New World Order: The Watchman Rises 1
Always thought death would be quieter. Not so loud, at least. Too much noise to be dead, unless afterlife suddenly real. After so many years bullshitting, strange time for God to decide to be real, let alone Heavenly Host and rest of Biblical drivel.
Always assumed death would be less painful, too. Not act; dying always wretched and filthy. Just…BEING dead, less painful, not painful at all. Can’t decide if this is bad or not. If dead, then at least still feel, so not dead by default, and what?
If not dead, then what…?
He feels cold, so cold around the edges, but his core is warm.
Kind of warm that feels wet. Warm like melted butter, mushy and runny, no other words for it. Rancid-warm.
There is no taint to his skin. Instead, he feels fresh, clean-scrubbed, pink at the ears and nose and-
Naked, no clothes, cold around the edges-
“I presume you are awake now, yes?”
Who-? Who is that? Voice…so familiar…
“Now-now, my dear Walter, pretending to be napping is only keeping me in such horrible suspence.”
Ozymandius! Adrian! Worthless shit-swilling-traitor! Fuck-…
…Still naked…
He sits up with such rapidness that the stars filling his field of vision outnumber the greatest astral displays of his childhood, the summer he finally ran away and rode the rails to the wide-open fields of Schenectady. He flails at his face, trying to cradle his head with his arms, but his dizziness is spread to all the outlying stations of his nervous system; his feeble back gives out as soon as the brace his elbows provided disappears.
Adrian barely saves his fall.
“Oh-ho-ho, Walter, I won’t have you giving yourself a cerebral hemorrhage…At least, not before I know whether my machinations were…successful.”
Adrian’s hands. Cradling head like Doomsday button, probably read to crush, thinks I’ve information I’ll spill? Sick and deluded.
“G…go to…hell…Vv-vv-veidt.”
Adrian gingerly places Walter’s head back against the infirmary pillow before clapping his hands slowly but with relish, applauding himself before an empty room, his only audience the infirm man on the table.
Still too weak, exposed in more ways than one-
“Welcome back, Mr. Kovacks, and let me say, looking quite as fit as ever.”
Have to find way to sit. Or talk. One or other good, both better. Hope Captain Monologue won’t notice not paying attention…
“You know, I had my doubts, what when I first saw the…state…you were in. I dare say a man of less integrity might have shuddered at the sight, but we both know I’ve never been one to pass up a challenge.”
Have to…move…somehow…
His fingers inch along cold metal, his flesh sticking as he begs his muscles to comprehend the gravity of their situation: They might think they can do whatever they please, but if they let him down now, they might go straight back to Hell with the rest of him. Apparently, Hell exists after all, seeing as he must have been there if Ozymandius had found something to bring back-
Something hard, foreign, boxy and metallic interrupts the normal curvature of his left side, something static and unyielding against his flesh. His roaming index and ring fingers inch along its breadth, tracing the fused line between man and machine, his mind drawing the parallel line between the intrusion and the base of his spine.
Some sort of maintenance, catheter maybe? Not bomb, please don’t be bomb. Ozymandius cruel, maybe insane, definitely not retarded…
Instinctually his body tries to pull away from the phantom trap, its true intent currently lost to Walter, but he assumes the worst, just to be on the safe side.
Startled by pain, he lets out a clear yelp of distress, pain shooting wildly across the spiderweb of his nervous system, its epicenter the strange intruder on his side.
“Dear me, Walter, but it seems I forgot to detach you…”
Ozymandius breaks his self-important tirade, the quick clip of his boots against ironwork grating stopping directly to Walter’s right, and he feels Adrian’s body heat fall across him as the man leans over him; he appears as a dark blur, obscuring the institutional fluorescents.
Smell, that smell…Smelled before, often, mostly recent, like dreaming but awake, maybe dead. Yes, probably dead. Was here, though, somehow.
A series of cheerful chimes sound over the intercom, and a muffled woman’s voice gives some sort of computerized update as a pressurized hiss fills the room. An instant later, a great weight seems to be lifted off Walter’s entire body: He feels light, anticipating effortless movement, faster than he knows how to comprehend.
He sits up directly into Adrian’s chest, knocking the caped man back, only-
-Only he’s in civilian garb, a lab coat and black slacks, disheveled, unkempt, unlike himself. Dark circles; must not be sleeping recently. Cat-antelope-thing dead, maybe guilty conscience? Certainly not over billions he tried to kill, certainly not Dr. Manhattan-
Hissing, Walter clutches his head again: His brain doesn’t want to think that route right now, apparently, because his head might explode if he does.
Across the room, Adrian laughs almost imperceptibly.
“What’re you so pleased about?” Walter grumbles, rubbing the sides of his face as the headache dissipates, and he begins to get his bearings: The room is huge, with open bulkheads to left and right set between arching walls that appeared to be glass, but looking through them proved they needed to be something much more durable. “Are we…under water?”
“You’ve always been the perceptive one, Walter,” Adrian smiles, turning his attention to a nearby wire rack full of bundled clothes. Selecting one from the center shelf, he unties the carefully-folded assemblage before setting it primly at Walter’s side.
Privacy? Huge empty room, just the two of us, he could go be busy somewhere.
Really, the room is quite packed with similar stations to his own: A table more appropriate for dissection than patient care ringed by piles of tubing, life support machines, and unidentifiable million-dollar gadgets that look straight out of a science fiction tabloid. In the center of the room stands a massive circular work station, like a nurses’ hub without the nurses or patients or hospital. This is where Adrian’s attention diverted to as he speaks, a long row of flasks and test tubes set up in an order only particular to his current work.
“Aren’t you wondering where you are?” Adrian asks, busying himself with pouring and measuring and annotating. “Aren’t you going to ask me some delightfully cliché questions about how you got here and what’s going on? Because, let me assure you, Walter, I’ve already told you.”
“…What?” Walter asks, a bit stunned. He’s pulling on the blue scrubs that comprised Adrian's gift-bundle, one-leg-and-then-the-other-just-like-that-don’t-fall-down, and Adrian’s line of talk is both baffling and annoyingly distracting. “You-“
“I’ve been telling you every day for the past 6 months, Walter,” Adrian interrupts, rounding on him with what Walter can only call homicidal fervor. He stops just short of stepping on Walter’s toes, pushing the weak man until his waist contacts the metal death-bed and he’s forced to lean his upper body back, nearly reeling. Adrian’s hushed words barely reach him in the expanse as he continues: “I’ve been telling you each day, ever since we began…I hummed it to your first cells, constructed your tissues to its tune, whispered it into your newly-formed ears, Walter, Walter-Walter-Walter, I made you, don’t you see? I made you.”
“You-…” Walter repeats, dumbfounded. Sure, his voice is hoarse and his muscles are unused, his mind is clouded and he feels completely at odds with himself, but he was dead, wasn’t he? Not rebuilt, that’s insane, impossible, incredible. Besides, why would it be necessary? It wasn’t like Dr. Manhattan or -
Crippling waves of pain, his head screaming as his mouth tries to follow suit, but it’s enough to take his breath away. Adrian steps back as Walter doubles over, gasping as the gears in his head grind to a hault.
What’s happening??!? Can’t…remember…
Night Owl and…Jupiter…nuclear war, Ruskies threatening Nixon, the whole world, and Ozymandius does too…Doctor, what did you do? To ME?!
“Doctor…Manhattan-“ Walter wheezes, groping at his thoughts while the dark ring of unconsciousness closes around his field of vision. He feels he needs to know, and Adrian will have to tell him, or he’ll force him to tell him, anyway, because his brain won’t think it, for some reason. “What…what did…what happened?”
He feels light, like the moment Adrian disconnected him, and just as he gets the idea he’s soaring through clouds, the solidity and frigidity of the metal table bring him back to reality. Adrian has picked him up under the arms, sitting him down on the edge, holding him steady. They are so close that Walter can once more smell the clean-smell coming off Adrian’s tired body.
Adrian places his hands on either side of Walter’s head and pulls him close, his temple touching Adrian’s chest. Awkward, uncomfortable thoughts surge past the blockade surrounding the Doctor, overriding one concern with another, and he’s caught in the backwash of confusion.
“Oh, Walter…Don’t think poorly of him, Walter,” Adrian soothes, ignoring the tension and discomfort radiating off his subject. “He did what he felt he had to do, nothing more, nothing less, as is Dr. Manhattan’s way, I suppose. But…if I may, he was a bit reckless, foolish even. Foolish, but well-intentioned.”
“Stop talking circles,” Walter grunts, pulling away finally, peering up into Adrian’s shifting eyes. He may have seemed tired, but there is no fatigue betrayed by his eyes, so perhaps it is his body playing games.
“He killed you.”
Water is dripping into a half-filled bucket, tinging hollowly in the vast expanse, a ticking echo that fills the void of silence between the two men, one stoic and the other slack-jawed.
“He…killed me?”
“Yes. Is that so hard to believe?”
“But…Why…Yes, I don’t believe it, I can’t! I can’t…don’t…want to-“ He mumbles into silence again, looking at his lap to avoid Adrian’s eyes.
Everything’s changed, then? Dr. Manhattan kills me. Would never happen, not in a MILLION years, but then what other explanation is there? And why-…?
“I do feel…different,” Walter says to himself, touching his side where the metal box used to be. Now there is only a sort of plug, like an empty outlet, and he doesn’t dwell there any longer than he did the thought of his supposed last moments. Both pains are physical and psychological, but neither is moreso yet than the other. He doesn’t really feel like dealing with either.
His face is turned upward, Adrian’s palms soft and warm against his cheek, his jaw, his neck. Warm lips greet his own, daring to nuzzle closer for the slightest taste, a gentle nibble, and then Adrian pulls away, a gentle smile on his face.
“As you should,” Adrian whispers, “My love.”
Always assumed death would be less painful, too. Not act; dying always wretched and filthy. Just…BEING dead, less painful, not painful at all. Can’t decide if this is bad or not. If dead, then at least still feel, so not dead by default, and what?
If not dead, then what…?
He feels cold, so cold around the edges, but his core is warm.
Kind of warm that feels wet. Warm like melted butter, mushy and runny, no other words for it. Rancid-warm.
There is no taint to his skin. Instead, he feels fresh, clean-scrubbed, pink at the ears and nose and-
Naked, no clothes, cold around the edges-
“I presume you are awake now, yes?”
Who-? Who is that? Voice…so familiar…
“Now-now, my dear Walter, pretending to be napping is only keeping me in such horrible suspence.”
Ozymandius! Adrian! Worthless shit-swilling-traitor! Fuck-…
…Still naked…
He sits up with such rapidness that the stars filling his field of vision outnumber the greatest astral displays of his childhood, the summer he finally ran away and rode the rails to the wide-open fields of Schenectady. He flails at his face, trying to cradle his head with his arms, but his dizziness is spread to all the outlying stations of his nervous system; his feeble back gives out as soon as the brace his elbows provided disappears.
Adrian barely saves his fall.
“Oh-ho-ho, Walter, I won’t have you giving yourself a cerebral hemorrhage…At least, not before I know whether my machinations were…successful.”
Adrian’s hands. Cradling head like Doomsday button, probably read to crush, thinks I’ve information I’ll spill? Sick and deluded.
“G…go to…hell…Vv-vv-veidt.”
Adrian gingerly places Walter’s head back against the infirmary pillow before clapping his hands slowly but with relish, applauding himself before an empty room, his only audience the infirm man on the table.
Still too weak, exposed in more ways than one-
“Welcome back, Mr. Kovacks, and let me say, looking quite as fit as ever.”
Have to find way to sit. Or talk. One or other good, both better. Hope Captain Monologue won’t notice not paying attention…
“You know, I had my doubts, what when I first saw the…state…you were in. I dare say a man of less integrity might have shuddered at the sight, but we both know I’ve never been one to pass up a challenge.”
Have to…move…somehow…
His fingers inch along cold metal, his flesh sticking as he begs his muscles to comprehend the gravity of their situation: They might think they can do whatever they please, but if they let him down now, they might go straight back to Hell with the rest of him. Apparently, Hell exists after all, seeing as he must have been there if Ozymandius had found something to bring back-
Something hard, foreign, boxy and metallic interrupts the normal curvature of his left side, something static and unyielding against his flesh. His roaming index and ring fingers inch along its breadth, tracing the fused line between man and machine, his mind drawing the parallel line between the intrusion and the base of his spine.
Some sort of maintenance, catheter maybe? Not bomb, please don’t be bomb. Ozymandius cruel, maybe insane, definitely not retarded…
Instinctually his body tries to pull away from the phantom trap, its true intent currently lost to Walter, but he assumes the worst, just to be on the safe side.
Startled by pain, he lets out a clear yelp of distress, pain shooting wildly across the spiderweb of his nervous system, its epicenter the strange intruder on his side.
“Dear me, Walter, but it seems I forgot to detach you…”
Ozymandius breaks his self-important tirade, the quick clip of his boots against ironwork grating stopping directly to Walter’s right, and he feels Adrian’s body heat fall across him as the man leans over him; he appears as a dark blur, obscuring the institutional fluorescents.
Smell, that smell…Smelled before, often, mostly recent, like dreaming but awake, maybe dead. Yes, probably dead. Was here, though, somehow.
A series of cheerful chimes sound over the intercom, and a muffled woman’s voice gives some sort of computerized update as a pressurized hiss fills the room. An instant later, a great weight seems to be lifted off Walter’s entire body: He feels light, anticipating effortless movement, faster than he knows how to comprehend.
He sits up directly into Adrian’s chest, knocking the caped man back, only-
-Only he’s in civilian garb, a lab coat and black slacks, disheveled, unkempt, unlike himself. Dark circles; must not be sleeping recently. Cat-antelope-thing dead, maybe guilty conscience? Certainly not over billions he tried to kill, certainly not Dr. Manhattan-
Hissing, Walter clutches his head again: His brain doesn’t want to think that route right now, apparently, because his head might explode if he does.
Across the room, Adrian laughs almost imperceptibly.
“What’re you so pleased about?” Walter grumbles, rubbing the sides of his face as the headache dissipates, and he begins to get his bearings: The room is huge, with open bulkheads to left and right set between arching walls that appeared to be glass, but looking through them proved they needed to be something much more durable. “Are we…under water?”
“You’ve always been the perceptive one, Walter,” Adrian smiles, turning his attention to a nearby wire rack full of bundled clothes. Selecting one from the center shelf, he unties the carefully-folded assemblage before setting it primly at Walter’s side.
Privacy? Huge empty room, just the two of us, he could go be busy somewhere.
Really, the room is quite packed with similar stations to his own: A table more appropriate for dissection than patient care ringed by piles of tubing, life support machines, and unidentifiable million-dollar gadgets that look straight out of a science fiction tabloid. In the center of the room stands a massive circular work station, like a nurses’ hub without the nurses or patients or hospital. This is where Adrian’s attention diverted to as he speaks, a long row of flasks and test tubes set up in an order only particular to his current work.
“Aren’t you wondering where you are?” Adrian asks, busying himself with pouring and measuring and annotating. “Aren’t you going to ask me some delightfully cliché questions about how you got here and what’s going on? Because, let me assure you, Walter, I’ve already told you.”
“…What?” Walter asks, a bit stunned. He’s pulling on the blue scrubs that comprised Adrian's gift-bundle, one-leg-and-then-the-other-just-like-that-don’t-fall-down, and Adrian’s line of talk is both baffling and annoyingly distracting. “You-“
“I’ve been telling you every day for the past 6 months, Walter,” Adrian interrupts, rounding on him with what Walter can only call homicidal fervor. He stops just short of stepping on Walter’s toes, pushing the weak man until his waist contacts the metal death-bed and he’s forced to lean his upper body back, nearly reeling. Adrian’s hushed words barely reach him in the expanse as he continues: “I’ve been telling you each day, ever since we began…I hummed it to your first cells, constructed your tissues to its tune, whispered it into your newly-formed ears, Walter, Walter-Walter-Walter, I made you, don’t you see? I made you.”
“You-…” Walter repeats, dumbfounded. Sure, his voice is hoarse and his muscles are unused, his mind is clouded and he feels completely at odds with himself, but he was dead, wasn’t he? Not rebuilt, that’s insane, impossible, incredible. Besides, why would it be necessary? It wasn’t like Dr. Manhattan or -
Crippling waves of pain, his head screaming as his mouth tries to follow suit, but it’s enough to take his breath away. Adrian steps back as Walter doubles over, gasping as the gears in his head grind to a hault.
What’s happening??!? Can’t…remember…
Night Owl and…Jupiter…nuclear war, Ruskies threatening Nixon, the whole world, and Ozymandius does too…Doctor, what did you do? To ME?!
“Doctor…Manhattan-“ Walter wheezes, groping at his thoughts while the dark ring of unconsciousness closes around his field of vision. He feels he needs to know, and Adrian will have to tell him, or he’ll force him to tell him, anyway, because his brain won’t think it, for some reason. “What…what did…what happened?”
He feels light, like the moment Adrian disconnected him, and just as he gets the idea he’s soaring through clouds, the solidity and frigidity of the metal table bring him back to reality. Adrian has picked him up under the arms, sitting him down on the edge, holding him steady. They are so close that Walter can once more smell the clean-smell coming off Adrian’s tired body.
Adrian places his hands on either side of Walter’s head and pulls him close, his temple touching Adrian’s chest. Awkward, uncomfortable thoughts surge past the blockade surrounding the Doctor, overriding one concern with another, and he’s caught in the backwash of confusion.
“Oh, Walter…Don’t think poorly of him, Walter,” Adrian soothes, ignoring the tension and discomfort radiating off his subject. “He did what he felt he had to do, nothing more, nothing less, as is Dr. Manhattan’s way, I suppose. But…if I may, he was a bit reckless, foolish even. Foolish, but well-intentioned.”
“Stop talking circles,” Walter grunts, pulling away finally, peering up into Adrian’s shifting eyes. He may have seemed tired, but there is no fatigue betrayed by his eyes, so perhaps it is his body playing games.
“He killed you.”
Water is dripping into a half-filled bucket, tinging hollowly in the vast expanse, a ticking echo that fills the void of silence between the two men, one stoic and the other slack-jawed.
“He…killed me?”
“Yes. Is that so hard to believe?”
“But…Why…Yes, I don’t believe it, I can’t! I can’t…don’t…want to-“ He mumbles into silence again, looking at his lap to avoid Adrian’s eyes.
Everything’s changed, then? Dr. Manhattan kills me. Would never happen, not in a MILLION years, but then what other explanation is there? And why-…?
“I do feel…different,” Walter says to himself, touching his side where the metal box used to be. Now there is only a sort of plug, like an empty outlet, and he doesn’t dwell there any longer than he did the thought of his supposed last moments. Both pains are physical and psychological, but neither is moreso yet than the other. He doesn’t really feel like dealing with either.
His face is turned upward, Adrian’s palms soft and warm against his cheek, his jaw, his neck. Warm lips greet his own, daring to nuzzle closer for the slightest taste, a gentle nibble, and then Adrian pulls away, a gentle smile on his face.
“As you should,” Adrian whispers, “My love.”