"What are you waiting for? Do it. DO I-" "DON'T!"
Arms flew in from his peripheral and encircled him. Rorschach's eyes shifted their focus from that luminescent blue figure who nearly embodied his life's end to the cozy black wool that enveloped Annalise's shoulder. His sensations flipped from desperation, near terror even, to the feel of his tremulous figure being clutched tight, cradled in the warmth of her embrace. Head nuzzled against the crook of her neck, hands reaching up to grasp her sides, he knew he was not going to die in this icy wasteland. As her voice, strong yet timid, icy yet fiery, hummed against his left ear and buzzed across to his right, he managed to vaguely comprehend that she'd spoken – it was a near echo of Dan's words earlier.
"Don't you dare."
They bounced muddily 'round his head as his own consciousness cried out in the foreground: "SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY!" It was almost a thank-you left unspoken, as well as a profound realization that Anna lived, not just in this instant, but in every single one, to protect, care for, and look after him…to keep him, at all costs, wholly and utterly safe.
As the thought shook his core even beyond its initial impact, she whispered into his ear canal so that it seemed to resound in his cranium, "I can't live without you." Before he had the chance to acknowledge, as he had so many times before, the weight of those words, the knowledge that he was truly needed by someone, the world crept back out from whatever crevice it had momentarily nested in, and he was mumbling, then whispering back, then howling so fiercely that they must know, they must be told, "We don't deserve to be lied to by self-righteous man!" He flung out a retort, as was in is nature, in the form of: "Can't live with this!"
Perhaps for lack of a more suitable reaction, she suddenly pulled him to the ground, throwing herself over him as a means to pin him down. He must have involuntarily allowed the action to take place, for he knew, and she was well aware, that he could toss her off with a scanty exertion of his strength. Before he had taken another cool drink of air to awaken his senses to his position, they were pivoted toward, and then secluded to the familiar sensation of her petal-soft lips, that smooth, warm tongue tangling itself with his, dancing with his, caressing his and luring him into a realm of the universe in which nothing existed aside from the two of them, forever entwined, close enough to one another, in body, spirit, and mind, to be a single entity: the sociopathic, brokenhearted man of innocence and the beautiful, hopeful, and just as broken woman who existed somehow on his level, but also magically elevated them above even the greatest of Earth's heroes and the holiest of its hearts. She seemed desperate this time, seizing onto him so tight for fear of losing him to himself, yet she still, as always, managed to leave just enough room for him to lead when he wanted to.
He'd always perceived the taste as that of raw emotion, were such a thing to be tasted. The most prevalent of these feelings varied with the moment, but there were those he always picked up on: passion, peace, solace, and something akin to sanctuary. What consistently shocked him, however, was the total absence of doubt, of concern, of some inner questioning over the worth or quality of her relationship with him, of the value in even having one in the first place. She was always absolutely certain that the immense space she filled within his heart was the only, most perfect place for her to be. He was equally stunned, if not more so, by the infinitely deep well of unconditional, all-consuming, freeing love he came into contact with every single time their lips pressed together or they moved with one another in those moments of incredible, unspeakable surrender, or even in their slightest conversations. And every time, in all of those treasured bits and pieces, he was left in awe of the simple, yet overwhelming understanding that all of that…it was all. for. him.
But like waves, his sense of worldly purpose came rolling back up to him, and just as it crashed over him most violently, she sensed it boiling up his throat, preparing to escape, and closed her lips against his, snapped back, and flung her voice forward so that it surfaced before his:
"You can live normally, Rorschach. You've always had it in you to abandon those damaged parts of you – Rorschach and the old Walter Kovacs. Rorschach isn't needed anymore. The world is ready to move past vigilantes, to be peaceful for as long as it can be, and it doesn't need us! Your face is this one" – at which point she swept her hand over his countenance, tracing every outline with the gentle touch of someone who appreciated each detail – "and there's nothing you can do about that. What the world needs now…and what I need now - what you need more than you realize, is this face and someone who says your name with love. The strength to start anew has always been in you, but it's never been required of you. Now it is, and I know you're always strong enough to do what you need to."
The truth hit him harder than any rock or fist could, and it hurt to face. He turned his left cheek to the chill of winter frost beneath him. Resisting that sudden choking sensation that is the first sign of tears, Anna rested her own right cheek softly against his upturned one, laying herself flush against his shivering form. "Walter." She had to know what it felt like on her tongue, rushing in warm gusts of air over her taste buds.
"Walter…Walter…Walter."
She reiterated the two-syllable, powerfully bestowed name with each new bit of flesh she delicately kissed – the forehead, the eyebrow, the eyelid, the cheekbone – every square inch seemed covered in warm and loving specks when the coolness of the body, now once again in sync with his head, compelled Walter to speak: "Cold." Mouth against the conjunction of his upper and lower lip, Anna hesitated before replying: "Say okay…then I'll let you up"
The moment seemed too long, though it was only a few meager seconds, but they were significant ticks of time. Those quickly passing minute-bits tick-tocked to the beat of a life-changing decision. Following their end, Walter Kovacs had been pulled up from the wintry crust that had begun to cling to his clothing and wrapped in the most ardent and restful embrace he'd ever felt. Tears flew freely from his ducts as Annalise rocked him softly and smoothed his hair and traced those earlier-followed paths along his face. From that moment on, no word spoken between them, even those three sacred ones of the highest esteem in human comprehension, ever managed to truly outweigh the life-altering power of that other two-syllable, powerfully bestowed word:
"Okay."