Disclaimer - If I was the Comedian, I would say "No, I don't own Watchmen or 'Hallelujah'" but would really be spelling it Y-E-S. But I spell it N-O, so I don't own either of them.

Rating - Rated T for language (including the F-word, because I just couldn't stop him) and sexuality (including allusions to rape).

Summary- In the end, it was Sally who broke Eddie, not the other way around.

A/N-- Wow, I'm thrilled by the response, you guys! Thanks to everyone who reviewed - Raven Aorla, Animefangirl2, NeoMatrix66612, CaleighoMeer, and Girlycard666 - and to everyone else who read. You keep me going!

This installment probably falls a little bit more into the movieverse- in it, Eddie and Sally have their affair before the Minutemen split up rather than afterwards. I trust you'll see why I did this by the end. Also, the movie leaves the nature of Sally and Larry's relationship up in the air at this time, so I took liberties with it.

Her Beauty and the Moonlight

The first time Eddie saw her, he thought, well, shit, that's what a woman looks like. Not the stupid kind that fainted at the sight of blood. No, she was an Amazon in silk. And from that first moment, she wasn't his.

Oh, she struck up a friendship with all the other guys, teasing them for all they were worth, swapping battle stories with them, revoking all their attempts at flirting. Everyone's except Hooded Justice's, of course. She flirted with him so much that it was a wonder that no one else on the planet but him seemed to get that he was as queer as a three dollar bill. A woman like Sally Jupiter wouldn't act like that with the man she loved. Oh, he saw who she really was, when the shit hit the fan out there on the streets and she didn't hold back.

Of course that was exactly the problem. He knew who she really was and he tried to talk to the real her. He first tried to ask her out after a particularly bad fight, put his hand on her waist while pretending to help her up. But of course it came out like some damn line and she just slapped him in that playful way of hers.

"No, Eddie. You know I've gotta go home and set my hair, you dog. You think I look this pretty naturally?"

"Oh, darlin', I bet you look even prettier au naturale." His voice got low. He knew women loved that husky growl. He even tossed in a bit of French, for Chrissakes. How could she refuse?

"Eddie, stop it," she laughed again. She could say so many things just by saying his name. He never knew so much meaning was lurking in two syllables, like muggers dark alleyways. She always said 'yes' when she said his name. He knew and she knew it and he was more than willing to wait until she really said it.

The next time he asked her out was after a charity ball where she was holding court with rapt reporters, and she was flirting with all of them too, damn little tease, refusing to comment on the nature of her relationship with Hooded Justice except to say that the reason he had to wear a hood was because he was quite an animal under there.

"I'm quite an animal too, doll," he whispers to her when they're dancing.

"Oh, that's no secret," she grins. "Isn't this a swell event? Look how many people came just to see us. And all that money going to the women's shelter? We're really doing good."

"I could do good for you, Sal," he responds.

"No, Eddie. I've gotta leave with HJ."

"You call him that even in the sack?"

Her pretty pale face flushes and she ends the dance early. "That's none of your concern."

"Jesus, I'm sorry!" He says, catching her arm, maybe just a bit too roughly. "Maybe you could leave with me some other time, huh?"

"Eddie," she says, quietly. Yes, just say yes, he's thinking. "Eddie, let go of my arm."

He lets her go. This is when he starts to think he might be hearing things when he hears 'yes' in her voice.

Soon she's all he can think about. He's out on the streets beating the shit out of crooks just so he can stop seeing her face. He buys a pin-up of her and then tears it up because he can't stand the fact that other men get off to the sight of those coy eyes. Then he buys another one because he likes to pretend he's coming home to her. He gets cheap hookers and makes them have sex with him like dogs, their faces turned away, so he can pretend they're her. And every time she says his name he pretends it's 'yes'.

One day, after a particularly tough night, they all regroup together before going home. He's looking for a place to change and happens on her instead, in her bustier and garters and boots and nothing else, looking over her shoulder at him in surprise. At first she says nothing. The moonlight drifts in through the window and lands on her bare shoulders and he knows he couldn't speak if his goddamn life depended on it. All he wants is her, on this floor, in this moonlight.

"Eddie, I'm changing," she says, a bit too late to really play the shocked virgin. "Could you close the door?"

"Sorry," he mutters, and leaves. He gets two hookers that night and neither of them satisfies. Pin-up doesn't work either. That's when he realizes he doesn't just want her for the sex. That's when he realizes that he's really lost.

Then there's that day. That day that he'll never live down or live past. He doesn't make any excuses about what happened. He got a little bit too much to drink and a little bit too tired of waiting for her. He wanted it to be over. He wanted her to hate him if only so there was no possibility she'd love him, just because he didn't think he could handle being loved by a woman like her. He wanted to break her before she broke him.

That's why he's laughing when Hooded Justice comes in. It's just all such a goddamn joke - the fake queer boyfriend coming in to beat up the would-be rapist who's so in love with this woman who dresses up in lingerie and fights crime that he doesn't know what else to do with himself. He's had the name Comedian for a while but this moment takes the cake. This is when he really starts to see the funny side of things.

The joke gets better too. They don't kick him out of the Minutemen. Apparently it's okay to try and rape someone but not okay to be a lesbo, who'd have thunk it? He lays low on his own for a while, gives her space. Convinces himself that he's not coming back at all.

…but he can't stay away and he knows it.

So he goes to the place where she's shacking up with Schexnayder, intending on apologizing for what he did and asking if they can still be friends or some other bullshit. He just really hopes she hates him. He hopes she takes another really good swing at him like she did that day. Instead, when she opens the door, her eyes fight between angry and sad, and she just stands aside to let him in.

"Larry's not here," she says, a little lamely, once he's inside.

"What the hell would I want with Larry, Sal?" He says. She laughs. Not a very pretty laugh, but she laughs all the same, and goes to the kitchenette.

"Do you want some coffee? Funny, I've never seen you in the daytime. Do you even drink coffee?"

"Don't bother," he says, catching her hand where it sits on the handle of the coffee pot. She tenses up but doesn't move and he's reminded of a dying baby bird he held in his hands as a child. He lowers his voice and speaks again: "You can cut the crap with me, Sal. I want you to always know that you can tell me anything, no holds barred. We spend enough time running around pretending to be people we're not."

She doesn't turn to face him but instead pulls her hand away from his and walks towards the living room. "Fine. Then I hate you for what you did. I hate you for making me feel stupid and powerless. I hate you for being a stupid brute."

It should hurt him to hear that but it doesn't. She's making herself say it. She sounds like a bad actress in a high school play.

"You should hate me," he says, approaching her.

"Well I do!" She shouts at last, turning to face him, her hands balled into fists. "It's all - it's all - it's all just so stupid." She's started to cry and he reaches out for her but she pushes his hand away. "No. I am not crying for you anymore."

She walks away again, this time towards the bedroom, and he follows her. Isn't this what their whole dance has been? She says no and pushes him away and then stands there and waits for him to follow. Isn't this what it's all been leading towards?

"You're right, Sally," he says. "It's a whole big world of stupid out there. Hell, you and me and all the rest of the Minutemen, we're probably just captains of the stupid parade, because we're the ones dumb enough to think we can knock some sense into people."

He should be able to add something to the end of that, something that brings everything together and proves to her that the world really isn't such a bad place and he's not a bad guy and she's not crazy. But this isn't the kind of world you can wrap up neatly with a bow and slap a 'happily ever after' on. So he just sits there silently and waits for her to respond. She does, after a while, by turning around and, for the first time since they met, taking a step towards him.

"Come over here," she says. "And kiss me."

"What?"

"You heard me. Come over here and kiss me."

"Sally - "

"I just want this to be over, Eddie," she says. "I just want this whole damn charade to be over."

She closes the distance between them and kisses him, hard, and when he opens his mouth to say something she takes it as an invitation and just keeps kissing him, pulling him towards the bedroom. He keeps trying to stop her but she won't listen. He tries to love her, to touch her softly, to treat her right, but she won't let him. She just silences him any way she can, and when she's finally spread out on the bed in all of her beauty, he can't help himself, even though it's sunlight that bathes her and not moonlight like he'd hoped. She says his name at the very end - but she never says yes.

"I - " he starts to say when they're laying side by side.

"Don't say it," she refuses to open her eyes.

"Well, I do."

She doesn't say anything for a while, but she does let him pull her close to his side and rests her head on his shoulder. She smells like woman and sex and expensive perfume and all the things he'll never have.

"Just for an hour," she says at last, quietly, like a child admitting to a nightmare. "Let's pretend that you really do love me."

For an entire hour he lays quietly at her side, just breathing the same breaths she breathes, and feels peace for the first time in his life.

"We don't have to pretend, Sal," he says when she stands up to dress. "Who knows - we could - "

"No, Eddie," she replies. "I've got big plans. You know that. And we both know you're not that kind of man. This afternoon is all we'll ever have," she hesitates, and her voice is softer when she speaks again. "And I'm glad. I'm very glad."

She goes to the bathroom and doesn't reappear. He gets dressed and leaves. They don't speak to each other at meetings or on missions anymore. The others assume it's because of the whole rape thing. See, told you the joke got better - it's not. And in the end, it doesn't just end whatever it was they had. It ends the Minutemen, too. They're like bulls in a china shop, destroying everything around them and then sitting back and watching the pieces fall and wondering what went wrong.

Then she's pregnant, and even he's smart enough to be able to count on his fingers. She doesn't even give him the chance to make an honest woman out of her - she marries Schexnayder before he can so much as wrap his mind around the word 'father'. He only tries to talk to her about the baby once, at her big retirement dinner.

"No, Eddie," is all she says before she walks away, out of his life.

He sees the announcements in the paper later, like anyone else who can read. Laurel Jane Schexnayder. God, what an awful last name. He crosses it out and writes Laurel Jane Blake. Then he throws the newspaper away. But are you ready for the really big punch line? When he's in Vietnam and there's a woman demanding that he act like a father, he shoots her. If he can't be her father than he won't be anyone's father. It doesn't excuse him. He knows that.

He keeps a picture of her in his closet, and he likes to look at it when he puts on the mask and gets ready to go out in service of his country. She has the most beautiful smile he's ever seen, even more beautiful than her mother's. He knows why Sally got so angry at him when he tried to talk to her - not because she thought he'd try to hurt her the way he hurt her mother all those years ago, but because there's a spark in her that was never in either of them. Somehow, against all odds, she's come out okay. She has a chance at happiness that neither of her parents ever had. Both of them were destined to destroy the things they loved, because they didn't know any other way to love them. There's no rhyme or reason or grand scheme behind it. It's just a crazy fucked-up world, that's all, and only some people can make it out okay.

He's glad she's going to make it out okay. He knows that when Veidt comes for him. But when he shoves him up against the wall and makes him break the glass over that old pin-up, the only woman he's ever wanted to come home to, he thinks of her, and of that afternoon, and what she said.

"It's all a joke," he manages to tell Veidt, but he doesn't think he gets it. Guy never had a sense of humor. Then he's sailing through the air and remembering the moonlight on her shoulders and thinking if only she could've loved him, he could've been something, he could've been someone -

Curtains.

Your faith was strong but you needed proof

You saw her bathing on the roof

Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you

She tied you to a kitchen chair

She broke your throne and she cut your hair

And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

A/N-- Wow, I actually really enjoyed writing that. I hope you enjoyed my take on Eddie and Sally - it certainly was interesting to write. Let me know what you thought!

Coming up next: the second Silk Spectre and the men in her life. Has she come out as okay as her dad thought she would?