Disclaimer: I do not own House or Watchmen.
Summary: Utilitarianism has definite disadvantages. Robert and Adrian know this all too well.
Vindication
Maybe he sits down on that particular stool of the bar because the man next to it looks eerily familiar. Maybe it's the same pointy face and the same blonde hair and the same ghostly skin that catches his attention, or maybe it's the hollow exhaustion in the pale round eyes that are similar in more than hue. Or maybe it's the closest stool and Robert is just drunk and shaky-legged. His words are slurred as he orders another scotch from the bartender.
The man glances over with languid interest. "Australian or British?" he asks quietly. Robert just stares dumbly back, not even thinking to reply but slowly, unsuccessfully trying to place the stranger's accent in turn. He doesn't remember to answer until the man raises his eyebrows to prompt him.
"Australian," Robert snaps, not sure why he sounds angry, because he isn't. Not really. Not at this stranger, at least. He wonders if that's what his father might have looked like if his father looked like him. But Rowan Chase gave nothing to his son besides a propensity for doing the wrong things for the right reasons.
"What's your name?" the stranger asks again. The first sound in what is odd, strained, like he's trying very hard to say it correctly.
"German," Robert says proudly, and the stranger laughs.
"Your name is 'German'?"
"No… you're… German," Robert says slowly, because he almost misspoke, almost said that the stranger's name was German, almost said a thousand other things he shouldn't say.
"I am," the stranger agrees. "Good ear." And Robert deserves the compliment because the stranger sounds kind of German and kind of British and kind of American, but the what trying very hard not to be a vut sealed the deal. And besides, Robert is used to mixes of accents-- Australian and Czech; Australian and British; European-schooled African-- trying so very hard to sound like you belong.
"My name is Adrian," the stranger says softly. Robert replies with his name in turn. Then his drink appears and all else vanishes, and he's content to let Adrian just be his strange German self, though Adrian seems determined to keep the conversation alive.
"You look like a man with a secret," Adrian murmurs, and Robert intelligently responds, "you look like I aged twenty years and got a terrible haircut." Adrian reaches up reflexively to touch his hair, and Robert laughs, because it's something he would do. Keep up appearances, hold onto vanity when all else fails. Pretend that being pretty keeps you safe and warm and innocent.
"Fine. You look like I had a son with a Barbie doll." At this Robert doesn't laugh so much as giggle in delight at the first thing that's genuinely amused him in months. It doesn't last long, though, and he orders another drink.
"What do you do, Robert?" Adrian presses, then cuts him off with a warning not to say that he stalks bars looking for living Ken dolls.
"Doctor," Robert replies honestly, not seeing the point in lying to this man, and Adrian nods in approval.
"If you really were my son with a plastic toy, we would both be very proud," he promises, and Robert chokes and feels like crying, but instead he asks Adrian the same question in return. Adrian grins. "I'm a superhero," he whispers conspiratorially, and Robert's eyes widen, involuntarily, despite the fact that he knows superheroes don't exist anymore, belong only to the comics and the past.
"Did you ever have to kill anyone?" he murmurs, head down, shoulders slumped. "Any villains, I mean." Adrian laughs.
"Robert, I'm a businessman. I sell things to make money, and then I use that money to fund research."
"Oh," Robert sighs, unexpectedly disappointed.
"'Oh'? You would want a superhero who killed people?"
"It would make them human."
Adrian blinked. "It would make them a killer."
"I'm a killer," Robert says softly. Adrian doesn't seem to believe him; all he does is smirk.
"Who did you kill?"
A shudder runs down Robert's spine. "A bad man. He would've killed thousands of people if I let him live." His hands are shaking. "I didn't shoot him or anything. He was my patient… I chose not to save him." Robert is surprised when Adrian takes his hand; he's even more surprised to find that Adrian is shaking too. Is he afraid? Is Robert Chase now someone to be afraid of?
"Tell me what you did," he whispers.
"I faked… a test. I ran it on a dead woman's blood. So the others wouldn't treat him for what he really had." Tears are running down his face now. Adrian follows them with his eyes but says nothing. Robert brings his free hand to his face and cries. "I did the right thing," he stutters. "I did what I had to do." He hears Adrian sigh.
"You're familiar with utilitarian versus Kantian morality, Robert?" Face still hidden, Robert nods. "You took the approach that gets things done. Most people would have done differently because most people would have been too afraid to take a stand. Kant was an idealist and a coward. You are neither."
"'s supposed to make me feel better?" Robert sniffs, drunkenly wiping the tears from his face. Adrian blinks.
"It's supposed to make you feel vindicated."
"I already know what I did was right," Robert counters. "The only question left is how to live with it. I mean, I guess… I just keep reminding myself that he was an awful human being. Right?"
Adrian thinks this over for a minute while Robert throws back the last of his drink and gets the remainder of his tears under control. "What if he had been a good man?" Adrian says at last. Robert frowns.
"Why would I kill a good man?"
"If he were part of something bad."
"Then I guess he'd be a bad man," Robert reasons. Now it's Adrian who seems close to tears. "Adrian?" he says quietly. Adrian purses his lips and pauses before looking over.
"Let's say you could save the world if you killed… say, fifteen million people. Save the whole world by their deaths. Would you do it?"
"I don't…" Robert begins instinctively, then pauses to remember how this time last year he wouldn't have thought himself capable of killing one man either. Still he doesn't change his answer. "I don't think I could do that."
"Why not? The ratio works the same way. Kill one to save thousands, kill millions to save billions."
"Yeah but… fifteen million people? I mean, I'd have to feel… fifteen million times as bad as this?" Robert shakes his head. "I don't think I could. I can't handle this. Adrian?" he adds as a murmur, because Adrian's chest is moving far too quickly, his pale eyes wild and desperate in an otherwise dead-looking face. "Are you all right?"
"Fine, fine," Adrian assures him, waving him away with a hand. The bar is dark and lit red and green by neon nights but it doesn't make Robert think of Christmas so much as blood on grass.
"Do you think you could do that?" Robert asks quietly, feeling like it's the right thing to say, though he's afraid of the answer. But Adrian doesn't say yes, doesn't nod, just sort of smiles and turns back to the bar.
"One man could never kill fifteen million people. Not even Hitler went that high."
Robert nods, slightly confused, thinking back; can't think of a time since way back in the eighties that that many people even died at once, and he can't remember that well. He was young.
"But here's a question," Adrian continues. "What if you did, what if you killed those people, and it didn't work. And the world ended anyway?"
"I guess I'd hope you mean the world ending in a sense where I'd be dead too," Robert says quietly. "God. I can't even deal with this."
Adrian nods. Then, slowly, he stands, stretching his body slowly and purposefully, looking strangely like a human-shaped cat. "It was very nice meeting you, Robert," he says quietly, holding out his hand. Robert grasps it. He's stopped shaking but Adrian hasn't, and he has to fight the strange and inappropriate urge to embrace him. He doesn't, though, and after a moment Adrian lets go, turns, and leaves.
Robert swivels on his barstool to watch Adrian pick his way through the crowd, yellow and purple in a sea of writhing red and black. And maybe it's just because they're both tall and slender and blonde-- yes, of course it's only because of this-- Robert feels as though he is watching the back of his own head retreating as Adrian walks away.