Author's Note: Yo. So… I finally saw Watchmen, got sucked in, and was spat out as a fangirl. Got the GN and read it through in one sitting, and my brain's been working overtime, cranking out fanfiction. Got a lot of ideas to play around with, but this one's been pestering me. Probably going to become a series… I hope. I hoping that I can do this well enough that I'll be happy with it… it allows me to explore all the different options that are open… You'll have to read more to see what I mean. ;) I think I saw a plotline like this somewhere in a Star Trek novel - if someone could tell which one if they know, it would be completely awesome.

Not a mooch for reviews or anything, but it would be great to get some feedback for this one, because I'm not entirely sure about it. Meh.

Disclaimer: Recognize it? Then it's not mine. :pf

Realities

Chapter 1: Alternate Possibilities

So peaceful, Doctor Manhattan, once Jonathan Osterman, thought. It was peaceful, sitting in the silent vacuum of space.

Only it wasn't too silent.

Stars made noise as they consumed the last dregs of their hydrogen fuel, and made even louder noises as they went nova. Noise that only he could hear, perhaps, but it was sound nonetheless. If a star went nova, and no one was there to hear it – yes, it still made noise. Even the particles of microscopic space debris made a sharp whizzing as they flew past him at supersonic speeds, unimaginable to those beings on his home planet.

Of course, the mere issue that he was hovering in a geo-synchronous orbit around Venus would probably have been a sticking point. How quaintly primitive. It was sometimes hard to remember that he had come from that.

Time meant nothing anymore, and bored him. Past, future – it didn't matter. Everything was the present. In the blink of an eye that he only blinked out of habit, he could see the birth and death of the universe and al time, and all the little hiccups in between. To keep things interesting, he mostly shut time out.

A billion, billion stars with trillions and trillions of planets, home to millions and millions of sentient life forms had interested him momentarily, then the interested waned to boredom. Each species was essentially the same: a slow, improbably (but not impassable or insurmountable) development from primordial ooze, a fast decline, then a long, drawn out decline to eventual distinction. The pattern got trite sometime after the hundred thousandth different species. To be blunt, time bored him. It wasn't interesting enough. Oh, big deal. So they had four proboscises and a trio of tentacles instead of two arms and two legs. It all balanced out.

So he found a new interest. He sat, floating in the void, and cast out about with his mind. He had discovered, rather by accident, that alternate dimensions existed. For every choice, for every option – reality split into at least two different paths. And these paths fascinated him. The tiny nuances of life that none on his home planet thought about created innumerable paths. When he was Jon, he would have never been able to understand. Only as Dr. Manhattan could he.

So he sat in the vacuum and traced the different paths that reality took, exploring each of the different timelines they created. He started with Laurie, loving tracing the paths she took, and didn't take, slowly, letting his mind drift over the thoughts of her like a lover's fingers would drift across – did drift across – her skin. From her to Adrian, to Eddie, to Daniel… and then finally he drifted to Walter. Rorschach, the one he had killed in his own reality, out of necessity, or so he kept telling himself.

Would have it really mattered? His decision to kill Walter Kovacs in his own reality only created two more realities – one where Walter lived, one where he died. From there, the reality where he lived continued on with one where he compromised and kept his silence, to one where he did what he had said he would (no, not threaten… merely stated the truth as he ever saw it – in black and white) and gone to the press. From there, there were realities were nothing changed because no one took him seriously, to realities where he was believed and Adrian was brought to justice. In one single reality, the public was so grateful to Rorschach that he was nominated to the Presidency and ran unopposed. There were infinite possibilities.

But there it was… the one thing that got Jon interested, really interested, in Walter Kovacs. In only one single reality out of the infinite number he could ascertain did Walter Kovacs become Rorschach. In only one specific reality did Walter don a mask to become a superhero. In many timelines he went mad young, in others he stayed a tailor, or joined the army, became a family man – in some timelines he was even a liberal, and voted for a black President!

There were several timelines where Jon became Doctor Manhattan – he had seen them. Same thing for Laurie taking her mother's mantle, the same for Daniel become the second Nite Owl. That's why the sad being of Walter Kovacs was so fascinating to him.

In all of the infinite possibilities that alternate realities offered – there was only one Rorschach.

The being that was once Jonathan Osterman was proud to have known the man.

Of course, once there was a Rorschach – the realities branched out again. In some realities, he was a docile man more along the lines, personality-wise, of Daniel. In others, he was even more imbalanced than he was as Jon had known him.

This fascinated Jon in ways that he hadn't known. He had thought that he had surpassed simple emotions like joy and delight… but here he was finding them in the being of this sad, straggly little redhead. It was like a book an uncle had gotten him as a child – after reading the first chapter, you picked an option of where you wanted the story to go, and turned to the page indicated. The story would keep up in this fashion until you reached the climactic moment – or died because of your errors. He had read the book until the binding had split and the pages had fallen out

He had never thought to know such joy again, and here it was.

He did something he hadn't done in recent memory.

He smiled.

Not that anyone could see it, but that was irrelevant.

He smiled out of pleasure, because even to him, not all of the paths were immediately clear. He would have to follow them individually to see where they went.

Who would have ever thought that the Terror of the New York underworld would now be the entertainment of one Doctor Manhattan? There was irony to it.

And so he sat, in the vacuum, and guided his thoughts to the nearest thread of reality. Mentally, he picked up gently and examined it. This one could be interesting.