Fic: Watchmen Movieverse, Nite Owl II/Ozymandias, "Personal Sacrifice"
Title: Personal Sacrifice
Author/Artist: muzivitch
Series: Watchmen
Pairing: Nite Owl II/Ozymandias
She was angry, Laurie thought as the icy wind blew through Veidt's audience chamber. Rorschach was enraged; of course, he would be - she'd never known him to be anything less than angry, and Veidt's actions today were a direct betrayal of everything Rorschach ever believed. Jon was...well, Jon felt nothing, Jon was entirely impassive, but it was Jon. She'd never known him to feel violently about anything. She assumed he had, once, but those days had been gone long before she met him.
Dan's reaction was the surprise.
She couldn't claim to know Dan Dreiberg that well, at least not before the last few weeks. They'd worked together occasionally, before the Keene Act, but not often. She'd mostly worked alone, and then with Jon, and Dan had always been partnered with Rorschach - but sometimes, sometimes the two of them had coordinated, and there had always been an ease to it, and she'd always thought idly that the two of them could do a lot together. Then she hadn't really seen him again, not for eight years, not until the last few weeks. The way they'd come together had been easy too, really, when you thought about it; the first time hadn't worked out, but after that they'd been heat and stroking hands and an unexpected grace that was entirely different than it'd ever been with Jon.
Laurie tipped her head to one side, her dark eyes narrowing under her thick fringe of hair as she watched Nite Owl slam Ozymandias into his wall of televisions. No, she guessed she didn't know Dan that well, not yet, because she wouldn't have ever thought that he'd do this.
There had been words at first - angry ones from Dan, who was vocalizing what she and Rorschach were thinking, that this was a betrayal, a broken vow. Not just of them, as the Watchmen, she thought, but a betrayal of humanity; Veidt had broken the vow that all decent people implicitly took. He'd thrown away the idea that people's lives, their individual lives were important.
And Veidt had been derisive, and sardonic, and Laurie couldn't blame Dan for throwing that first punch - she would have kicked him in his smug head herself - but then he'd kept going, long past the point where there was any purpose to it. His anger wasn't even flagging, she thought, and Veidt wasn't even fighting back. It was like...it was like he was letting Dan get it out, and there was a look in his eyes, a kind of softness she'd never seen before. There was a pain in Dan's underneath the anger, like a personal betrayal, and her own eyes darkened with a flash of recognition.
There was something between the two of them, she thought. She'd never seen it before, but she kind of thought...she kind of thought that it had probably always been there, and always would be.
"Dan," Veidt finally said quietly, in a voice that was calm, and patient, and melancholy, and made her wonder for the first time if doing this had cost Veidt something after all. "A world united in a peace... they had to be sacrificed."
"No!" Dan said, and his tone was so much sharper, so much angrier. "You haven't idealized mankind but you've... you've deformed it! You mutilated it. That's your legacy." And then a moment later, in a lower, softer, horribly bitter voice that was so unlike Dan that she didn't even really register it as him at first: "That's the real practical joke."
Dan wasn't looking at Veidt as they turned away - it was like he'd looked at him so long that he couldn't bear to again - but Laurie glanced at him as she spun away. There was a soft pain in his eyes that had nothing to do with the bruises Dan had left on his skin, a desolation. He'd sacrificed fifteen million for this, she thought, and he'd sacrificed something else, too, something that had been just his.
She wondered if he even realized that.
Author/Artist: muzivitch
Series: Watchmen
Pairing: Nite Owl II/Ozymandias
She was angry, Laurie thought as the icy wind blew through Veidt's audience chamber. Rorschach was enraged; of course, he would be - she'd never known him to be anything less than angry, and Veidt's actions today were a direct betrayal of everything Rorschach ever believed. Jon was...well, Jon felt nothing, Jon was entirely impassive, but it was Jon. She'd never known him to feel violently about anything. She assumed he had, once, but those days had been gone long before she met him.
Dan's reaction was the surprise.
She couldn't claim to know Dan Dreiberg that well, at least not before the last few weeks. They'd worked together occasionally, before the Keene Act, but not often. She'd mostly worked alone, and then with Jon, and Dan had always been partnered with Rorschach - but sometimes, sometimes the two of them had coordinated, and there had always been an ease to it, and she'd always thought idly that the two of them could do a lot together. Then she hadn't really seen him again, not for eight years, not until the last few weeks. The way they'd come together had been easy too, really, when you thought about it; the first time hadn't worked out, but after that they'd been heat and stroking hands and an unexpected grace that was entirely different than it'd ever been with Jon.
Laurie tipped her head to one side, her dark eyes narrowing under her thick fringe of hair as she watched Nite Owl slam Ozymandias into his wall of televisions. No, she guessed she didn't know Dan that well, not yet, because she wouldn't have ever thought that he'd do this.
There had been words at first - angry ones from Dan, who was vocalizing what she and Rorschach were thinking, that this was a betrayal, a broken vow. Not just of them, as the Watchmen, she thought, but a betrayal of humanity; Veidt had broken the vow that all decent people implicitly took. He'd thrown away the idea that people's lives, their individual lives were important.
And Veidt had been derisive, and sardonic, and Laurie couldn't blame Dan for throwing that first punch - she would have kicked him in his smug head herself - but then he'd kept going, long past the point where there was any purpose to it. His anger wasn't even flagging, she thought, and Veidt wasn't even fighting back. It was like...it was like he was letting Dan get it out, and there was a look in his eyes, a kind of softness she'd never seen before. There was a pain in Dan's underneath the anger, like a personal betrayal, and her own eyes darkened with a flash of recognition.
There was something between the two of them, she thought. She'd never seen it before, but she kind of thought...she kind of thought that it had probably always been there, and always would be.
"Dan," Veidt finally said quietly, in a voice that was calm, and patient, and melancholy, and made her wonder for the first time if doing this had cost Veidt something after all. "A world united in a peace... they had to be sacrificed."
"No!" Dan said, and his tone was so much sharper, so much angrier. "You haven't idealized mankind but you've... you've deformed it! You mutilated it. That's your legacy." And then a moment later, in a lower, softer, horribly bitter voice that was so unlike Dan that she didn't even really register it as him at first: "That's the real practical joke."
Dan wasn't looking at Veidt as they turned away - it was like he'd looked at him so long that he couldn't bear to again - but Laurie glanced at him as she spun away. There was a soft pain in his eyes that had nothing to do with the bruises Dan had left on his skin, a desolation. He'd sacrificed fifteen million for this, she thought, and he'd sacrificed something else, too, something that had been just his.
She wondered if he even realized that.