In Dusty Corners, a watchmen fanfic

Title: In Dusty Corners
Disclaimer: I, in no way, shape, manner, or form, own the Watchmen or the characters said comic/ film adaption contains. All publicly recognizable characters are copyrighted to Alan Moore and I do believe DC. No copyright infringement is intended.
Fandom: Watchmen
Continuity: Comic; right around the time preceding the Keene Act
Characters: Daniel Dreiberg (Nite Owl II)
Summary: The beginning of the end of Nite Owl II is quieter than one would expect.
Warnings: None
Author's Note: Thanks to Fairady for the prompt. Criticism encouraged.

Despite himself, it takes Dan a long time to realize what is so readily apparent.

It's the small things, the little parts, that are the most telling; he spends more time on the basement stairs, watching Archie wallow in dust and tarps and disuse, than he does in costume. Where once he rigorously tested and reworked his designs for better equipment – enthusiastically sketching out fantastic weapons and machinery that got no more than half-realized before moving on to the next – the older models sit out, languishing beside boxes of memorabilia and all else that has no place in his home, with Dan. On a few nights, he gets to the bottom of the stairs and stops, rubbing his goggles anxiously between his fingers, before turning back, up into his kitchen. He remembers how he used to go out often, for hours and hours at a time, sometimes hiding in cloud banks and catching what rest he could with his police radio broadcasting static and calm voices, half-listening for the bursts of jargon and alarm.

Things are different, now, he tells himself, when sleep isn't coming easy and the television isn't helping. He can't be like he was, the world's gotten too big for him, for small heroes. That it isn't his job and it shouldn't be. That it isn't fair. It never was.

Rorschach won't quit, won't cave to the pressure. But then, Rorschach is— is something, something only a terrifying shade darker than what he was, a machine, and he—Dan can't do it, not like that, like most Masks, find whatever it is that makes them rise and fall. He'd rather bend and bend and bend until everything's twisted than break, and that's what makes him flawed, maybe, or just contradictory. Not weak, just— adaptable, in a way the others never were. So few of them get out alive, God knows, and those who do hardly with anything intact; only clawing away by the skin of their teeth, something in them changed.

He knows what's happening – even if he thinks he doesn't – reads it in the silences after the intermittent fights, breathing harder than he should, the city pressing down around him. Finds it in the quiet aching in his gut, the number of steps he trails behind Rorschach, always on the edge of his shadow, in the few times they cross ways and it doesn't end in awkward silences and divergent paths. Politics and uncertain futures are such a small part of it; it's coming down to the wire and he doesn't know what to do, what to think.

The evening that he knows, that he understands it in all its threads and convolutions, starts unremarkably.

The morning sun through his blinds wakes him more thoroughly than any alarm, urging him to roll out of bed with a stiffness that has become all too familiar, absently reapplying the sloppy bandages he dressed the night before. His fingers prod the jagged lines of his wounds, checking for the oozing warmth of infection, skirting the bumps and bruises that are his nightly fare. He showers, then drinks his morning coffee, and heads downstairs, wondering when this became mundane. He measures Archie's fuel, paces the corners for bats and pigeons and strays, and surreptitiously looking for signs of scuffle, the tell-tale disorder in the medicine cabinet that he never uses (should have it removed, but he's always had such a hard time letting go of anything).

He goes out for the expensive, terrible messes that advertise themselves as take-out, ordering a little more than is necessary for one (because he's more or less an optimist, and the woman at the cash register still smiles at him like she doesn't see him every day), and spends the rest of the afternoon drifting between television news anchors and aeronautic machinery.

It is why he is making this shuffling exchange that it happens.

One bare foot on the bottom stair, Dan looks back to the lumpy silhouette of Archie, resignedly thinking, it's probably dark enough, and did I remember to load the dryer, and he stumbles on air, toe jamming against the edge of the metal railing. He yelps, hopping back and clutching desperately at the rungs as he hobbles to level flooring, cursing loud and angry. He sits on the ground and cradles his new hurt – stubbed, already purpling, the nail bloody and painful and torn – and it hits him. He's been shot at, stabbed, beaten black and blue and all those wounds he was so indifferent to this morning are burning like they're fresh and he's aware, aware of what he's been doing all these years and the aches that came too early and the way Hollis's hands shake, the way his mouth trembles.

He could have died. He could have died, easily, a hundred times over, just a twitch away from the wrong place, wrong time. God. He's a lonely, middle-aged man who lost his prime before he even realized it, who keeps a flame thrower in his personal airship like it's perfectly normal. There are people who don't even know him who hate him, who are outlawing him, legitimate people with certificates and authority that he's never had, and they never needed masks to have it. And suddenly he feels ridiculous, and small, because what difference have they made, any of them? How is it any better than when they started? Everyone's broken and bent and battered, and he thought it was different for him, but it's not, it's just not as noticeable. He thinks of the man he was and the man he is, and he can't quite reconcile the images.

He sits and he wonders when it all went so terribly wrong—

But what he's really wondering is, when was it ever really right?

The act passes, and it's like an excuse, a reason to just let it all go.

Dan picks back up with his old magazines, the subscriptions he never really gave up but hadn't read in so long he nearly forgot what they were for. He flips idly through newspapers, ignoring the stark headlines because he already knows what they will be, all laws and bills and amendments and murders. Reads about elderly woman and their amazing recoveries, quaint stories about kids painting school halls and baseball games, things that are lost between sensationalism. Rediscovers old bird enthusiasts and tries to find things to talk with them about. Fails, mostly, but it's something of a social life, something of an out, and he's willing enough to take what's offered to him without question.

His house is cleaner than it's ever been, and the bruises have faded into nothing, sunk in his skin like they were never really there at all. It's more comforting a though than he cares to admit.

Days pass, and soon enough he even stops noticing the unassuming door, the stairs that lead down into another life. Downstairs is just a basement, just a place to leave his junk and things that don't have any place of their own. He gains some weight around his middle, a healthy roundness that speaks of easy living. A comfortable normality descends, and he finds his way through it easily enough, even if he sometimes has to stop and remind himself what he's doing is right.

Weeks pass, and he even stops hearing shouts and screams and homeless prophets' predictions when he goes walking, stops wincing at monotone newscasters voices announcing another death, another rape, another missing child. He becomes just another face in the street, unassuming as any other, a sea of people who slide through the world without looking.

Months pass, and he finds can't find a good reason to open that old door, to go down the stairs. So he doesn't.

Years pass, and one night, Daniel Dreiberg comes home to find his lock broken.