This wasn't going according to plan. Not that there had been much of one to begin with. Daniel had gone down the ramp to do what? Confront Manhattan about his girl? It was ridiculous, but had still made Rorschach tingle under all his layers. Manhattan hadn't been as impressed. He had held one hand out and clapped it down on Dan's face. Dan had frozen, a thumb and pinky under each eye, the others resting on his forehead, and then Rorschach's tingle had turned to pins and needles stabbing in alarm.

There had been a hum and crackle of static. Dan's eyes had blazed as white and empty as Manhattan's and he had collapsed as limply as if Manhattan had dissolved his bones out of him.

"Jon!" Laurie's voice was shrill and petulant, like a brat whose newest toy has been broken to teach her a lesson. Rorschach had lunged out to stand over Dan. It was as useless a gesture as Dan's had been. What could he do against a jealous god? He glared up, savagely glad to see Laurie blanch at whatever she saw in the swirling blots. There was a burst of blue and they were both gone.

There was a silence then, except for his own harsh breathing. Only his. He turned back to Dan in alarm. If he wasn't breathing… Rorschach dropped to his knees over him, pulling off his gloves. He straddled his waist to claw at the armor for a pulse. Nothing from the chest, so he dug under the throat armor, still warm and damp. Nothing.

Manhattan could've just stopped his heart, could've teleported it somewhere else, maybe for Laurie to step on wherever they were going and ruin her atrocious shoes, could've done any number of fatal things. Helplessness shook Rorschach in its teeth. What could he do? How could he undo what Manhattan had done? What kind of vengeance could he take on the blue being for it? How could you punish something so removed? Would even killing Laurie affect him now? Rorschach was distracted from such thoughts when a heartbeat shuddered under his fingers.

"Daniel?" His voice was hardly recognizable, but when Dan's eyed opened, they were also. They were still a pale, electric color that stared through him for a long horrible moment before Dan winced and squeezed them shut. "Daniel!"

He cupped Dan's face, relief colliding with more fears that something unfixable had been done to his friend. Dan's eyes opened again, this time with a painful gasp. They were brown again, but he choked on each breath and clutched Rorschach like he was drowning.

"You're alive!" he gasped as if he wasn't the one on his back on the floor. He half-laughed, half-sobbed, throwing his arms around Rorschach's neck and pulling him close. He chuckled/wept something disbelieving into Rorschach's chest and then pulled him down to kiss him through the mask. Rorschach froze, jaw dropping as kiss after kiss pressed against his open mouth. It was relief, obvious, heart-breaking relief, and it was for him and he had no idea why, so he allowed it, even when the shock wore off enough for him to think again. By then, Dan had buried his face into Rorschach's throat and was rocking them both gently.

"There's still time," he whispered. Rorschach didn't know what he meant by that, but he could tell it was significant to Dan. Whatever had affected him this way had left his emotions overflowing into his voice. Rorschach tried to gently ease him back.

"Time to go" he said, hoping mention of the mission would help. "Check with Adrian."

"No." Dan's voice went cold so fast that Rorschach couldn't help but freeze. He looked down to find the brown eyes hard and icy.

"What?" he asked.

"Adrian is behind all this. All of it. He killed Comedian, Moloch, Weaver, Janey Slater. He framed you and Jon. He intends to kill millions more to make his point and have his own way. I know it." He ran a hand into his hair. "Jon made me see time the way he does. Laurie told me he had tried to do that to her. I went through my whole life laying here, Rorschach. I saw it all, from birth to the day I end up dying in the rain. I don't know why he showed me, but he did. We go to Adrian's office, we find out what he did, and we go to confront him."

Rorschach was staring at him. There was a certainty there that he hadn't seen in Dan in years, if ever. The polite, placating look in his eyes was gone. There was stone cold conviction staring back at him and it caused a weak flutter in his stomach. When was the last time he had eaten? He didn't remember. It didn't matter.

"And?" he prompted. Dan's expression didn't change. He looked more like his namesake now than he ever had with the goggles.

"We lose."

"You believe that?" Rorschach forced his unease to sound like anger. "Accept your visions as carved in stone, like Manhattan?"

"No," Dan still sounded certain, implacable, ruthless? "I have seen my whole life, Rorschach. I know exactly what I'll regret when I lay dying and I have no intention of making the same mistakes twice." A trace of his gentler self-deprecating smile touched his lips. "I intend to make all new ones."

He sat up and kissed Rorschach again before he could pull back. Shock slammed through him again. He made a sound but wasn't able to move until Dan got back up and started rummaging through the piles of equipment and carrying it into Archie. Rorschach got to his feet. He was stunned and galvanized, but none of his emotions were complete enough for him to act on. Outrage, confusion, relief, worry, and something he wasn't sure what to call flickered through him, kaliedescoping into each other. He felt lightheaded and trembling, and fumbled for a sugar cube. He got his breathing under control and ventured over to where Dan was feverishly packing things up.

"We have time," Dan said again, over his shoulder. "It will take all day to get Antarctica, and it won't work anyway. When we get there, Adrian will just muss his hair beating both of us bloody. We aren't able to stop him. You die trying."

"…Not a bad way to go." It was all that Rorschach could think to say. Dan gave him a steely look.

"Except that no one knows," he grumbled. "No one ever finds out. It's assumed we die in the attack because we're never seen again."

"We?"

"I die six years later." Dan buried himself in the box of parts again. "That six years is spent planning what I could've, should've done. Replaying it over and over again. I know what to do now."

Rorschach made a questioning sound, creeping closer. The energy was crackling off Dan and Rorschach was tempted to touch him, just to feel it quiver. Dan was moving too quickly for that now. Another load of parts and tools was put in Archie and then he started pulling out canisters with flammable markings.

"Get aboard," he said. "We'll do the rest en route. The police will be here soon."