Warnings: Mild dubious consent in the third chapter. Also, a little violence.
Chapter 1: Sam Hollis
The route from his home to the café is unusual lengthy and fatiguing, while he's trying to walk without limping.
His back hurts at every movement – because kevlar protects you from almost everything, but being hit with an iron bar hurts all the same – his arms are sore and the last patrol, the night before, left him with bruises on all of his body. However, it's his left leg which bothers him the most, since one of the criminals he fought managed to stab him just above his knee. As soon as he returned home, he had to stitch the wound and now he feels like all his leg is burning.
Maybe he wouldn't hurt so much if it were someone else who cured him: even with his experience of crime fighting, it's always easier to cure a partner than yourself, especially when you only have a mild painkiller and fingers too tired to be steady. But there wasn't anyone that could help him at home, last night. There hasn't been anyone for months, by now.
Laurie has stayed by his side for a little more than two months. It was a nice illusion of comfort and warmth, but they both knew it wouldn't have lasted. Every second of their relationship seemed to be based on someone's absence: the absence of Rorschach, who occupied his thoughts in a maybe too deeply way than what one would expect for a fallen friend; the absence of Jon, who Laurie mourned in a painful silence. And the absence of a justice he had really believed to, before Adrian's utopia became reality, killing millions to build peace and showing him that even lies and massacres could be used to create something good.
The secret behind the peace crushed both him and Laurie, stealing away all of their dreams and illusions, and corrupting even the little comfort they found in laying naked and pressed together, when the tried to forget everything with the fleeting pleasure of intimacy.
But their two solitudes didn't vanish when they were together. They were both too broken, they had lost too much to manage to build something anew. They almost drowned together in their mutual sorrow and regrets, hating the fact that they couldn't raise again even supporting themselves on each other. And then Laurie left.
Dan didn't truly try to make her stay, he knew too well he couldn't find in her the comfort he needed. And now it has been several months since when he began living alone again in a house too big and too silent for just one person.
Two weeks after their breakup, he went to patrol like he had used to years before. But just like Dan didn't feel complete living alone, Nite Owl isn't complete either and without Rorschach he feels he has been mutilated. He has kept on patrolling anyway, night after night, bruise after bruise, because crime fighting is the only thing that makes him feel alive.
He doesn't try to be a hero anymore, because he learned his lesson too well. After he saw his ideals shattering in front of his eyes, he doesn't aim to a childish dream of justice anymore. He just wants to make someone's life better and to occupy the time he otherwise would spend restless, so he fights against criminals and pushers and all the violent people that make the streets a place to be afraid of.
He saw Laurie, one night. Laurie who wasn't Laurie but Silk Specter, while he wasn't Dan but Nite Owl. They stared at each other without talking for what felt like an eternity. At his feet, there were five pushers. At hers, four of them, the rest of the gang. Seeing her again so suddenly and unexpectedly hit him with a nostalgia so intense he almost faltered. It lasted one second, before his mind took over with a cold rationality he hadn't possess before Karnak.
He and Laurie weren't made to be together. They had tried it once and it hadn't gone well. They exchanged a nod, before vanishing in opposite directions.
They didn't meet anymore and the fact strangely doesn't bother him how it would have done if he had been his old self.
Dan. Grow up.
And he did, in his own way. He left behind all his illusions and his heroic aspirations to accept the pain of a perpetual regret. He lives drawn to a past when things were easier, when he still had his naivety as a shield, had a partner, had a purpose and no horrifying secrets to keep. But he knows he can't turn back time, nor can he take back the innocence that has been peeled away from him like an additional layer of skin.
And now the present is something blurred and meaningless and he isn't sure he can care about a future.
The wound on his leg is pulsating painfully when he arrives to his usual café.
He doesn't look around; he just reaches the little table in the most secluded side of the place, the one he occupies almost every morning. When the waitress smiles at him, he greets her with a nod, knowing that he doesn't even have to order, since he's having breakfast there for months, now. Then he lets his gaze wander around, looking at the people in the café without truly see them.
Not for the first time, he wonders if this is how Rorschach lived. His world was broken and he wasn't able to build another one. Now he feels like a stranger in a new world where he doesn't belong.
Everything he knew is dead or gone. The Crimebusters don't exist anymore, Rorschach is a red blot in the snow. Hollis was killed by a gang he couldn't even personally punish. Laurie fled away with her sorrow. And he doesn't have anyone anymore.
There was him too, once, among the few people he considered friends. But he doesn't want to think about him. It's not easy when he is surrounded by the consequences of his actions, when his utopia infests televisions, newspapers and the whole city even more than it infests his own nightmares. But after some time, he learned to turn his back to everything concerning Karnak and the tragedy that erased from the map the most important city in Earth: he doesn't watch the television anymore, he doesn't buy newspapers, he doesn't listen to the conversations of the people around him. He just concerns himself with everything regarding crimes and owls.
Sometimes he feels like a mere shadow who stands on the brink of reality without really being part of it.
His thoughts are interrupted by the waitress, who serves him a cup of coffee and a muffin, his usual breakfast. It's one of the little advantages of being a regular customer: he doesn't have to order and the waitresses leave him alone without attempting a conversation or asking him if he wants something else – and he appreciates all of it, even if, inside of his head, he can hear a voice similar to Rorschach's scolding him: never be predictable, Daniel. Not safe.
He automatically thanks the waitress and begins eating.
I don't have to be careful here, Rorschach. It's just a muffin.
He smiles bitterly, when a wound that never heals begins burning again in his chest.
Some days Rorschach's loss still hurts like a punch to the stomach, maybe because he thinks he could have saved him. Or maybe because he thinks he should have chosen the same fate for himself.
He breathes deeply, trying to ease the pain. And it's exactly in this moment that an external voice reaches his mind, shattering his thoughts. He tenses suddenly, like he were patrolling the street instead of sitting quietly in a normal café. But he can already taste blood in his mouth, his hands have already started shaking and his eyes are wandering around, looking for the owner of that pleasant, persuasive voice that was the protagonist in his worst nightmares.
He knows that voice.
And when his gaze focuses on a small group of men sat at a large table near the counter, he suddenly can't breathe anymore.
He knows that ageless profile, the blond and perfectly combed hair, the light smile typical of who has always the situation under his control but is too polite to display it.
He is there.
Cold sweat is drenching his shirt on his back, his skin is burning and he feels more helpless than he was in Karnak, when he was defeated without even landing a hit.
Adrian Veidt is there.
He walks out of the restroom only when he can breathe normally again. He's still sweating and he still feels he's going to puke at every inspiration, but at least he doesn't tremble anymore. Even if his face is burning hot, the Nite Owl in him keeps his step calm and controlled.
He still can't understand if he wants to assault his former friend or to ask him how it felt to have killed millions of people. He does nothing, just reaches his table and sits down. He knows too well he's no match for Ozymandias and he doubts he can feel guilt, regret. Maybe Adrian Veidt can't feel anything at all, and that wouldn't surprise him.
The minutes spent in the restroom helped him to regain his composure and now he can breathe properly again. He just needed an isolate place where he could hide and regain control, where he could accept that in the café there was the man who had taken everything away from him and at the same time seemed to have saved the world.
And he knows that Adrian saw him, because before he stood up to flee to the restroom, the billionaire had met his distracted gaze without any emotions, without surprise, like he already knew that Dan would be in that café.
Since there's no reasons to avoid looking around, he lets his gaze wander where the counter is. He is as tense as an arrow, ready to meet Adrian's emotionless eyes again, but through his cloudy glasses he stares at an empty table: Adrian has left.
He deflated in his chair, feeling empty and unexpectedly disappointed. Together with the relief of not having to face him, there's also a strange regret, since now he can't attack him anymore, can't even show him his hatred and his contempt.
When he looks down at his own table, however, he tenses again: there's a folded napkin next to the half muffin he didn't have the time to finish. He opens it while is heart is hammering in his chest.
There are three words written elegantly in it. An hotel's name, a room number. Nothing more.
And when Dan understands, he almost feels again that painful cold that there was in Karnak.