Warn: Genderbent Rorschach, pregnancy.
Promise
Daniel is very gentle with her, which she should resent. She doesn't. What's important is what those hands are capable of, violence her father might have only dreamt, and that the violence is not marking her. The white prints of his fingers have all faded out before her sweat cools.
-
He asks her to stay - not longer than the night, he adds, the hurried way he says it betraying what he's really thinking - and though she dresses beside his bed after he's gone to sleep, she climbs back in. The doubt doesn't leave when he wraps a lazy arm around her (possessive, a weak voice in the back of her head objects). It does, however, dampen, and that is enough for her to knock her knees against his and close her eyes.
-
Two weeks later, Daniel is halfway through apologizing to her when Rorschach tells him, "I stayed the night."
He blinks at her. "Yeah, but -"
"Said I was welcome to," she interrupts, knowing that she can, "and now you take it back?" The words crack the air, though they are only meant to lay him to rest. Daniel reacts appropriately, flinches away from the barbs.
"God, no, that's not - Wanda," (now she flinches underneath the mask) "that's not it. You've just seemed so miserable ever since we…did." She wonders if he would be sinking into himself if he was armed with his cowl.
Rorschach feels the weight of the last fourteen nights shifting on her back, a place somewhere between her throat and heart swelling. She refuses the urge to loosen her scarf. "Expect things to be simple?" she asks.
Daniel blinks; his fists collapse out. He laughs. "No. I guess not."
-
Some nights, she slides underneath his blankets, lets him envelop her in his gentleness and the special brand of violence men cannot keep but which is somehow bearable from Daniel. Once, he leaves a bruise on her neck, a perfect round circle that makes her burn.
He doesn't stop kissing it until it's faded away.
-
Before she moves in (intrudes), Rorschach begins to feel faint more often than she ever has, her hunger pains dizzying. She keeps an eye out for her period, because that can be the only explanation. She takes more food from Daniel than before, guiltily cutting open cans and jostling together sandwiches as soon as he's out of the room. Eating more just makes it worse.
The worst it ever gets is one night when she wakes with a jolt, feeling her hunger down to her toes. When she sits, she is forced to stay very still until the room stops spinning; she struggles to remember her last meal. A can of spam two nights ago, hurriedly eaten while Daniel worked at fixing Archie's shields. (Money is very tight these days; an unopened box of pads sit at the foot of the bed, a necessary purchase that cost her two meals, at least.)
Surely, she thinks, she has something to eat. Anything will do, anything.
She doesn't, nothing except a bottle of mustard that she squirts into her mouth, the sour tang making tears spring to her eyes faster than her blind desperation did. God is punishing her, she thinks, stomach rolling, throat sticking around the thick mustard. He's hurting her for ruining a good man, for behaving no better than her father's prostitutes.
For putting on her coat and face at six in the morning and hurrying to Daniel's.
-
"Wanda," Daniel lays a hand on her shoulder, flushed face screwed in startled concentration, "you're getting…"
The word wet sticks in Wanda's throat, the lewd suggestion too much to make.
"…bigger," Daniel finishes. When she stares at him, he rolls his hips, dislodges her so he can sit up. "I mean, your, uh. Breasts. And hips." He accentuates by cupping one of her breasts in his hand; she almost knocks the touch away until she realizes he's right: Where before she only filled his palm, her breast now swells to admit his fingers in a smooth curve, almost large enough to fit his hand. She wonders how she missed it. "Is every…" Daniel takes in a slow breath. By the time he lets it out, his expression is sober. "Did something happen?"
"No," Wanda answers. Then, after some consideration, "It's probably excess fat. Have been eating more." She doesn't like the way his eyebrows furrow in concern or the way his thumb rubs at the top of her breast, the same way he strokes at her hair as he drifts to sleep.
"Have you had your period lately?" The word period sticks in his mouth and his hand twitches, but he doesn't stop.
Wanda scowls at that and scoots back; her feet dangle over the side of the bed. Daniel lets his hand drop, ineffective. "What are you implying?" she snaps. "I miss it often."
"Okay." A slice of moonlight through the window highlights his concern, a swathe across his cheeks. "Forget I said anything."
She tries.
-
Rorschach lays in Wanda's bed and rests her hands over her stomach. Daniel has been so very careful with her; this shouldn't be possible.
The swell of skin is hard, and she unveils it button by button, heart racing her thoughts. No, she thinks; Daniel is wrong. There's nothing inside of her other than what should be, each piece hers alone. Daniel would never mark her so permanently.
-
Rorschach can smell something cooking even from the basement.
He's in the kitchen, disarming smile on his face. "Sit down," he orders with nothing resembling command. "I hope you like meatloaf?"
-
Not long after, Daniel steps over the threshold of Wanda's apartment with three cardboard boxes, a roll of duct tape, and a grin that would better fit Nite Owl.
"Okay, ma'am," he says, "I'm kidnapping you."
Wanda tugs her shirt down over her belly and huffs.
-
Daniel hums under his breath, locks of his hair spilling over her stomach. He doesn't say a word, but at one point smiles so brightly that Wanda has to look away. It's either that or let him take her over.
-
She knows she shouldn't, but she makes a point of crying alone when the urge takes her. She also doesn't voice the hundreds of doubts that threaten to crush her every time she catches the unfortunate sight of her pale-limbed body in mirrors. (She can't decide if it is misshapen.)
Daniel must know, though, because he makes a point in return of not saying a word to her when he takes her shopping, or when he reads the books he bought two weeks ago, or when new information lights up his face.
They only talk about it when they must.
-
"I don't want a hospital," she murmurs to Daniel. Outside the moon is waxing, barely visible behind the orange glow of city smog that lingers still, despite Dr. Manhattan's modern energy.
"Then we'll find you a good midwife," he assures her. She is eight months full, her stomach rising between them, not as obtrusive as she thought it might be. Her body is too slim and malnourished, she thinks. Even with what Daniel's done for her, she is so sure that this will come to nothing, that one day she will bleed out and be lost to her body's convulsions.
-
Daniel's been growing a paunch of his own despite consistent patrol, his body parodying hers as he pushes second servings onto her plate and chews his way through his third. She hates that she's doing this to him, hates it more when he snaps at his machines or the microwave or anything that can't be hurt. Wanda knows better than to assume it's not because of her, because she won't cultivate his happiness and hasn't smiled in two months, at least.
For a long time they constantly argued about patrol, always skirting around the real issue - "Things have changed, Rorschach," Daniel would say (plead, sometimes shout); "Nothing has," she would wound, digging in her teeth and nails and heels and tearing the whole way.
It's only very recently that Daniel's won that battle. Wanda drags her fingers through his hair when he brings the streets in, their dim light trailing after him; she bites at his mouth, resenting herself more than him. He takes it with low moans and eyes wrenched shut.
-
The midwife's pleasant and subdued. Her name is Esther Edelstein; she's an old friend of Daniel's mother. She wears her gray hair in a low bun that is entirely sensible. She talks Wanda through the next two weeks; politely ignores the lack of a ring on her left hand. It sounds less barbaric than what Wanda's imagined, the way Esther explains it.
Daniel hovers at her shoulder, as nervous as she suspects he'll be when her water breaks.
-
Later, Dan lays a hand on her stomach and kisses her face, her ear, murmurs, "I'm going to take care of you," bares the sentiment until she catches the fear in his voice.
"Not going anywhere."
-
The contractions are not much worse than the time Underboss ground her hand under his heel, over cut glass. When she tries to explain this to Daniel he begs her not to joke about that, his face reddening.
He half-cradles her as he lays her down, and then he calls Esther.
-
Seven hours into labor Wanda reads Paradise Lost to her nervous wreck of a partner and her yawning midwife. The contractions hurt more when they clutch at her, but when they pass they are gone for so long that she has time to turn verses in the air. The whole ordeal is so anticlimactic that she can only guess she's already failed as a mother.
She's not surprised.
-
Three hours after that, she stays very quiet, breathes when she is told and pushes when she is told and doesn't look at the blood painting her legs. She can't feel much of anything anymore besides Rorschach's quiet conviction.
-
When Esther has her back turned, Daniel unfolds the sweaty ball of Rorschach's face out of her fist. He lets Rorschach look at it, the white and black blurring through the medication and pain.
Then he tucks it back into her fist. Kisses her forehead.
-
Rorschach can hear the soft sound of scissors closing. She remembers cutting Big Figure with a box cutter.
Her partner whispers to her.
-
There is a weight in Wanda's arms.
Dazed, she lifts her head.
"Oh," she says. "Hello."