Watchmen: Dan/Adrian, PG-13
Title: The Dust Of Empires Chapter 2
Fandom: Watchmen
Verse: movie
Rating: PG-13 (NC-17 overall)
Pairings: Dan/Adrian, Dan/Laurie, Dr. Manhattan/Laurie
Warnings: sex, violence, angst, mentions of canon character death, AU
Spoilers: general Watchmen canon
Beta: Thanks to karaokegal for beta-reading.
Summary: Adrian had known that he would not survive the creation of his utopia unscathed, but he had never thought that it would be his own conscience trying to break him. Now, in the midst of his personal turmoil he is in dire need of the friendship of people who might never forgive him.
Chapter 2
It was three in the morning and after a grueling night of crime fighting Adrian was shattered. Hauling himself back in through his window, he immediately began undressing, sophisticated dignity all but forgotten. He left the parts of his costume strewn across the floor on the way to his bed and collapsed on it as soon as he got there.. Adrian knew he really should take a shower. He could feel the night’s filth and sweat, blood and various other undesirable things cling to him, but he was simply too exhausted to get back up. Cleanliness would have to wait ‘til the morning when he would shower and change the sheets.
Head already comfortably resting on his pillow, Adrian reached for the lone photo frame that occupied his otherwise empty bedside table. Even in the darkness, he knew exactly what his fingers were tracing, gently and reverently, this picture of Bubastis being all he had left of her. Of course he still had the genetic code that had created the lynx hybrid and he had all the resources he needed to replicate her tenfold, but he wouldn’t; his heart would not let him. She’d been precious to him, a companion and a friend.
“Good night, girl,” Adrian muttered in the darkness of his bedroom, a small smile playing on his lips, despite the sudden tightness that had settled in his chest.
*
When Laurie woke up late the next morning, shortly before noon, she found Dan already in the kitchen, making coffee.
“Morning,” she managed through a yawn and a smile as she sat down at the table. The morning's paper had already joined the previous day's one in the beginnings of a haphazard pile.
“Good morning,” Dan replied, pouring both of them mugs of coffee and handing Laurie hers exactly how she liked it. As they both sipped their hot drinks in silence, Daniel stayed standing, leaning against the kitchen counter, staring intently at nothing at all. Laurie stood up, the long, white shirt she’d borrowed from Dan just about covering her rear.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she whispered as she approached Dan, placing her coffee mug on the counter behind him. Wrapping her arms around Dan’s waist, Laurie kissed him softly, hoping to break through the slight frown that seemed to be a permanent resident on Dan’s face these days.
The gentle gesture, at least, got a reaction from Dan as he set down his own coffee and returned Laurie’s kiss, his hands sliding to her waist.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked softly, their closeness providing no need for raised voices. Laurie just nodded and rested her head against the crook of Dan’s neck.
“I did. I would have slept better if you’d been there the whole night.”
Dan sighed. “Sorry,” he said. “Couldn’t sleep so I went downstairs to make some adjustments to Archie’s navigation system.”
Laurie smiled wryly; this was nothing new, but it still worried her to a large extent.
“You don’t sleep enough,” she murmured as she reached up to smooth some worry lines that also seemed to be a recent addition. She knew Dan had had trouble sleeping since they’d come back from Antarctica, but no matter how many times she’d asked him to wake her up if he needed to talk, he never did. He just got up, went downstairs and spent the rest of the night and early morning tinkering with his gadgets and Archie. Their love life, gentle gestures and whispered words aside, was all but dead. Their daytime obligations and the crime fighting took up all the time they did not need to spend sleeping.
Daniel cracked a small smile, catching Laurie’s hand in his larger one. “I’m fine,” he attempted to assure her. “Don’t worry.”
Laurie knew that those words were a well-intentioned lie. She could tell there were so many things going through Dan’s head that prevented him from sleeping; things that he was keeping from her. Laurie loved Dan a lot. He’d been there for her when she broke up with Jon, he’d seen her as a human being and as a woman; she loved him for that. Everything they’d been through together had created a connection between them that Laurie was sure very few people shared and had Dan not been there for her when she most needed a friend, she would have been all alone in her sadness and might have despaired. She loved Dan for keeping her grounded in his warmth. Recently, though, Laurie wasn’t sure that this love was managing to break through the wall the last months’ stress had drawn up between her and Dan.
Nonetheless, Laurie mustered a small smile.
“Though I must say, you could be so much worse,” she teased. “Most men would spend their sleepless nights drunk infront of the TV.” With another peck to Dan’s lips, Laurie turned to the stove and began taking plates from the cupboard above it.
“Eggs for breakfast?”
“That would be great,” Dan answered with a smile which Laurie thought might have been genuine. He then took Laurie’s place at the kitchen table.
The remnants of a smile still lingering, Daniel turned his attention to the newspaper and its headlines. Politics made up most of the front page, though a small section at the bottom was dedicated to an article about an unknown masked vigilante who had recently been active around some areas of New York. The article immediately caught Dan’s attention and he began reading it in silence, turning the page when it led onto the next.
As his eyes scanned the text, the idea of there being another, new, mask captivated Dan.
“Did you read this?” he exclaimed, some excitement bleeding into his voice. Laurie momentarily moved the fried eggs to another burner and came up behind Dan, leaning over his shoulder to read the article.
“No..." The slight shuffle of more newsprint pages. "But here, there was something in yesterday’s paper as well,” she answered eventually, having found the article she had been looking for. “Yeah, here it is,” she said. “It made front page.”
They both read the second article in silence and once they’d finished, exchanged glances. “So they call him The Phantom?” Daniel noted. “Well, there’s hardly anything known about him…,” he trailed off. To Laurie’s ears he sounded disappointed; she suspected that Dan desperately wanted to meet this man who was a potential ally... or a possible threat.
“Is he with us?” Laurie wondered out loud. “Is he on our side?”
“He fights crime,” Daniel insisted. “Been doing a good job of it, according to this.” Dan tapped the newspaper with his finger. Laurie pursed her lips and nodded.
“I guess that’s right,” she mused. “Then again, Adrian Veidt was supposedly fighting crime. Trying to save the world, even. And we know how that turned out,” she argued bitterly.
Dan’s gaze flicked to Laurie’s face briefly before he looked away, biting his lip and frowning. He said nothing and Laurie expelled a quiet sigh through pursed lips. This was one significant difference in how they dealt with recent events; Dan was sad, grieving his best friend, his mentor and all the other people who’d died in the creation of Veidt’s ‘peace.’ He was worried for the future and doing his best to make it turn out better than the past. Laurie did this too, shared the same emotions, though her grief for Rorschach was limited, but she had one very useful emotion to add to the mix: she was angry beyond belief.
Laurie was also sure that somewhere deep inside, Daniel shared this anger, but he was too nice a man to let it slip past the barrier of politeness.
“Well,” Laurie began, moving to place breakfast back on the heat. "He's out there, so I'm sure we'll meet him soon. And then we'll see..."
Dan nodded in agreement, but continued staring at the newspaper headline, lost in thought.
*
By three in the afternoon, Adrian thought his head might split open from front to back. He’d managed to have lunch this time, but it had done no good. If anything it had made him feel worse. He sat at his desk, the computer screen infront of him, but his hands were cradling his throbbing head. His long fingers slowly massaged his temples, hoping to ease the constant ache that had settled there.
With a sigh, Adrian realized that it was no use. Pushing his chair back slightly, he reached for the second to top desk drawer and opened it, briefly scanning the contents before finding the already open bottle of aspirin he’d been hoping was still there. He shook two of the tablets from the container and swallowed them with the remains of the water in the tall glass that stood to his right on the desk. Slowly and with a slight twinge in his back, a souvenir from the previous night’s fights, Adrian stood up and walked the short distance to the water cooler that stood next to the door of office. There he refilled his glass and, as he stood by his office’s large window, he sipped the cool liquid slowly.
Adrian was beyond tired. He wondered whether he would be able to take a short nap before he went on patrol that night, but he doubted it. In a few minutes he was due to meet with an important client and the negotiations were sure to take several hours. If all went well and he left the office right after the meeting, it would still be too late to rest if he wanted to leave on patrol shortly after nightfall.
Slowly, the pounding in Adrian’s head lessened, but then gave way to a strange blank rushing in his ears. Adrian barely took any conscious notice of this until the screams began; high-pitched, accompanied by urgent words that were there, but just slipping through his mental grasp by an inch. More screaming echoed in Adrian’s ears as the picture of the devastation of Ground Zero slowly pushed itself into his mind’s eye. In this vision, Adrian could see himself standing above the crater, smiling proudly, his posture confident.
The rushing static grew louder and Adrian did not even notice that he’d begun to shake violently. Not until his secretary’s voice, coming through the intercom, shocked him out of his trance.
“Mr Veidt? Your visitors are waiting for you in the lobby.”
Adrian was so startled that he nearly dropped the glass he’d been holding. With slightly ragged breathing which he managed to hide well, Adrian answered the intercom before taking a moment to regain his composure. Had he been dreaming? Reliving the nightmares that had been haunting him for months in broad daylight? Had he fallen asleep standing? Adrian really wasn’t sure. He had no idea what had just happened, but it had shaken him badly, leaving his hands unsteady and making it hard to draw breath.
Shaking his head angrily, Adrian downed the rest of his water and slammed the glass down on the desk with unnecessary force. He was annoyed with himself, angry that he would let his subconscious and the lack of sleep get to him like this.
Sighing heavily, Adrian looked himself over in the mirror that hung on his office wall, making sure he still looked presentable. Much to his satisfaction, he did; the headache, though, had returned full-force.
*
That night, Adrian patrolled New York on his black Yamaha V-Max, listening in on the police scanner with his portable receiver. The Phantom, as Adrian had found out the press called him now, had already stopped a robbery and a gang-rape that night and was now heading towards the docks where the police force was stretched too thin to operate effectively. Four suspected members of a drug ring had managed to escape from police custody.
As he heard police sirens and gunshots nearby, Adrian knew that he was close. From what he had managed to deduce, there was only one main road the men could use to escape to safety. Adrian hoped that they were on foot, because he would have to abandon his motorcycle. Though the Yamaha was licensed in the name of a man who only existed on paper and would never be found, Adrian did not think that busting in on the crime scene on his bike was a good idea. It would be far too unwieldy should he have to break into combat fast.
As Adrian abandoned the motorcycle in a nearby alley, he suddenly heard an all-too-familiar humming above and it momentarily startled him to realize just how whole-heartedly he welcomed the sound. Looking up, he immediately saw the bobbing shadow of the Owl Ship heading towards where the crime had been reported. Adrian launched into motion quickly, following Archie’s course by foot and this led him right to the heart of the action.
*
When Nite Owl and Silk Spectre arrived at the scene of crime, Adrian was already in full combat with the group of four criminals who had escaped. Adrian was desperately trying to occupy the one attacker who’d come armed with a gun, but this was a futile task, since three others were trying to stab him with switchblades from various angles. It was all Adrian could do to kick at them, keeping the miscreants at bay.
The moment Adrian triumphantly managed to finally kick the gun from the man’s grasp, he found himself forcefully slammed into a nearby garbage container by one of the other criminals. The impact against his back forced the air from Adrian’s lungs and within seconds he found a long and sharp knife aimed for his throat.
The weapon, however, never found its mark as a sharp object came flying and effectively embedded itself in the attacker’s arm, making him drop his weapon and howl in pain. Adrian seized this moment of distraction and landed a kick to the criminal’s stomach and a strong blow to his face, sending the man to the floor. Wasting no time, Adrian straddled him and applied a strong set of handcuffs which he’d been carrying on the inside of his coat.
Adrian then quickly picked up Nite Owl’s throwing crescent and turned back to the fray. Nite Owl and Silk Spectre had appeared so suddenly that Adrian had barely noticed. They must have come into the area from over the rooftops, leaving the owl ship moored somewhere out of sight. Nite Owl was currently in hand to hand combat with a second blade-wielding thug, while Silk Spectre tried to stop the other from reaching a gun his companion must have dropped previously. Adrian launched himself at the man, tackling him to the ground, but had never expected this criminal to be so strong. The thug took a few painful blows, but gave as good as he got and Adrian was finding himself being battered with quite some force.
The dim clinking of ammunition being removed from a gun could be heard in the background, followed by a cry and some cracking and scraping indicated that Nite Owl had taken down his opponent. This distracted the man who had Adrian on the ground and Adrian shoved the criminal off with all his strength. The man stumbled and soon met his match in a few well-aimed kicks from Silk Spectre’s lethal-looking boots.
She and Nite Owl tied up the remaining criminals while Adrian picked himself up off the ground. He quickly assessed his own condition and determined that aside from a few scrapes and bruises he was fine. His attention quickly moved to make sure the other two masked vigilantes had fared no worse.
Standing in a circle of defeated criminals, the crime fighters slowly approached one another.
“Thanks,” Adrian commented sincerely, tossing the throwing crescent back to Nite Owl. Nite Owl caught it deftly and secured it back in his belt.
“You’re welcome,” he retorted. “So you are-"
“The Phantom, apparently.” Adrian introduced himself with a chuckle, doing his damnedest to hide every modicum of his lingering accent. If something would give him away it was that and he was not yet ready to reveal his identity to his former allies in crime fighting. In the same way he doubted whether they were ready to learn of it. He just hoped that they wouldn’t recognize his voice and make the connection anyway. However, seeing as neither Nite Owl nor Silk Spectre made a comment or seemed terribly surprised, it seemed Adrian was in luck, his identity remaining a secret for the time being.
“So, you’re with us?” Silk Spectre, who had previously kept silent and obviously cautious, asked.
Adrian smiled at her from under his helmet. “I’m with you.”
The air suddenly filled with ever-nearing police sirens and Adrian took this as his cue to leave.
“We should go,” he urged his fellow vigilantes. He then turned to leave, heading in the direction of where he had left his bike. Before rounding the corner, Adrian stopped briefly and looked back.
“We'll meet again,” he assured before vanishing from the others' sight.
A/N: Please review. :)
Fandom: Watchmen
Verse: movie
Rating: PG-13 (NC-17 overall)
Pairings: Dan/Adrian, Dan/Laurie, Dr. Manhattan/Laurie
Warnings: sex, violence, angst, mentions of canon character death, AU
Spoilers: general Watchmen canon
Beta: Thanks to karaokegal for beta-reading.
Summary: Adrian had known that he would not survive the creation of his utopia unscathed, but he had never thought that it would be his own conscience trying to break him. Now, in the midst of his personal turmoil he is in dire need of the friendship of people who might never forgive him.
Chapter 2
It was three in the morning and after a grueling night of crime fighting Adrian was shattered. Hauling himself back in through his window, he immediately began undressing, sophisticated dignity all but forgotten. He left the parts of his costume strewn across the floor on the way to his bed and collapsed on it as soon as he got there.. Adrian knew he really should take a shower. He could feel the night’s filth and sweat, blood and various other undesirable things cling to him, but he was simply too exhausted to get back up. Cleanliness would have to wait ‘til the morning when he would shower and change the sheets.
Head already comfortably resting on his pillow, Adrian reached for the lone photo frame that occupied his otherwise empty bedside table. Even in the darkness, he knew exactly what his fingers were tracing, gently and reverently, this picture of Bubastis being all he had left of her. Of course he still had the genetic code that had created the lynx hybrid and he had all the resources he needed to replicate her tenfold, but he wouldn’t; his heart would not let him. She’d been precious to him, a companion and a friend.
“Good night, girl,” Adrian muttered in the darkness of his bedroom, a small smile playing on his lips, despite the sudden tightness that had settled in his chest.
*
When Laurie woke up late the next morning, shortly before noon, she found Dan already in the kitchen, making coffee.
“Morning,” she managed through a yawn and a smile as she sat down at the table. The morning's paper had already joined the previous day's one in the beginnings of a haphazard pile.
“Good morning,” Dan replied, pouring both of them mugs of coffee and handing Laurie hers exactly how she liked it. As they both sipped their hot drinks in silence, Daniel stayed standing, leaning against the kitchen counter, staring intently at nothing at all. Laurie stood up, the long, white shirt she’d borrowed from Dan just about covering her rear.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she whispered as she approached Dan, placing her coffee mug on the counter behind him. Wrapping her arms around Dan’s waist, Laurie kissed him softly, hoping to break through the slight frown that seemed to be a permanent resident on Dan’s face these days.
The gentle gesture, at least, got a reaction from Dan as he set down his own coffee and returned Laurie’s kiss, his hands sliding to her waist.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked softly, their closeness providing no need for raised voices. Laurie just nodded and rested her head against the crook of Dan’s neck.
“I did. I would have slept better if you’d been there the whole night.”
Dan sighed. “Sorry,” he said. “Couldn’t sleep so I went downstairs to make some adjustments to Archie’s navigation system.”
Laurie smiled wryly; this was nothing new, but it still worried her to a large extent.
“You don’t sleep enough,” she murmured as she reached up to smooth some worry lines that also seemed to be a recent addition. She knew Dan had had trouble sleeping since they’d come back from Antarctica, but no matter how many times she’d asked him to wake her up if he needed to talk, he never did. He just got up, went downstairs and spent the rest of the night and early morning tinkering with his gadgets and Archie. Their love life, gentle gestures and whispered words aside, was all but dead. Their daytime obligations and the crime fighting took up all the time they did not need to spend sleeping.
Daniel cracked a small smile, catching Laurie’s hand in his larger one. “I’m fine,” he attempted to assure her. “Don’t worry.”
Laurie knew that those words were a well-intentioned lie. She could tell there were so many things going through Dan’s head that prevented him from sleeping; things that he was keeping from her. Laurie loved Dan a lot. He’d been there for her when she broke up with Jon, he’d seen her as a human being and as a woman; she loved him for that. Everything they’d been through together had created a connection between them that Laurie was sure very few people shared and had Dan not been there for her when she most needed a friend, she would have been all alone in her sadness and might have despaired. She loved Dan for keeping her grounded in his warmth. Recently, though, Laurie wasn’t sure that this love was managing to break through the wall the last months’ stress had drawn up between her and Dan.
Nonetheless, Laurie mustered a small smile.
“Though I must say, you could be so much worse,” she teased. “Most men would spend their sleepless nights drunk infront of the TV.” With another peck to Dan’s lips, Laurie turned to the stove and began taking plates from the cupboard above it.
“Eggs for breakfast?”
“That would be great,” Dan answered with a smile which Laurie thought might have been genuine. He then took Laurie’s place at the kitchen table.
The remnants of a smile still lingering, Daniel turned his attention to the newspaper and its headlines. Politics made up most of the front page, though a small section at the bottom was dedicated to an article about an unknown masked vigilante who had recently been active around some areas of New York. The article immediately caught Dan’s attention and he began reading it in silence, turning the page when it led onto the next.
As his eyes scanned the text, the idea of there being another, new, mask captivated Dan.
“Did you read this?” he exclaimed, some excitement bleeding into his voice. Laurie momentarily moved the fried eggs to another burner and came up behind Dan, leaning over his shoulder to read the article.
“No..." The slight shuffle of more newsprint pages. "But here, there was something in yesterday’s paper as well,” she answered eventually, having found the article she had been looking for. “Yeah, here it is,” she said. “It made front page.”
They both read the second article in silence and once they’d finished, exchanged glances. “So they call him The Phantom?” Daniel noted. “Well, there’s hardly anything known about him…,” he trailed off. To Laurie’s ears he sounded disappointed; she suspected that Dan desperately wanted to meet this man who was a potential ally... or a possible threat.
“Is he with us?” Laurie wondered out loud. “Is he on our side?”
“He fights crime,” Daniel insisted. “Been doing a good job of it, according to this.” Dan tapped the newspaper with his finger. Laurie pursed her lips and nodded.
“I guess that’s right,” she mused. “Then again, Adrian Veidt was supposedly fighting crime. Trying to save the world, even. And we know how that turned out,” she argued bitterly.
Dan’s gaze flicked to Laurie’s face briefly before he looked away, biting his lip and frowning. He said nothing and Laurie expelled a quiet sigh through pursed lips. This was one significant difference in how they dealt with recent events; Dan was sad, grieving his best friend, his mentor and all the other people who’d died in the creation of Veidt’s ‘peace.’ He was worried for the future and doing his best to make it turn out better than the past. Laurie did this too, shared the same emotions, though her grief for Rorschach was limited, but she had one very useful emotion to add to the mix: she was angry beyond belief.
Laurie was also sure that somewhere deep inside, Daniel shared this anger, but he was too nice a man to let it slip past the barrier of politeness.
“Well,” Laurie began, moving to place breakfast back on the heat. "He's out there, so I'm sure we'll meet him soon. And then we'll see..."
Dan nodded in agreement, but continued staring at the newspaper headline, lost in thought.
*
By three in the afternoon, Adrian thought his head might split open from front to back. He’d managed to have lunch this time, but it had done no good. If anything it had made him feel worse. He sat at his desk, the computer screen infront of him, but his hands were cradling his throbbing head. His long fingers slowly massaged his temples, hoping to ease the constant ache that had settled there.
With a sigh, Adrian realized that it was no use. Pushing his chair back slightly, he reached for the second to top desk drawer and opened it, briefly scanning the contents before finding the already open bottle of aspirin he’d been hoping was still there. He shook two of the tablets from the container and swallowed them with the remains of the water in the tall glass that stood to his right on the desk. Slowly and with a slight twinge in his back, a souvenir from the previous night’s fights, Adrian stood up and walked the short distance to the water cooler that stood next to the door of office. There he refilled his glass and, as he stood by his office’s large window, he sipped the cool liquid slowly.
Adrian was beyond tired. He wondered whether he would be able to take a short nap before he went on patrol that night, but he doubted it. In a few minutes he was due to meet with an important client and the negotiations were sure to take several hours. If all went well and he left the office right after the meeting, it would still be too late to rest if he wanted to leave on patrol shortly after nightfall.
Slowly, the pounding in Adrian’s head lessened, but then gave way to a strange blank rushing in his ears. Adrian barely took any conscious notice of this until the screams began; high-pitched, accompanied by urgent words that were there, but just slipping through his mental grasp by an inch. More screaming echoed in Adrian’s ears as the picture of the devastation of Ground Zero slowly pushed itself into his mind’s eye. In this vision, Adrian could see himself standing above the crater, smiling proudly, his posture confident.
The rushing static grew louder and Adrian did not even notice that he’d begun to shake violently. Not until his secretary’s voice, coming through the intercom, shocked him out of his trance.
“Mr Veidt? Your visitors are waiting for you in the lobby.”
Adrian was so startled that he nearly dropped the glass he’d been holding. With slightly ragged breathing which he managed to hide well, Adrian answered the intercom before taking a moment to regain his composure. Had he been dreaming? Reliving the nightmares that had been haunting him for months in broad daylight? Had he fallen asleep standing? Adrian really wasn’t sure. He had no idea what had just happened, but it had shaken him badly, leaving his hands unsteady and making it hard to draw breath.
Shaking his head angrily, Adrian downed the rest of his water and slammed the glass down on the desk with unnecessary force. He was annoyed with himself, angry that he would let his subconscious and the lack of sleep get to him like this.
Sighing heavily, Adrian looked himself over in the mirror that hung on his office wall, making sure he still looked presentable. Much to his satisfaction, he did; the headache, though, had returned full-force.
*
That night, Adrian patrolled New York on his black Yamaha V-Max, listening in on the police scanner with his portable receiver. The Phantom, as Adrian had found out the press called him now, had already stopped a robbery and a gang-rape that night and was now heading towards the docks where the police force was stretched too thin to operate effectively. Four suspected members of a drug ring had managed to escape from police custody.
As he heard police sirens and gunshots nearby, Adrian knew that he was close. From what he had managed to deduce, there was only one main road the men could use to escape to safety. Adrian hoped that they were on foot, because he would have to abandon his motorcycle. Though the Yamaha was licensed in the name of a man who only existed on paper and would never be found, Adrian did not think that busting in on the crime scene on his bike was a good idea. It would be far too unwieldy should he have to break into combat fast.
As Adrian abandoned the motorcycle in a nearby alley, he suddenly heard an all-too-familiar humming above and it momentarily startled him to realize just how whole-heartedly he welcomed the sound. Looking up, he immediately saw the bobbing shadow of the Owl Ship heading towards where the crime had been reported. Adrian launched into motion quickly, following Archie’s course by foot and this led him right to the heart of the action.
*
When Nite Owl and Silk Spectre arrived at the scene of crime, Adrian was already in full combat with the group of four criminals who had escaped. Adrian was desperately trying to occupy the one attacker who’d come armed with a gun, but this was a futile task, since three others were trying to stab him with switchblades from various angles. It was all Adrian could do to kick at them, keeping the miscreants at bay.
The moment Adrian triumphantly managed to finally kick the gun from the man’s grasp, he found himself forcefully slammed into a nearby garbage container by one of the other criminals. The impact against his back forced the air from Adrian’s lungs and within seconds he found a long and sharp knife aimed for his throat.
The weapon, however, never found its mark as a sharp object came flying and effectively embedded itself in the attacker’s arm, making him drop his weapon and howl in pain. Adrian seized this moment of distraction and landed a kick to the criminal’s stomach and a strong blow to his face, sending the man to the floor. Wasting no time, Adrian straddled him and applied a strong set of handcuffs which he’d been carrying on the inside of his coat.
Adrian then quickly picked up Nite Owl’s throwing crescent and turned back to the fray. Nite Owl and Silk Spectre had appeared so suddenly that Adrian had barely noticed. They must have come into the area from over the rooftops, leaving the owl ship moored somewhere out of sight. Nite Owl was currently in hand to hand combat with a second blade-wielding thug, while Silk Spectre tried to stop the other from reaching a gun his companion must have dropped previously. Adrian launched himself at the man, tackling him to the ground, but had never expected this criminal to be so strong. The thug took a few painful blows, but gave as good as he got and Adrian was finding himself being battered with quite some force.
The dim clinking of ammunition being removed from a gun could be heard in the background, followed by a cry and some cracking and scraping indicated that Nite Owl had taken down his opponent. This distracted the man who had Adrian on the ground and Adrian shoved the criminal off with all his strength. The man stumbled and soon met his match in a few well-aimed kicks from Silk Spectre’s lethal-looking boots.
She and Nite Owl tied up the remaining criminals while Adrian picked himself up off the ground. He quickly assessed his own condition and determined that aside from a few scrapes and bruises he was fine. His attention quickly moved to make sure the other two masked vigilantes had fared no worse.
Standing in a circle of defeated criminals, the crime fighters slowly approached one another.
“Thanks,” Adrian commented sincerely, tossing the throwing crescent back to Nite Owl. Nite Owl caught it deftly and secured it back in his belt.
“You’re welcome,” he retorted. “So you are-"
“The Phantom, apparently.” Adrian introduced himself with a chuckle, doing his damnedest to hide every modicum of his lingering accent. If something would give him away it was that and he was not yet ready to reveal his identity to his former allies in crime fighting. In the same way he doubted whether they were ready to learn of it. He just hoped that they wouldn’t recognize his voice and make the connection anyway. However, seeing as neither Nite Owl nor Silk Spectre made a comment or seemed terribly surprised, it seemed Adrian was in luck, his identity remaining a secret for the time being.
“So, you’re with us?” Silk Spectre, who had previously kept silent and obviously cautious, asked.
Adrian smiled at her from under his helmet. “I’m with you.”
The air suddenly filled with ever-nearing police sirens and Adrian took this as his cue to leave.
“We should go,” he urged his fellow vigilantes. He then turned to leave, heading in the direction of where he had left his bike. Before rounding the corner, Adrian stopped briefly and looked back.
“We'll meet again,” he assured before vanishing from the others' sight.
A/N: Please review. :)