okay, first off this takes place in Jon's POV
just so no one gets confused. and i would like to thank Fire Black Dragon for commenting. the only one who did. so thank you for that. like i said i really need more reviews guys. i don't think i have much else to say.
Review please.
I am on Mars.
I watch as the individual red pieces of sand move over each other methodically, hauntingly slow between my toes. Beautiful. Innocent, untainted. Beauty that was wasted in times of war and death. When was the last time that anyone stopped to smell a rose that wasn't on a grave? There were no flowers to go unappreciated on Mars. Just beautiful red formations something that should be left to its own, not shoved into a life of industry and pollution. Beauty like Laurie and Dezzi. On the inside they were the same. Living in the shadows of their guardians; in the shadows of heroes. Chosen for them, almost forced upon them. They could have rejected the life style. In the end Dezzi chose for herself, if given the chance Laurie would have picked the costume anyway. Not that she would admit that out loud.
A frown ghosts over my face. The old photograph in my hand is being taken in 1959. At a carnival, I am there with Wally, with Janey, both alive and well. I rub my thumb over Janey's abundance of hair that was now a shear veil of gray that she kept slicked back under the glossy faux hairs of a wig. I am being blamed for her cancer. I wish I could take it away. In all honesty I probably have the ability to. In all honesty I probably wouldn't. As I am stroking the photo Dezzi is declining my offer as I knew she would. But I asked just the same. Somehow hoping I was seeing the future wrong for once and she would accept. But she didn't and now she is somewhere back on Earth, some 60 million kilometers (at the closest), probably hunting more clues and unintentionally hunting Rorschach in the process. I have seen her eyes when she speaks of him, she is falling and she is fighting it as much as she could. What was it about nuclear threat…that pushes people together…that pulls them apart? Threat of change…
Janey changed, she became afraid, she became old. I had lied to her, was lying to her, telling her I would want her forever, but she was aging and she wasn't Janey anymore. Laurie looked the same as when I met her, beautiful, young, was that luck on her part? Or was that me unintentionally holding back the aging process so that I wouldn't have to let her go like I knew I would in the end? Would she eventually grow old, would she eventually change? She was changing…so am I.
I know she is with Dan. Dan, Nite Owl II, human, he sees Laurie one hundred percent for Laurie. He isn't looking for her genetic coding, isn't counting cells or telling her he can't go out into public because of how he looks or because he is losing his connection with the bodies walking down the street. Dan is good for Laurie, I know that and I must accept it.
In 1945 cogs are raining down on Brooklyn while meteorites are falling onto Mars while tears are falling in the future. I drop the photo and walk away from where it settles in the sand. While I am walking away from the photo I am picking it up from the man who took the picture and giving it to Janey in 1959. While this is happening I am being torn apart and Janey is framing the only photograph anyone has of me and placing it in the bar where we met, where our fingers brushed on that cold glass for the first time. While this is happening cogs are falling from the sky in 1945 and I am taking the photo from its cracked frame from the dilapidated bar and arriving on Mars.
It is 1970 and I am carrying Laurie into our new Washington apartment, a month later I see a 13 year old Desdemona Allison Blake for the first time at the airbase. She picks me out of the crowd but doesn't look at anything but my eyes, and she is staring right through them. She seems to be completely aware of everything that is happening around her, seems to look at the world with a far too mature point of view. She approaches me and we talk for almost an hour. It wouldn't be until late March in Saigon that I would discover she was related to Edward Blake, I would be surprised that I didn't recognize it before. In 1972 Allison Rachel Blake dies of colon cancer. Desdemona is 15 and is now known as Fiasco, Ed couldn't be prouder. Blake had asked for a leave a month before when Dezzi contacted him in a panic as her mother got worse. I would accompany them both to the funeral. A year later Desdemona leaves for Chicago, says she can't be around the squabbling anymore. Before she leaves she tells me, "Jon, anyone who looks at you and says you're emotionless is an idiot. If anything you feel more than the rest of us put together, you're just smart enough not to show it. Every emotion you've ever felt all at the same time…Hell that would break anyone." No one sees her for five years. In 1977 the Keene Act is being passed; The Comedian and I are exempt. Around 1978 Desdemona begins showing up around the city again, The Comedian is the happiest anyone has seen him in a long time. It is 1971 and Ed is showing me the only photograph he carries with him other than a newspaper clipping of the first Silk Spectre. It is a black and white photo taken in 1964, the time where I can hear the masks arguing, of his sister and her daughter smiling broadly while sitting on a picnic blanket, leaves are falling and there is a bouquet of white roses next to them, Edward Blake's shell breaks for a moment and he boasts while saying he bought her the flowers.
It is 1985 and I am on Mars, Laurie is walking out on me, Dezzi is declining my offer, the Comedian is dead, and I am truly alone. It is 1985 and I am wondering why I even bothered to put myself back together all those years ago. Is there one exact moment everything went so terribly wrong is it the accumulation of all our mistakes that crushes the world? Is there one person to blame or is it all of us who is responsible? Is anyone really responsible at all? Or does everything have a predetermined outcome, something like a book, that no matter how hard you try to change it, no matter how many pages you rip out, and no matter what page you flip to the ending will always be the same. A book without an author, a clock without a craftsman, something that can't be written, that can't be made, something that just is. It is 1985 and I think back to that bouquet of white roses in the photograph, for that one moment those roses were perfect, for one moment Laurie and I were perfect, for one moment Dezzi was a child and the world still held wonder. Everything wilts and all those split seconds moments, chapters, cogs and wheels, perfection, by the time you realize it…it is too late. It is 1945 and I am trying to catch the cogs falling from the fire escape but it's too late and they go crashing to the ground, it is 1985 and I am done trying to capture things that are too late to save. It's too late, always has been, always will be…too late.