To: dr_oil From: coalsparrow
Artist: coalsparrow
Title: The Lone and Level
Rating: PG
Characters: Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias
Setting: Post-Karnak
Warnings: Self-reflection - not very actiony.
“Nothing ever ends.”
Three small, simple words, only one multisyllabic. No complicated code to break, no pattern to find-to most this would not even seem a riddle. Yet, Adrian Veidt had never been a man who would look at anything the way “most” would. The former Crime Buster pursed his lips, his eyes and subconscious drifting from television screen to television screen as his greater concentration rested on this seemingly uncomplicated phrase.
Dr. Manhattan-John-was gone, leaving Adrian with nothing but these words in his wake. He did not even know if the words were meant to comfort or to condemn, and he admitted that, with the strange, blue man the words could be either, both, or neither all at once. A Gordian knot that he had no sword to cut because words from John were always significant and Adrian refused to insult, even in private, the only living being he considered his intellectual equal. He knew the literal meaning of the words; now he needed to decipher their significance.
Something caught his eye, and he focused more on the screens to find what he had seen in passing. There, bottom left hand screen-Sally Jupiter speaking in an interview about her new organization Healing Hearts, which worked to help refugees from the affected areas of the United States find their loved ones. He idly wondered what Sam and Sandra Hollis-that was what Dan “Nite Owl” Drieberg and Laurie “Silk Spectre” Jupiter were calling themselves now-thought about the project. After all, the elder Jupiter was using her missing daughter as a way to show her goal and credibility, to get back into the spotlight, but perhaps the two would allow this deception for the greater good.
Ah, there-same screen, two centimeters to the right. Trying to avoid the cameras but standing where they could fully survey the crowd. Old habits from long nights-trying to blend in and maintain control at the same time. Apparently they supported Sally Jupiter's activities enough to stand in the crowd of her peers. The disguises were not far above the rubber nose and moustache variety either, particularly in Dan’s case as he now sported the latter. Adrian could not suppress a snort; Nite Owl looked ridiculous as a blond. Not the most creative names, but taking the name of a mentor was something that Adrian could appreciate, at least. Ozymandias, his own preferred moniker, fit in the same category, did it not? Laurie looked well, as well as she had ever been, if not a little better-natural at Dan's side, looking towards her mother with no signs of the distress or hate that Adrian had seen lurking there over the several years they had known each other.
Dead center screen--look now! His subconcious locked his eyes on the advertisment, and the normally calm, collected Adrian Veidt ground his teeth. An ad from the New Frontiersman, who were preparing for a television special. Unusual enough for a newspaper, particularly one of their poor caliber, but not as much as what they claimed to possess. A Journal. From Rorschach. That contained "serious, new enlightment regarding the aliens that had destroyed countless lives."
Only Rorschach could cause this much trouble from beyond the grave, could jeopardize everything that he had worked to achieve in one last stand of "justice." Unbidden Shelley’s words fell from his lips, phrases out of order in a chaotic jumble that matched the situation that now surrounded him thanks to a troublesome ginger hobo, “The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. Round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare… The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
This Ozymandias faced twin deserts of ice and blood-slicked cities rather than sand, but the principle was the same, and Adrian felt his manicured nails dig into the arms of his chair as he tried to retain his composure. The crushing weight of time and the inevitability of the rise and fall of civilizations-the waves of fear and destruction that had, up until his attempts to unite mankind and save it from nuclear war, could not be stopped. Rorschach's journal represented a return to all that he had fought against. Is this what you were saying, John? Is this what I was supposed to realize-- that, beneath my nose, a journal existed that contained evidence of my guilt, no matter how slight? That all of my work would ultimately lead to no great change?
“NO!”
Other men had given into history. Other men, even his beloved Alexander the Great, had sat down and wept because the world as they knew it had changed by their own hand to the point that they no longer knew how to control it. Like all men, they had only been able to place their vision so far ahead of themselves, but Adrian Veidt would not fall prey to this Ozymandias syndrome. He had rejected his disguised identity and all that inhabited it because he, Adrian Veidt, could do more good for mankind now than he ever could have as a single man in a suit. When no one else could see the writing on the wall, he had dove ahead into his plans and emerged with a world at peace; no action taken without careful calculation, no result unexpected. He would not allow this peace to end because of small, diseased minds like Rorschach’s that wallowed in the filth, splashing small amounts of “holy” water here and there when only a full flood could wipe the slate clean. He had done the necessary once, swallowed his pride and the personal cost.
He could, and would, do it again.
Acknowledgements/Copy Rights:
"Ozymandias" written by Percy Shelley and quoted from my Norton Anthology.
All of Watchmen are not belong to me - I just write small fanfic about it, k?
Author's Note: Many apologies for taking this long to get it up, dr_oil - hope you enjoy it all the same!
Title: The Lone and Level
Rating: PG
Characters: Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias
Setting: Post-Karnak
Warnings: Self-reflection - not very actiony.
“Nothing ever ends.”
Three small, simple words, only one multisyllabic. No complicated code to break, no pattern to find-to most this would not even seem a riddle. Yet, Adrian Veidt had never been a man who would look at anything the way “most” would. The former Crime Buster pursed his lips, his eyes and subconscious drifting from television screen to television screen as his greater concentration rested on this seemingly uncomplicated phrase.
Dr. Manhattan-John-was gone, leaving Adrian with nothing but these words in his wake. He did not even know if the words were meant to comfort or to condemn, and he admitted that, with the strange, blue man the words could be either, both, or neither all at once. A Gordian knot that he had no sword to cut because words from John were always significant and Adrian refused to insult, even in private, the only living being he considered his intellectual equal. He knew the literal meaning of the words; now he needed to decipher their significance.
Something caught his eye, and he focused more on the screens to find what he had seen in passing. There, bottom left hand screen-Sally Jupiter speaking in an interview about her new organization Healing Hearts, which worked to help refugees from the affected areas of the United States find their loved ones. He idly wondered what Sam and Sandra Hollis-that was what Dan “Nite Owl” Drieberg and Laurie “Silk Spectre” Jupiter were calling themselves now-thought about the project. After all, the elder Jupiter was using her missing daughter as a way to show her goal and credibility, to get back into the spotlight, but perhaps the two would allow this deception for the greater good.
Ah, there-same screen, two centimeters to the right. Trying to avoid the cameras but standing where they could fully survey the crowd. Old habits from long nights-trying to blend in and maintain control at the same time. Apparently they supported Sally Jupiter's activities enough to stand in the crowd of her peers. The disguises were not far above the rubber nose and moustache variety either, particularly in Dan’s case as he now sported the latter. Adrian could not suppress a snort; Nite Owl looked ridiculous as a blond. Not the most creative names, but taking the name of a mentor was something that Adrian could appreciate, at least. Ozymandias, his own preferred moniker, fit in the same category, did it not? Laurie looked well, as well as she had ever been, if not a little better-natural at Dan's side, looking towards her mother with no signs of the distress or hate that Adrian had seen lurking there over the several years they had known each other.
Dead center screen--look now! His subconcious locked his eyes on the advertisment, and the normally calm, collected Adrian Veidt ground his teeth. An ad from the New Frontiersman, who were preparing for a television special. Unusual enough for a newspaper, particularly one of their poor caliber, but not as much as what they claimed to possess. A Journal. From Rorschach. That contained "serious, new enlightment regarding the aliens that had destroyed countless lives."
Only Rorschach could cause this much trouble from beyond the grave, could jeopardize everything that he had worked to achieve in one last stand of "justice." Unbidden Shelley’s words fell from his lips, phrases out of order in a chaotic jumble that matched the situation that now surrounded him thanks to a troublesome ginger hobo, “The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. Round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare… The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
This Ozymandias faced twin deserts of ice and blood-slicked cities rather than sand, but the principle was the same, and Adrian felt his manicured nails dig into the arms of his chair as he tried to retain his composure. The crushing weight of time and the inevitability of the rise and fall of civilizations-the waves of fear and destruction that had, up until his attempts to unite mankind and save it from nuclear war, could not be stopped. Rorschach's journal represented a return to all that he had fought against. Is this what you were saying, John? Is this what I was supposed to realize-- that, beneath my nose, a journal existed that contained evidence of my guilt, no matter how slight? That all of my work would ultimately lead to no great change?
“NO!”
Other men had given into history. Other men, even his beloved Alexander the Great, had sat down and wept because the world as they knew it had changed by their own hand to the point that they no longer knew how to control it. Like all men, they had only been able to place their vision so far ahead of themselves, but Adrian Veidt would not fall prey to this Ozymandias syndrome. He had rejected his disguised identity and all that inhabited it because he, Adrian Veidt, could do more good for mankind now than he ever could have as a single man in a suit. When no one else could see the writing on the wall, he had dove ahead into his plans and emerged with a world at peace; no action taken without careful calculation, no result unexpected. He would not allow this peace to end because of small, diseased minds like Rorschach’s that wallowed in the filth, splashing small amounts of “holy” water here and there when only a full flood could wipe the slate clean. He had done the necessary once, swallowed his pride and the personal cost.
He could, and would, do it again.
Acknowledgements/Copy Rights:
"Ozymandias" written by Percy Shelley and quoted from my Norton Anthology.
All of Watchmen are not belong to me - I just write small fanfic about it, k?
Author's Note: Many apologies for taking this long to get it up, dr_oil - hope you enjoy it all the same!