SEVEN PILLARS OF MANHATTAN
I
Looking back a thousand times upon it, Adrian realised that day was part of his destiny.
II
"Hey, you! Fucko!"
Ozymandias, not used to being addressed that way, whirled about.
"I take it you are the Comedian." He said, calmly.
"That's right. Fucko. What's the matter? Ya don't like bein' called fucko? How about I just call youse Nazimandias. That's right. I know what you are. I know why you're so fuckin' worried about what happened to that Nazi faggot cunt Mueller. I'll tell youse what happened. He was a fucking Nazi. He got what he deserved."
Adrian was about to speak, again, when the older man, although large and heavier than him, showed he could move with a lithe, savage grace and struck him, in the throat.
It was an immobilising blow.
"C'mon, fucko, take your free punch, you fuckin' Nazi." The Comedian taunted.
Ozymandias hit him as hard as he could; a blow calculated to succeed in breaking his opponent's nose.
The Comedian only laughed, pushed his nose back into place, spat a mouthful of blood on the ground, and, with the same predatory élan, returned fire.
A devastating uppercut that sent Adrian reeling back.
He staggered, the taste of his own hot blood choking him, teeth wobbly in a suddenly spongy jaw, his aching, ringing head full of cobwebs and fur.
Ozymandias, the undefeated, fell on his hands and knees on the ground, his mouth leaking blood and teeth onto the filthy cracked pavement of the waterfront.
"You give up?"
"Never."
Another laugh from his opponent, followed by the methodical administration of a thorough beating.
This wild, sardonic black Irishman beat him with a singular brutality, channelling his obvious rage into a calculated plan to inflict the most pain, and yet, the most superficial damange on Adrian's helpless body.
He refused to curl in a ball, or to beg for mercy; he tucked his head down to his chest and took it.
The kicks, the punches, the cursing.
He suddenly remembered T.E. Lawrence, relating in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the savage beating he took from the Turks before he was violated by the Turkish Bey.
When describing the beating, Lawrence commented that a sudden warmth spread through him as he was being beaten, and characterised it as "probably sexual".
Under the rain of blows and curses, Adrian felt it, too.
It cut through his pain and the shame of his defeat quite softly, blunting both with a quiet acceptance of his fate.
He had been defeated, and this fearsome brute with blood in his dark eyes had dominion over him, to use him as he wished, and there was nothing Adrian could do.
After he was beaten, Lawrence implied that he had been raped.
He had said that he had given up his bodily integrity to save his life.
Adrian had not understood, when he read it, because no man had ever been able to best him, but now, he understood perfectly.
The beating stopped.
Adrian heard the Comedian's boots moving around him on the pavement.
Holding his breath against the wall of his chest, he waited, his heart thundering, to feel the bloody hands that had beat him ripping at his costume, for a laugh and a low sneer and the cold metal of the steel shields to press against his back in that moment of insult, before he was forced into the ground, before he was made to yield his bodily integrity, for the sake of his life.
Adrian turned his head to find the Comedian.
He was using some newspapers that had been lying around to wipe off Adrian's blood.
"What…what are you going to do to me?"
For a moment, the Comedian looked confused.
He laughed again, derisively.
That laugh, perhaps, was the cruellest thing of all.
"Christ, kid, are you afraid I'm gonna make a punk outa youse, or are ya upset that I ain't? You got the wrong guy. Ya wanted your buddy Hooded Justice for that. Me, I ain't no rapo, an' I only like broads. Jesus, alla you fuckin' Nazis are faggots. Christ only knows why."
He finished cleaning himself with the newspapers, stuffed them in a trash can, and left.
After he was gone, Adrian Veidt collapsed in the alley, crying bitter tears.
III
As the years passed him, Adrian would try, again and again, to make sense of that night.
Never before had he experienced such feelings for a man, and he never would again.
Unlike Lawrence, he never developed a need to be beaten or humiliated; his sexual affairs were very normal, and conducted with women; he never found himself taking a second look at a man.
Was it some kind of grudging respect at having met someone who could best him?
Some noble acknowledgement following a clash of titans.
He had to cast it that way, because the alternative was squalid, horrible, and utterly mystifying to him.
Why love?
Why him?
IV
Yet, each man kills the thing he loves.
Wilde.
But what about Lovecraft?
That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die.
Ozymandias did not regret his downfall.
In the wake of President Nixon's suicide, when Congress called him to testify about the "proof" of his role in the JFK assassination, as well as the matter of the Death Squid Massacre in New York, he was cool and calm.
His objective had been achieved; even in his disgrace, the US and the USSR remained united, to purge the Brave New World of the arch-fiend who was its architect.
As he sat in a filthy cell on Riker's Island, awaiting his arraignment, as the reporters jammed their microphones into his face as he left the courthouse after meeting bail, he was calm, he felt neither anxiety or fear.
Watching the screaming TV news coverage that vilified him, he was not angry or upset.
For one thing, he knew that his destiny had been fulfilled, his greatness consummated.
No matter what befell him now, that could not be undone.
But as he sat in his apartment, a wild hope leaped in his chest and Adrian Veidt's heart hammered in a strange and savage joy.
In all that had befallen him, he saw not the handwriting on the wall, but the hand that made it.
And when the familiar and expected heavy footsteps came in the hall, and when the door splintered, the faint, stupid hope that his soul refused to relinquish bore bitter fruit.
When he strode over the fallen door, as if neither death, nor even the years since their first meeting in 1962, had ever touched him.
"You're alive! But…but how?"
That laugh.
Oh, that laugh.
"Guys like me, Ozzy, we're hard ta kill. Shoulda done your homework."
One more time, those hands laid upon him, carrying him on to his fate, to his great and final destiny.
It was a beautiful night, and the moon was full, and for the first time, for the last time, Adrian Veidt was in the embrace of his one and only love.
The Comedian hoisted Ozymandias off of his shoulder, and briefly, held the younger man aloft over his head.
"Me, I did my fuckin' homework. You're not comin' back." He said.
And Adrian was in the air.
It took only moments to pass through the glass, and he was still in the air.
It was a strange sensation, not at all like in the dreams of falling, and the time of his descent passed rapidly.
The booming laugh and the towering figure of the Comedian standing in front of Adrian's broken window retreated rapidly.
He closed his eyes, wanting to know no other sight but that, as he flew on, into eternity.
V
Ozymandias did not scream as he fell, or when he hit the ground.
On what remained of his face, there was an expression of serene joy, and on his lips, a smile.
VI
She came and looked at the body on the ground, Mrs. Sandra Hollis, who, with her husband, Sam, had given two years of her life to this ultimate end.
She was mystified.
Her father came out the front doors in a hurry, looking both ways, as she screwed the silencer onto the barrel of her gun before firing twice into the unfettered brow of the dead man
"What the fuck is he grinning about?"
"He got what he wanted. Let's go, kid, before the cops get here. C'mon."
They retreated into the shadows, both moving quickly over the obstacles in their path.
"Jesus Christ, he's supposed to be here! Why didn't you just fuckin' marry Barney Fife!"
"Will you leave him alone?"
"Will he ever get his shit together? Then I'll leave him alone."
"You are such an asshole."
"Runs in the family, cupcake."
Sandra looked into the distance and swore.
"Jesus, Dan, where the fuck are you!"
"Sam." Her father corrected her.
"Whatever the fuck! Where the fuck is he with the car? And what the fuck are you talking about Veidt? He wanted to get thrown out a window and die?"
Her father lit a fresh cigar
"No. He wanted me to kill him. He knew that was all he was going to get. So, after all these years, he decided, fuck it, I'll take it."
Sirens in the distance.
"I don't understand."
They made their way through an alley, a convenient shortcut, and then, the quick flash of headlights.
"Neither do I, kid. There's the car. Let's go."
They piled into the back, the door was open, and Sandra pulled it shut.
"Go! Go! Jesus Christ, Dan, where the fuck were you?" she insisted.
"What did you want me to do? Drive up to the body? What the hell was he grinning about?"
"I don't know. Ask the old man."
"Well, Eddie?"
"He got what he wanted. Forget it. It's done."
Silence.
"So, what do we do now? Do we go back to California?" Dan asked.
The Comedian realised they were both looking at him.
"Fuck no. We stay here, and we get back to work."