A Mother's Love, a watchmen fanfic

A Mother's Love

The first memory he has of his mother is more sensation than solid picture, dim orange stripes cutting the wall to pieces and her body a heavy warmth beside him. Her hand runs through his hair on repeat and the world is shaking around him but he's not afraid. Her fingers are cool against his scalp. He's not afraid. "Shh, baby," she murmurs, and the orange stripes flicker out. He's not afraid.

There's not a first; it's not that easy to define.

He's five years old and his mother is crying, hunched against the wall, and the tears shake in his chest, too, but he has to be strong. "Mommy, it's okay," he says, feeling ineffectual even as she loops an arm around his waist and draws him in. He doesn't like the way she smells, but she kisses his forehead and lets him run his hands through her hair.

If he doesn't cry, too, then maybe she'll stop, but it's so hard not to when the world's problems are insurmountable before his tiny hands.

"Oh, for God's -" She looks from her soiled socks to his empty, open hands, to the milk carton laying between his feet. Something in her snaps. "You fucking little shit." When she hits him it is with the back of her hand; it stuns him into inaction and his apologies and tears stick in his throat. She doesn't look at him when she cleans up, but an hour later, when she finds him in her closet, she draws him out with soothing hands and whispers "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, baby," and the marks sting a little less when he looks at them in the mirror.

"Walter, honey," she says. Tangling her hands in his hair she kisses him on the mouth, like she does sometimes when she puts him to bed, and she stays like that. Her lips are warm and wet and she cups his face with her hands, delicate and gentle. When she pulls back, she looks like she's going to cry. "You know I love you, right?"

He doesn't want her to cry again, so he nods and pecks her on the lips, not sure if he's allowed to, but she sighs and wraps him in a hug and she's soft, and warm, and when she kisses his neck it's because she loves him.

Walter doesn't like it when she pushes her tongue into his mouth, because it always makes him feel like he's going to gag and the butterflies in his stomach kind of scare him. But her thick slug of a tongue means she loves him and that she's sorry for hitting him, and she always kisses his bruises so gently. When she strokes his body it's as if she's afraid he'll break.

Sometimes, she takes his wrists and makes him cup her breasts, and stomach, and she lets him curl up in her lap and smoothes back his hair. It means she loves him. It means she's not going to hurt him and will only call him baby and honey and Walter and never shithead or retard or waste of space.

"Don't you like it when we do this?" she asks, rubbing slow circles on one of his thighs. Guilty tension is thick in his stomach and he feels a little like he might cry, except the pressure is further down and it feels a little like happiness, so it must not be bad.

"Yes, ma'am," he says, and he tilts his head up and kisses her on the cheek.

She catches him sneaking looks at her when they're bathing together and she looks at him for a minute with squinty eyes. At first he's afraid he's made her angry and, ashamed, he turns his back fully to her, scrubbing furiously at his chest as if he can wash away the stain of his stare.

"You're curious, aren't you?' she says, and he jumps at the sound, so sure that he would receive reprimand. When he looks back, she's not washing herself anymore, just looking at him with the water running down. "C'mere. It's okay. You can look."

"Momma, I don't," he mutters, blushing. He's not supposed to look at bad parts. He knows that.

"You came from here," she says, gesturing to her girl parts. "I'm your mama, ain't I?"

Tentatively, he turns around, aware of how naked they both are. That funny rush is making his chest tighten as he studies her knees; with an impatient sigh, she takes his arm and rests his hand on her hips.

"See? I don't bite."

He allows himself to look up, to stare at the space between her legs. It's smooth by her stomach and wrinkled further down, pink and ugly like newborn babies' skin, and it's kind of gross. Walter thinks about how some boys in his class got in trouble with the teacher for looking up girls' skirts, and he wonders who's right - his teacher or his mother.

He doesn't realize he touched her there until she hisses softly and bats his hand away. "Don't do that," she murmurs, and hot shame washes over him. He turns away and rubs at his hand with his rag, hard, but the pliant feel of her folds against his fingers remains the rest of the night.

One night, she sends him out for condoms and he gets lost. By the time he gets home, it's well after dark and he's trying real hard not to cry. He knows she'll be mad. There's no way to give her the condoms without direct confrontation, either. He hates the condoms for being something his mother needs and the normal gas station for being closed and his mother for needing her rest, because why couldn't she go? She knows the streets better; she can read New York like the back of her hand. That's what she says.

When he gets home, she seems bigger than normal and she pulls on his hair, vicious, and the tears explode out of him, shaking and high-pitched. He hates sobbing, how noisy it is, but he can't help himself, he just does it. After she lets him go and spanks him in the butt, he runs to his room and pushes his bed in front of the door. He decides he's never coming out, not even to eat, and if he dies then that's just fine with him. The pain doesn't ebb away for a long time and he curls underneath his bed, smelling dust and bitter metal and doing his best to temper his sobs.

He doesn't like it when the feeling his mother elicits becomes something physical under her touch. It makes him feel disgusting, watching his parts start to stiffen under her fingers, but she doesn't tell him he's being bad, just rubs between his legs and kisses at his face and tells him how sorry she is for being a bitch and that she loves him, she loves him more than the whole world. He starts to shake and he tries to cross his legs but her hand's in the way, and it hurts but it's also kind of singing inside and he feels dizzy.

"Momma," he gasps, and she pauses, looking at him for the first time, her expression hidden in shadow.

"It's all right," she soothes, and stops touching there, rubbing instead at his stomach and chest. "Walter, honey, you know I love you and wouldn't ever hurt you, not on purpose, don't you?" She's pulling down her underwear with one hand and he feels something wet drop on his cheek. Walter nods without really thinking about it, clenching his hands in the sheets, shivering with nerves, and the pulse between his legs is setting him on edge.

When she rolls on top of him, he's hit with a sense of claustrophobia; there's that smell, perfume and late nights and quavering sobs, and when she rocks her hips against his it's suffocating. "I love you, baby," she murmurs, and she turns her head just right and he can see that she's crying.

That cry-feeling tightens his throat and she's moving over him and he doesn't know what to think - it hurts without really hurting and his mother's saying she loves him so it can't be bad, and her hands are on his ribs, tracing them back, and he doesn't -

- he doesn't -

He's scared when his body convulses, when he bucks up into - he's in her, he thinks blindly - her steady heat and whines, and it feels good but it hurts, too, and her palms are stroking his cheeks. It's because he's crying too, he thinks, panting and shivering all over. He's crying, too, and it's that more than anything else that makes the guilt clench in his stomach, unfettered. He's not supposed to cry in front of her when she's crying. He's supposed to be strong. But as she rolls onto her side and ruffles his hair, he just feels weak and drained and can't stop sniffling. He's just too weak.

Sometimes, she nudges his hand between her legs, tells him that he can touch if he wants, but all he can think about is seeing her in the shower. He doesn't like how wet she is, down there, and he doesn't like the way his hand smells afterwards.

She scrubs his shoulders down roughly, and he knows what's coming. He doesn't want her to touch him, even if it does mean that she loves him, because his teachers don't like it when boys try to touch girls and so it must be wrong. His teachers are very smart, and his mother's smart, too, but not that smart, because she doesn't have a working job, so maybe she doesn't know that girls and boys can't touch each other there.

But when the rag slips between his legs, his words catch in his throat.

When Walter realizes that his mother apologizes the most when she hears him cry, he works harder at keeping quiet. It works.

Walter is nine years old, and his mother is screaming at a man, threatening him, and Walter feels tiny in his shirt, in this world of grown-ups. He hasn't yet made the connection that his mother shares her love with the men who visit her, but he will later tonight, when he's curled up with his pillow and pressing a fistful of ice to the side of his mouth. For now, he just knows that he has done something very bad. For now, he knows that his mother is going to hurt him, and that the lock on his door doesn't work anymore, and that she is stronger than him.

His wall is split with orange light and he is alone, but he can hear the sounds his mother is making and he recognizes the tension in his stomach. He lays as still as he can and does his best to not let himself hear her pleas.

Heat and wet and pressure - but it's not the same, it's moving, her tongue is, and it's almost nice because that means her tongue's not in his mouth, but he doesn't like the way his body reacts to her. He doesn't like her apologies, or the way she loves him; it makes him feel sick, even as that strange singing happiness makes his toes curl and his brain go fuzzy. The water from the shower makes her hair stick to her face and neck and she keeps her eyes shut. He wants to sit down. He wants to get out of the bath.

But she looks up for a moment, just looks at him, and he's paralyzed.

Walter Kovacs is eleven years old. When the officers ask him what his mother does to him at home, he does not tell them what he brings on himself. He folds his hands in his lap and simply tells them that his mother never loved him, because maybe if he says it enough, it'll be true.