1.

Scarlet looked out her window. The snow stretched out for miles. There was nothing but the vast expanse of white. Adrian had offered her a room that looked out over the beautiful oasis, but she preferred this view. It was harsh and bright, but it was real. There was no hiding behind the vague shape and meaningless comfort. That's how Scarlet lived her life, no hiding, everything was real.

She walked over to the desk that sat next to her bed; it was piled high with books. She picked up an old leather bound book which was titled, The Secrets of Ancient Egypt, she let her fingers trace the raised letters. Four years ago she thought it was absurd the way Adrian made her learn such useless things, she wanted to learn how to fight, but now she understood. Adrian had explained that to be truly powerful, one had to have a mind that was equal to if not stronger than one's body. He had taught her about art, literature, and science along with all her physical training. He said she had talent, in mind and body and neither should go to waste. There was a soft knock on her door and she jumped slightly as she looked up. Adrian Veidt stepped into her room tentatively. She smiled when she saw him. She had always been able to appreciate that by normal standards Adrian was a very attractive man. Then again, she thought as she smirked to herself, she wasn't exactly what you would call normal. Especially in the way she saw the people around her, to her Adrian was her brother, her mentor, and in many ways one of her closest friends. She had lived here with him at Karnack in the southern most reaches of the world for four years, and never once had there been even the hint of a romance between them. Romance…. She thought to herself, the word was as absurd to her as the idea of waking up one morning and seeing a tree growing outside her window in the frozen tundra. Romance was useless, the world had much more tangible and satisfying things to offer, such as justice.

"Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't we supposed to meet for a sparring session an hour ago?" said Adrian, as he leaned against the wall and gave her a smug but affectionate look.

"Excuse me?" said Scarlet, "You've been in a meeting with the new President since noon. I've been waiting for you."

"Touché…." said Adrian, "But I'm free now… so can we go enjoy ourselves?"

"Yes…" said Scarlet and they walked out of her room and down the hall.

"So tell me Adrian, how is the actor turned President doing at keeping his decrepit country from falling apart at the seams?" Scarlet said sarcastically.

"Reagan is actually doing very well, America is finally starting to come back from all the darkness they were subjected to under Nixon. He's actually taking a new look at the Keen Act, there's talk of it being revoked." said Adrian as he opened the door to their massive gymnasium.

Scarlet stopped in her tracks and looked at him.

"Are you serious? Revoked…. That means the Watchmen could be active again, not hiding in the shadows like frightened mice." she said breathlessly.

Adrian gave her a crooked smile and walked back to her, he put his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her in an endearing way.

"You and I both know that if the president and his advisors are talking about something it is going to be months if not years until anything happens. If anything happens." He said calmly.

"I know," said Scarlet and she walked across the room to a large open area and then turned back to him, "It's just nice to have a hope, maybe it's time we moved back…"

"I've been thinking that too…" said Adrian as he took a spot opposite her about twenty feet away.

"I guess that depends on whether you think you're ready." He said with a playful smile that she knew was meant as a challenge.

Scarlet attacked him straight on and went for a round house kick but Adrian was too fast he dodged to the right, and tried grab her arm and twist it behind her but she flipped around and caught him with a punch to the chest, he flew back slightly but managed to bring his leg around and knock her feet out from under her. She executed an impressive spin in mid air so she landed on her stomach and could bring her foot up to kick Adrian in the stomach as he advanced. They continued this violent dance for the next half hour or so, each one of them getting the upper hand at certain moments. In the end it was Adrian who prevailed but it was obvious they were very closely matched. From this point Scarlet went on to practice with her knives. She went through the training obstacle course that Adrian had made for her, and by the end she had gotten a perfect seventy out of seventy hits. She had been training for the past four years and Adrian had told her that he was fairly certain she would be the most unparalleled knife fighter in all of the United States when they returned.

As they walked out of the gym Adrian gave her a nudge and smiled.

"You're really getting quite impressive in their Tessa." He said.

Scarlet's body tensed in annoyance as she looked at him.

"How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that? I'm not Tessa. I'm Scarlet." she said heatedly.

"If you're serious about moving back to the real world you're going to have to accept the fact that part of you will always be Tessa Park." said Adrian matter-of-factly.

"When we move back, I will accept that the world will see me as Tessa, I will get up each day and put on that face, but it will only ever be a mask. That's the difference between you and I Adrian, you can be both Adrian Veidt, and Ozymandias, I can't." she stepped close to him and looked him right in the eyes. Her voice was barely above a whisper and she spoke again, and it trembled slightly with the passion of her words.

"Tessa Park is dead." She said softly, "She died with Timothy Park, when Timothy's heart beat it's last it was Tessa who closed her eyes and cried. When the tears were gone, it was Scarlet who opened her eyes again. I'm nothing more… nothing less." She said softly.

"Oh Scarlet…" said Adrian in a sad but resigned sort of way. He patted her arm and shook his head slightly before walking away.

Scarlet watched him go and then headed back to her room. She felt the emotions inside her, they were always bubbling just under the surface. Scarlet walked into her room and went to the shower, she turned on the water as hot as she could stand it and then stepped in. She tilted her head back and let the water wash through her hair. She held her arm out and watched her skin changed from creamy white to pink to red where the water touched it. She closed her eyes and let the memories come flooding back, her sister…. her parents…. Timothy… his beautiful smile flashed before her eyes and she smiled in spite of herself. There was someone else… he was nothing more than a vague shadow to her, a whispered figure, but he had always been in the back of her mind. She remembered when she was ten and he had shown up at her house to tell her parents that he would find her baby sister who had been kidnapped. His voice was low and gruff, and something about him seemed… scary. Not the obvious superhero, not like Adrian. She had been peeking through the crack in the railing on the staircase; she only caught a glimpse of him as he left; trench coat and fedora. She had never seen him again. She had asked Adrian about him when she had come here, it was the first time she had a name. Adrian said he was called Rorschach. She thought the name fit, something raw and rough about it. She remembered the moment Adrian told her he was dead. It felt like a light had gone out in her world. As long as she had been Scarlet, she had felt some connection to the world, knowing the shadowed figure she had seen walking out her doorway so many years ago, was out there doing what was necessary.

Scarlet realized that her fingers were pruning so she stepped out of the shower. She wrapped a towel around herself and headed back into her room. She opened her closet to pull out some clothes, and her eyes fell on a particularly interesting outfit in the far left corner. There was a long black trench coat made of leather, and a pair of knee high jack boots. A pair of camouflage army issue pants and a bright red cotton shirt hung next to them along with a black bobby cap, and a black mask that covered the eyes. Scarlet reached out and picked up the mask. She had always marveled at the backwardness of her life. How wearing this mask, was the only time truly felt like she wasn't hiding. She put the mask over her eyes and turned to look in the mirror. The Scarlet Carson, it was a red rose, a British variety, her mother had always loved them. She told her the story about how her grandmother used to grow them in her window box. One day when her mother was little she tried to pick one and got her finger pricked by the thorns. Granny told her that she should always remember, even the most beautiful things in the world, come at a cost. Granny never knew how true her words were. Now Tessa was gone, and only the Scarlet Carson remained, to pay that cost.

"You still in there old girl?" she said to her reflection, thought it didn't answer, Scarlet thought she felt something inside of her confirm her question.

00000

A few days later Scarlet was swimming laps in the Oasis pool. Adrian had gone out of his way to make sure that the Oasis was the epitome of Eden. There were toucans, macaws, and ever other find of tropical bird imaginable. There were monkeys and sloths and even some wilder animals. Scarlet's favorites were the ocelots there were like miniature jaguars and they were very friendly having been raised around people. She climbed out of the pool and went to sit on a chair where her favorite ocelot, Hermes was sprawled out. She sat down next to him and stroked the cat's soft fur. She wrapped herself in a towel and then laid back and closed her eyes. Scarlet was an extremely modest person. Even though she knew that Adrian was the only one who would possibly see her and he did not look at her that way, she was very reserved when it came to showing off her body. A few moments later Adrian walked into the Oasis.

"Well this is a pleasant surprise…" said Scarlet, "you never come down here…"

"Yeah well I got a bit of time off this morning, and I thought I'd come join you in a swim." He said he gave her a knowing look and then continued, "What I really want to know is, was this really a surprise? Or did you know I was coming?" he said.

Scarlet gave him a slightly guilty grin.

"I saw a flash of you coming a few seconds before you got here…." She said.

"Good…" said Adrian, "that means your improving because you can see beyond the important events of your life into the everyday."

Ever since Scarlet was a little girl she had a particular gift that no one quite knew how to explain. She herself likened it to having a sort of buzzing in your ears that you never got rid of but almost became used to. Sometimes she would be struck with the strangest sensation that she knew what was going to happen seconds before it happened. The first time this had occurred was when she was eight. She and her mother had been walking down the road and she had suddenly yelled, "watch out!" Her mother had jumped violently and was about to chastise her for trying to scare her when across the street a man had walked into a ladder propped up against a building and brought it crashing down. Her mother asked her how she had known the man was going to do that, and she had answered honestly that she had no idea…she just knew. From that point on her mother had called it her special gift, she had teased that she would become a psychic when she grew up and make tons of money doing, "ten second fortunes". When Scarlet had come to Karnack things had changed, something about the high amount of tachyons here seemed to heighten her "abilities" and Adrian picked up on it almost instantly. He explained that most human beings operate on one wave length, but there are other wave lengths all around. She just happened to have the ability to tap into a higher one than most other humans. He began to try to the best of his ability to help her harness and use that ability. He was working by theory only, seeing as how he could not do it himself. She had started having definable visions of the future only one year previously, and she was now working on learning how to control them. Adrian had on more than one occasion said he wished they had Dr. Manhattan, or Jon, as Adrian called him, that he could teach Scarlet how to use her power so much more efficiently than Adrian ever could. Scarlet was always fascinated when Adrian talked about the other Watchmen. He told her about Jon, and Laurie also called the Silk Specter, and Daniel Dreiberg, who was a Watchmen called Night Owl. Yet he was very vague on any details about the one Watchmen she was desperate to know about. It took her almost three months to get him to tell her anything about Rorschach. He knew her past, and how intrinsically tied to it the masked man was, but she often got the feeling that he was actively trying to make her forget him, and that her ardent idealization of him was a source of great annoyance.

"So are we swimming or what?" said Adrian.

"Ok…" said Scarlet, and got up to follow him to the pool.

"So fifty dollars says I can swim ten more laps than you." said Adrian.

"You're on…" said Scarlet and she removed her towel to get in the pool. She was still slightly awkward about letting Adrian see her in her swimsuit but he was like her brother, so she decided it wasn't too inappropriate. She made to step into the pool when she noticed that Adrian was staring at her, his eyes were focused on her left hip and she looked down. He was staring at the small tattoo she had there, it was two lower case typescript "r's" that were mirrored, with spots on either side.

"What the hell is that?" said Adrian softly his eyes were full of anger.

"My tattoo…" said Scarlet defensively, "I've had it since I was seventeen…"

"Do you have any clue what that symbol means?" said Adrian.

"I know exactly what it means…." said Scarlet coldly, "it's Rorschach's symbol. He left a note on our front porch when I was eleven; this symbol was how he signed it. I didn't know anything about him then, except this symbol, it was my only connection to him. Then when everything happened, when I decided to become Scarlet, I got this tattoo. It reminds me of why I am, what I am. He's my inspiration, my driving force."

"You're inspiration…." Said Adrian softly his voice full of disgust, "So that's what all of this has been about. Four years I've trained you, cared for you, protected you, and nurtured you. For what? So you can go out there and pick up where he left off?? No compromise? Everything is black and white, be a sociopathic killer like HIM????" Adrian was shouting now.

"HE DID WHAT NEEDED TO BE DONE!!" shouted Scarlet right back, "AND HE DIDN'T CARE WHO HATED HIM FOR IT!!"

"You know NOTHING about him…." Said Adrian in a deadly whisper, "he did what he did for himself, he refused to compromise no matter what the circumstances. He didn't understand the meaning of sacrifice for the good, only for himself."

"You're a liar…" said Scarlet, "everything he did was for others, every moment of his life. I'd wager he died for the good of humanity as well."

Adrian made an incredulous noise and he moved towards her.

"He died because he was to hard headed to see that the good of humanity required sacrifice!! He died because he wasn't strong enough to do what I did, what we all had to do." Said Adrian, and he looked away from her closing his eyes as in pain.

"What are you talking about?" said Scarlet warily.

Adrian sighed and put his head in his hands.

"I'd hoped it would never come to this…." He said as he got slowly out of the pool and sat on one of the chairs. "I tried so hard to keep you from this pain, to make you see that the world isn't as black and white as some people believe, because I knew…. that if this day ever came, you would hate me forever…"

"Adrian what are you talking about?" said Scarlet, she wrapped the towel back around herself and went to sit beside him, "I could never hate you, you're the only family I have…"

Adrian looked up at her sadly.

"You will hate me Scarlet," he said, "But now I see there isn't any other way."

"It was five years ago…. The world stood on the brink of nuclear war, and everyone was living in fear. I had to find a way to stop it, to save mankind." Adrian began slowly.

"I remember…" said Scarlet, "We were all so scared and we felt so alone. Then there was the alien attack in New York, I remember. I was on Long Island when it happened, just outside the blast radius. It was so horrifying, so much death and pain."

"and yet…. It almost seemed fortuitous did it not?" said Adrian slowly, "even with all the death, it stopped the Cold War, Russia and America made peace, and the whole world was saved. It was almost as if New York needed to happen."

"How can you say that??" said Scarlet in anger, "All those innocent people, something like that should never be the answer…. I mean, the lives of all those people…. No one could ever…."

Scarlet's voice trailed off as she looked into Adrian's face, she stood slowly moving away from him and shaking her head. Her voice was full of realization as she spoke.

"No…." she whispered, "Oh God…no…Adrian please… tell me it wasn't you…." Her eyes filled with tears.

"The good of the many…. Outweighs the good of the few…" he said softly.

"The few….there were millions Adrian! You killed millions of innocent people…" gasped Scarlet.

"And I saved billions of innocent people!" spat Adrian, "you really are like him, we had this same argument when he found out."

"YOU BASTARD!!" Scarlet screamed and she ran at him, he didn't even move to stop her as she hit him with all the force she had.

He went flying out of the chair and landed hard on his shoulder on the tile floor. He stood slowly rubbing his shoulder and looked back at her. She ran at him again ready to attack but he quickly caught both her wrists and held them so she couldn't hit him.

"You can attack me all you want, but it won't change anything." He said calmly.

She shrieked in anger and frustration and she fought him for another moment or two before acquiescing and simply glaring at him murderously. She stood before him and neither of them spoke for a few moments. Then finally she broke the silence.

"Why did he die?" she asked coldly.

"Because he refused to accept that it needed to happen, just like you. He was going to try and tell the world what I did." said Adrian.

"and you killed him for it??" said Scarlet the rage was building in her again and she began to tremble.

"No I didn't…" said Adrian delicately, "Jon did."

"But he did it for you…. To protect the horrors you had committed." said Scarlet.

"Yes… he did it for me." said Adrian.

Scarlet took a step back and looked at Adrian. She felt like she was seeing a completely different person.

"Well you were right about one thing Adrian…" she said, "I do hate you."

"As I said…." Adrian replied with a sad twisted smile.

"There's something I need you to know…" said Scarlet as she glared at him, hoping the sheer magnitude of her anger would burn a hole right through him.

"What's that?" he said calmly.

"I will use every bit of power I have inside me, from this day on to fight against you. You have spent the last four years giving me every tool I need to become your greatest adversary. I am going to carry on where Rorschach left off, I will make the criminals of New York fear to say my name the way they feared his. I will change humanity, or I will burn it to the ground, and when I'm done, I'm coming back for you." she held his gaze fiercely to show him how serious she was.

"Well then you better get started," said Adrian, the sadness was readily apparent in his voice and expression, but Scarlet didn't care.

"Go pack your things and I'll inform the jet pilot he's taking you back to America…" he said.

Scarlet turned away and stormed towards the oasis door. As she made to leave Adrian called her name.

"Scarlet… I know you will never forgive me, but know that I did what I did because I believe it was the only way, and all the deceit aside, I do love you." He said.

"You're right Adrian…." Said Scarlet, and she turned and gave him her coldest look, "I'll never forgive you."

With that Scarlet turned and left him standing there looking ruined. She packed her things and left Karnack without a second glance.