Watchmen Kink Meme 3. Weeeeeeee.
Rules of the meme:
1. Anonymously post a pairing and prompt you would like to see written. Since this is a kink meme, there is supposted to be a kink involved, but normal well-written prompts should work just as well.
2. Anonymous will respond to your post and write it for you! Art and such is also acceptable/awesome. Multiple people may respond to ( Read more... )
They were aboard the Owlship, sharing coffee and revelations. Nite Owl's head was spinning no less than the others'. All this time, he'd had no idea his partner was a woman. Which was comforting in a way. Not that he had any objection to homosexuality, but his own inclinations had always been towards the fairer sex, with one exception - so he had thought. It had been discouraging to find himself making an exception for the one man who was certain to consider such behavior completely beyond the pale.
Maybe he had sensed it somehow. Regardless... his interest was still probably hopeless. Especially if she had the same attitude towards simple heterosexual fornication as her father.
“Sylvia never told me. The President sent me... well, somewhere else, I still can't reveal where.”
“The President?” Nite Owl echoed incredulously.
“President Truman,” Dean said impatiently, as if Truman were the only president worth mentioning. “There was subversive activity he needed me to investigate. I saw it as a good opportunity to make a fresh start, get away from the brazen hussy whose wiles had entangled me, to my shame.” By this, Nite Owl assumed Dean meant Wanda's mother. “But she knew how to get a message to me. She could have told me.” His mouth twisted angrily. “She never did. If she had, I would have offered to make an honest woman of her - as honest as she could be, anyway. I certainly never would have left you to grow up without a father.”
Rorschach - Wanda, of all the outlandish names, her mother *must* have been a bitch - gave a jerky nod. “I know.”
Dean looked at his daughter with what looked like reverence. “But you certainly turned out well in spite of that. I never hoped to have a child. Now I find out that not only do I have a daughter, but she's a *hero*.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “I couldn't be more proud of you, Wanda.”
Wanda's face promptly turned the exact same color as her hair. While her partner looked on in disbelief, America's most contemptuous, hardbitten vigilante bashfully ducked her head like a schoolboy being complimented on his curve ball by his favorite baseball star. “Wasn't sure it was appropriate. For a woman. But had to do something.”
“Of course you did. What's important is, you aren't a whore like your mother. Like so many young women these days. I only wish you had cause to be as proud of me.”
Wanda started making strangled *enk* noises which Nite Owl interpreted as disagreement. Nite Owl spoke up. “Uh, maybe I should drop you two off somewhere you can talk? Catch up?”
Charlie looked at Wanda. “Good idea. I'd like to see where my daughter's living.”
“I can let you guys off,” Nite Owl offered, even though he was burning with curiosity to see what other secrets his partner had been hiding.
Wanda shook her head slowly. “You can come with us... Dan.”
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In Wanda's rented room, Dan found his respect for Charlie increasing more than he would have thought possible. Dan himself was grateful for his mask; without it, his shock at the conditions in which his partner lived would have been impossible to conceal. He had long suspected that Rorschach was poor, mainly because of the mooching, but this was much worse than he had imagined. There was no other word for it: the place was a slum.
Charlie glanced over the shabby room, its stained wallpaper and ramshackle furniture which had probably been salvaged from the garbage, without showing any expression, except for a brief nod of approval when his eye fell on the tall stacks of back issues of New Frontiersman. Then he turned to Wanda.
“You live here alone?”
“Yes, sir.”
Dan covered a surprised laugh with a cough. It wasn't really funny. Rorschach had obviously been longing all his - her - life for someone she could address like that, with respect. It was actually very touching and very sad.
Charlie put a fatherly hand on Wanda's shoulder. Wanda, the daughter who, two hours ago, he hadn't known he had. “It isn't proper for a young woman to live alone, unchaperoned. I know, you couldn't help it, with no family and no husband. But now that we've found each other, you should come and live with me. My apartment isn't very big, but there's room for two people in it.”
Dan didn't expect that to go well. When he had figured out that his partner was living hand to mouth, he had tried to offer help, of a modest kind - offered to buy Rorschach a new suit, for instance. His offers had been gruffly refused. Rorschach didn't want to be the recipient of charity. Dan had started just making sure he always had plenty of sugar cubes and canned goods on hand and pretended not to notice when some of them went missing sometimes.
To his amazement, Wanda said, with what she probably thought was meekness, “Yes, sir.”
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I am absolutely fascinated with where this is going, and how Wanda's dynamic with her father will develop. Will it be a positive or negative influence? I can't wait to find out!
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Daniel was relieved that Rorschach showed up for patrol the following night. He hadn't been sure it would fit in with Charlie's notions of propriety. But when he asked, Rorschach just gave him that inscrutable ink-blot look and said, “Battle has to be fought, Daniel.”
“Right. Well, let's fight it, then.”
When they patrolled, it had long been their custom for Rorschach to periodically harangue the world in general in the quiet moments in between finding crimes to foil. Mostly their companionship was one of silent camaraderie, but now and then, something would set Rorschach off and he would unfold his wild theories of conspiracies, of Communists and fluoridation, of international bankers (“Not all Jews,” Rorschach had said tersely once when Dan had protested at that one) and porn merchants, of modern artists and drug czars. At first, Dan had tried to argue, but soon he had realized how futile that was and would simply let his partner rant until he ran out of steam.
But now, in between skirmishes, Rorschach had turned into a veritable chatterbox. And every sentence began with the same heartbreaking phrase:
“My father says....”
With a full-time, low-paying job in addition to the vigilante gig, Wanda probably hadn't had time to make any friends or form any normal relationships. Dan realized painfully that he was probably the only person Wanda could share this with.
When they were catching their breath after having interrupted a break-in, Dan spoke up before his partner could. “Why did you keep it secret that you were a woman?”
Rorschach stiffened. “Not appropriate job for woman. Didn't want to set bad example.”
Nite Owl laughed before he could stop himself. As if anyone looked to a paranoid, reclusive vigilante for a role model. “But you're doing it,” he said hastily.
She shrugged. “I can. Most people can't. Has to be done.”
Dan supposed that made sense, in a Rorschach kind of way.
At the end of the night, right before Rorschach stalked off into the night, Dan spoke up again. “Wanda?” he said, experimenting with the name.
She stiffened, maybe at hearing her civilian name while she was in uniform, and waited.
“I'm glad you found him.”
“Hurm,” she replied, and disappeared into the darkness.
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Dan couldn't think of a polite way to compliment her on not smelling as bad as usual, but he did say, “New clothes! You look great!”
He couldn't see her face, of course, but something in the set of her shoulders made him think she was embarrassed. “Father bought.”
“You wouldn't let me buy you anything.”
“Family. Different.”
“I suppose so.”
They engaged in another night of alternately beating up bad people and Wanda further acquainting Dan with her father's opinions. Which were remarkably similar to her opinions. Dan was starting to wonder if she wasn't actualy his daughter, but his clone.
Dan noticed something else, too. Rorschach was as efficient as ever at bringing down hoodlums, but she was noticeably less sadistic about it. Not gentle, no, but Dan felt certain that the pain that had driven her to do this had ebbed. Sometimes her cruelty had disturbed him, so this was another welcome change.
She was still Rorschach, though. Still the avenger of the night, ruthlessly just. Still the bizarrely creative fighter she always had been; on this night, with half a dozen large armed thugs coming for them, she had yanked open a drawer and flung the contents at them in a well-aimed torrent, contents which unfortunately for them turned out to be apparently the entire line of Ginsu knives.
At the end of the night, just when she was about to leave, Dan gathered his nerve and made his request. Pulling off his own cowl and goggles, he asked, “Rorschach... do you mind if I ask you a favor?”
She only regarded him blottily, so he hastily went on, “May I... see your face again?”
It was a minute before she replied. “Why?”
It seemed a normal enough thing to want to Dan, but Rorschach never had been normal. Not even by vigilante standards. “Because... we've been partners for years and I've only seen your face once?” He tried to think of a way to put it that she would understand and consider valid. “You've been pretty much the most important person in my life for a long time, and I've only just found out what you look like.”
She made no response for an uncomfortably long moment, but at length seemed to decide that his unaccountable wish was a reasonable one. She took off her fedora and carefully pulled off the mask.
She was still ugly. There was no denying it. Dan studied her thoughtfully. He had been thinking about this face a lot in the last couple of days. Knowing what it was like hadn't changed the way he felt. The one surprise was how interesting her face was in its awkward angularity. He supposed it was a face one could get used to.
She had held his gaze at first, but his intent scrutiny at length made her uncomfortable and she dropped her eyes. “Know I'm not pretty,” she muttered.
“Rorschach - Wanda - the way you throw a punch is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen,” he retorted, and he meant it. It was that perfectly flowing punch that had first awakened his interest in Rorschach, a long while back. Her whole body moved with it. It was almost like watching a ballet.
And she always moved that way when she was fighting. Elsewhere she was more awkward, but in a fight or while scaling a wall she was elegance in motion.
“Don't like being without my face,” she muttered, pulling the mask back on with an abrupt motion.
“I understand that. I'm sorry. I just had to see you again.”
She left without even a *hurm*. Dan didn't mind. With the image of that gaunt homely face in his mind, he had to think some things over.
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captcha is telling you it's time, Dan: "south rectory"
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***
Dan took a few weeks to think it over. He had never really asked himself what he felt for Rorschach, aside from camaraderie and lust, because he had always assumed that nothing but the first of those was viable. When he had believed his partner was a man, given Rorschach's hidebound notions, he had resigned himself to unrequited lust and tried not to think about it too hard. There hadn't been any other possible course of action.
Now that he knew Rorschach was a woman and that making his interest known wouldn't automatically get him dropped down an elevator shaft, he had to figure out if he wanted to make it known.
With any other woman Dan had ever been interested in, the course would have been simple. Ask her to dinner, let them see if they still liked each other by the time dessert came, then suggest a nightcap back at his place. Which would probably get him dropped down an elevator shaft.
That was the problem. Rorschach had very rigid notions. With her, everything was all or nothing. If Dan expressed interest, he was pretty much going to have to marry her.
After weeks of thinking it over, Dan hit on what he hoped was a workable compromise, not unmindful of the fact that Rorschach disapproved of compromises. One Friday night as they were finishing up their patrol, Dan said, “Hey, why don't we get some takeout before you go home? You don't have to work tomorrow, do you?”
“No. But should go home.”
“Just stay for a little while. I'd like to hear more about your father.”
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Still, when they were at his kitchen table with their burgers and fries (American food, not Chinese communist sympathizing cuisine), and Dan had coaxed Wanda to remove her mask, Dan started by saying, “It seems you and your father share all the same values.” At the brief nod, he continued, “That's good. But what would you have done if you'd found him and he had been more like, say, me?”
Wanda took a minute to think that over. “You are a good man, Daniel.”
“Even though we disagree about a lot of things?”
“Just innocent. Think other people are good like you. Don't know what scum they really are.”
“I see.” At least that explained how she had been able to team up with him despite his soft liberal values. She thought they were the product of naivete, not... whatever it was that she thought motivated those she designated as “scum”.
“Is there anything you and your father disagree about?”
“Thinks I should quit job. Says he owes me. Won't. Pull own weight.”
“What do you do, anyway?”
“Work in garment factory.”
The words made Dan glance at her uniform. Before, when Rorschach's clothes had gotten bloodstains or anything else on them, they had stayed for weeks. Now her trenchcoat and suit were clean, obviously washed on a regular basis. Speaking of which, she was smelling better all the time. Dan suspected it wasn't only that her father was either making her wash or making it possible for her to do so. She was also probably eating better, now that she wasn't scraping to make rent. The cheap stuff she'd doubtless been living on before couldn't have had a good effect on her body.
“What?” she demanded, gruff.
Startled out of his thoughts, Dan said, “Hmm?”
“Twisted your mouth. Looked sad.” She glared at him suspiciously. “Why?”
“Ah.” He hesitated. “I was wishing you had let me do more for you.”
She looked down at her remaining fries. “Not necessary.” She paused, then continued. “You are a good man, Daniel.”
“I hope your father agrees.”
“Does!” was the emphatic response. Wanda then related everything her father had said about the heroism of masked vigilantes. Dan watched her surprisingly engaging homely face and made attentive noises at the appropriate times, but his mind was on other things. He was asking himself, Could we live with each other? Or would we strangle each other within a month?
He wanted it to work. He was lonely, had been for years. But a superhero couldn't marry just anyone. Some women might find the idea of marrying a masked avenger romantic, but presented with the reality, of nights alone at home while he patrolled the streets, of having him stumble in hours after midnight with flesh wounds needing bandaging....
He wanted to believe that Rorschach was his solution. She would understand his life. And he was attracted to her. Her face hadn't changed that. He was glad he hadn't seen it for so long; he might never have been able to see past it to the beauty in her fighting, the grace of a perfectly oiled machine. And they had a bond, built from countless nights of watching each other's backs and risking their lives together. Wanda should be the perfect woman for him.
But as they finished up their milkshakes and he listened to her usual reactionary diatribes, different now only because of the recurring prefix: “My father says....” Could he listen to this for the rest of his life? And how long would it be before he violated some tenet of her ironclad code, in a way that she couldn't dismiss as caused by his being “innocent”? He would disappoint her. It was inevitable.
And all that was assuming that she was interested in him. She had never shown any sign. It was still likely that this was completely one-sided.
When she pulled back on her mask and left through the tunnel from the Nest, he watched her go and knew that it would never work.
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He was still wrestling with this days later, on the afternoon when he received a phone call. “Charlie Dean here,” the man barked when Dan picked the phone up. “Be in my office at three.”
“What? Why?”
The older man's voice was impatient. “My daughter trusts you with her life. I think I have a right to know what kind of man you are.” Then came an all too familiar pause, just a fleeting break in barked remarks, before Charlie grudgingly amended, “If you have another appointment, we can discuss things at some other time.”
For one of that clan, it amounted to being considerate. “No, three is fine.”
Dan presented himself at Charlie's office at the appointed time and submitted to nearly an hour of brutal grilling. It was irritating, but he supposed that if his daughter was a masked avenger, he would also want to reassure himself about her partner.
Charlie already knew about his moderate politics, it emerged, and he made the same excuse for them as Wanda. But he interrogated Dan about his fighting skills, his motivations, and then about his background in general. When they came to that, Dan decided to take the bull by the horns.
“You do know that I'm Jewish, Mr. Dean?” he asked, his tone challenging.
Charlie looked at him for a minute, then declared, “You shouldn't feel ashamed of that, son. Jews make good Americans! Levi Strauss, Louis Brandeis, any number of decorated World War II veterans. I've had Jews working with me and under me here at the Bureau, and they were some of the best men I've served with.” He continued with a rant, the point of which seemed to be that all the “bad” Jews, like Marx, were also self-hating antisemites, while Dan tried to decide whether to be offended at the patronization, or relieved that his partner and her father were a little saner than he had thought.
But then, he thought he could see where this exception to their general bigotry had come from. Both of them had personally known Jews who clearly met their rigid definitions of “good men”. Charlie Dean had served with them in the Bureau and the Army, Wanda had partnered with one in vigilantism. With the proof before their very own eyes that the nastier articles in New Frontiersman were clearly in error, they had found a way to make exceptions. Maybe that was all both of them needed to overcome the more unsavory aspects of their ideologies: to personally see evidence to the contrary. Maybe he could even help them with that. He had already helped Wanda with it, more than he had known.
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“What's your business here?” one demanded, with the air of one used to the authority of official sanction.
“Personal,” Dan said briefly, trying to walk around him. The other blocked his path.
“You an informant?” the second one asked, his tone belligerent.
Dan indulged a brief fantasy of beating the stuffing out of the conceited young man. Would do him a world of good. “I'm a friend of Mr. Dean's daughter,” he said, trying again to pass them.
Both men cracked up, and Dan froze. “Another one?” the first one snickered.
“Another what?” Dan was already sure he didn't want to know.
“Don't worry, you're not the only one. Ever since his daughter moved in with him, he's been dragging every bachelor he can find in for evaluation.”
Dan was incredulous. “You mean he's....”
“Trying to find her a husband.” The second Fibbie guffawed. “But just try to find any man's who's desperate enough to marry a dog like her!”
The next thing Dan knew, the second Fibbie was lying on the floor trying to stanch the blood spurting from his nose with his necktie, the other Fibbie was yelling for security, and Charlie Dean was standing in the doorway to his office, and Dan's knuckles were sore.
Dan was preparing himself to apologize and make some kind of excuse when the security guards arrived, but Dean spoke up first. Pointing to the second Fibbie, he said, “Clumsy idiot tripped over his own two feet. Take him to a doctor.” Looking at Dan, he said calmly, “Nice talking to you.”
Dan left, feeling unaccountably embarrassed, and with an awful lot on his mind.
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