AN: I do not own Watchman. I do not make any profit off of this work of fiction; all Watchman characters belong to their creators and DC Comics.
Prelude
My Name is Ozymandias,
King of Kings:
Look on my Works,
ye Mighty, and despair!
Alone.
Complete solitude was a rare thing for an unmasked vigilante and billionaire. In public, there were always photographers and journalists trailing in his wake. In private, calls and lusting secretaries came at him like bullets. You either took it or dodged them. When the quiet came, he valued it.
But this, the silence that thudded in his ears, was oppressive compared to the comfortable hum of inactivity he usually felt. Adrian Veidt, the hero Ozymandias, was seated on the steps of the media dais. Snow was piling up in drifts, more floating down through the shattered top of the pyramid where Dr. Manhattan had busted through the day before. Tinges of sunlight were starting to color the clouded sky. Dawn was approaching.
Killing millions…to save billions.
Veidt clenched his hands, the right still bleeding sluggishly. Slim, expressive fingers curled and strained beneath the heavy leather of the gloves. He was still garbed in his typical costume of form fitting metal and latex, albeit worse for wear. His diadem was cast aside, hair lank and greasy from lack of wash. Unmoving, he had sat there for most of the night. Adrian stared fixedly at the ground as he went over the events of the day before.
He incinerated Bubastis, the poor creature. His heart clenched, remembering the last seconds of her life displayed on the monitor as the very particles that composed her sleek frame were separated and pulled apart into their simplest components.
Single handedly, he had tripped the switch that in turn had lit up major cities around the globe with the 'bombs'. Dr. Manhattan's recreated energy had blown a chunk out of Manhattan Island itself, but not all of it.
New York.
Moscow.
Hong Kong.
Los Angeles.
Tokyo.
London.
Paris.
Beijing.
Key points around the globe, every one. In minutes, they had been leveled as punishment for skimming the close line between peace and a nuclear holocaust. The avoidance of a World War and the assured billions that would die if such an event occurred did nothing to dampen the guilt of killing innocents. Adrian paled, his stomach clenching with nausea as he lurched forward and vomited bile onto the marble floor. He shook; sweat was beading under the fringe of his hair as he cradled his head and shut his eyes tight. A noble cause could never be more perverse to him, after the fact. He would live with their blood on his hands until his last breath.
Klaxons started their warning blare as the system picked up the radio of an incoming Veidt jet touching down on the airstrip, scheduled earlier in the planning to pick him up from Karnack at the appointed time. A day after the cataclysmic explosions that obliterated millions of lives, Adrian Veidt would expectedly rush back to New York from seclusion after hearing of the tragedy, ready to offer aid and massive funds to the world to begin reconstruction. In a moment, he would pull himself together and go out to greet his entourage.
He would return as a savior to the world, a hero. Not the executioner as was the truth.
Right on time. Just as planned. I had to trick it…the greatest practical joke in history.
Who was laughing?
Bruised, bleeding, and broken, Adrian Veidt wept.