's asleep; he's sitting at the table in just his pajama pants, arms folded in front and cradling his head. There's a cup of coffee sitting to the side and a folded dark something (just a newspaper) under his elbow, and the domesticity of the scene almost relaxes her. Until, of course, her training kicks in and she looks closer at the scene; the hitch of the shoulders, the strain of the spine-- somehow most incriminating: there is no steam curling from the cup, implying that it's been poured and sitting there for some time.
Fingers clench and unclench at the thing lurking under Dan's elbow, bunching at it, and it hits her that it's very much not a newspaper and where did he even get that? And where had he been hiding it? It should be in Antarctica, buried in blasting snow, gone and forgotten so Dan can move on.
Regardless of the fact that it shouldn't even be here, Daniel is wordlessly gripping it, fingers splaying and clenching in a way that is mutely pitiful, and regardless of the fact that she almost wants to be angry for its presence, something about that gesture makes her heart clench painfully. It should surprise her that Dan found something material to cling to Rorschach's memory by, but somehow she can't.
Instead of being surprised or angry, she's more suddenly depressed-- how long have they been treading around each other, sharing space but not living together-- respecting each other's space to the extent that Dan probably didn't even bother hiding the blood-splattered relic, just tucked it in a drawer because he knows she'd never pry that far.
She twitches back into the hallway when Daniel shifts in his seat, pressing against the wall and trying to suppress the feeling that she's been spying on something private and sacrosanct. Closing her eyes, she hears Dan moan something that sounds a little like Oh God and a little like Rorschach, and her heart hurts a little more. Peering around the corner again, she notes the tenseness in the posture, the hard clench of fingers around the fabric, and the tremble of his shoulders.
He doesn't cry like a man, muted and restrained; and he doesn't cry like a woman, in harsh, loud sobs. His weeping is closest to that of a lost child, honest pain laid bare in his loneliness, sniffling and choking and doing nothing to muffle the anguish, to dam it up or repress it. Just lets himself go, rocking slightly in his chair and clenching the ruined mask.
For a moment she debates going to him, but the moment is so private and so painful and she has no idea how to deal with men who have opened themselves to weakness. She's never been in a situation like this, never had to even think of comforting someone. She wants to do something to make him stop, because the sound is like knives against her ribs and she can only imagine what it's like for him, and it's not fair because she doesn't know what to do.
Backing away, she thinks it's probably for the best just to forget she ever woke up tonight, to just go back to bed and return to the charade tomorrow. The best for both of them.
"Christ," Dan moans from the kitchen, his voice harsh and so, so broken. "How am I going to do this without you?"
Laurie doesn't know who he's talking to, and hopes for the first time it's not her as the sound of his voice floats out from the kitchen. She doesn't know how to help him either, and the knowledge that he needs someone-- someone who will never come-- sends the knives slipping off her ribs and strait into her heart.
Halfway up the stairs, she can still hear him weeping, and she wonders if Rorschach would have known what to do, in her place. She thinks of how long they worked together, how much they had seen together, the trust and camaraderie twining two very different people together; thinks of how glowingly Dan would speak of Rorschach, even though Laurie had seen no real reason for it. She thinks of how, paranoid and stubborn and insistent, Rorschach had still always come back to Dan, even after the Keene act. She thinks about friendship and trust and how sometimes those things worked together and became something more meaningful.
She thinks of all these things, and suddenly, as she's collapsing onto the bed, she feels very, very small.
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Happy Valentine's Day…