Wish You Were Here
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Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?In the aftermath of Karnak, Dan and Rorschach find themselves stranded on a (mostly) deserted tropical island.
They materialize aboard Archie in a matrix of scintillating light, Rorschach still clutching his mask in one white-knuckled fist. It takes Dan a moment to orient himself, a minute more for the nauseous lurch of his stomach to settle and the dissonance to fade, then he grabs Rorschach by the shoulder with the intention of steering him into the co-pilot seat and giving him a damn good lecture on the merits of self-preservation.
He freezes, the words dying on his lips when he realizes they are in flight, hurtling unfettered through the sky with ocean and cloud reeling out beneath them.
An ugly crackling from the control panels grabs Dan's attention and he jerks into action, falling into the pilot seat. He splays his hands on the dash and scans over the readouts, unable to focus enough on of the scrolling lists of data to make sense of their situation. Their displays are glitching, mosaiced into jagged blue squares that stutter across the screens.
Dan feels the blood drain from his face and a wave of adrenaline crashes over him, dredged from reserves that he didn't know he still had. He glances sideways at his partner, who has perched himself on the edge of the co-pilot seat.
"Buckle up," he snaps, and he can feel the panic swelling in him. The urgency of his words have little impact on Rorschach, who merely stares with those awful dark eyes. They scare Dan more than the mask ever did. "Buckle up." Louder this time, much louder, edged with desperation and punctuated with button-mashing. "Damn it, we're going down, buckle the fuck up."
Dan rises to shove Rorschach solidly into his chair with a distressing lack of resistance and straps him in, fumbling with the mechanism.
Archie jolts, dropping a few hundred feet when the displays cut out briefly, but then stabilizes into a steady decline. The smell of ozone is sharp in Dan's nose; his eyes water from the acrid smoke that seeps from the sparking electrics. The air is getting thick, harder to breathe. Dan's ears ache with the rapidly changing air pressure. Claustrophobia crowds him; he's all erratic movements and half-described gestures as he tries to assert control over both himself and the ship.
His fingers skate desperately over buttons and dials. He yanks at the thrust levers. Archie is becoming less and less responsive as Manhattan's energy dissipates. A chunk of Antarctic ice is melting over the altitude display; he laughs, verging on hysterical. The sound of it terrifies him almost as much as the rattling and creaking of strained metal, almost as much as Rorschach's dead-eyed stare.
Rorschach just slumps there, slack-faced, eyes down, hands worrying at his mask. He's twisting the hem through his fingers like a rosary, as if that's the only thing that can stop them shattering across the surface of the ocean.
And maybe it is. Blind faith might be the only thing that can save them now.
Dan lets the thought hang there for a moment, then there's another jolt, a starboard list, and there's no time for anything else when they plummet towards the glistering waves.
So unbearably hot.
The clammy, suffocating kind of hot, the kind that steals Dan's sleep in the heart of summer, plasters his hair to his forehead and brings deathly-still nights that make him kick his tangled sheets away in frustration.
The clinging, damp kind of hot that won't let him breathe, denies his lungs the relief of cool, crisp air. The kind that frays his temper to a thread, brittle and fragile and ready to snap over just about anything.
That kind of hot, but worse.
Worse, because he's stranded in a godforsaken wilderness who the hell knows where, with only the highly conductive shell of his very expensive, very fucking irreparable airship as shelter, and only his very somber, very fucking unhelpful partner as company.
"He's. Broken," he says again, words carefully released from behind clenched teeth. "Over the past day—has it only been a day? Two days? I don't know, Jesus. Over the past however long, he's been soaked, frozen and now he's being slowly boiled in a sea-salt marinade. Half the tools I need are in my workshop, the other half are scattered over the beach, and even if they weren't I wouldn't know where to start and I'm tired and I ache and everyone is dead and I don't fucking know where we are and I just want to. Stop. For a moment. Please?"
Rorschach's mouth bows downward a few more millimeters in rebuke. "Was just thinking we could move further inland, to jungle edge maybe," he says. "Hot here on the beach."
"I know!" Dan exclaims, sluicing sweat off his forehead in unnecessary emphasis. "I know, man. But it's a goddamn miracle we made it to dry land at all." Dan places a hand on Archie's hull, wiping an arc through the salty grime. "He's not—I can't fix him. He's just going to have to rust away, right here."
He sighs and hunches down onto the sand, running both hands through his damp hair. At least Rorschach has snapped out of his fugue, if only to make untenable suggestions. It's better than the eerie silence of Archie's cockpit after they'd survived the impact in one piece, the only sounds the groaning of metal and the feeble thrum of the remaining, failing engine as they crawled along without direction or purpose. Rorschach hadn't said a word in those uncertain hours, hadn't moved from his seat—had barely moved at all—ripples of shadow passing over his dour features as the ship surged along with the tide, hanging just beneath the surface of the ocean like a bloated corpse.
"Daniel." Rorschach casts a blissful pool of shade as he leans in to speak. "Should take stock of supplies. Even if we're here only for short time, must make sure we have enough water and food."
Dan raises his head to look at his partner. He's stripped off the stinking trench and jacket. The once-white shirt is soaked and clinging to all the vicious planes of his body, and his hair has darkened where it's damp and curling with perspiration.
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. We should do that. And, uh, I think there's some sunblock in Archie's med-kit," he says, touching the tip of his ear.
Rorschach mirrors his gesture with a lopsided grimace, and it's the first honest-to-god real expression Dan's seen on the man's face since they busted him out of Sing Sing.
Hence, the supplies they have consolidated into one plastic box are rather pathetic. Enough beans and tinned beef to last maybe six days, a crate of two-liter bottles of water, and about a year's worth of powdered milk. A bright yellow plastic picnic set and a small pan that Dan used to catch an oil leak once completes their salvage operation.
Rorschach drops a handful of sugar cubes atop of the cans, and steps back. "Outlook is grim," he observes. "Wonder what native wildlife tastes like."
"I don't plan on sticking around long enough to find out," Dan says from inside Archie. He reappears at the hatch, a wad of clothing under one arm. "I found some old civvies. Want a fresh shirt?"
"No." Rorschach plucks at his sticky clothing. "Pointless exercise."
"Suit yourself. My costume is beyond unbearable though, be right back." Dan dives back into Archie's roasting interior. He'd torn off the sleeves and dispensed of the gauntlets and boots some time ago; still, stripping off the layer of Kevlar that remains is an incredible relief, even if the slacks he's found are a little too tight around the waistband.
When he emerges back into the bright sunshine, Rorschach is nowhere to be seen.
"Oh, god damn," Dan says, raking both hands through his hair. "Goddammit, Rorschach."
He follows the indents of Rorschach's footprints, funneled and shapeless in the dry sand, until they get lost in the rich loam at the jungle edge. There's no sign of passage through the thick vegetation there, so Dan returns to Archie, sits on the side that offers the most shade and swears to himself, long and colorfully.
He misses the familiar weight of his journal, the crisp clarity that ink on paper brought.
He sets off along the jungle edge, feeling the sun prickle the back of his neck despite the hat tugged down over his ears. He's barely conscious of the way he obfuscates his tracks in the dark soil beneath the canopy. Old survival instincts, adaptable to any scenario.
Almost any.
He can still feel the way the air had crackled around him, how beneath his clothes his skin had raised in gooseflesh that was nothing to do with the cold. He can't quite recall how it had felt to cry for the first time in a decade, only that it wasn't cathartic. He'd stood on the edge of a familiar abyss, pinwheeling, only to once again fall the wrong way. Pulled instead of pushed.
He walks for hours, navigating the island's coastline. It's mostly all beach, occasionally thrusting into rocky outcrops and cliffs that require a detour up into the dense jungle.
By the time Rorschach returns to the airship, the sun is dipping below the horizon and casting searing red and purple across the clouds, not so different from the acid luminosity of his city's sky. The Archimedes is silhouetted against the sunset like a beached sea-creature, and Daniel is perched atop him with a crowbar. The tide has receded, leaving a long, golden strand.
"Where the hell did you get to?" Daniel tosses the crowbar into the sand with a muted thump, and slides down Archie's side. He's bare-chested, his shirt discarded in a sweaty, sandy pile. Rorschach notes the way his stomach bulges over the waistband of his khakis.
"Afternoon constitutional," he says, pointedly.
"Yeah, cute." Daniel snatches up his top and shakes it out. "What did you find? Indigenous tribesfolk? Pirate treasure? A five-star island resort?"
Habitually, Rorschach looks at his wrist although he knows his watch is still in a box in Sing Sing. It's an annoyance. It wouldn't correlate to the island's time, but that is irrelevant; he would have liked to know precisely how long he was gone. He makes a rough estimate instead. "Island is circumnavigable in... under four hours. Maybe three and a half. River tributary about two miles along coast to the east. Outcrop with caves a mile beyond that. Would be dangerous at high tide, no use as shelter."
"No sign of Gilligan and company, I take it." Daniel's voice is muffled as he pulls on his shirt.
"Island appears uninhabited," Rorschach replies, since despite Daniel's flippancy, it's a valid piece of information. As an afterthought, he adds, "Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Nite Owl."
Daniel purses his lips as if biting back a retort, then sighs. "Yeah. I'm sorry, man. It's just—everything." He stares out across the sea for a moment, then softens his face into a smile. "At least you found fresh water. That's... that's a major worry off my mind. Now, help me with this."
He has dismantled the external layer of the airship, pried out rivets and levered free the curved panels of metal. One section of the hull lies on the beach, the concave shell harboring drifts of sand.
Rorschach takes a moment to appreciate his partner's resourcefulness. It's not as sharply honed as his own, but then Daniel hasn't spent the past eight years living rough by day and evading the law by night. Nevertheless, it was something he had almost forgotten, even as the line and flow of his body in combat has remained so familiar. "Will make good cover, not so stifling like this."
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I unloaded everything from Archie and moved it up past the tide-line." Dan lifts one end. "Just give me a hand to carry it. We should set up camp before it gets too dark."
They prop the remains of Archimedes up into a lean-to, between a jutting boulder and the rough trunk of a palm. They disturb some large insects, beetles with shiny chitin and mean-looking claws. Rorschach crushes one and peels away the chitinous exoskeleton, thoughtful.
Daniel doesn't try to hide his disgust. "Whoa there. We aren't out of food yet."
Dan prods at the glowing embers with a stick, sending motes of searing orange into the night sky. The jungle is a black wall at their backs, the ocean an expanse like the sky, delineated from the horizon by reflected moonlight. The tide whispers, fluid and eerie.
"The city was always so bright," Dan says in a bid to spark a conversation, or to at least break the vast silence. "You forget just how dark it can be."
Rorschach is hunched over, hands clasped in front of his knees. The fire illuminates him, intensifying the red of his hair and the raw pink of his burned nose and cheeks. "No," he says into his chest. "Never had that luxury." He meets Dan's eyes only briefly, but it's enough to discourage him from any further talk.
Dan reaches out to him, like he always does. He glows at the seams, bright flares spiking from his body in a harsh supernova, burning up his layers like paper. His mask melts, sloughing off in rivulets of black and white. His eyes are as blue and intense as the glow that envelops him, and then all Dan can see is his skeleton, the silhouette of his bones as they flake away, blasted into the alien troposphere by the detonation that consumes them both.
The bright afterimage floats before Dan's eyes, surreal against sea and sand and palms that are a soft gold in the dawn light. He sits up, gasping at the ache in his muscles, and it's a long, bewildering moment before the morbid imprint behind his eyes fades and his sleep-addled brain accepts that the beach is reality and not another deceit, a dream within a dream.
Rorschach isn't there, of course, just a sandy indent in the trench coat he had spread out to sleep on. There are insects swarming around it; large ants and horned beetles, probably attracted to the smell. Dan grimaces.
The fire has burned out and left drifts of white ash in the sand. Dan pokes at it, turning over the blistered wood in the hopes of finding an ember still smoldering. No such luck, and they only have four matches left, god dammit. He wonders where his glasses are. He could probably use them as a magnifying glass if it came to that—or there's a bounty of 9-volt batteries in his gear, and he's sure he'd stashed some steel wool in Archie to scour down the displays. They need to light signal fires. Big bonfires. Something.
He gives the fire a frustrated prod, and disturbed ash swirls against the early sky. He closes his eyes for a second, chasing back the unease of his nightmare.
Rorschach is there when he opens them again, casting a long shadow, a shovel propped over one shoulder like a doomsday sign. "Good morning, Daniel."
"Morning, pal." Dan rocks back on his heels, feeling the tight pull of sunburned skin over his shoulders. "Been digging for Aztec gold?" Light banter this time, not acerbic sniping. Despite the disturbing dream, he feels a little better for getting some sleep.
"Aztec gold is a myth." Rorschach drops the shovel into the sand next to their meager pile of possessions. "Dug latrine. Men's room is behind rocks thirty yards that way. Tide will take care of it."
"Uh, great. That's great." Dan rubs at his chin, fingernails rasping over bristle and precipitating a tiny avalanche of grit. He laughs suddenly. "Hey, do you remember why we have that shovel?"
Rorschach nods. " 'Captain Dread'. Small-time crook. Preoccupation with pirates." He shoots Dan a pointed look. "Buried fruit of petty theft like dog. Left us selection of maps, X marks the spot. Childish game, thought we wouldn't bother. Or would keep us busier than it did."
"No job too small," Dan says with a grin. "To this day I can't figure out what he expected to achieve."
Rorschach snorts, crouching to hook a can out of the box of supplies. "Infamy through gimmickry."
"Well, we'd know a bit about that, I guess." Dan eyes the strip of red skin between his shirt collar and fedora brim. "Did you find the sunblock?"
Rorschach straightens up. "Fine without."
"No, seriously. You're gonna fry." Dan locates the bottle among their heap of supplies, squeezes some of the contents into his hand.
"Daniel," Rorschach growls. He wields his tin of beef like a threat, tilting it towards Dan in warning. "No."
Dan lunges at him, wrapping one arm around his waist and throwing his full weight into his side. Rorschach stumbles, loses his footing in the soft sand and lands on his ass. Dan makes the best of the opening and smears sunblock across his forehead and down the side of his face.
Rorschach heaves him away and fixes him with a baleful glare that could probably crumble buildings.
"You'll thank me for it later," Dan says.
"Stop it," Rorschach mutters, turning away to wipe a hand down his face. He's shaking as he climbs to his feet.
Oh, hell, Dan thinks. "Hey. Hey, buddy. I'm just trying to—"
"Know what you're trying to do, Daniel. Know what you—" Rorschach turns to him, eyes lit with anger, his face lively for one terrifying instant. "Not going to thank you for it."
Dan takes a step towards him. "This isn't about sunblock, is it," he says, and he knows it's a stupid question, but some selfish part of him wants Rorschach to be that petty, to say yes, Daniel, your incessant mothering pisses me off. I'm angry about sunblock and not because you—
"No," Rorschach says.
Dan's temper rises in frustration, and he lets the words bubble out, hoping they'll ease the twist in his gut. "So, what? You wanted me to just stand there while you..." He shoves his partner's shoulder, hard, then grabs at the front of his shirt. He kind of wants to shake him. "After all the years we spent watching each other's backs? In what reality do you think I could do that? What the hell, Rorschach?"
Rorschach hunches his shoulders, shrugs Dan's hands off him as he turns away. He stalks off down the beach without sparing Dan another glance.
Dan calls after him. He is ignored.
He breathes deeply, calming himself until his measured exhales turn into heavy sighs. He runs a hand through gritty, sweat-damp hair, and sets off in the opposite direction.
He carefully doesn't think about Laurie, where she might be and who she might be with, doesn't wonder if Jon will tell her where he is. Doesn't wonder if she thinks he's dead, whether she will mourn him.
He strips off his sweaty clothes and scrubs himself down in the sea, and he's concentrating so hard on trying not to think at all that he almost misses the flutter of paper. It catches the corner of his eye, an alien scrap in the natural landscape. He kept some paperwork on Archie, but it was all safely locked in a fireproof case and it all survived the impact. He wades out of the water, the sun rapidly evaporating the moisture from his skin and leaving it tight and dry.
He approaches the paper with hesitancy, plucks it between finger and thumb, almost as though he expects it to be poisonous. The side he looks at is blank.
He turns it over, and finds his caution may be warranted.
Rorschach finally stops shaking after a half-hour of hard running, loose sand working into his boots, sapping the strength from his legs. He can feel himself fracturing, emotions he'd thought long dead seeping through the cracks like revenants.
Daniel can tell and is trying to hold him together, and somehow that makes it worse. So much more humiliating, to treat him with such care after betraying him so thoroughly.
The sunblock is slick on his face, oozing down his cheek like fruit pulp, and after so many years that indignity burns bright still, the embers of it stoked into a barely-tethered rage that threatens to choke him. It's dangerous like this, without—
His face is wadded in his back pocket, impossible to wear in this humid purgatory.
Manhattan would have spared him this, would have disassembled him into harmless, inert atoms and dispersed him with impassive efficiency. A clean end, not barreled into the snow and bartered for, then left to live as this unpinned, messy human thing that's self-destructing inch by excruciating inch under the weight of someone else's atrocity.
It had been enough. Scales tipped too far, an unfixable situation. Not something he could live with, one way or the other.
A mangal opens up here, spidery roots crawling into the delta of a river mouth, buttonwood and red mangrove casting their tangled anchors into the salty water. Rorschach splashes into the shallows, lets the river slosh into his boots and soak his pinstripes. It make the fabric heavy and cool against his skin. The scintillation of the bright sky reflecting on the moving water is captivating. He stands there and watches the marbling of light on dark for what feels like a long time, the river streaming around him. He is a rock and he is steadfast. He will endure.
Movement on the periphery of his vision brings him back to himself. He feels calmer and more controlled for now, familiar mechanisms grinding into action. He turns, watches Daniel as he slides down the sandy riverbank and wades toward him.
He realizes something is wrong when Daniel doesn't look at all apologetic.
"Rorschach," Daniel says.
He sounds strange. Dazed, as though he's on the verge of going into shock. It's a considerably delayed reaction, if that's going to be the case. Rorschach frowns at him.
"I think," he's saying. "I think I know where we are." He peels his shirt away from his chest, scrubs his fingers through damp, curling hair. "I found this, and I think... I can't tell for sure, I don't know where my glasses are, but it looks like—"
"Calm down," Rorschach says, with a patience he doesn’t feel. He takes the piece of paper Daniel is holding out to him. It feels like it's been soaked and sun-dried a few times; it has a soft, textile quality under his fingertips.
He examines the faint lines on its surface. It's an illustration, he realizes. Something stylized, yet recognizable. It makes him think of the ancient myths and legends he read about in his youth—creatures from the abyssal deep, writhing and monstrous. Jormungandr. The Kraken. Leviathans.
Colossal squids.
Rorschach trudges on across the loose-packed sand, skin burning under the relentless heat. The Archimedes' skeleton appears on the horizon, the bared struts of its carcass rising like the masts of a tall ship. "Was not top of my game," he admits grudgingly. "Is possible I missed something."
"Something. Like a giant fucking alien squid..."
Rorschach curls his lip; Daniel's histrionics are wearing thin and the crude language is not helping his case. "Monstrosity isn't here," he snaps. "Saw that with your own eyes."
"Yeah," Dan says, rubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand. "Yeah. I did. Okay. But I still don't like this."
"Don't expect that you do."
"Who knows what other crazy experiments Adrian was up to, I mean, Christ, we could find anything here." Daniel is growing increasingly agitated, caught up in his own horror. There are dark patches diffusing from the neckline of his shirt and under his arms, striping across his belly where the flesh and cloth crease. "You saw Bubastis. He could have... I don’t know, genetically reconstructed dinosaurs. Grown three-headed monkeys. A goddamn jungle-dwelling polar bear. Anything."
"Unlikely."
"You ever read The Island of Doctor Moreau?"
Rorschach has. As a boy he had spent hours in the home's meager library, thumbing through the pages with creeping dread, reading about Moreau's manufactured monsters, his discarding of morality and ethics in favor of playing God. He shoots Daniel a warning look that goes entirely unnoticed. "Ridiculous. Need to pull yourself together."
Daniel halts suddenly, opens his mouth. He looks over his shoulder to check the jungle boundary and Rorschach feels the last of his patience evaporate like water splashed on a hot rock.
"No monsters. No beast-men. No aliens. Just sand, palm trees, and you, acting like small child who is scared of closet door left ajar." He takes off his hat, knocks a dent out of the crown and jams it back on.
Daniel ignores him, still distracted by the dense tangle of undergrowth. He reaches out to catch Rorschach's arm before he can stride away. "He had installations here, a laboratory," he says. "The ones the Comedian found. Rorschach, he had—"
"Yes," Rorschach says, and already the anger is simmering down, giving way to clarity of purpose. He combs his memory, threshing away the tumult that surrounded their encounter with Veidt. He considers the monologue they had been subjected to with detachment, concerning himself with the components of Veidt's master plan instead of the repercussions.
One particular component.
"Likely destroyed it," he says. "Worth investigating nonetheless, couldn't ask for more convenient way to get back."
He sees the muscle in Daniel's jaw clench, shaping the round edges of his face into something harder. "Even if he didn't destroy it, he said it didn't work properly, by design. It's pretty much a certainty that we'd end up a bloody stain on the blacktop."
“Could try to—"
"Don't even bother," Daniel says. "God, if Adrian-the-Smartest-Man-in-the-World couldn't get it right with a crack team of scientists and Doctor Manhattan at his disposal, how the hell do you think I'm going to manage with nothing but half a coconut shell and a goddamned can opener, huh? There's got to be a safer way to get off this island. We should see if there's anything we can use in the labs, but I think we should stay on the beach, build signal fires and—"
"Want to sit in the sand until miraculous rescue party arrives? Hope passing ship will spot you, take you home?" While Daniel's optimism used to be a welcome counterpart to his own admittedly bleak perspective, sometimes it tipped into passiveness, made him apathetic. That has not changed. It isn't any more acceptable now. Rorschach inflects just enough to give the words the weight they deserve. "Nobody knows we're here, Daniel. Nobody. Not going to spend rest of my life eating tree bark and waiting to be saved."
Daniel glares back at him, expression tight. He's ashen under the sunburn. "You've got a death wish. Fine, I get it." He sets off back toward camp at a brisk pace, kicking up sand in his wake. He half turns, jabs a finger. "Don't think for one second that I'm going to enable you."
On the horizon, stormclouds gather.
He tosses another pebble into the sea; it skips three times before it's sunk by a cresting wave.
He couldn't have stood there and let it happen. Rorschach was his partner for a long time—is his partner again, after all these aimless years—and it was counter to Nite Owl's instinct to allow him be injured, never mind let him endanger himself to that extent. Rorschach must understand that, despite the grudge he is obviously determined to hold. Sure, it was undignified, tackling him into the snow like that, but he's gotten over worse. The guy was practically sobbing into his scarf. That wasn't right. Dan had felt— had needed to—
He bends to pick up another flat pebble and refocuses his thoughts.
He'd needed to hold him back from doing something irrational in his grief. A hand on his shoulder and a tug of his lapel works when the Comedian's rankled him, but when he decides to face down a god, it calls for a more direct approach.
The stone is smooth, sea-turned and striated with quartz, warm in the palm of his hand. He rubs his thumb across it, then tosses it into the ocean. Two skips.
The sea is getting choppier and the waves are breaking with more force. The humidity has grown steadily over the past few hours. The air is thick and close and there's a tension gathering that has nothing to do with Dan's state of mind. He slants his hand against his forehead and squints, trying to protect his eyes from the sun and the reflective glare of the water. The thunderheads are moving closer, black anvils suspended in the vast sky.
Thunder rumbles in the distance. Dan does not relish the prospect of a storm, even to clear the air.
There's driftwood laid out on a rock near their camp, left to bake dry under the sun's implacable heat. Dan gathers it up and piles it at the back of their makeshift shelter. He'd set more fires earlier, three of them, laid out in a triangle and ready to be lit when night fell. No use if it's going to rain, so he trudges back and forth, sweating, and stows that firewood too.
He swats at the mosquitoes that settle on his skin, and tries not to think about disease vectors and malaria and yellow fever. The insects are worse here next to the dense vegetation, hanging in translucent, whining nebulae, dangling legs brushing the back of his neck and making him shudder.
Their supply of bottled water is depleted already. They will have to refill them at the river sometime tomorrow. Dan frowns as he grabs himself a warm bottle, counts up the number remaining. Rorschach can't have taken more than one or two with him, and that was several hours ago.
"You goddamn idiot," he says, and gathers up as many bottles as he can.
He's unfastened his shirt and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. His forearms are gouged and bleeding and smeared with pulped plantlife. He stirs when Dan kneels next to him, and cracks one eye open when Dan flips his hat off and touches the back of his hand to his forehead. He's flushed and dry, breathing shallowly.
"What," he croaks, and leans away.
Dan pushes a bottle of water into his hand. "Drink something, before you drop dead."
Rorschach scowls, but the expression is slow, half-formed. "I'm fine," he says. He still sounds as stubborn as a rock, which is reassuring, if not infuriating.
"Bullshit." Dan stands, opens another bottle and tips some over his head. Rorschach gasps in an unfamiliar reflex, and then staggers to his feet. Dan restrains him easily when he tries to bully himself into Dan’s personal space. "God, you're making me old, you know that? Look at you, you're dehydrated and crisping up. What the hell are you playing at?"
Rorschach shakes water droplets from his head and takes a step back, leans against the tree instead of against Dan. He glares at the bottle, twists off the cap like he's wringing its neck. Dan watches his throat work as he downs half of the contents on one breath. "Not playing," he says around a gulp of air. "Was on my way back when you interrupted me."
"Yeah, you looked like you were making great progress."
Rorschach ignores him and finishes the rest of his drink. Water dribbles from the corner of his mouth and spatters onto the angry pink of his collarbone. Dan licks his lips and sips from his own bottle, then takes Rorschach's empty and hands him another.
"Enough," Rorschach says.
Dan sighs, tries to sound more reasonable and less annoyed. "Look, buddy. It's gotta be a hundred, maybe even a hundred-ten. I know you're used to that, what with the dozens of layers in the middle of summer and everything, but this is different. You've got to—"
"Stay hydrated. Know that," Rorschach says. "Stop clucking like mother hen."
Dan closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose and counts to ten, slowly. Then another five.
When he opens them again, Rorschach is a few paces away, picking through the undergrowth. "Would you give it up and come back to the camp?" Dan catches up to him; it's only marginally cooler in the green shade, but there is relief in being out of the direct sun. "It's going to storm real soon. You can finish up your recon once we survive that."
"Going to sit under only metal structure for hundreds of miles?" Rorschach says. There is a long roll of thunder. The sky is much darker now; fat drops of rain are beginning to fall on the canopy above, beating an arrhythmic tattoo. "Thought I was the one with death wish."
"It's the safest place to be, in a storm," Dan insists, though it is an unnerving prospect. Archie was built to be a Faraday cage, but Dan has no idea if they’d be safely grounded in his present state. He's not really willing to find out. Still, it could be academic: "We don't know even if it's electrical, anyway.”
As if on cue, lightning arcs on the horizon, a bright, forked flash ensconced in the clouds. Rorschach glances at him sidelong, lips moving in a silent count.
Dan grimaces and dips his head to murmur a blessing under his breath. If there's a time to start feeling religious again, now seems about right. Another peal of thunder, and the hair on the back of Dan's neck rises. He tries not to think about their salty, conductive skin.
"Nineteen seconds," Rorschach says. "About four miles away. Going to be rough night."
"We shouldn't stand among the trees," Daniel says, voice raised against the downpour. "We're not safe here." The rain is beating a riot against the jungle foliage. It was relieving at first, but now the force of it stings like a whip against Rorschach's sunburned skin, pounds against his already aching head.
He measures the wisdom of pointing out that they are outside in a lightning storm, therefore nowhere is safe. Daniel has shown unprecedented levels of agitation today, so he errs on the side of caution and offers up his reasoning instead of a flat refusal to move onto the beach. "Sea is getting rough. Don't want to be dashed onto rocks."
He has to shout to make himself heard. It makes his voice sound strange to his own ears.
Daniel mutters something in response, but it is torn away by the wind. The expression on his face is not favorable as he turns and wades deeper into the vegetation. Rorschach suspects Daniel may be dealing with the heat even more poorly than himself.
He follows, one hand clamped to his head to keeping his hat in place, and quickly pushes past Daniel to lead the way. The denseness of the plant life soon gives away to a narrow trail. He had discovered it earlier, worn there by animals. He figures from the shape of the imprints that they were made by some kind of wild pig.
The spoor has since been erased, churned into a slurry of mud and mulch. It's difficult to navigate, slippery underfoot and he almost loses his balance one or twice. He glances over his shoulder to see that Daniel isn't faring much better. There's mud up to the knees of his khakis and he's grabbing handfuls of the vegetation to keep himself on his feet. He's soaked, rainwater cascading over him and slicking his hair to his face.
"Not far," Rorschach yells.
"Not far to where?"
Rorschach doesn't reply, just ducks his head and struggles onward. Rain slides from the canopy above in fervent drenchings and the trees lash under the force of the storm, heaving back and forth. The jungle absorbs the brunt of the wind, but it still buffets them around, keeps them off-balance.
Striations of lightning illuminate the forest floor, punching the undergrowth into high contrast, freeze-frame abstracts that burn afterimages into his retinas.
It's awesome in its power, and terrifying on a primal level. Nature's contempt. Rorschach had often wished for a storm like this to come down upon his city, an apocalyptic cleansing of the streets—right until the moment Veidt had made it happen, all the reality of his conviction played out in lurid, gory detail. He is struggling to find a new paradigm.
The tangle of creeping vines and fern thins out as they move away from the perimeter of the rainforest, and the going becomes easier even if the wind and spearing rain don't ease up much. They slog deeper between the shadows and tall trees until finally his target is in sight: a shear of rocky earth.
It had stymied Rorschach's earlier explorations. Long and steep, it has been thrust out of the ground by geological shift, perhaps. Tree roots twine through it, and it's cloaked in greenery—rain-battered moss that releases pungent, earthy aromas that make him think of rotting newspaper.
Rorschach wordlessly ducks to hunker beneath an overhang of rock. He watches Daniel weigh up the chances of it being struck by a lightning bolt and collapsing on top of them. When he's not being blindly optimistic, Daniel is the worst kind of pessimist.
Impatient, Rorschach leans up and snags Daniel's arm, pulling him down into the relative shelter of the rock. He doesn't let go immediately; he knows Daniel's unease over how exposed they are to the elements, the instinctive urge to find somewhere small and dry and enclosed.
There's nowhere like that here.
Rorschach is in no mood to try and convince him that this is the best they can do, not with his own nerves frayed to a thread and his tolerance perpetually waning. He tightens his grip.
Daniel furrows his brow, hair shifting where it's painted to his forehead. The look on his face makes Rorschach's free hand twitch and curl into a fist.
"God, it's cold," Daniel says. Pitiful, but too worn to sound childlike. They are both shivering hard, and he wonders if they could suffer hypothermia before the storm blows out. The irony of freezing to death on a tropical island doesn't escape him.
It would be practical to conserve their body-heat. Rorschach tugs at Daniel's arm, brings it around his waist, conscious at the breach of personal space. His shiver of repulsion is lost in the storm.
He's accustomed to adverse weather. Braving Antarctica was admittedly a prideful thing, but he has survived enough New York winters with little more than the clothes on his back. Daniel is not as hardy, even with an excess of body fat to insulate him. When he shifts closer, his fingers are icy against Rorschach's side.
Rorschach hears him take a breath. "Shut up," he growls, before he can say anything foolish.
Instead, Daniel chuckles mirthlessly, a low rumble by Rorschach's ear, and Rorschach's gut twists. He recognizes the feeling. It usually means he has made a mistake, misjudged the situation, and it's going to cost him.
Dan has no idea what time of day it is, whether it's dark because of the storm or because of how deep into the jungle they are, or if the sun is setting. They must have been crouched here for a long time because his calves are cramping badly and his feet and fingers are numb. He can't ever remember a stakeout being as uncomfortable as this.
Or as phenomenally awkward, and that includes that one time he'd needed to take a leak before he'd fine-tuned the fastenings of his uniform. Rorschach hadn't spoken to him for a week. Dan shudders with remembered embarrassment.
He feels Rorschach shift in response.
The rational part of him knows they're just sharing body heat, but the rest of him finds the voluntary closeness unnerving. Considering how at odds they've been, it's like having his hand licked by a rabid pitbull.
Something in a dark corner of his psyche makes a grab for his attention, and Dan sets his face into something he hopes is unreadable. Hell, it's a good thing it's mostly half-light because he's never been very good at that. He briefly entertains asking Rorschach for tips on maintaining a poker face.
The rain is finally letting up. At least he thinks so—it's not battering as loudly against the foliage, and the thunder is more distant and less frequent. Now that he's paying more attention to his surroundings and not the latent heat of the body pressed up to him, he realizes that the wind has dropped.
As though reading Dan's thoughts, Rorschach unfolds himself and pushes to his feet, leaves a void where cold rain mists against Dan's chest and face. "Storm's passing," he says, shaking out his limbs.
Dan straightens up slowly, braces his hands in the small of his back and winces. It hurts his face. "Okay," he says. "Guess we should check out the damage. This way back to camp, right?" He gestures vaguely westwards.
"Hrm," Rorschach says.
"Rorschach, don't even think about telling me you don't know—"
"Know the way back." Rorschach scowls and adjusts his hat. It's soaked through and the brim is drooping. He turns slowly, looking at the undergrowth, but Dan knows better than to think he's suddenly taken to appreciating the scenery.
Dan folds his arms, tries to feel more like Nite Owl and less like a sodden forty-something covered in mud. "Okay, listen. Veidt's labs won't have washed away, unlike our food. You can play hide and go seek later, but I think we have more immediate concerns right now."
The muscles in Rorschach's jaw tighten.
"Okay?" Dan repeats. He is so goddamn stubborn sometimes, deliberately goddamn contrary.
A nod of his head, grudging acquiescence and nothing more. Dan follows him as he trudges back through the undergrowth.
In retrospect, he's very glad they didn't stay on the beach.
The sea has rolled Archie along the strand, pressed him upside-down against the wall of jungle. The trees and undergrowth buckle under his weight, and the exposed girders where Dan had stripped away the exterior of the hull are gouged deep into the sandy earth. Flotsam has shored itself around the curved perimeter of the ship, sunk into the sand like it's been there forever.
Of their makeshift shelter, there isn't a trace.
Dan approaches, smooths his hand over Archie's salt-crusted surface. He was a true labor of love and it hurts more than he can say to see what has become of him, stripped and battered, left to corrode into nothing. The sunset reflects off the glassy arc of his eyes; post-apocalyptic fire, rust and rivets. There's a knot in Dan's throat. He feels desolate.
"I always missed flying," he says, and maybe he's thinking about what he's saying, maybe he isn't. "It was good to know he was there, if I ever changed my mind."
Rorschach grunts, apparently disinterested in Dan's grief or just not willing to engage, more concerned with combing the area around what was their campsite. He already has some salvage cradled in the crook of one arm. He sets it aside in order to crouch down and scoop away handfuls of sand.
"Did change your mind," he says after a few minutes, eyes fixed on his own hands, at work unearthing what turns out to be the shovel. "Why?"
Dan's not sure he has a straight answer to that. He thinks of solemn-faced news reporters, doomsday clocks, the shadow of Nite Owl always looming over him, waiting to swoop. He thinks of Laurie, svelte and handsome, descending his basement steps. He thinks of a mugshot on his television screen like a backhand.
"It's complicated," he says.
The look on Rorschach's face suggests he knows exactly what Dan was thinking. It's as plain as any configuration of inkblots.
"Okay, so it might have had something to do with—" He cuts himself off before he starts sounding apologetic, because what the hell is that about. "Everything was getting kinda heavy, you know? I had to do something. And, well. Then you got yourself caught—"
A cautionary noise from Rorschach.
"—so what the hell, you know? It felt good to be Nite Owl again. Really good." He shivers as a cool evening breeze picks up and chills the moisture that still clings to his clothes. The sun is splitting on the horizon, and it's going to get very dark, very soon. "I felt useful. Like I was needed again."
"Never stopped being needed," Rorschach says, too stiffly to be truly reproachful. "Could always have been useful."
Dan tries to feel irritated more than weirdly touched, and if there's an awkward silence where he isn't sure how to respond, Rorschach is either oblivious or indifferent to it. He has an answer, of course—he didn't want to operate illegally—but that'll start an old, tired argument and he doesn't have the heart for it.
Rorschach straightens up, stabs the shovel blade into the sand. "Need to light fire before it gets too dark." He takes off his hat and digs his fingers into his hair to scratch his scalp. It makes Dan twitch, actively fighting the urge to itch at the crop of insect bites on his ankles and the back of his neck.
They make an earnest attempt to start a campfire, but even if everything wasn't completely soaked, they have nothing to light it with. Rorschach accepts this with equanimity, much to Dan's relief. He's acutely aware that they're in a critical situation and the last thing he needs is more pointless bickering.
Apart from the shovel, they have two cans of stewed beef and one can of beans (and nothing to open them with); a few of the empty water bottles that got wedged into the undergrowth, and, after a cursory search of Archie, a dripping wet utility belt with throwing crescent and assorted contents.
Dan lies on what was the ceiling, body cradled in the curve of the hull. Through the ellipse of the ship's eye, the moon is nothing but a pale blade against a starfield. It's only that meager light that keeps it from being perfectly, unknowably dark. Dan shivers, listening to unidentified sounds that interrupt the gradually familiar tapestry of sibilant jungle and sea, and the rhythmic chirr of insects.
His hands play over the crescent moon of his belt, the edge still keen against his thumb. He wonders if there's anything out there that's sizeable enough to hunt. He wonders if he could kill it, once he'd caught it.
His stomach rumbles at the mere allusion to food, and Dan snorts at himself, loud in the chambered space. He supposes he'd manage some level of ruthlessness after a while of eating nothing but bugs and seaweed.
There's the shuffle and squeak of a body against riveted metal, a grunt of discomfort. "Problem, Daniel?"
"Oh, just planning our meals for the foreseeable future. How does boiled sea anemone strike you?"
There's a moment of obvious confusion on Rorschach's end. Dan can't blame him, he thinks he might only be half-joking.
"... sounds poisonous," Rorschach eventually says.
"Yeah, probably." Dan decides to indulge his own nonsense. "Easy to catch, though. Oh, I dunno. I'm sure it must be a delicacy somewhere."
"Hrrn. Don't care for foreign food."
Dan laughs, letting it ripple up from deep in his chest. It's welcoming, how genuine and easy it feels. "What do you propose, then?"
"Found evidence of wild pigs on island."
That just makes Dan laugh harder, because of course it would be pork.
His thumb finds the edge of his throwing blade again, and his laughter subsides abruptly. He can sense Rorschach looking askance at him. He's a vague shadow among vaguer darkness, sitting hunched over his own knees like some kind of bogeyman.
The quiet extends into a silence, and Dan can imagine that the dawn must be creeping over the horizon back in New York, because his body is telling him it's time to sleep. He closes his eyes, and his imagination spears him with vivid imagery: a cold gray morning; empty windows and broken glass; deserted streets. Shadows that loop and arc, cast by something beyond his willingness to see.
He is shaken awake from a creeping, disorienting dream, the kind that leaves him distant and off-kilter for hours, but the relief of being shaken free is negated by the urgency in Rorschach's voice. The man is hovering over him, and his panel-beaten face in such close proximity is not the first thing Dan wants to see of a morning.
It really isn't.
His instinctive reaction is to sit up and get the hell out of the way, but Rorschach growls, "Don't move," and pins him by the shoulders. His hands are scorching.
What the hell, Dan thinks. It's mostly a question.
The unreality of his situation forms strange connections in his brain, makes him think: oh god, that's right, then: please, yes, and immediately on the heels of that, back to what the hell?
"Rorschach?" he says, a little more tentatively than he would have liked.
"Don't move," Rorschach says again, and lets go of Dan's shoulders. "Stay very still."
He sits up and removes one shoe, holds it firmly by the toe and raises it, worn sole facing Dan. He looks so very solemn, and in Dan's befuddled state, it's completely bizarre. He wants to laugh, but then he might not be able to stop.
He's wondering just how badly the sun and stress has gotten to both of them when Rorschach brings the shoe down hard next to his ear. It hits Archie's wall with a retort like gunfire. Dan has rolled to one side and is crouching, fists up and body tensed, before he realizes he's even moved.
Rorschach shoots him an unreadable look, and proceeds to scrape meaty, vibrant spider-parts off the heel of his shoe.
Dan shudders, hair rising along his arms and prickling at the back of his neck. "Thanks," he says, and tries to get himself to relax a notch, but that son of a bitch was huge. It probably ate birds. He can't help wondering if they get that big by themselves.
"Hey," he calls to Rorschach. He's scavenging at the jungle edge again, and it looks like he's found the battered remains of their pan. "You still got your lock picks?"
That seems to pique Rorschach's curiosity. He jogs over, pulling a fold of leather from his back pocket. He hunkers down and hands it to Dan. "What are you doing?" he asks.
Dan unrolls the case and shakes out the sand, then selects a hook pick. "Any sentimental attachment to this one?"
Rorschach just stares at him, so Dan stares back. His nose is starting to peel, and Dan notes a peppering of gray hairs among the patchy red-blond of his stubble. Dan chases a memory: the first time Rorschach had pulled the mask over his nose in front of him, the Sweet Chariot cube and the grains of sugar in the corner of his lips. He remembers how fresh-faced they both were, back in the good days, and feels old.
"Don't have use for it in foreseeable future," Rorschach says. "Unless you know something I don't."
Dan rolls his eyes and cuts the head off the pick, catching it in his palm. He finds the end of the nylon line, and Rorschach makes an approving noise when he realizes what Dan is up to.
"Fishing line," he says. Then, because obviously an almost-compliment isn't acceptable without accompanying criticism: "Will it work? Don't want to waste food for bait."
Dan grins at him, shakes his head. "I'll make a lure out of something shiny."
Rorschach looks skeptical.
"If that doesn't work, there are plenty of bugs. C'mon Rorschach, you didn't ever go fishing?" He gets no response beyond a glower. Dan shrugs at him. "Man, it's like you were never a kid."
Rorschach doesn't seem inclined to disabuse him of this notion, and something about his dismissiveness is aggravating. It's like he's so invested on keeping up the hard-assed front—even here, and now—that he's willing to erase his own childhood.
It's a big red danger sign. Dan can't help but poke at it.
"Really? You're telling me that you sprang fully-formed from your mother's—"
The next thing Dan knows, he's flat on his back and Rorschach is sitting on his chest, fist cocked.
"Ooww..." He brings a hand up to his mouth and checks for blood. He can taste it on his tongue. The inside of his cheek is oozing. "Jesus, Rorschach—"
"Don't talk about my mother's—" Rorschach hisses. "Don't talk about my mother."
"—forehead? Like Athena, you know... ow, fuck, get off." Dan twists, uses the strength still in his shoulders and legs to dislodge him.
They sprawl into the sand and Rorschach tries to take another pop at him, but it's so goddamn half-hearted Dan just grapples him down and waits for him to stop thrashing. Maybe that will earn him some passive-aggressive bullshit later, but Dan can deal with that no problem. The years haven't dulled his skill in handling that particular element of their partnership.
For now, he's conscious of the fact that he has his partner in a vaguely homoerotic clinch, and he would perhaps like to extricate himself before Rorschach realizes it too, because hey, one set of issues at a time.
"Done?" he asks.
He gets a drawn-out, frustrated sigh in response.
"I didn't mean to upset you, man," he says, pushing himself back onto his heels. "Again. Sorry."
Rorschach climbs to his feet with stiff dignity, comporting himself as though being planted in the sand was his idea in the first place. He dusts off his pants and shirt. "Not upset," he says.
"Angry?"
"Yes." He scoops up his hat, dons it.
"More so than usual?" Dan wonders what's happened to his filter lately. Wherever it's gone, it's dragged his sense of self-preservation along with it. He blames massacres and caffeine withdrawal.
"Dreiberg."
Furious, then. Still, he's not lashing out again or stalking off into the jungle, which is something.
It suddenly occurs to Dan that Rorschach's trench coat is missing, inhaled by the storm, and that means his mask must be gone, too. He's not sure what that means for either of them, but it's probably not good.
"I'm fine, by the way," Dan says. "Your right hook isn't as mean as your left."
Rorschach has the grace to look slightly chagrined, but nothing more. Dan will take what he can get as far as that's concerned.
He winds up the nylon that had gotten looped and tangled in their scuffle, stows it back in his belt. There will be time for fishing later, but for now they have more pressing needs. He gathers their surviving water bottles and jerks his head. "C'mon, give me a hand with this."
He keeps thinking of his face. Its absence is like a void in him. He is null.
The day finds its heat as they walk, and he's parched by the time they reach the river and hike a little way along the bank, away from the sea. He crouches down to cup a handful of the running water. It's halfway to his mouth when Daniel jogs his elbow, spilling it. The water falls between his fingers, makes concentric ripples that are swept away in a fragment of an instant.
"Don't," Daniel says, and he seems genuinely apologetic. He's sweating heavily, must be just as thirsty. "We need to boil it first. Could be all kinds of parasites in there. Worse, if anything's died upstream."
He's right, and it's irritating that he's right. The heat and his loss is affecting him, compromising his common sense. He wants to scowl, but his mind hooks onto Daniel's words and turns them, presents an idea.
"Upstream," he says, straightening so he can take a clearer look at his surroundings. The river opens into a delta here, wide and shallow, and he wonders if how long it will remain navigable if they follow it toward the heart of the island.
Daniel shakes his head and makes a noise; frustration, perhaps. "Later," he says, discarding a split bottle. "This first. Then we have to gather tinder and get a fire started, somehow."
Rorschach watches his partner as he industriously fills the bottles with river water and caps them, and suspects that Daniel is starting to enjoy this.
Rorschach tilts his head to one side, frowns.
"Huh." Daniel drops it back into the water; it makes a splooshing noise and sucks a vortex of bubbles down with it. "Guess the storm brought in some..." He makes a vague gesture. "Flotsam?"
"Flotsam," Rorschach confirms, shifting the bottles around so he doesn't drop any. They're already warm, the plastic losing its rigidity and becoming too pliant in his grip.
Daniel wades out of the ocean. His pants are soaked and cling to his legs, to the curve of his calves. He's still packed with muscle there—there, and on the other parts of his body where the flab hasn't settled.
Rorschach stops staring as abruptly as he started, and with less justification.
"What's the difference with jetsam?" Daniel says, unaware. "I can never remember."
"Ehn." Rorschach finds that he can't remember either, maritime law of salvage not being particularly relevant in his life thus far. He shrugs. "Wonder what else has washed up."
"A crate of beer would be nice," Daniel says. "Or coffee. I could really go for some coffee. And a few cartons of takeout. And, if we're being serious here, a heap of clean underwear."
"Don't hold your breath."
"Oh, I'm really not."
"I am," Rorschach says, and startles himself when he has to choke down something that wants to be a laugh. They've been here far too long already. Rorschach waits for the expected retort about his own dubious hygiene, but Daniel just looks at him, a foolish smile spreading across his face.
Rorschach shoves some of the bottles back in his direction, hoping for irritation to allay the warmth in his eyes. He takes them without complaint, though, and they walk on.
"I missed you," Daniel says after a while, and then has the decency to be embarrassed about such mawkishness. He looks away, then at the sand at his feet.
Rorschach isn't certain how to respond. He is uncomfortable, though not in an entirely negative way. That always trips a wire, warns him that it's something he should be wary of and certainly not indulge. But Daniel is looking at him, and there's a desperate underscore of hope in his expression. It should be pathetic.
He thinks of his spare mask, in a box in Sing Sing. "Could always find me," Rorschach says.
"No." Daniel rubs at the side of his face with a flat palm, stubble rasping. "I mean, you you. The you who made terrible puns and used to stay for coffee. The one who shook my hand at the end of an evening. Before you went— before things went—" He shrugs, then falls silent for a while.
Rorschach knows he is not trying to think of what to say, or how to say it. He already knows what he's talking about. They both do. He is trying to decide if it's wise to give it voice.
"Oh, hell," Daniel says, finally. He lifts his hand away from his face, waves it, dismissive. "It doesn't matter."
No, Rorschach decides, it doesn't matter at all. He hunches his shoulders as they trudge the rest of the way back, fedora casting a protective shadow over his face. They make intermittent small-talk—easy grumbles about the sand, the heat, sunburn, and nothing of things that have long since passed.
"This isn't as easy as it looks in the movies," Dan says. He's sitting, rolling a branch between his palms, one end wedged into a lump of driftwood. "Not even a wisp of smoke."
"Not sure that's how it's done." Rorschach crouches next to him, makes a sawing motion with his hands. "Thought you had to use bow of some kind."
"Yeah, maybe. Probably. I should have gone to Boy Scouts after all, huh?"
"You didn't?" Rorschach slowly blinks at him, and Dan feels a strange satisfaction that he can still surprise his old friend. It's always been easy to forget that, for all his keen deductive reasoning, he isn't infallible.
"No. I wanted to, but..." He gestures with the stick. "My father didn't think I needed it to reach my 'full potential', by which he meant there wasn't a merit badge for financial management." Dan makes a face. "I just wanted to be an Eagle Scout."
He sits back, skewers his stick into the sand with no small amount of indignation, and realizes it's been a long time since he'd really thought about his father. He'd skated over the surface of things when talking with Laurie brought it up, but that conversation still made a few cracks. He's not surprised that resentment still festers in his memories. Disappointed, perhaps, but not surprised.
A snort from Rorschach. He's looking out across the ocean, hundred-yard stare battling with the horizon. "Admirable goal. Pointless, though. Father was right."
"Thanks, buddy," Dan says, trying to keep it light but managing something between true hurt and thick sarcasm. "You always know just the right thing to say."
"You misunderstand. Didn't need to be Eagle Scout to become Nite Owl."
"You think Nite Owl was my full potential?"
"Is."
"Was. Well, get this: Nite Owl can't even light a fire without a..." He trails off, because it's so goddamn obvious he can't believe he didn't think of it sooner. He wonders if he's losing it, brains melted clean out of his skull.
"Daniel?"
Dan scrambles to his feet, stumbles his way over the loose-packed sand and heads for Archie. Rorschach follows, grumbling under his breath for whatever reason but Dan ignores him, runs his hand over the airship's hull until he finds what he's looking for. The small access hatch is dented and misshapen, but he digs his fingers into the gaps the battered edges have left and pulls it open.
"Fuel," he explains, unscrewing the cap beneath. "For the flamethrower."
Rorschach frowns. If he's enthused or wary or anything but indifferent to the idea, he doesn't show it. "Still need to ignite it."
"Mm." Dan turns a small circle and scuffs his foot through the sand, turning over a couple of pebbles until he spots a likely candidate: dark gray with an angular, glassy surface. He picks it up, holds it between finger and thumb and waits until Rorschach raises an impatient eyebrow.
He strikes the flint against an exposed girder, and grins.
"Whoa," Dan says, and holds it at arm's length. "Okay, go go go."
Maybe Dan's laughter is a little on the maniacal side as they run back to camp, but he's carrying a length of seaweed that's quick-burning like a fuse and he's not sure whether the campfire's going to catch before he does. He drops it among the tinder, and Rorschach crouches to set the wood around it.
He doesn't flinch when the flames lick up around his hands, just rocks back onto his heels and rubs his knuckles against the outside of his thighs. They feed it, then let it burn until the flames die back into red coals, and Rorschach uses the shovel to bank it with its own ashes.
It's stifling, but they have nothing better to do but sit and swelter in the late afternoon heat. Rorschach's shirt is practically transparent, plastered against his wiry frame.
"You know," Dan says, conversational as he settles their sorry-looking pan among the embers. His knuckles complain as he uncaps the bottles of water and pours them in. "I think we're gonna be okay."
"Don't get comfortable," Rorschach says. "Upriver, tomorrow. Need to find Veidt's labs and investigate."
The idea of trekking through leech-infested water and then into the dense tangle of the jungle—resplendent with all kinds of predatory, poisonous, or otherwise unfriendly plants and creatures—in search of an installation that may or may not be there, and if it is, may or may not contain genetically-engineered poisonous, predatory, or otherwise unfriendly plants and creatures, all to satisfy Rorschach's obsessive fixation? That isn't immediately appealing to Dan. He was kind of looking forward to a little fishing.
Instead, he says, "Investigate what, exactly?"
Rorschach looks at him like he's stupid. It has familiar weight, but Dan finds that it's easier to weather when the man is bright pink and peeling like a leper.
"Oh, Jesus, no. Look, I already told you, the teleportation tech is not our way home. No way in hell."
Rorschach tilts his head back to look at the sky, the tree line, the blue horizon, then back at Dan. "Better idea?"
Dan sighs. If he suggests signal fires again it'll precipitate yet another stupid argument, but the truth is, he doesn't really know what else to do. What he does know is that Rorschach will carry on single-mindedly whether Dan goes with him or not. God knows there's precedent for that.
"No," he says. Maybe if they find the labs Rorschach will see how pointless it is to try to operate unfathomably advanced technology without so much as an instruction manual. Maybe. "Okay, let's do it your way. We can take a look."
Rorschach grunts like it was an entirely expected victory. Dan occupies himself with the freshly-boiled drinking water and works on settling the annoyance that is trying to bristle through his calm.
He sleeps fitfully, plagued by twisting nightmares. In his dreams, he has to concentrate hard or creatures erupt from the ground around him, wrap him in oozing limbs, try to drag him down into earth that becomes the sea.
Daniel finds them first. He catches sight of some seabirds, trails down the beach after them like a child chasing a kite. His yell draws Rorschach's attention from the remains of their breakfast—a paltry meal of sweating tinned beef and tepid water, but he's subsisted on less.
He's trying to hustle the creatures from one of the bodies as Rorschach approaches. They rear back and spread their wings, bob and sidestep, waiting for the opportunity to dart back in to tear at the flesh. They remind Rorschach of downtown gutterpunks, sharp-eyed and avaricious, ready to snatch whatever they can.
The bodies—three of them, give or take—have settled into the beach, partially submerged in the rippled sand. Their limbs are bent, rigor clawing their fingers.
"God," Daniel says, running his fingers through his hair, then pressing the back of his hand against his mouth. "Do you think the storm blew them in?"
He seems disturbed by their existence. Rorschach isn't sure why. He's seen plenty of bodies before, some in much worse condition.
"It's like something out of that pirate comic," Daniel says. He glances at the seabirds, licks his lips and then visibly shudders.
Rorschach wouldn't waste his time with such fantastical indulgences, but he still knows which comic Daniel is talking about, thanks to the kid at his regular newsstand. The one the missing Max Shea wrote. He has a sudden, itching suspicion.
He crouches to examine the nearest corpse. It's bloating up, decomposing in the humidity, strata of salt crusting on the dark flesh as the seawater evaporates. Left arm gone, shoulder blade hanging ragged and bloodless. The rest of the body is pocked with lacerations and mangled like it's taken massive blunt-force trauma. Explosion, maybe.
He turns the corpse over, wrinkles his nose at the slimy texture of putrefying flesh. Its features are distended and ingrained with sand, but recognizable enough from the vanished persons articles that ran ceaselessly throughout '84 and until early this year.
"Funny you should mention," he says.
"Killed millions," Rorschach says, rolling Shea into his final resting place atop another corpse in a shallow, loamy grave. "Or did you already forget. For the greater good."
"For my sanity," Daniel mutters, and shakes a spadeful of sand into the hole. "They won't be washing up here. I don't have to... to deal with that yet, okay. I can't get my head around that."
The shovel makes a crisp noise as it slices into the earth. Daniel starts digging out another grave. More sand to bury his head in.
"Retribution," Rorschach says, as inevitable as the sunrise.
"We'll have to head off into the jungle soon." Daniel is wearing a string of bottles like a bandolier and a sheen of sweat like a second skin. He waves a hand through the insects that swarm around his head. "Jesus, how can my toes be freezing but the rest of me so god damned hot."
"Stop complaining," Rorschach suggests. Daniel's constant iteration of his discomforts is making it hard to ignore his own. He sighs, wades toward the shore and climbs up into a nest of mangrove roots. Daniel waits, standing in the water until he realizes that they're taking a break, then follows in wide, slow strides, arms held out to keep his balance.
"You realize," Daniel says as he opens a bottle of water, sips from it. "Killing Adrian won't solve anything."
"Not stupid." The skin around Rorschach's ankle throbs, still swollen from jumping out of Moloch's window. He reaches down to scratch at it through the wet fabric of his pinstripes. "Merely what he deserves. Happy to deliver."
"And then what?" Daniel is watching him, brows deeply creased. "Once you've scuppered everyone's hope for the future, that is. Martyr yourself on his bodyguards?" He caps the bottle roughly, hands it to Rorschach.
"Won't have bodyguards," Rorschach says, and fixes him with a level stare. "Won't have power. Won't have anything. In no position to bring hope."
"Of course he is. You saw what he had planned for his businesses, the message he's sending out. Exactly the kind of thing that New York will need. It's..." Daniel trails off, takes sudden interest in his hands, and Rorschach fills in the blanks with satisfaction. It's manipulative, disingenuous. Self-serving, under the veneer of altruism.
"Hard to swallow promises for future from man who destroyed present. Expected to die; left journal with New Frontiersman before we departed for Karnak." He tips his head back to drink, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and glances at Daniel. He looks incredulous. Not what Rorschach expected, but good enough. "May have survived, but result is unchanged. Everyone will know the truth."
He has a significant measure of regret for this. Judging from the news reports that flooded Veidt's screens, his plan had worked. The only action Rorschach has left can only serve to undo Veidt's victory further. But his journal is posted, and that cannot be undone. He must make the best of it, even if Veidt's only answer for his crime can be a quiet assassination.
Rorschach will decide what to do about himself, after that.
Daniel puts his hand on his forehead. "The New Frontiersman. Of course. Of course you did." The revelation seems to overwhelm him. His mouth trembles and he makes a noise as though he's going to laugh, or perhaps cry. He looks suddenly, incredibly tired.
"So you understand, Veidt's life irrelevant to fate of new future," Rorschach says. "Hehn. Could even be dead already. Left world to recover on own terms."
"Um." Daniel slides back into the river, shirt catching on the tree roots and riding up over his stomach. Rorschach notes that since deprived of his takeout-laden sedentary lifestyle, he's begun to shed some weight. "Sure. How about we focus on finding a way back first, and we can see how things stand when we get there, okay?"
Rorschach accepts the placation for what it is, because at least it means Daniel is thinking of getting home.
"Well," Dan says. "That was easier to spot than I thought it would be."
Rorschach insists on a quick recon of the buildings, scouting the perimeter before approaching them. Dan isn't sure what he expects to uncover. Surely not people. He doesn't object to the cautious approach, though. He's apprehensive about what they might find in the labs.
Rorschach stalks from tree to tree like a great cat, leafy shadow striping him as he moves. He is about as inconspicuous as a panther would be in the suburbs, each movement marked by swaying foliage and the rustle and crack of leaf litter. At Dan's insistence, he's smeared his face with silty river mud to shield himself from the worst of the sun. It's nothing like his mask, except when Dan catches him from the corner of his eye.
The installation is a two-story seventies affair, all sci-fi angles that seem dated already. It looks like there were large windows on the second level, spanning floor-to-ceiling in unabashed ostentation. They've been blown out, maybe by the storm. Fragments of glass lie in the undergrowth, shining with reflected sky. The windows on the bottom floor have fared considerably better; Dan figures they were more sheltered, or underwent a more rigorous tempering process.
Adrian's fascination with Egyptology is in evidence at the entrance. The reinforced steel door is embossed with a representation of the pyramids at Giza.
"Some think they were built by alien visitation," Rorschach says, passing his fingers over the design.
Dan tries to read his expression. He's frowning as usual, now occupied with the electronic lock. Dan imagines ink blotted over his eyes and cheekbones, the familiar tight pattern of concentration it would make.
"You believe that?" he asks. He knows the kind of paranoia that flourishes between the pages of the New Frontiersman and what kind of conspiracies his partner is willing to entertain.
Rorschach snorts. "Patently ridiculous. Much easier to believe they were built on the back of slaves, bent under yoke and whip of human cruelty. Only aliens are the ones men construct as scapegoats." He jabs a finger at the pried-off lock panel, the loose wires twisted like a nest of snakes. "Can't do anything with this."
"Figured as much," Dan says. He's always been impressed by how far Rorschach could get with various security systems, despite (or maybe because of) being something of a luddite, but this lock would be beyond even Dan and his electronics kit on a good day. "Okay, so. Options."
"Windows," Rorschach says. He scoops up a rock about the size of his fist, hefts it.
"Whoa, hey—" Dan says, but before he can tell him to wait a minute, Rorschach has already flung it at the glass full-force, face twisted with effort, shirt-tails pulling loose from his pants. It rebounds with a resonantion that is too loud and far too artificial for the jungle, echoing out into the trees. The rock bounces back into the long grass, the window decidedly unbroken.
"Hurm," Rorschach says, steadfastly unembarrassed.
"That's not going to work," Dan says. He steps back, craning his neck to take in the upper story of the building. "Think we can get up there? The interior doors might be less secure."
Rorschach doesn't bother with a 'yes', or 'good idea, Daniel', just takes a couple steps back to inspect the concrete door lintel then the rest of the structure. He bounces on his toes, rolls his shoulders back.
"So, what do you think," Dan says. "Should I call Archie, or are you gonna use the grappling gun?"
Rorschach shoots him a dark look, reaches up and digs his fingers into the brickwork. Dan gets an eyeful of thick shoulder muscle and then pinstriped ass as Rorschach scales the facade like a goddamn lizard. Dan's pretty sure he no longer has the upper-body strength to follow, and even if he did, the extra pounds on him would make things hard-going. He decides to offer encouragement instead.
"Good work. Looks like there's a decent handhold to your left."
Rorschach pauses, one leg crooked to reach a new foothold, and looks down long enough for a withering glare. He hauls himself up the last meter or so—pointedly ignoring the handhold like the stubborn son of a bitch he is—crawls up through the empty window frame and disappears from Dan's view.
Dan realizes he's not sure what he's supposed to do next. It's a reminder of how disconnected their partnership had gotten before it all went completely to hell, Rorschach quick to go do his own thing without keeping Dan in the loop. Back in the day they'd have a plan and contingencies. Neither of them would have been left wondering and worrying about what the other was doing and whether they should be at their back, or—
He catches a flicker of movement behind the dark glass of the window, a split-second before it explodes.
It shatters into a cascade of glass fragments and Dan staggers back, falls into a crouch, arms up to protect his face. He can feel glass in his hair, slipping down his collar and into the creases of his shirt
"Easier to break from the inside," Rorschach says, stepping through the debris. He's hefting a fire axe, and Dan's lizard brain likes the taut sinew of his forearms and the white knuckled grip far too much. The rest of his subconscious cleanly categorizes this picture under danger, avoid.
Dan shakes his head, partly to get a hold of himself but mostly to shed some of the crystals of glass.
"Come on." Rorschach turns on his heel, crunches over the glass as he strides back into the building. Dan follows, glad to get the sun off the back of his neck, even if the interior is stifling. He blinks, eyes accustoming to the comparative dark. Luminous afterimages dance across his vision, superimposed over the disembodied paleness of Rorschach's skin and shirt, moving around in the dark like a ghost.
He hears a rapid click-click-clicking, and his sight finally resolves enough to see his partner has found a light switch.
"Veidt must have ran installation on generators," Rorschach says, propping the fire axe against the wall. "We should find them."
"Yeah." Dan looks around. They are in what appears to be a meeting room. There's an oval table engraved with Veidt's logo, chairs arranged around it in a neat semi-circle, undisturbed. A blank flip-chart pad on a stand is propped in one corner, and it's all very corporate for being in the middle of a jungle. Dan takes a closer look but there's nothing to shed light on what exactly went on in here, just a ragged edge where sheets have been torn away and marker pen bleed-through on the paper below.
"Won't find them there," Rorschach says, with no attempt to hide his impatience. "Plenty of time to search for clues once power is restored. This way. Saw corridor on the way down here, seems likely."
"Okay, fine," Dan says, equally brusque. "After you."
Rorschach strikes off into the building, finding relief in the cool, if stagnant air. He can hear Daniel behind him, footfalls echoing in step. Abruptly, he slows up until they are abreast. Old instinct. Daniel raises his eyebrows. Rorschach ignores him.
The corridor is long, concrete-floored and stepped every twenty paces or so. It gets gradually darker the further they walk. Soon it is pitch-black, the diffuse square of sunlight behind them snuffed out as they push onwards, further downwards, moving with one hand against the wall.
It's damp under Rorschach's palm. Condensed moisture. A few more paces and the cold brick gives way to a different material. "Door here," he says. He locates the handle. Unlocked, good. The door swings open.
"Ugh," Daniel says. The sound is hollow and echoing even though he's pitched his voice low, as though there is anyone to overhear them. "Do you smell that?"
Rorschach takes a deep breath through his nose. He smells sweat, both Daniel's and his own, sour where it's caught in their sea-washed clothes, and hot, fresh sweat under that. He smells stale, cold air. He smells... something ripe and putrid that isn't the rich loam of the river-mud on their shoes.
It catches the back of his throat, makes him think of slick, oozing appendages and roughs his skin into goosebumps in a way that has nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with an unidentified, primal fear, transmuting to a desire to lash out, to tear and destroy and survive.
"Not down here," Daniel says, and Rorschach can hear panic, barely suppressed. "The generators will be out. Out back, or. Somewhere else. Not down here."
"Go," Rorschach says. He doesn't like this at all, not the atmosphere or the smell or the shocked quality to Daniel's voice, or they way he wants to bury his teeth into something, to twist his hands into viscera. He reaches out, clutches Daniel's arm, hard. "Back. Out. Into the sun."
They move at a steady pace at first, but the nape of Rorschach's neck is prickling and all of his instincts are screaming don't turn your back don't turn your back and it is cold down here, unnaturally cold and they must move now, move move move, run as fast as their legs can carry them, don't trip, don't stumble, don't stop—
—and the sun bursts over them, blinding and searing and more welcome than it's ever been. They stumble into the long grass, shaking like the forest in a storm.
Rorschach sits next to him in a slow, deliberate motion and lays his hands on the ground, curls his fingers in the scrubby grass. He doesn't answer immediately, but Dan doesn't doubt that he heard the question. He's likely thinking it over. Rorschach deals with this kind of thing differently to him—differently to how they both used to.
"Daniel," Rorschach asks, after tilting his head back and staring up at the foliage for a while. "Sleeping well, lately?"
Dan blinks at him. "No!" he says, pure incredulity driving his voice up half an octave. "And I still won't be, not after that." He shakes his head, then adds, "Are you?"
"Dreaming more," Rorschach replies. "Unusually vivid. Unsettling."
"I— yeah." Vivid is a good way to describe them. "I mean, not all of them, but some. Some are, like..." Dan gestures, trying to convey the abstract, technicolor scenarios that have been hijacking his sleep, bludgeoning at his subconscious.
"Intrusive," Rorschach says. There's a weight behind the word, some meaning he's waiting for Dan to grasp.
"I'm going back now. Back to camp," Dan says, because god damnit, he's already seen enough fucked up crazy shit to last a lifetime, he doesn't need any more today. "Please come with me," he adds, not even caring how it sounds.
To his acute relief, Rorschach nods and gets to his feet. Dan chooses to believe it's because he's already figured it all out and there's nothing more to investigate here, and not because he's as badly shaken up as Dan is.
But instead of heading back to the river, Rorschach approaches the building again, towards the shining glass fragments, the sharp sharp edges that could cut them both wide open in an instant. Dan can't manage a question, grabs him instead, aware that it's more a panic reflex than conscious decision.
Rorschach halts, turns slightly toward Dan. His face is pale, even under river-mud and the stippling of his freckles. "The axe," he says. "Want to take it with us." He shrugs Dan's hand away but nods in assent, lets him press shoulder-to-shoulder as they step back through the broken window. The hair along Dan's arms and at the back of his neck is standing on end, and there's a persistent part of his brain that tells him this will all end in blood and violence, their entrails strewn over the tropical foliage.
Despite the trembling and tension and pounding adrenaline, Rorschach stoops to retrieve the axe without collapsing into madness. They stumble back to camp under the westering sun.
He brushes sand from the bottom of his bare feet and retrieves his boots from where they have been drying next to the campfire, hung upside-down on sticks driven into the ground. He gives them a shake, vigorous enough to reassure himself that no scorpions or spiders have taken up residence. Rorschach doesn't look up, so he doesn't bother explaining where he's going.
Dan stands facing the jungle and adds his own sounds to the swash of the tide and the hum of insects. It burns a little; he is probably dehydrated despite his best efforts. He has done a lot of running and sweating today. He shakes, zips up, stares down the dark shadows in the vegetation before trudging back to camp.
Rorschach acknowledges his existence with a brief glance. His stomach growls, long and loud over the pop and crackle of the fire, but his expression doesn't budge.
Dan makes a barely humorous noise. "You should've said you were hungry, I would have gotten takeout on my way back."
Rorschach offers up a half-shrug. "Been hungrier."
Dan remembers the evening news and the pictures they showed of Rorschach's apartment, intended to shock and disgust. It had worked for Laurie, but Dan had just felt uncomfortable at the voyeuristic nature of it all, and depressed that the conditions his partner had lived in were somehow incriminating. Dan had never known the extent of it, but he been aware enough that he'd never begrudged him the food from his cupboards.
"We need to scout the island for food tomorrow," he says.
"Still a couple cans left," Rorschach says. "Tomorrow we go back to the labs."
Dan takes a long, deep breath. "No. We shouldn't wait until we're down to nothing before we start hunting, that's crazy."
"Hunting. Heh." Rorschach pins Dan with a frown. "Pick fruit. Help me find generators, get teleporter working. Stupid to go native when way home is just a matter of effort."
Dan sits back into the butt-groove he's pressed into the sand and decides he's not going to have this argument again. "Whatever you want to do, man. But tomorrow, I'm taking the shovel and digging a pit trap."
Rorschach stares at him. "Know you're avoiding the place, Daniel."
"Well, yeah. I'm not gonna pretend I wasn't creeped the hell out." He sighs, rakes his hand through his hair. "It's something to do with Adrian's experiments, right?"
"Probable." Rorschach's face has dropped into shadow; the fire has burned down into smoldering coals. "Remember what he said, about monster sending out psychic shockwaves, laced with... suggestions. Monster was rock thrown in pond. What we feel are ripples. "
"God," Dan says. "Yeah, that makes sense." He lets that sink in. "He did that to our city. It wasn't just the destruction of the impact. He put... that into all those people's heads. That terror."
"Worse. Weaponized it. Designed to drive people mad enough to kill, themselves and others." A careful pause that chills Dan's blood. "Did you feel it?"
"I..." Dan's whole body shivers, skin crawling as he dwells on how he had felt, fighting as his mind tries to shy away from it. Christ. "Just... profound existential despair. Fear, like I was drowning in it. I guess if it had been stronger or prolonged I might have tried to stop it, in any way I could."
Rorschach's mouth twitches, and he stares off into the blackness of the ocean. Dan can't help but read it as a flinch.
Dan wonders if the impact of the psychic assault differs from person to person, exploiting emotional vulnerability or a predisposition for violence as it sees fit. "And you want to go back in there?" he says.
"Have to," Rorschach mutters, after a pause. "Veidt said monster was designed with death as detonation for psychic bomb. We just felt the aftershock. Whatever it is, it's no longer a threat."
"I dunno. Didn't feel like it wasn't. We don't know long the power's been out, how long the thing's been dead. If it's even dead. What if the thing oozes that shit as standard when it's alive? What if being exposed to it for too long will—"
"No way of knowing," Rorschach interrupts. "But doubt it's alive. Veidt's scientists couldn't have worked with... that. Psychic imprint will only be getting weaker."
It's logical. Dan only wishes he could believe it. He's conscious that his fear has been artificially augmented, but emotionally, it's difficult to keep perspective. "I'm really not looking forward to sleeping tonight," he says. His body has other ideas, though; he stifles a yawn and knuckles at his strained, tired eyes.
"Have to, eventually." Rorschach gets to his feet, brushes sand off his clothes. "May as well get it over with."
"Don't go back tomorrow," Dan says, as they trudge to Archie's husk. "If you really believe it'll get weaker, then it makes sense to stay away as long as we can."
Rorschach is silent. It isn't acquiescence, but it's not disagreement either.
It's black everywhere. Not blind-black or night-black, but nightmare-black, the kind of black that shows up shadows. They gather and pulse and shift, converge like iron filings to a magnet, swirl in a formation that seems to hold knowledge.
He is on the sea, afloat on a raft of bodies. The shadows converge on the horizon.
They swarm towards him in an undulating stream, and Dan tries to decipher their meaning as they come, paralyzed by the compulsion to understand this dream-portent even as their first wet touch makes him recoil.
Then they are on him and around him, sliding over his skin and twining like tentacles before Dan recognizes the trap: there is nothing to them but destruction. They tear at his flesh, flaying him with their inhuman appendages, plunging into his mouth so they can pick, pick, pick from the inside out. His throat is full, chest stuffed, air displaced from him and yet he can still scream.
And scream he does.
He comes to with the memory of it still in this throat and a hoarse sound bouncing around Archie's hull. The absolute darkness prolongs his panic until he remembers where he is, and that his eyes are actually open. His heart is like thunder in his ears, calming slowly as he gets his breathing under control.
It doesn't sound like he's woken Rorschach with his night terrors, at least. There's no restless turning or low-pitched grumble.
Morning seems eons away. Dan slips out of Archie, intending to wait the night out on the beach and pray a little for dawn to happen. He sits near the banked ash of the campfire, buries his feet in the cool sand.
"Bad dreams," Rorschach says, from somewhere nearby.
Dan starts in his skin, takes a calming breath or two before he replies. "Awful." His throat feels like jerky. He coughs.
A grunt of agreement.
"How long have you been up?" Dan asks.
"Don't know. Hours."
"Want to talk about it?"
"No."
Dan scrubs a hand through his hair. "Thank god. Uh, no offense."
Rorschach sits beside him, near enough that their shoulders press. His bony feet intrude on Dan's nicely-warmed bit of sand, toes curling and burrowing. "None taken."
"Hey," Dan says, though his mock-indignation dissolves into a wide yawn. "Get your own bit of beach."
Rorschach makes a rusted noise that almost sounds amused, nudges Dan with his shoulder. "Should try to get more sleep."
"Out here?"
"Will make sure ants don't carry you off into jungle." Rorschach turns away to hunker by the fire, poking at it with a stick. He digs the embers out of the ash and feeds them tinder. "Or anything else."
The sensation of dream-tentacles crawls across Dan's skin. He shudders, and tries not to feel childish about still being uneasy. He shuffles into the safe sphere of firelight, props himself onto his side with his elbow. The fire dances and crackles, wraps him in a heat that is more gentle than the daytime sun. Rorschach lapses into his usual conversational self, so Dan just watches the flames and listens to the sea and the jungle.
Soon his eyelids start to get heavy; he rolls onto his back and counts the foreign array of stars until they blur.
Theatrics having accomplished nothing, he hauls to his feet. Rorschach is sitting upright by the fire, stick propped over his shoulder, chin on his chest, fast asleep at his post.
Dan grins and creeps away to find some water. Crouching, he counts up the bottles. They still have enough to last them at least a day, but they will have to collect more soon. A routine, then—for as long as the plastic hold up, anyway. He grabs a half-full one, chugs most of it, upends some over his face and then tries to get his teeth as clean as he can with just his finger. He's met with little success and a lingering nasty taste in the back of his throat.
He prepares for the thudding pressure in his temple and tips his head back to gargle with the last of the bottle. From the corner of his eye, he catches a flash of color. He spits and wipes at his mouth, then squints back up at the vegetation. There, high in the spiny palm leaves: heavy clusters of small orange fruit, dozens upon dozens of them.
Dan has no idea what they are. He decides he doesn't really care, as long as they're edible. They're a good eight meters up, though, and he figures it's not worth the exertion until he knows it's worthwhile. He gathers a few fallen fruit from around the trunk—on inspection he thinks they might be dates, though they're only a little like the wrinkled, sticky brown things in their supermarket boxes—and ambles down to the sea.
He perches on the edge of a rock, feet among crisp tendrils of seaweed, and sorts through his treasure. A couple of the dates are soft where they've sat in the loam, fermenting in the heat, so he puts those aside. He rinses the rest in cupped hands, in the shallow warmth of a rock pool.
He splits the fruit apart, separating the edible parts from the long, smooth stone in the center. The flesh is dense and moist, releasing its juice in sticky rivulets that gather in the valleys between his fingers. He knows he should take it easy in case they aren't so good to eat, but after the first careful bite he is pushing the fruit into his mouth as fast as he can, a strange mix of astringency and sweetness bursting over his tongue and awaking hunger cramps in his stomach. It's like manna from heaven compared to the cold, tinned crap they have, and once he is empty-handed, he scrabbles around for the rest of the dates he discarded and eats them just as fast.
He walks back to the jungle edge, licking his fingers clean as he goes. He makes an impromptu basket of his t-shirt by holding onto the hem, and starts collecting.
Rorschach is awake when he gets back to the fire, stripped to his waist and wringing seawater out his shirt; it clings when he shrugs it back on. His pants are dark with moisture and his hair is plastered to his head, and he glares when he catches Dan staring.
Dan just grins back at him. "Breakfast is served," he says, and pours the dates into their pan.
Rorschach picks one out and inspects it, deep mistrust on his face.
"It won't kill you."
"Remains to be seen." Rorschach peels back his lips and gingerly bites into the fruit. The juice dribbles into the scruff of stubble on his chin. "Hrm. Not what I expected." He spits the stone into the sand and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand
"Not too foreign for you?"
Rorschach ignores him and grabs a handful, secreting them in the pockets of his pinstripes. "Come with me," he says, retrieving the shovel from the sand.
"Where to?" Dan asks warily, falling into step. He fortifies himself and prepares to dissuade his partner from another trip to the installations, at least for today.
Rorschach hefts the shovel, resting it over his shoulder. "To hunt," he says, as though it was his idea all along.
The jungle is lively with ambient sound; the crack of disturbed vegetation under their feet is barely noticeable amidst the rustle and sway of plant life and the chatter of wildlife in the branches above. Insects buzz and swarm incessantly.
The air is warm and moist, and Rorschach works to ignore the way his shirt sticks to him, and how his palms sweat against the shaft of the shovel. The indigenous giant arachnids have strung skeins of web across their path, fine drifts of it picked out with dew. It makes them easier to see before they get a faceful, but that doesn't mean it's completely avoidable.
Sometimes he catches a glimpse of slender, bright legs twitching under the paper-fan leaves of a palm, and it brings a slew of intrusive imagery with it. Psychic residue from the installation, still preying on his aversions. It has been bothering him.
Daniel pushes along beside him, water bottles in hand and fireaxe over his shoulder, occasionally stopping to gaze up into the canopy at one bird or another, or to wipe clinging strands of silk out of his hair and stubble. Rorschach works to ignore the way Daniel's shirt sticks to him, too.
He is weary from interrupted sleep and harassing dreams, tiredness settling into his limbs like a malaise. Each step along the narrow trail they are following is a labor, his feet dragging over the fresh animal prints sunk into the mud. His hat makes him swelter so he takes it off.
"They travel this path for sure," Daniel says, stopping to brace himself against a tree. The first two feet of bark have been stripped and the exposed wood is rubbed smooth, apart from the crystals of rosin forming on its surface. Pig tracks converge and diverge around it. "So..."
"So." Rorschach echoes, and raises an eyebrow.
"So, unless you're planning on chasing after them with that shovel, here's a good a place as any?" He wipes his forehead with the back of his arm, and his shirt pulls taut across his chest, fabric almost transparent with moisture. He grimaces, makes a futile effort to pluck it away from his skin.
"Hrm." Rorschach's own clothes aren't exactly comfortable and walking has only been exacerbating the issue. Breathing is like sucking in warm water. He would like to stop moving, but here is no good. "Trees too dense," he says. "Ground full of roots. Will make things difficult."
Daniel seems to consider this a moment, and sighs. He looks about as happy as Rorschach feels. "Well, maybe a bit further on."
They slog on through the undergrowth and eventually the trees abate, giving way into a clearing of low, succulent plantlife and scrubby grass that is flourishing outside of their green shadows. Rorschach follows the pig-prints to the center of the clearing and wastes no time in sinking his shovel blade into the earth. The sooner they get this done, the sooner they will find out if it is a colossal waste of time and energy.
Daniel sets the fireaxe and bottles of water down and starts moving the bigger clods of earth aside.
Rivulets of sweat roll down Rorschach's face and sting his eyes, drip off the end of his nose. He shakes it away, leaves dark spatters in the soil. The ground is packed hard under the slurry of mud and loamy topsoil. It's more difficult work than the graves they dug at the shoreline, and his arms shake with exertion before too long. His shirt is drenched and unbearable against his skin. He stabs the shovel into the mud so he can strip it off, frustrated at the hard limit his body has set.
When he bends to hook his shirt onto a spiny shrub, the edge of his vision grays out.
"Hey," Daniel says, paused halfway to hauling up a chunk of earth. His face is lined with concern. "Let me take over."
"I'm fine," Rorschach says, goes to take the shovel again, but Daniel's hand is already there, damp under his palm.
"Take it easy for a minute," he says, pushing a water into Rorschach's chest. He relents and takes the warm bottle, but only because Daniel is pressing him to lean against a tree and he can't gather the energy to protest.
He admits, finally, that he is close to exhausting himself. The reserves he has always depended upon to keep himself going are long spent, siphoned away by weeks of upheaval and now tapped dry when he needs them the most. His resolve may be boundless, but his body is a hindrance. He feels limp and resentful.
Daniel has dispensed with his shirt, too, and is heaving mounds of soil out of the hole. The waistband of his khakis is stained dark. Rorschach watches him as he swings in a slow, pendulous rhythm, back shining with sweat, thick shoulders jolting as the shovel blade strikes the earth over and over.
He doesn't last all that long, either.
"God, I hope this works," Daniel says, lowering himself to sit in the dirt next to Rorschach. He takes a long draw from his water bottle, and makes a face. Despite boiling, it still tastes earthy and flat. Rorschach prefers it to tap water; at least he knows there are no chemical additives in it.
Rorschach shrugs. "It will, or it won't," he says. His brain feels like mulch.
"Can't argue with that." If Daniel is bothered by his hedging, he doesn't show it. He leans over to one side, examines what they've dug so far. "How far down do you reckon we have to go?"
"How tall is a pig," Rorschach says.
Daniel looks at him, blinking slowly.
Rorschach shakes his head. "Deeper than this. Maybe wait til evening to do more. Cooler."
"Yeah, maybe," Daniel says. "Don't want to end up like a hummingbird."
Rorschach tries to make sense of that. He's not certain if he's bordering on delirium, or if Daniel is. He goes ahead and assumes it's Daniel. "What?"
"You know," Daniel flutters his hands like they're bird wings. The shadows dances over the sun-struck foliage. "Hummingbirds. Perpetually on the verge of starving to death. Manage to get just enough energy from one morsel of food in order to find the next."
"We're not going to starve," Rorschach says. Morsels. He hikes his rear off the ground so he can get at his pants pockets. He had forgotten about the curious fruit Daniel had brought earlier. They've mashed into his pocket lining, all viscous fiber and hard pits, but he manages to scrape out a handful. He splits the pulp, offers the half with the least amount of lint to Daniel.
Daniel's face lights up as though he's been offered candy, and he swallows the fruit down in two bites, then sucks on his fingers. He doesn't seem to mind that they are covered in mud, but then, neither does Rorschach. He's licking the sticky juice from the creases of his palm when he catches Daniel watching him. It makes him frown, makes him conscious of his bare chest, and Daniel's shoulders, and how close they are sitting.
Daniel looks away, then at the ground, then up at the canopy. "Alright, that's better," he says with a forced enthusiasm, and wipes his hands down his thighs, heaves himself to his feet. "Round two, let's go."
Rorschach looks up from his shovelful of dirt, waist-deep in the hole. "Problem?"
Dan waves him off, stumbles into the undergrowth to get a little privacy, and sweats it out.
"I've had enough," he tells Rorschach, once he's recovered enough to maintain some level of dignity. His hair is plastered to the nape of his neck and he feels disgusting. "It's too hot and we're out of water. I need to stop before I pass out."
Rorschach shovels out a couple more heaps of soil. It seems to take him a long time, then even longer to drag himself of the pit, sinewy arms shaking hard as he boosts himself up. He looks ashen beneath his sunburned cheeks, and he's moving slowly, deliberately.
That efficiency of motion is familiar, the way he's conserving every shred of stamina. It's a portrait of a man living on the brink of exhaustion. It's what first compelled Dan to reach out early in their partnership, to push the line until it became friendship, made it okay to offer coffee and food and a place to sleep, and to be rebuffed with unspoken gratitude.
Rorschach turns and looks at the ragged pit they've dug. Its sides are funneled and avalanching soil. "Will have to do for now," he says, "Cover it up. Leaves, branches."
Dan kicks around in the undergrowth and gathers an armful of palm fronds and banana leaves, chops at a bunch of fan-like shrubs with the axe. Rorschach is busy laying out a lattice of sticks and branches, sturdy at the edges but weaker in the center. Dan spreads the leaves out on top as best he can, crouched at the edge of the pit and pushing them into the middle.
The end result looks like nothing but a hole covered in wilting vegetation. It's nowhere near as convincing as his Hardy Boys novels had led him to believe it would be, but Dan figures the pigs won't know. He crouches there for longer than he needs to, head swimming, and he knows he will be dizzy when he stands up. The trek back to camp is daunting. He senses Rorschach at his shoulder and expects a short-tempered demand to get moving, but his partner just puts his hand on his arm.
Rorschach's fingers slide over the sweat slicking Dan's skin, and seems to think better of the gesture. He takes his hand away, wipes it on his drenched pinstripes. "Let's go back," he says.
He wades back to shore, buck naked. Hunched in the shadows against Archie's hull, already with his shirt back on, Rorschach could not ignore him any harder. Dan slops his clothes down next to the campfire, and heads back to the ocean uninhibited.
The day's laboring has left him feeling a little untethered. He used to feel self-conscious about his waistline—about the gradually diminishing attention of the young cashiers at his local store and the tellers at the bank downtown, his muscle turning to fat in the heat-death of his vigilante career—but here on this spit of land smack-dab in the middle of tropical nowhere with only his pathologically grim friend as witness, he could care less.
He wades deeper, face turned to the sun, feet leaving the sandy sea bed. He turns onto his back and drifts in the suspension of saltwater, pushed ever towards the shore by the undulating current. For the first time in weeks, he lets himself relax, and actually enjoy it.
Seagulls wheel overhead. The sky is brilliant. The sun is blinding. He closes his eyes and listens to his body: the ache in his shoulders; the bruises set deep under his skin by Adrian; the hungry churn of his belly. How many days have they been here? Three? Four?
He is gently beached, shored up on the tide-line. He pushes out a deep, long exhale, not quite forlorn enough to be a sigh, and lets the sea wash the sand out from around him. His hair is seaweed. His breath is the scant cloud-cover. He is one of the countless pebbles along the strand.
His zen is shattered when Rorschach unceremoniously drops his wet clothes over his crotch.
Dan cracks his eyes open. Rorschach scowls down at him, stark as a thundercloud against the deep azure sky. "If you want to sleep, do it on dry land."
Dan smiles up at him, lazy. He's too tired and slack to want a fight, so he just gets to his feet and bundles his clothes up, trudges back up to Archie as naked as he ever was. Rorschach is doing everything he can not to look at him, just muttering sharply under his breath. That would have put Dan on edge back in the day, a blowout waiting to happen, but now it just strikes him as funny.
"What," he says, all hazy bravado. "You never seen a fat naked Jewish guy before?"
"No," Rorschach replies, and, as blunt as a tire-iron to the head: "Don't want to, either."
"Ouch, my ego." Dan grins at him, figures if he's going to nettle his partner over his prudishness he may as well be amiable about it. He settles himself into Archie's shadow; a nap seems like a real sweet prospect, if he survives the next five minutes. "We'll see how that goes once our clothes wear out. Can't say I've seen any scrawny naked Irish guys before, so maybe we can call it evens."
"Not going to be here long enough for that," Rorschach says. He pauses. "And I'm not Irish."
"Well, yeah. I guess not." Dan stretches out up on his side. The sand is soft and welcoming. He lets it mold to his body, sticking to where he's still damp. He pillows his head on his wet khakis. "Not with a name like Kovacs." It's the first time he's said that name out loud. It tastes surprisingly bitter.
"Insinuating something?" Rorschach says. He leans with one hand against the airship's battered hull, the other clenched at his side. He stares down at Dan with unnerving intensity.
Dan raises his eyebrows. "Like what?"
"Suggesting I am un-American, maybe. Casting aspersions on my heritage."
"Buddy, I've not met anyone as steadfastly patriotic as you."
"Not true. You knew the Comedian."
Dan rolls onto his back, bursts out in a genuine laugh. That seems to offend Rorschach further, which makes Dan laugh even more. This is edging into dangerous territory and all he can do is treat it like a joke. Maybe Blake was on to something.
"And don't call me that," Rorschach says. "Don't like it."
"What? Your name?" Dan frowns up at him. Rorschach glowers back and Dan unconsciously superimposes an inkblot over his features, the one that shows up when he's trying to disguise hurt with curtness. "Yeah, alright. It doesn't suit you anyway."
Rorschach nods, seemingly satisfied enough to leave Dan in peace. He slouches off to the sea, presumably to engage in some fully-dressed passive-aggressive ablutions.
Dan closes his eyes, and the swash of the ocean transmutes into the sucking of street gutters, a downpour in midsummer, streets drenched and liquid around his feet.
He is walking through the city, and the swaying foliage is Central Park. Dan sleeps and dreams in blood-red, old memories and new fears weaving into something bigger. The rain pours over him, and it's hot, alien weather. There's carnage in the gutters, viscera sucking at his feet, rising up around his ankles.
He turns his face to the sky and it's searing, enough to sluice the skin right off, pulling loose under his fingers. He is staring into a nuclear glow brighter than the sun and pulling his skin away in glutinous strips. The smell of it fills his nose, and in his dream, he is hungry.
He shouts himself awake.
Above him, the sky is erupting a toxic vermilion, slashed with brilliant blues and yellows, pushing its colors into the sea. His chest is crushed with panic and it takes a minute before he can get his breathing under control. He swears softly to himself, sits up and runs a hand through his hair.
The shadows have moved while he slept and now he has sunburn on top of his sunburn. He heaves himself to his feet, despairing at the dry tightness of his skin and the heat that's radiating from it.
Their pot is on the fire, brimming with water that's only just begun to simmer. Rorschach is down by the sea, a silhouette crouched on the smooth, flat rocks. There's the flash and glint of something on the water's surface, caught in the last of the sun's sanguine rays. Dan pulls on his salt-stiffened clothes and makes his way down to the shore to see what he's managed to catch.
"Do you have pants on," Rorschach asks as Dan approaches.
"Pants and a shirt," Dan says. He contemplates the back of Rorschach's neck; the stripe of angry red skin and the ridge of his spine. Everything about him is so combative, even when he's doing something quintessentially relaxing.
"All dressed up and no place to go."
Dan's laugh is more sober than he expected. He sits himself down, sand gritting between his palm and the sea-worn rock. "Don't even have to go fetch water," he says.
Rorschach makes a noise by way of acknowledgement, then pulls in the nylon line, untangles seaweed from the otherwise empty hook, then gets to his feet to cast it out again, grunting with the effort. It arcs over the water and sinks with a gentle plash.
"Did you sleep?" Dan asks him.
"No."
They sit in the quiet, just sea-song and briny air, the call and wheel of gulls in the darkening sky. Eventually, Rorschach hands the fishing line to Dan. He doesn't have any more luck, which isn't a whole lot different from his youthful summers spent on Martha's Vineyard, but he'll keep that secret to himself. He tugs the line to make the lure shimmy and glimmer.
It get dark quickly once the sun drops, and the tide turns, slack water beginning its retreat. Rorschach sits with his bony feet dipped in the rockpools left behind, stark in the moonlit water. He is as still as the sky, eyes turned down and a perpetual crease in his brow.
The fishing hook hits the sand of the seabed, only a skim of retreating ocean covering it. Dan winds in the line and calls it a night, tries to ignore the persistent gnaw of his stomach. There are still two cans of food left. He hopes it will be enough. "I was thinking," he says.
"Finally," comes the reply, terse in the periphery of the dusk.
Dan laughs, shakes his head. "Is it hard work?"
"Is what."
"Being so prickly all the time." Dan settles back on the rocks, absorbing what sun-warm heat of them he can before it dissipates into the void of the sky. There's a breeze sweeping in from the sea, cool enough to rough his skin into gooseflesh.
Rorschach just grunts, circumspect even in the middle of nowhere.
"Don't you ever get tired of it?" Dan closes his eyes and tries to imagine he's up on his roof, sat outside the pigeon coop, Rorschach nearby in a trench coat that's not tattered and bloody and a suit that he bothered to press, the sound of traffic below them both. But the ocean is too insistent for such a conceit, the air too salty on his tongue, those days too long past. "Don't you ever feel like... I dunno. Being normal?"
"No," Rorschach says. "Do you?"
Rorschach is silent in the obtrusive blackness that is the night, just a long inhale and the soft shift of clothing that's barely audible over the wildlife's chirring and the baseline roar of the ocean.
Dan isn't sure he should be glad that he's not the only one who's lost track of time.
Dan is alone when he wakes with the pale dawn seeping into Archie's carcass. There are malingering shadows in his periphery and exhaustion still clings to him like quicksand, threatening to drag him back under and into new nightmares.
He closes his eyes again and tries to grab a few more minutes before the heat makes things unbearable, but just as he starts to drift off, an inhuman screech vibrates through the airship's hull, into his skull and teeth and bones—
His feet are under him, his heart pounding—a tiger, his sleep-addled brain insists, it's one of Adrian's experiments, he probably left Bubastis' rejects here to roam and breed—and he tumbles out onto the beach, casting about for Rorschach because they have to stick together if they want to survive out here, this island is teeming with dangers they don't even know, and—
He's standing just outside, turning a sharp-edged pebble in one hand. "Daniel?" he says.
"Did you hear that?" Dan says, and he's not sure if Rorschach's indifference to mutated giant man-eating felines is reassuring or disturbing.
"This?" Rorschach drags the pebble down Archie's hull, scraping off a sliver of the paintwork with a horrific squeal. A tally mark, next to the one already scored there.
"Yeah." Dan sits down hard in the sand and proceeds to feel like an idiot. His body reminds him that it's overworked and undernourished as the adrenaline trickles away, and the limp quality to his limbs makes him think that he has more in common with overcooked spaghetti than other human beings. "That. What are you doing?"
Rorschach looks at the pebble in his hand, then at the airship, vaguely contrite as though Dan is objecting to him defacing the paintwork. "Keeping track," he says. "Figure this is day six."
"Not even a week," Dan says. "Christ."
Rorschach etches a third tally mark into the ship. "Okay?"
"Yeah, it's not like buffing him to a high shine is on my list of priorities."
"No," Rorschach says, adding a fourth mark then crossing them with a fifth, the godawful sound disturbing a couple of birds in the jungle canopy. He rolls his shoulders and stares at the tally marks. "Are you okay."
"To be honest with you," Dan says, after brief consideration, "I've been better." He's hungry, exhausted, covered in insect bites, and has a low-level, persistent headache, either from not wearing his glasses, or more likely dehydration. And under all that, an abiding grief that surges over him whenever he thinks of home.
Rorschach is stood rigidly in profile, and the way he's avoiding eye contact is obvious. Whether it's because there's something wrong or if he'd forgotten what it's like to have to worry about another person, Dan isn't sure.
"Are you?"
Rorschach gives a slight shrug. "Same." His face is haggard, off-color despite the vicious red of his sunburned cheeks, and there are heavy shadows under his eyes.
"Get much sleep?" Dan asks, although he already knows the answer.
Rorschach hesitates, and Dan can tell that he's going to avoid the question or maybe see if he can get away with lying outright. Dan raises his eyebrows at him: don't even try it, buddy.
Rorschach glares back. "No."
"Then maybe you should."
"Tried," Rorschach says, and Dan is conscious of how he's slipped back into the monosyllabic, clipped responses.
Dan recalls his own dreams, and doesn't envy what Rorschach must see when he closes his eyes. He resists the urge to reassure him, some kind of gesture to remind him that he's not the enemy here. Instead, he says, "Hey, listen. I'm going to go see if anything was dumb enough to fall into our pit."
"Will come with you," Rorschach says, immediately more amicable at the change of subject. He collects a couple of the water bottles. "Nothing to do here."
Nothing but maybe relax for five minutes, Dan thinks, and take care of yourself a bit. "Are you sure? You don't look that great."
"Neither do you."
Dan rakes his fingernails through the itchy scrub of his beard, and laughs abruptly. "Okay," he says. "That's fair enough."
He heads toward the jungle, but Rorschach doesn't move to follow him. He catches Dan with a tight grip on his forearm.
"Daniel," he says. "Get your blade."
The trap is empty. Rorschach isn't particularly surprised, and Daniel seems almost relieved, turning Nite Owl's crescent in his hand like a nervous tic, flipping it over and over.
"Well," Daniel says, surveying the unbroken, wilted blanket of vegetation. "Come back later, I guess?"
Rorschach grunts. It would be wise to check the trap as often as they can, in case anything they do catch manages to escape, but the thought of trekking back and forth makes him weary to his bones. Prison stay blunted his edge, probably. Regular meals and a serviceable mattress, and nothing to do for long stretches but keep scum in line and be prodded by a psychiatrist. Too easy.
He prefers the jungle, all told.
"Worth a try," he says, spearing one on the hook. "If it doesn't work, we're gonna have to open one of the cans."
There are two left, pushed into the sand next to the gently smoldering fire. Rorschach's stomach growls at the idea; he's hungrier than he remembers being for a long time. Cold beans straight out of the tin had always been a meal of efficiency and convenience. Now it seems like a luxury.
"Why don't you get out of the sun for a while?" Daniel nods toward the bloated shadow cast by the airship.
Daniel's fussing is irritating, even though he knows he's just looking out for him. Perhaps that's what the problem is, the presumption that after years of estrangement he still needs—or wants—someone to watch his back. He knows his impatience over it is unwarranted, but he is tired and he doesn't care.
"I'll wake you," Daniel says, and the look on his face is so earnest and kind that Rorschach wants to shake him a little. "If it looks like you're having a— if you seem restless. I'll wake you up, okay. But you look beat."
Rorschach has to admit that it's true. For all his resilience he is worn down to the quick. He relents, ducks away from the companionable hand to his shoulder, and leaves Daniel to his fishing. The side of Archimedes's hull is relatively cool, hidden from the direct glare of the sun for the time being. He rests his back against the curve of the ship and closes his eyes for a moment.
His consciousness frays around the edges. Daniel's hand strokes his shoulder, and he turns into the touch, leans against the warmth of it until Daniel's fingers sink right into him. They are melded together and Daniel is panting in agony. Then Rorschach pushes inside him in return, tangling muscle and sinew, winding it together like rope around his fist, binding them tight together.
Their bones grind.
He throws back his head to breathe, but there is flesh in his mouth and when he tries to push it out, it takes his teeth with it. He gasps in horror and blood gurgles in his throat. Daniel echoes him and the sound twists in his stomach, but it's too big to keep. It has to unravel outside of him. Bone and sinew snaps.
He convulses, aspirating sand.
Daniel still stands ankle-deep in the surf, fishing.
Rorschach coughs hard, spits out a wad of gritty saliva and uncurls himself from where he's slid onto the sand. He waits for his blood to settle, struggling briefly with a surge of fear-panic at his body's response to the dream, breath caught tight in his throat until it subsides into a more familiar, reassuring disgust. At least he was asleep and didn't have to endure it in the moment.
Veidt's creature is an abomination.
Daniel shoots him a questioning look as he wades past, deeper into the vast ocean until it's lapping around his waist and the undercurrent pulls around his legs. He can feel the man's eyes on his back as he shrugs off his shirt and sluices it out. He'd like to do the same to his pants, but he is not inclined to such exhibitionism. He makes do with soaking them until he can get some privacy.
With his back to the island, the sky is immense. It's hard to comprehend that it's the same one that hangs over New York, sliced by power lines and the towering concrete of the city's architecture. The thought presses down like a weight on him, makes him feel momentarily insignificant. With a shake of his head, he snaps himself out of it. Enough to deal with without inviting an existential crisis. He splashes his face with cool water and leans over to rinse sand out of his hair.
He's almost back at the beach when Daniel whoops and hollers, untethered excitement in his shouting. There's a silvery fish thrashing on the end of his line, glimmering in the afternoon sun.
"Good," he tells Daniel. He's smiling with modest pride, the way he used to when he was the one to find a lead or a critical piece of evidence. Rorschach realizes that it's his voiced approval that Daniel is responding to, rather than his own achievement. He's not sure what to make of it. Was that always the case?
He doesn't remember, and so shrugs the thought away.
"I think it's a mackerel," Daniel says.
"Don't care what it is, as long as we can eat it."
"Yeah, I know!" Daniel laughs, low and delighted. "I'll stuff just about anything in my face at this point."
Rorschach's dream asserts itself, the unbidden sensation of phantom flesh filling his mouth. He suppresses a deep shudder and sets to turning the embers of their fire over, though he can't pretend the glowing coals are the source of the disturbing warmth that flushes through his body.
Daniel carries on, oblivious, slicing the fish's belly open with his crescent. He is grimacing unconsciously as he scoops its guts out onto the sand, and absently wipes his hands on his shirt. He finds a broad, waxy leaf to wrap the fish in and then buries it in the coals. The fragrance of it cooking hits Rorschach like a boot to the stomach and he hunches over, trying to alleviate the sharp pangs of hunger. He feels like he should be salivating, but his mouth is dry.
"Smells amazing," Daniel says, settling in the sand next to him. He wipes at his own mouth with the back of his hand. "Shouldn't take long to cook, I think. Hope not, anyway."
Rorschach's stomach growls in reply. Despite this success, they will eventually reach a tipping point. He wonders how long they will be able to keep it up. He pokes at the fire again, makes the coals spark.
Daniel's hands shake as he unfurls the leaf and divides the fish, pulling the flaky white flesh from its bones, pausing to laugh and curse gently and blow at his burned fingertips. He is shameless in how eager he is, but Rorschach can't begrudge him that. Not when he can't wait until it's cool enough either, the sweet flesh searing his tongue.
There are fresh pig-prints in the loam.
"Oh, wow," Dan says, and can't help the grin that spreads over his face. Behind him, Rorschach makes an indistinct noise. The branches over their pit have collapsed inwards.
Rorschach moves around him, taking quiet steps toward to edge of the pit. "Two," he says, and almost sounds surprised.
Dan crouches down next to him and watches the creatures with fascination. They're small and animated, reddish-brown with pale stripes. They're making huffing noises and rooting at the funneled soil that is the pit walls, but seem otherwise calm. Dan almost feels bad for the things, but his stomach doesn't care so much. It's just as well. He can't afford to feel empathy for his food.
Still, the thought of sinking his throwing crescent into the animal's flesh, cleaving the skin and muscle, makes him hesitate. Despite all the violence he dealt with back in the day he never had the fortitude for that kind of brutality. His crescent has never cut anything more than rope.
Rorschach sighs, loudly and impatiently. "Give it to me," he says, and extends his hand without looking at Dan, his eyes firmly fixed on the animals scuffing around in the bottom of the trap.
He drops down into the pit, grabs one of the piglets—which starts squealing and thrashing, sending the other one into frantic laps—and traps it between his knees, then yanks the creature's head up and cuts its throat without pause. Blood spills over his hands and flecks his shirt.
His face is blank. A muscle in his cheek twitches.
Dan is viscerally reminded that his friend has killed at least three people. The thought draws cold fingers up his spine, and sets him to thinking about whether Grice was the first, and when they get out of this place, if the prison inmate will be the last. Maybe they mark turning points in Rorschach's life, touchstones he uses to divide his memories, like those who climb Everest use the preserved bodies of those who failed as landmarks. Or maybe he doesn't think of them at all. Dan isn't sure which would be worse.
He definitely doesn't think about the way he had felt in Happy Harry's, the fury that had driven his fist into the Knot Top's face, and how stopping had never felt like an option. He feels a little sick.
"Squeamish?" Rorschach says, wiping his bloody hands on his thighs. They leave dark streaks on the fabric. "Would prefer shapeless pink meat, vacuum-packed for convenience, maybe."
"Eh." Dan tries for a grin. He'll gladly take this particular criticism in lieu of his current train of thought. "Maybe. It's not exactly kosher, but hey, who's gonna know."
Rorschach throws the dead piglet up onto the scrubby grass, and hoists himself out of the pit after it. Dan takes his crescent back. The burnished surface is sticky with blood. Rorschach has left his fingerprints on it. The pig that's still pelting frantically around the pit has stopped its noises, though it's still in distress. If Dan felt bad for the animals before, now he feels downright awful.
"What should we do with the other one?" he says. A big part of him wants to let it go, even though that would be incredibly stupid. Food is a critical problem for them, and a piglet represents at least a few days' worth, but truth is he doesn't want to kill it, and he definitely doesn't want to watch Rorschach kill it, either.
"Leave it there," Rorschach says, as though the answer was obvious. "Come get it when we're hungry."
"It might escape."
"What do you suggest?"
Dan doesn't have a reasonable answer to that. He shrugs.
"Find a leash and collar, make it your pet?" Rorschach says. He hefts the dead piglet by its back legs. "Can't afford to be soft, Daniel."
"I'm not being soft." That's a nerve he never likes being struck, and Rorschach knows it. "I just want to be, I don't know, humane."
"Humane," Rorschach says, acidic. "Funny. Where was your humanity, Daniel, when you agreed to keep quiet?"
"What?" Dan says, low and unsteady. He feels like he's been slugged in the stomach. "What?"
Rorschach stares at him levelly, dead animal slung over his shoulder, blood on his hands and soaking his shirt.
"Okay, what choice did I have?" Dan asks. He can feel his heart pounding his throat and swallows around it. If this is how Rorschach wants to play it, he's got no reason to pull his punches. "What was I supposed to do? Go out and die in the snow, or survive. Those were my choices. You're the one who chose to throw his life away. Never surrender, my ass."
Rorschach blinks, jaw tensed hard. Around them, the wind picks up. "You don't understand, Daniel," he says.
"You're goddamn right I don't. And you know why?"
It's rhetorical, but Dan is still pissed that Rorschach doesn't even try to answer the question. He starts off back towards the beach, anger caught in the back of his throat.
"Because I don't know anything about you," he says. "Barely a goddamn thing. All those years and you always left me guessing. You're Rorschach, nothing more, nothing less. Just Rorschach, without a real face or a real name and too many goddamn walls for me to ever get through."
Rorschach is silent, trailing behind him. Dan turns and walks backward through the underbrush while he lets his mouth run. This is old hurt, and damned if he can stop now that he's started. He is exhilarated and justified and full of dread.
"Oh, but wait. You do have a real name, and a real face. But I don't get to know it, not 'til every other fucker in the tri-state area does too, because it's not like I earned any more trust than they did, right?"
Rorschach stops dead, and the expression on his face pulls Dan up short, too.
"Would have been a liability," he mutters, once he's composed himself, but he doesn't sound his usual assured self.
"Didn't seem to be a problem when I told you my name," Dan says. His anger deserts him abruptly, and he doesn't feel very righteous any more. He just feels tired. "I didn't ever consider you a liability, not even when things got messed up. You were my partner. I depended on you, even without knowing a damn thing about you."
"I know that," Rorschach says. He turns, looks up at the canopy, then into the deep shadows of the vegetation. "And truth is this: know me better than anyone."
"That's..." Dan sighs. It's most likely the truth. "That's pretty sad, Rorschach."
"Spare me pity. Besides. Have always been more notorious one. Criminal fraternity unlikely to try to get to you through me. Doubt they would bother you at home."
A week ago Dan had apologized and offered his hand, but his charitable nature is feeling the strain. He resents feeling like his loyalty was ever in question, and he doesn't particularly care for the precision blows to his ego, either. He sets his shoulders and folds his arms.
"Well, hell," he says. "If it did ever happen, I hope you'd tell them right away. Name, address, social security number, the color of my goddamn underwear. You know why?"
Rorschach scowls at him, pushing past the barrier of vegetation and onto the beach.
"Because I'd know where they got the intel." Dan pauses. He wonders why the scenario is making his stomach jolt like he's about to leap between buildings. "And I would obliterate them."
Rorschach stares at him for a long moment, boring into him with those flat, tired eyes, then his mouth quirks strangely and he drops the piglet next to the campfire. "Wouldn't be that simple," he says. "Likeliness aside."
Dan stands next to him, shoulder barely touching. Something's fluttering in his chest. "Yeah," he says. "I know. But it's the thought that counts, right?"
He tries not to be disappointed when Rorschach changes the subject with pointed lack of subtlety.
"What do we do with this," he says, toeing at the piglet.
"Well, I don't know," Dan says. "Your guess is as good as mine."
"Thought you might have picked up some relevant skills while you were in Africa," Rorschach says.
"What?" Dan crouches down to handle the creature, turning its lax form over in the sand. It's stiffening up. He swats away the flies that keep settling on its throat. "Why? I stayed in a hotel. I ate at the restaurant there."
"Ehn," Rorschach says, as though all he knows of Africa is what he's seen on Adrian's famine relief posters; starving faces and shanty-town huts, its residents cooking over fire-pits.
"I guess we should take the guts out, at least." The crescent is sticky in Dan's grip. He punctures the creature's hide with the sharp point of the blade, then draws it through the flesh and muscle of the pig's underbelly. The sensation settles queasily in the pit of his stomach.
Its intestines spill into the sand.
Dan's skin wants to shudder right off as he sinks his hand into the piglet's chest cavity. It's still warm, and viscera oozes between his fingers as he encourages the rest of the intestines to slide out in slick, pink coils.
"So," he says, mostly in a bid to distract himself. He sounds faint. He clears his throat. "How did you know I was in Africa?"
"Saw it on your calendar." Rorschach is watching him intently. Apparently he doesn't find anything objectionable in Dan's gore-covered hands.
Dan cuts the last of the internal organs free. Nothing seems to have ruptured, which gives him a little faith that they aren't about to chow down on some serious food poisoning. "And you were reading my calendar because…?"
Rorschach shrugs. "Was pinned to noticeboard. Shouldn't put personal information out there if you don't want people to read it."
"It wasn't like I took out an ad." Dan makes an attempt to scrape some of the dense bristle from the pig's hide. He should have a problem with Rorschach's flagrant violation of his privacy, but the anger's just not there any more than it was the first time he came downstairs of an afternoon to find the unwashed dish in his sink and the empty tin cans in the trash.
He settles for feeling pissed off that he never feels pissed off enough, and gives up on shaving the damn pig. He quarters off the haunches instead, pointed corner of his crescent blade dissecting the ligaments and loosening the bones from their sockets. He shoves the meat into the smoldering campfire without much care for ash nor sand; he figures his diet is going to feature both whether he likes it or not. The fire flares, disturbed embers coruscating and then licking into flame as the wind catches them.
Dan considers the rest of the carcass blankly, then goes to kick around at the treeline for some sturdy branches. He soaks them in the sea then lashes them together into a makeshift tripod, embeds it in the sand and hooks the rest of the carcass over the fire. It's perpetually in danger of falling apart or falling over, but it does for now.
Blood drips sluggishly into the crackling flames. The acrid odor of burning hair stings his nose.
Rorschach sits, surreptitiously pressing one hand to his stomach. Dan's own appetite had abated slightly with the fish, but now it's reared up again, gnawing at his insides at the promise of more food.
At the edge of the jungle, the palms rustle in a brisk gust. Dan looks skyward. It's becoming increasingly overcast, shreds of cloud pushing across the horizon. No immense thunderheads like the day of the storm, but ominous nonetheless.
He returns to the sea and takes his time washing his hands in the rising tide, sluicing blood from between his fingers and from the creases in his palms. It's still humid as hell—worse than usual—and Dan swelters as he settles back in the fire's perimeter.
"So," he says, once he realizes Rorschach has been maintaining a sullen quietude. It's always been easier to sense his mood from the quality of his silence than from the flatness of his words.
Rorschach looks up, tension pulling at the lines of his face, no doubt thinking that Dan is going to push him on what happened in Antarctica. Dan will, because he figures Rorschach owes him that much, but now is not the time. It's getting late and he doesn't want to end the day with them on fractious terms yet again.
"I know you're uh, itching to get back to the installation," he says instead, and manages to sound only a little hesitant. He had almost said dying, which was too on the nose for him, all things considered. "You want to take another look tomorrow?"
Rorschach looks down at the sand, then up at the sky, then says, "May be wiser to avoid for long as possible."
Dan raises his eyebrows in surprise. Rorschach ignores him, though shifts uncomfortably.
"I thought you—"
"You thought wrong."
"Alright," Dan says, and this time can't keep the relief, or surprise, out of his voice.
The fires spits and hisses, pig fat rendering down and spilling into the flames. It smells transcendent. Dan's stomach growls ferociously.
He swallows down his watering mouth and asks, "Still with the bad dreams, huh."
Rorschach half-shrugs. Dan will take that in the affirmative.
"Wonder when it'll wear off."
"No way of knowing," Rorschach says and lapses back into silence.
If it will at all, Dan finishes for him.
After a while Rorschach stands abruptly to pull one of the pig haunches from the fire. It's charring, skin crisp and bubbling and perfectly black. He hisses when a rivulet of blisteringly hot fat dribbles onto his fingers; he drops the meat into the sand and sits back down heavily. He squeezes his hand into a fist, loosens it, shakes it and then jams the offending fingers into his mouth.
"You gonna eat that?" Dan asks.
They eat in silence, and Rorschach waits for the other shoe to drop. The argument they had earlier succeeded in making him acutely uncomfortable instead of angry for once, and it's set him on edge. Daniel's bare hurt over Rorschach's identity caught him by surprise. He doesn't like the way it makes him feel, as though he has done wrong by him.
Compounding that, he knows that Daniel wants to ask him about Karnak—wants to understand, and in a bout of empathy, or guilt, Rorschach does not entirely blame him. Perhaps he could even explain, eventually.
(He tells himself it has nothing to do with the way Daniel had looked at him earlier, fierce and unequivocal in his revenge fantasy. It should have been laughable. Instead, Rorschach feels a turbulence in his chest whenever he thinks on it.
When they get out of here, perhaps there is a chance that Nite Owl will return to him.)
Overhead, the sky darkens while they eat, the wind pulling bruised gray clouds over the afternoon sun. Daniel looks up, grease shining on his mouth. "Rain?" he says, and licks his lips.
"Maybe," Rorschach replies, just as the wind picks up a lash of sand that stings at his arms and face. He gets to his feet and jerks his head towards the Archimedes. Daniel nods and begins to gather up their food.
Daniel shakes his shirt out and scrubs both hands through his hair; sand hisses and pings as it hits the ship's metallic interior. It's markedly hotter inside, all of the day's warmth still retained in the ship's bones. Rorschach sits and quietly sweats.
Outside, the jungle thrashes under the strident weather. There is the frequent crack of sand and pebbles against the ship, resonating loudly in the chamber and blowing between cracks in the battered paneling.
Rorschach sleeps, but only barely. Whenever he settles into something heavier than a doze he is immediately jerked awake, either by the wind buffeting the ship or by the obscenity of his dreams. His thoughts are distorted and messy; sometimes he thinks he could reach out to Daniel and ground himself, but he does not.
He hears Daniel get up in the early hours and follows him outside to find him silhouetted in the pastel wash of the dawn, standing near the remains of their campfire and looking concerned. The pig entrails they had left there are gone.
"Well, now we know," Daniel says, as he heaves the stinking carcass into the treeline for the benefit of whatever stole its guts. "Eat it while you can."
He looks down at his hands in disgust, then wipes his nose with the back of his wrist.
They return to their pit-trap. It is empty, sides collapsed and funneled into a slope. Daniel dutifully layers the shriveled vegetation back over regardless. It might be worth it to dig it out again, but not today.
More important is to try to relight the campfire—which they will have to learn to do without matches from now on, since it uses their last one—and then hauling back fresh bottles of water to boil. Daniel makes idle smalltalk that Rorschach finds himself listening to less and less as they near the river. They are still a distance from the installation but he can sense it nonetheless, the press of something unnatural against the inside of his skull, sliding strange thoughts between his own.
Daniel must feel it, too. He glances upriver often and fills the bottles quickly.
The weather is temperamental, distant banks of stormclouds unleashing torrential rain out over the ocean, winter monsoons that often leave the island untouched but for a sharper wind. Whenever the storms do reach land they are light and still, misting across the jungle canopy and washing everything in a tepid gray. It makes the air so thick that breathing is like drowning.
Daniel spends his days working on their fishing line, collecting feathers and nacreous seashells from the beach, and scraps of plastic and metal from the Archimedes. He sits on the rocks and twists them into lures, sharpening bits of wire into hooks. Some attempts are more successful than others, but Rorschach wonders if they are any more significant a variable than the depth of the tide or the length of Daniel's patience.
They dig their pit out again, and it takes them days to recover from the resulting exhaustion. It remains steadfastly empty.
Rorschach is more idle than he's ever been. He has never spent his time simply resting, other than the barest hours of sleep he needed to function between work and patrol, or preaching and vengeance. It instils a restlessness in him, an insistent drive to keep moving, keep doing, except there is nowhere to go and nothing to do. All he can do is freewheel on and on like a bicycle that's slipped its chain.
(He often thinks about how he will confront Veidt, once they are home. He wonders if he will have the pleasure of seeing him already cowed by his hand, or if he will have the pleasure of collating his bite-sized lies into something the world can't swallow so readily.)
He develops new calluses on his hands, and the soles of his feet toughen from walking barefoot on the baking sand and over the pebbles in the river. He is always abraded, sliced, scratched, cut or bitten, but that's not unfamiliar.
Their conversations are repetitive and inane, their arguments circular. While Daniel has relieved his solitary existence in the past, now it is difficult to gain respite from his company. Sometimes he feels like hitting Daniel and wrestling him into the sand, just to drive him away for a while, to make him shut up. Once, he almost does, and he can tell that Daniel can tell, and they don't speak for a day and a night and almost another day.
Daniel sets his signal fires again, and he starts another fight over it just for something to do.
His hair grows, and his beard. It irritates him to the point where he tolerates the idea of Daniel touching his face, and eventually asks him to scrape the whiskers off with his crescent blade. Daniel does so with care, though his cheeks feel hot for a long time afterwards.
Daniel lets his own beard grow full and his hair, which he already wore too long, curls over the collar of his shirt. His weight drops, khakis shifting lower and lower on his hips. His skin darkens into a tan while Rorschach continues his cycle of burning and peeling.
They live—survive—on fish and forage, soft moldering fruit and palm heart and vile, chewy seaweed, except for one morning when Daniel tallies up the markers and wishes Rorschach a merry Christmas. He insists that they have the last can of beans between them.
The tide advances and retreats; the moon grows from a sliver to something fat and hungry.
"We have to go," he tells Daniel, who is sharpening his crescent with a wet rock. "Should be doing something about this."
Daniel gives the blade a couple more passes, then checks the edge with his thumb. "Okay," he says, apparently without concerning himself over what ‘this' might be. He doesn't sound like he means it.
Rorschach has remained outwardly stoic, but the noises he makes at night undermine that significantly. The cracks are there, and Dan suspects they are old, worn deeper and wider—the Grand Canyon to Dan's Keystone. Still, he is resolute, stubbornly determined to face this intangible enemy head-on. It's so like him that Dan could sigh.
The installation looms, squat on the riverbank. Its windows are blank, reflected out by the morning sun. It's empty. He knows it's empty. But still he imagines that anyone—anything—could be standing in there, observing their labored approach. Despite the heat, goosebumps rise along Dan's arms.
They clamber out onto dry land. His sodden pants chafe against his skin and his perpetually-damp shirt sticks to the middle of his back, but he barely notices it now that he's standing in the shadow of the installation. He breaks into a fresh sweat as Rorschach steps over the threshold.
He pauses there, turns his head to regard Dan briefly, then disappears into the gloom of the interior.
Dan wavers, caught between the prospect of entering the building or being left alone in its presence. He takes a deep breath, tells himself to stop being so goddamn irrational, and follows his partner inside.
A square of sun blazes onto the floor, terminating abruptly before it can illuminate the room beyond a hazy dimness. The place has suffered since they were last here; the smashed window has let in drifts of foliage that has dammed itself around the conference room's chair legs, and the blank flipchart is soggy, curling up at the edges and mottled with mildew. The air smells dank and earthy, with an underlying sickly-sweet putrescence that Dan doesn't want to think about.
His eyes adjust to the darkness. Rorschach is heading towards a door in the far wall, away from the corridor that leads into the facility basement.
"Hey," he says. His throat feels dry. He coughs. "Where to?"
Rorschach shrugs. "Don't know. Need to find generators."
If Dan was a braver man, maybe he would have said let's split up, it'll be quicker but he is tired and fraught and feels like he has to walk softly lest he wakes an old god that slumbers beneath his feet. So he just nods and says, "They should be on this level."
The door leads to a high, glass-ceilinged foyer, predictably decked out in ostentatious marble and brass finishings. Neglected palm plants (probably imported, Dan thinks with barely suppressed hysteria) flank an elevator door. Dan presses the call button, just for the hell of it.
A large brass plaque is mounted on one wall: an arrowed list of places; Veidt's logo etched in the bottom-right corner. Habitat Elevators; Dining Rooms & Kitchen; Atelier; Laboratories; Conference Room; Maintenance.
"This way," Rorschach says and strides off through a pair of adjoining double-doors in the direction the sign indicates is maintenance. Dan catches up to him, unnerved by how quickly the corridor gets dark. He can't shake the notion that he is being watched, as though a constant observer is judging his performance. He feels his balls shrink up the same way they did when they were approaching Karnak.
Before long it is too dark to see, and they hit a dead end. Dan feels along one wall, then turns around to try another (thinks: if I touch a corpse, what will I do…) and instead finds the dry, wiry hair that must be the back of Rorschach's head
"Sorry," he says.
Rorschach grunts, then grabs his wrist, guides his hand to a cool metal panel with grooves in it. "What does this say?" he asks.
Dan runs his fingers over the etched letters. "Private," he says. "Mat— maintenance."
"Yes. Thought so, too." There is a rattle and an aborted click as Rorschach turns the handle, then a couple of flat thuds, recognizable as him trying his shoulder against the door.
Dan finds the handle and edges of the doorframe, orients himself in relation to the hinges. "Hey, let me—" he says, and senses his partner move back. He kicks at the door, the impact vibrating up his leg and tweaking his knee. Again, and there's more give. A third time, and then Rorschach is there again, battering his shoulder against it until it splinters inward.
It's intensely dark. Dan takes a deep breath, and puts his hands out in front of him.
"Sorry," he says again, and Rorschach mutters under his breath.
He takes a series of steps forwards and almost pitches over face-first when he encounters a step. They are awkwardly placed, more than a pace forward but not quite two. He hears Rorschach stumble and then make a derogatory comment about Adrian or his architect or both. His breath is audible through his nose.
Dan's own pulse beats hard in his throat. He keeps his eyes closed, otherwise he can see things in the perfect blackness.
After a half-dozen, there are no more steps. He shuffles forward until he finds something solid—the familiar steel framing around the solid block of a generator. "Here," he says, almost ashamed of the relief in his voice. "The generators are here."
"Can you start them," Rorschach asks. He sounds controlled, but like it's a compulsion. His breath shudders loudly.
"Maybe." Dan passes his hand over the front of the generator; he identifies the control panel among the meters and led displays. He flips what he hopes is the air switch, and when the faint point of an indicator light appears, he says a silent prayer of thanks. He continues praying that the fuel pipes are open as he depresses the only thing that could be the ignition button. There's nothing at first, and despair rises in him like a tide—then, mercifully, the generator springs to life with a loud, rhythmic chug.
Hope swells. Please have enough fuel, he thinks. Please have enough fuel.
Overhead, the fluorescent lights flicker to life.
Dan stands still for a couple of moments, head down, and then opens his eyes. He sees his own uniform boots, scuffed and battered, the leather ruined by saltwater. Rough concrete underfoot. The steel generator frame. Relief surges over him in a wave, then subsides. All that's left is unease and an awareness of his own blood pulsing under his skin.
He looks up, then over at Rorschach. He's sallow under the harsh lighting, lips too pale and cheeks an abraded pink, eyes bruised and dark. He shines under a film of sweat.
"Are we good?" he asks.
"Yeah," Dan says, giving the generator a quick once-over. Gauges indicate a decent amount of fuel in this one, at least. "Yeah, I think so."
Adrian has an impressive set up: about four dozen rig generator sets, islanded in parallel. Dan figures it would take a phenomenal amount of juice to run a teleporter, even for a split-second. Another comes online as he watches, responding to increased demand. Maybe from lighting and air con in the building proper, but more likely from the labs. There's probably more heavy-duty hardware down there, too. Something that can calculate the trajectory of a living creature through a fold in reality.
"We should find Adrian's quarters," Dan says. "There's no way he wouldn't have direct access to the laboratory servers. I wanna see if there's any documentation or schemata for the teleporter tech, and it means we won't have to... uh. Go down."
"Yes," Rorschach says. He's looking down the bank of generators and their flickering indicator lights. "Good idea. Elevators?"
"God, that's so good," Dan says. "I forgot that air could be cold."
The first set of doors leads to a common area with an array of couches, a television set and a radio on a glass-topped coffee table, stacked with newspapers from October. Rorschach leafs through them and comments on the absence of the New Frontiersman, though at least he doesn't sound like it's a surprise.
Investigating the habitat turns up a common area, a medical station, and a series of rooms with en-suite bathrooms. In the first room they try, Dan barks out an involuntary laugh when he catches sight of himself in a mirror. "Wow," he says, and leans in for a closer inspection of his beard and hair.
"Stop preening," Rorschach says, though he takes a long glance at himself, too.
All the beds are in various states between turned-down and stripped, some obviously slept in and others untouched. In one room there is a clothes tag left on the dresser; in another, a bottle of nailpolish forgotten on the night stand. A few coins. Sunblock. Remnants.
Rorschach eats any mints from the pillows as he finds them, without apparent shame. He offers one to Dan, who declines with a shake of his head. Just the thought of a sugar comedown makes him feel a little ill.
What he really wants to do is to fall face-down onto a mattress and sleep for about a month.
The last room they are in has an expansive view over the ocean. He can almost believe he's in a five-star vacation resort. The guests here probably thought so, too, right up until their boat exploded. He rakes a hand through his salt-rough hair. "None of these belong to Adrian," he says.
"Obviously." Rorschach wanders into the en-suite. Dan hears the dry chug of a pump somewhere below as Rorschach tries the basin taps.
"The water must be on a separate system," Dan calls. "We need to find the desalinators, get them back online."
He gets an echoing grunt in response.
They head back to the foyer and into the second wing of the building. There's only one arrangement of living quarters on this side, through two more sets of double-doors, marked private on a burnished brass plaque. Rorschach shoves them open without ceremony. They're presented with an immense view of the ocean, spread beneath a sky that is starting to turn a vibrant yellow, sun limning the faintest shred of clouds that cling to the horizon. It casts long shadows across the tile floor; the first overtures of dusk gather.
The room is massive to the point of feeling empty. A king-sized bed is arranged near the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows, adjacent to a couch with a tattered arm that is tufted with suspiciously purple fur. An otherwise oversized mahogany desk does its level best to fill one corner, a workstation and a stack of in-trays covering its waxed surface. The hard-drive whirrs with promise.
"Well," Dan says, and settles himself into the leather executive chair. His ass is immediately clammy, and he grimaces. The computer has already booted itself; the monitor display is whirling, spiraling pixel fractals. Rorschach hovers over his shoulder.
Dan moves the mouse, and the screensaver dissolves.
PASSWORD? blinks onto the screen in green monospace.
Dan hovers his fingers over the keys for a moment. "Hm," he says, and despite his better judgment, types:
RAMESES II_
He hits return and gets a rejection message, and feels more than a little foolish.
Rorschach leans over his shoulder. He searches the keyboard with one finger and pecks out:
OPERATION_
The cursor blinks confrontationally. Dan shrugs, and adds:
OPERATION PSYCHICSQUID_
"What?" he says. Rorschach shakes his head in mild contempt. Dan gets another rejection message, unsurprisingly.
"Is there a limit," Rorschach asks.
"Huh?"
"Number of attempts. Is there limit to it."
"Oh. Uh. Maybe. I'll get a warning if there is. I think."
He hears Rorschach leave, gone to ransack Adrian's bathroom cabinets or disapprove of his choice of shower curtain or something.
"Probably," he mutters under his breath, "I hope." He drums his fingers on the desktop, then tries:
ALEXANDER_
Another outright rejection. The OS at Veidt Enterprises was a lot friendlier. Dan sits up straight. "Son of a bitch," he says, because of course it was. He must have wanted Dan to be out of the city when the shit hit the fan, to have picked something so obvious. To have left the password right there, next to the monitor.
He has a hard time feeling grateful for it. He slams more words into the machine, rapid-fire.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT_
KARNAK_
WORLD PEACE_
ATTEMPTS REMAINING: 2
"Alright," Dan says to himself, and pushes away from the desk. "Alright."
WHO WATCHES THE_
There is a shout, and the crack of splintering glass.
"Rorschach?" Dan calls, and springs to his feet, pulse immediately kicking in his ears and throat and chest. He has the sudden conviction that there must be someone else here, one of the scientists maybe, left behind and driven mad, waiting for the right moment to prey on them as they explore unawares...
He barges into the bathroom. Rorschach is alone, hunched over his fist, blood dripping onto the tile floor. The mirror over the basin is starred inward.
"What happened?" Dan asks, more breathlessly that he would like. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," Rorschach says, shaking droplets of blood from his fingers. "Fine. Hand slipped." Then, perhaps because it is such a patently laughable explanation, he adds hesitantly: "Thought I... saw something." He pulls off a run of toilet tissue and wraps it around his knuckles. It is immediately soaked. He glances at the mirror.
Jumping at your own reflection? Dan wants to ask, light and sarcastic to break the mood, but he knows it's not the case. Not when he can't seem to look at the jagged array of the bathroom mirror, all those eyes staring back at him—too many eyes, more eyes than would account for the fractured glass, too many tongues, and teeth, and—
"Any luck," Rorschach says, too loudly for the small room they are in. Dan focuses his attention on Rorschach, his sickly skin and dark eyes and his sunburned nose.
"Uh," Dan shakes his head. "No. Let me. Here, I'll show you."
They step out of the bathroom and if the claustrophobic paranoia isn't shed entirely, Dan finds that it's alleviated to something manageable, just to be able to see the sky and the sea, the westering sun.
He sincerely hopes that Rorschach isn't expecting to stay here after dark.
"What happens after two failed attempts." Rorschach leans over Dan's shoulder and rubs his good hand over his cheek, stubble rasping in Dan's ear.
Dan shrugs. "Best guess, knowing Adrian, it will wipe everything. And judging from his recent performance, could possibly self-detonate for good measure."
"So," Rorschach says.
"So," Dan echoes, then sighs, deep with trepidation. "Maybe we should try our luck in the laboratories."
Rorschach inhales, and straightens up. He keeps pressing his slashed knuckles to his stomach, staining his shirt with dark blooms of blood.
"But first we take care of that," Dan says.
He tries to keep his thoughts away from the bathroom, the reflection, the grotesque fleshy beast that lurched and crab-walked out behind him. Trick of the light, optical illusion. Stress. Over-tired, undernourished. All in his mind.
Somehow that doesn't make him feel any better.
Daniel makes him sit at the table in the medical room while he rummages in the cupboards for supplies. He comes back with a set of tweezers and some iodine and bandages. Rorschach takes the tweezers from him before he can get any ideas about nursing him.
"You sure you don't want me to—"
"No."
He makes a couple of failed attempts to extract the slivers of mirror from his knuckles, fumbling with his off-hand. Daniel hovers, obviously exasperated by his stubbornness, but he has done this kind of thing before without Daniel's help, and he can do it again.
His hands shake and he can't keep a firm grip. He accidentally pinches himself and slaps the tweezers to the tabletop in frustration.
"Alright," Daniel sighs, and pulls up a seat opposite. "Pass them over here."
Rorschach hands Daniel the tweezers grudgingly; he supposes he must endure this if he wants them to get anywhere soon, though since Daniel's hands shake almost as badly as his own do, he has no real faith in the operation.
"Okay," Daniel says, then mumbles, "sorry." He takes Rorschach's hand from the table and cradles it in his own, and leans over, nose almost brushing the back of it. Daniel's breath is warm. He is gripped with an intense awkwardness and has to ruthlessly suppress the urge to jerk his hand away.
Daniel squints, tweezers poised, and Rorschach realizes belatedly that of course, his glasses are gone. Despite this, he feels the queasy, sharp slide of a shard of glass, tugged free from the dip between two knuckles. Daniel drops it on the tabletop. It is a half-inch long, paper-thin and bloody. He works slowly, meticulously extracting the shreds of mirror, pausing often to push his hair out of his face. He is like a watchmaker, engrossed in the minute detail of his work.
Rorschach keeps looking at the collection of shards on the tabletop and fighting the compulsion to lean over and press the flat of his tongue to them, embed them deep into the soft muscle. The hairs on his arms prickle, and he closes his eyes for a moment, takes a shallow breath through his nose.
He could do that, and then he could take Daniel's face between his hands and press his sharpened tongue between his lips, into his mouth. Lacerate him. Slice him open from the inside. He can almost taste his blood.
A shudder jolts its way up his spine.
"I keep thinking," Daniel says, strangely detached, and places the tweezers down. "That I'm gonna pull the tendons out of your hand."
"Enough," Rorschach says. His mouth is dry and his voice cracks itself on the syllables. Daniel looks at him with obvious concern, swipes his knuckles with iodine and tapes them up. He doesn't need to ask if there's anything wrong.
The sky outside is disintegrating, a nuclear yellow that spreads across the horizon. Daniel is highly receptive to the idea of returning to camp, so they ransack the medical supplies and pocket anything that might be useful: tape; bandages; tylenol; malaria tablets that are probably pointless by now. There is a locked steel cabinet on one wall, no doubt for the heavy-duty painkillers and other prescription drugs.
Daniel wonders out loud if there are scalpels in there, and Rorschach decides they can stand to leave it for now.
On their way out of the building, Daniel darts into one of the bedrooms and reappears with a pillow stuffed under each arm. Rorschach lets it go without comment.
They wade downriver in the dark. The current sucking at Rorschach's ankles is greedy and cold, lapping up his calf and sometimes spattering the inside of his thigh. The full moon gives them more light than they'd otherwise be afforded, but it haunts his thoughts like a superstition and makes the shadows on the riverbank stark and threatening: great loops of tree roots like limbs, or tentacles.
Sometimes he thinks he can see something moving on the river's edge, keeping pace and shaking the foliage, but there is nothing there to meet them when they finally get to the beach. Still, he feels a tension between his shoulderblades as though he is being watched. It angers him, that he knows it's a trick of his subconscious, and yet he can't shake it.
Daniel doesn't say much as they trudge down the strand but he visibly relaxes as the upturned hull of the Archimedes slides into view, limned by the silvery moonlight. They clamber inside and Daniel pushes a pillow onto him.
It is a strange luxury, but not as much as Daniel's warmth, settled closer than usual.
Dan dreams that he is on a raft, adrift in the ocean with no land in sight.
The raft is constructed of people, lashed together like timber. Some of them are turned down into the water. Others stare blindly at the sky, hair in the water around their heads spread out in tendrils. All of them are people he knows, some of them not by name but by their faces, familiar ghosts. Others are people close to his heart.
Hollis is one of them, supine and grey. Laurie too. He stretches himself across her and strokes the hair from her face, out of her dulled eyes. I'm sorry, he tries to say, but the words are like boulders in his mouth. I'm so sorry.
He wakes up slowly, a knot of grief in his throat. His arm is numb beneath him. The pillow is wet against his face, soaked with his own sweat and saliva, and when he tries to sit up, he finds that one of his ankles is trapped between Rorschach's. It's absurd enough that he could almost still be asleep.
Yesterday feels like a fever dream. His head spins and he feels wretched, like the worst hangover he's ever had but without the dubious pleasure of too much alcohol to justify it. He has the impression that he acted foolishly, but he remembers everything with enough clarity that he can't pin down why that is, exactly.
Rorschach shifts in his sleep, injured hand curling against his stomach. His face is pinched, mouth tight and a deep furrow settled in his brow. Despite this, his dreams appear to be distinctly more enjoyable than Dan's.
Dan looks away, not quite embarrassed, more thrown by the intimacy of the situation. He so rarely sees Rorschach asleep and he's conscious of how much Rorschach would hate being watched, especially since he's... well. Dan disentangles himself and goes out onto the beach.
He strips down and washes his clothes in the sea, then spreads them out to dry on a plateau of rocks, fissured and pitted with tide pools. He sits there for a while, sun beating down on his shoulders and neck, and tries to shed the pall of his dream. It's not as disturbing as the sharp terror of his nightmares, but the acute sense of failure that weighs on him doesn't fade as readily.
He doesn't believe that Laurie isn't okay, knows that it's only his fears being manipulated, but he wishes he could know for sure anyway.
His pants are stiff and they crackle with sand as he pulls them back on, grains of the damned stuff settled in every fold and crease. The breeze blows the smell of salt and seaweed in off the ocean and wakens the queasy gnaw of hunger in his stomach, and with sudden misery, Dan recalls the signage in the installation foyer. Dining Room & Kitchen.
The hell is wrong with them, that they just—
Dan gets to his feet and goes to see if Rorschach is awake yet. He isn't: one burned, freckled forearm flung over his face, a light snore on his breath. He is lax and lean, muscle and sinew prominent where hunger has stripped him mercilessly. The late morning sun makes his hair very red. Something draws tight in Dan's chest, pushes against his ribcage.
Oh, hell. He shakes himself and thinks, are you crazy. They've been stuck here together for too long and he's just tired and sad and not used to seeing Rorschach so vulnerable, that's all it is.
Or he was thinking about Laurie earlier and this is just transference. Something like that.
He grabs his crescent blade in case he is lucky and the shovel in case he isn't, and tries not to imagine how pleased Rorschach might be if he can bring back some bacon for breakfast, how he'd give a gruff nod of approval, maybe.
Oh, hell.
Rorschach jerks awake, groan mercifully stifled by his pillow. He keeps himself still for a moment, concerned that he has disturbed Daniel, but he quickly ascertains that he is alone. There is only his breathing and the tachycardiac pounding of his blood.
He chokes on another groan, an awful sound that vibrates in the cavity of the airship. His pulse throbs in his throat and in his gouged fist and elsewhere, keen-edged and lewd, and he grinds his thumb over his wound in a bid to drown everything in pain.
It doesn't work. He shudders and tries thinking about the brittle sensation of a bent-back finger snapping or how easily metacarpals give way under careful pressure, but instead he remembers the way the delicate bones of his hand had shifted in Daniel's grip. He thinks of Daniel's breath on his wrist. His body jackknifes involuntarily and he unzips hurriedly with shaking hands and clenches his teeth as he releases into his palm.
He stumbles out onto the beach, doubles over and retches the meager contents of his stomach up into the sand.
Daniel is not out here either, for which he is grateful. He keeps him mind carefully still—as still as the sky, as blank as the sea—kicks sand over his mess, scoops handfuls of it to clean his palms and between his fingers. He sits and waits for Daniel to get back from whatever task he has set himself on and tries to find something meditative in the emptiness of his stomach and the static in his head.
Approximately an hour and two bottles of water later, Rorschach is annoyed. The shovel has gone, as is Daniel's throwing crescent, so he can take a good guess as to where the man is. No doubt they have caught something, and Daniel is spending his morning paralyzed with indecision over whether to kill it or to expire from starvation.
With grudging tolerance for the hunger-tremors in his limbs, Rorschach travels to the river to top up their water supply. The sun is arcing to its apex on his return, and still Daniel is absent. His annoyance gives way to a cautious concern.
He picks up the fireaxe, just in case, and heads into the jungle.
Rorschach travels the jungle path at a good clip, the weakness in his body chased back by a flush of adrenaline. The handle of the fireaxe shifts and bounces where its slung over his shoulder, enough to probably bruise but he barely notices. His stomach is clenching in on itself, either from hunger or foreboding, he doesn't know. He's never been able to separate out the sensations, as he is usually underfed and always anticipating the worst.
Path veers to the left—halfway there. Scars of sunlight press through the foliage, over the palm with the wind-bent trunk and an epiphyte clambering over it. He's minutes away still. His footfalls crunch through crisp fallen leaves in a regular beat and his breath comes hard in his chest. He passes the gnarled tree with its loops of vine and fungus shelves, and then he is in the clearing.
No sign of Daniel. The trap is uncovered, wilted leaves scattered and—some of them glistening. Wet. Rorschach frowns and shrugs the axe from his shoulder, and creeps forward.
Their shovel lies discarded in the loam. The ground nearby is churned up. His foreboding mutates into true alarm as he kneels and touches the glistening wet and his fingers come away bloody. It's fresh, only just beginning to turn tacky and dull. No dead piglet here—perhaps slipped Daniel's grip in a botched slaughter. Daniel has probably spent all morning running after it.
Seems likely.
Or—the blood could be Daniel's. Not as reasonable a deduction, he knows this, but one he seizes upon. It bothers him enough that he raises his head and bellows Daniel's name to the indifferent screen of jungle. When his voice echoes back to him, it sounds on the verge of panic. He doesn't like it.
Behind him, the undergrowth rustles violently. Rorschach turns with relief to the source of the sound and takes two paces towards it before an inhuman scream freezes him in his tracks.
The vegetation thrashes and a beast hurtles out of it.
It's pure instinct and muscle memory that makes Rorschach throw himself aside in a Hail Mary of a maneuver. Clumsy, almost too slow; he feels the creature's hot breath on his face. He hits the ground with his shoulder and rolls to one knee, grabs the axe and brings it up in front of him in defense. Daniel's early worries about the island's fauna shoves to the forefront of his mind, marinated in the accumulated stress of the installation's strangeness and what they know of Veidt's experimentation—what monster has finally revealed itself?
Only a wild boar.
Heh. Only. Two hundred brutish kilos of angry mother pig.
Doesn't remind him of anyone in particular.
Her deep-set eyes glitter, and she moves to circle him, snorting, front hooves scuffing at the ground. Rorschach shifts his stance and she freezes, then opens her maw in a high-pitched, piercing cry. There is blood on her teeth.
(Those teeth could shear through human flesh like a butcher's cleaver.)
Rorschach is immediately, completely furious.
He channels it into readiness—it's not so different to facing down an opponent on the streets; low-rung criminals with delusions of grandeur hire muscle on the regular, always as wide as they are tall, necks as thick as their arms, twice Rorschach's weight but half as fast. They hurt when they catch him, but they're slow. He quickly learned to take them out of commission as efficiently as possible.
Difficult to break a pig's wrist, or nose. Would be breathtakingly foolish to try gouging her eyes. He does the next best thing and uses what he's got. He anticipates her next charge, sidesteps wide and uses his momentum to swing the axe as hard as he can. It embeds itself in her shoulder with a sick thud. She squeals and backs up, dragging the handle out of his hands.
She flings her head back but can't reach the axe, and her mouth works empty air, spittle flying. Soon she gives up and rears around, careening into a tree trunk as she crashes back into the jungle. That jolts the axe free. Lucky. Very useful tool. Rorschach retrieves it with caution. While he might have hurt her enough to drive her off, she may return. He has a pretty good idea why she was here in the first place.
He returns to the pit, and to the congealing blood. If he looks closely, he can detect a trail of spatter leading into the jungle, not far from where the boar appeared. He pushes aside the fiddleheads and waxy fatsia leaves, and there's Daniel.
The adrenaline drains from him all at once and his legs almost go out from under him. Daniel has managed to drag himself most of the way up the tangled buttress roots of a fig tree and wedge himself a half-dozen feet off the ground. Dark blood is smeared over the bark and leaves. For a moment Rorschach thinks he's too late, that this is how Nite Owl meets his end, and all he can think is that it's a better death than a heart attack on his couch.
But when Rorschach reaches up and grabs his ankle, Daniel stirs.
"Jesus, get out of here," he groans, struggling out of his slump. His voice turns urgent. "There's a, a bitch of a pig—"
"Gone," Rorschach tells him. He climbs up as far as he can using Daniel's leg as a handhold. His pants are soaked and sticky, and Rorschach knows that this much blood is never good news. Didn't sever an artery or Daniel would be so much carrion by now, but still not good. "Chased her off. Hrrn. Don't know how I'm going to get you down."
"S'okay, I got it," Daniel says, and shifts under Rorschach's hand. He slithers from his perch, clutching at the tree's twining roots, only to fall and land unceremoniously at Rorschach's feet.
"Oh god, oh Jesus Christ, you could have caught me," he moans into the leaf litter. "Think I'm gonna puke."
Rorschach ignores his bleating and rolls him over to inspect the damage. His khakis are ripped up and he's tied a tourniquet around his thigh with a salvaged strip of the fabric. Smart. The remains of his pants leg are ragged and dangling with threads that are plastered to his skin, stiff where his blood has begun to dry. He lets out a high-pitched yelp when Rorschach peels it back to take a better look.
Not pretty.
Daniel takes a few deep breaths and visibly marshals himself. "I'm going to die, aren't I," he says evenly. He's staring up at the jungle canopy, his brows knitting together.
"Got you pretty good."
Daniel doesn't need to know there's a hefty chunk of flesh missing. Barely nicked something major judging by the amount of blood and how it's bubbling up. No need to panic him; the tourniquet is doing a reasonable job for the time being. He can find out the gory details on his own time.
"Nothing critical," he lies. "Quit catastrophizing."
"Didn't think it'd be like this. Always thought I'd get shot, you know?"
Rorschach hauls him onto his feet. It's going to be a long, rough trek back to the beach and he is not looking forward to Daniel's complaining, or worse, his heartfelt deathbed confessions. "Fat chance," he grumbles. "Foolish old coot."
"Hey, man, you're no spring chicken yourself," Daniel retorts. He's sweating more than normal and despite his tan he's sickly pale in a way that makes Rorschach think of spoiled milk—though, evidently, it's done nothing to dampen his petulance.
"Hehn." Rorschach braces an arm around his waist. "Still better shape than you right now."
"Not a high bar." Daniel leans heavily against Rorschach's side and swears softly under his breath. His mouth contorts, and, horribly, Rorschach realizes that he's crying a little.
He sets his jaw and ignores the uncomfortable lurch in his chest. "Walk it off," he says, yanking him along by his belt loops.
He sniffs and rubs his nose with the back of his wrist, and his chest hitches hard enough that Rorschach probably felt it—he's definitely picked up on the odd mournful sigh, judging by the way his demeanor is steadily icing up. Well, fuck him. Dan's going to die in this idyllic hellhole and there's nothing either of them can do about it.
He choked badly with the pig—fight or flight failed to kick in until the creature had its teeth in his leg, and by then he was already considering the probability of his survival if it got him on the ground (not good); whether there was anything he could hit it with (the shovel); and where the hell Rorschach was (better late than never, he supposes).
The trail back to the beach is longer than it's ever been. Each pace hurts more than the last, and the viscous sensation of blood oozing down his leg makes him feel nauseous. He keeps trying to get Rorschach to stop marching him long enough to hurl into the bushes, but when he does manage to drag them both to a standstill, all that happens is he braces his hands on his knees and gulps helplessly, to Rorschach's palpable contempt.
Finally the jungle breaks away and they're back at camp. Rorschach dumps him next to the firepit and disappears off somewhere. Great. Dan attempts to expire before he gets back out of sheer spite.
No such luck, and he spares a moment to feel like a jerk when it turns out Rorschach had gone to fetch him some water, but it doesn't last. He swallows it down too fast. It sloshes in his empty stomach and then cramps him up. He rolls onto his good side and groans while Rorschach sits with his back to him and stokes the fire.
"I'm not cold," Dan says, shivering.
"Not trying to keep you warm," Rorschach responds, which is both cryptic and suspicious. The combination is not a tiny bit concerning.
"What then," Dan says, as a fresh wave of sweat breaks down his back. He feels sick with pain; it rises and recedes, but like the sea, is inescapable. He can feel his heartbeat in his leg. He's not worked up the courage to look at it yet.
Rorschach gives a one-shouldered shrug and thrusts something into the fire. He builds the wood up over it, really piles it on until it's roaring hot and Dan is lightheaded and soaked in sweat, just absolutely dripping with it. Sand clings to every bare bit of skin and grinds against him mercilessly.
It's hot enough to be a funeral pyre, he thinks feverishly. Rorschach is going to burn his body and all he will be in the end is greasy ashes and teeth and the odd titanium pin.
Or he's going to cook it, is his follow-up thought, and almost paralyzes himself with the force of his ugly laughter. Cook it and eat it. Survival of the fittest, winner takes all. So long, long pig.
Rorschach glances over his shoulder at him. A flicker of concern disrupts his sour expression.
"Nothing," Dan manages to splutter between excruciating gasps of laughter. His fingers curl into the sand. "I'm fine."
"If you say so."
Dusk is beginning to tear at the sky. It won't be long before full dark drops over them like a shroud. Dan makes a valiant effort to get his hysterics under control, then, with great disregard to his pain threshold and his own personal dignity, heaves himself into a sitting position. He's going to have to take a look at this before he can sleep, or he knows what kind of nightmares he'll have. If he can even sleep at all.
"Oh, Jesus," he says, and sucks his teeth as he eases the stiffened fabric away. The gouge in his thigh is at least six inches long and—Christ, god, there's a great big oozing indent, that fucker ate a bit of him. There's some irony there, he's sure.
The wound wells steadily with fresh blood; thick and dark. It keeps coming, soaking the leg of his khakis. It would make him queasy to look at it too closely if he weren't already on the verge of throwing up.
He touches it instead, which is how he discovers that the tourniquet cutting into his leg has numbed things somewhat. A spear of pain drives into his thigh, up his spine and into the back of his teeth. It hurts so much he can't even make a noise, and finally his stomach gives up the goods. He lurches onto his side and spews a few pathetic mouthfuls of bile into the sand. God, if he weren't in so much agony he'd be agonizingly hungry.
"Better?" Rorschach asks. The air above the campfire shimmers. He's thrown some green wood on it. To keep the mosquitos away, and the flies and their diseases and their maggots.
"Not even slightly," Dan says, choking up. He tries to spit but it just dribbles into his beard. He comes to the conclusion that exsanguination is going to get him before infection ever will. His toes feel numb, his chest is tight. "Hey, I don't think this is gonna stop bleeding anytime soon."
"Agreed," Rorschach says, and slides a strip of metal from the fire. It's glowing hot.
"Uh, okay, look," Dan says. His sweat turns into the coldest of chills, head to toe. "No. I am not okay with where you're going with this." But it's as if Rorschach doesn't hear his complaints. He shoves the strip back into the fire, kicking up a ribbon of burning motes. Dan recognizes it as part of Archie's interior paneling, probably one of the jigsaw of pieces he needed around the coffee machine.
"Lied earlier," Rorschach says. He stands up; his hands work at his belt buckle. "It's bad. Going to bleed out if it's not fixed. Have to cauterize it."
"I don't—don't want—" Dan says, meaning either of those things. It's probably too much to ask for a third option. A screaming but swift death at the hand of a bio-engineered horror squid suddenly seems alright. Just haul him up and throw him in the monster basement.
Rorschach pulls his belt from its loops with a sound like a whipcrack, doubles it up and hands it over. "Shut up," he says, "and bite down."
Dan eyes the belt in his hands warily and tries to form a new plan. One that's clever and effective and that will impress Rorschach enough that he'll consider it. He regrets surreptitiously drinking the lone vodka miniature the second week in. In the end, Rorschach evidently gets tired of watching a parade of trepidation march across his face. He sighs and snatches the belt back.
He gets to a knee and cups Dan's face with one hand. Dan must be delirious to the point of hallucinating, because there's no way that he'd voluntarily—
Ever the romantic, Rorschach shoves his thumb into the corner of Dan's mouth and levers his teeth apart, mashing his lips in the process.
"Ohw-ow," Dan says, even though it's really not that painful at all, comparatively speaking, but was a mistake because it's given Rorschach enough leeway to jam the belt leather in there. It's salty and pungent, and Dan bites down to stifle his indignation and his disappointment rather than spit it out and have things devolve into a scuffle. He's not exactly on fighting form.
"This will hurt," Rorschach says solemnly.
"Ih aedy huhs," Dan informs him.
"Then no big deal."
Rorschach retrieves the metal strip then arranges himself behind Dan in the sand. Deliberately vanishing into his blind spot was always a portent that something unsavory was about to transpire; Dan makes a questioning sound around the belt leather. Rorschach takes a breath, one that sounds like he's about to tell him to shut up again, but instead he says nothing. He pulls Dan's shoulders back and straightens out his arms, then pins them under his knees.
"Ready?"
Dan will never be ready, especially with Rorschach pressed tight against his back. He sucks on the belt and shrugs half-heartedly.
Rorschach wraps one arm around his neck like he's preparing to choke him out, spreads his hand flat against Dan's shoulder then leans over and briefly touches the red-hot metal to his wound.
Dan has a moment to think: huh, that's not so bad, then his entire body convulses as that searing heat transmutes into an onslaught of pain. His spine curves and his teeth sink into the belt, muffling the low, animal groan that rips from his throat.
"Shh," Rorschach says into his ear—more a frustrated hiss than an expression of comfort—and touches him with the metal again. Dan digs his heels into the sand and twists against him, though Rorschach is as rigid and uncompromising as he's ever been. All he can do is writhe in the prison of his grip. Rorschach's hand makes a fist in Dan's shirt. "Once more. Keep still, Daniel."
Dan shudders under his grip. The anticipation of the burn is almost worse than the burn itself. The metal comes down once more as promised. Almost worse—but nowhere near, in reality.
His mouth goes slack and the belt slides down his chest, falling into the sand.
"Motherfucker," he says hoarsely. "You motherfucker, oh fuck."
"You shut up," Rorschach spits, and cuffs the side of his head. Dan just goes on to curse the illimitable stars, the empty wilderness, the endless barrier of the ocean and every inauspicious turn that brought him to this place and to this moment, with varying degrees of coherence but with, in his opinion, admirably consistent viciousness.
Rorschach tosses the metal aside and bundles Dan over onto his side so he can extricate himself. The stench of burning flesh seeps into Dan's consciousness. His stomach recognizes the smell of cooking meat, clenches hard and then rumbles, loud and long and hungry.
Rorschach pauses halfway through getting to his feet.
"Sorry," Dan says faintly. He presses a hand over his stomach as though he can muffle its horrific noises. "That was kind of fucked up."
He jogs to the sea and wets a scrap of Daniel's khakis in the night-time surf. Salt water is good for wounds. Even as he thinks it, he feels a hopelessness wash over him. He has cauterized his own wounds in the past, once or twice, when circumstances and a lack of medical supplies demanded it. He'd used the element from his hotplate.
They had become infected every time, despite his best efforts. And there is no best effort here. There's pig saliva in him, ash and sand and insects seeking something soft and wet to burrow into. He'll soon develop an infection, the poison will spread into his bloodstream and then he'll go into toxic shock. His chance of survival is low, unless—
The shadow of the installation looms large in Rorschach's consciousness. He could go alone, brave its creeping horrors and salvage what drugs he can and leave Daniel at risk of dying while he's gone, desperately alone. Or he could drag Daniel there with him, weak, feverish, and vulnerable to whatever is haunting the sterile corridors, but—
—but it's grounding, the two of them together. Even if it takes them both, in the end. Better it takes them both.
He plasters the saltwater fabric over Daniel's leg. He stirs and moans incoherently, but remains unconscious. He is as hot as a furnace, sweating through his clothes. It's borderline unbearable, but Rorschach tucks himself at his back anyway and waits for the dawn.
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