Title: Comedy In Us
Disclaimer: I, in no way, shape, manner, or form, own the Watchmen or the characters said comic. All publicly recognizable characters are copyrighted to Alan Moore and I do believe DC. No copyright infringement is intended.
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters: Sally "Jupiter" Juspeczyk
Continuity: Set at some vague time shortly after the assault
Warnings: Language
Summary: Sometimes, when she was alone and the lights were out for the night, she thought of him.
Author's Note: Still trying to get a handle on Sally's voice; she baffles me to no end. Trying to understand her is a little more trying than I initially thought it would be; it's rather difficult to get into her mindset, especially concerning Terrible Events, and how squicky they really are. Hard concrit welcomed and encouraged.
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Sometimes, when she was alone and the lights were out for the night, she thought of him.
It was the little things, simple though they were, that filled her nighttime hours. How his throat made a gentle slope into his broad shoulders, constantly knotted with a tension most people mistook for merriment. His thick forearms that tapered off into incongruously delicate wrists, work-worn and blunted fingers, with the nails perpetually bitten to the quick. The almost greasy quality of his hair, which was strangely not as unpleasant as it should have been. The crooked angle of his cocksure sneer, and how it tightened just enough to look forced whenever Hooded Justice glanced his way.
Yes, increasingly, she was thinking of him. Of Eddie.
And it was unnerving.
She was repulsed by him; what woman wouldn't be? Eddie was the worst kind of monster; charming, roguish, and utterly without limitations. He was sick. She sometimes thought he had always been a little sick, inside. After all, who else but a deranged monster would commit such an act against a friend, a teammate? He had struck her, attempted to violate her in the worst of ways. For that, she would always feel bitter, angry, confused; because, despite these… evening transgressions, rape was still rape. Even if… even if she felt so… wrong and right afterward.
She rolled in the bed, faced the empty space beside her, watching the wall for signs of betrayal.
Maybe she was little sick, too. Maybe this mask stunt was a little more than just publicity.
Maybe, sometimes, when she was alone and the lights were out for the night, she didn't want to turn to a wall.
Frustrated, Sally ran her fingers over the cool sheets beside her, teasing out the texture of the fabric, catching the grooves of her fingertips on the weave. Yes, sometimes it would be nice to not sleep alone.
If HJ wasn't a – well, if he wasn't the way he was, who knew what would have been. If he hadn't been that way, he wouldn't have been so cold to her afterward, like she was to blame for Eddie's perversity. He would have held her tight, murmured his little nothings and she would not have spared a thought for Eddie's wellbeing; would have, justifiably, put the whole disgusting mess behind her and moved on. She would have never longed for warm hands in the dark, the rough scent of a man too used to his own odor.
She wouldn't have thought, have… felt, like this, so conflicted.
But HJ was like that. With Nelly. While she was… different from them all. Outside, somehow; not quite part of the gang.
And Eddie was…
Eddie was. Well. Eddie was something.
Sally grimaced, turning her face into her pillow, exhaling with a halfhearted curse and puffing it in again to taste the stale carbon of her recycled breath. Her fingers knotted in the frill, pulled it tight, until she was certain it would tear to pieces if she just tugged a little harder—
Damn.
That was the tragedy of this whole situation – the joke, the big, stupid joke she just couldn't get around. That the Comedian was a fiend, a twisted little bastard. He was wrong in the head, lacked impulse control; he was everything that made what they did seem a little more abnormal. Yes. He was everything that was wrong with them, even as he was fighting beside them. Jesus. They pretended to be somewhere above it all when they were, one and all, so very small, so very… strange. Deviant.
God damn, and there he was, that little fucker. Mocking them just by being there in the first place, some little dock rat that had had delusions of his role in the scheme of things. The Comedian. Ha, ha. How funny. They'd all had a great laugh with him, at one time or another; they'd all thought they were in on it with him, alongside him. But no. Blake was always alone, made himself alone, by choosing to be what he saw, personifying the world with all its Technicolor flaws. A big fucking gag on all of them.
No. That wasn't it.
The joke was, she thought, that he wasn't laughing along.