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Dezzi crossed the street without much notice of the horns and shouts of the taxi drivers. To her left she noticed the newspaper that had belonged to the Irishman lying neatly on top of the rest of the trash. Picking it up she snapped it open like she remembered Eddie doing. Her mother said her father did it too. From somewhere in the folds of the grey tinted paper a smaller crudely ripped paper fell. She bent to pick it up but what was written on it stopped her from throwing it back into the trashcan with the newspaper. Rushing to the stand she had just left Dezzi barely gave the owner time to greet her again. "Have you seen Walter yet today?" "Yeah, in fact, he was just here. Went that way." He pointed to his left and watched her sprint off.

As the sidewalks grew more congested Dezzi had to slow and jump up to see over the heads above her in an attempt to get a glance of a sign or bright orange hair. She ignored the rude remark of a business man she accidentally bumped into and ran a hand through her hair. Just as she was about to completely give up a hand to her right grabbed her arm and hauled her into an alley. Fists balled she twisted for a left hook stopping just short of the freckled nose set between two unflinching eyes below two raised eyebrows all under the ownership of one Walter Kovacs.

"Jumpy today." He stated simply, holding her wrist perhaps a little longer than really necessary. "You expect to grab a crime fighter, yank them into an alley and no at least almost get punched?"

He shrugged a little causing his sign to move with his shoulders. She sighed and resisted the urge to hug him. The alley way settled into a silence and neither seemed to know what to say next. Bother were thinking of the same thing but neither wanted to mention what had happened between them and whatever magnetism they had had in that moment, though still there, seemed momentarily polarized by the tension and swelling of the city. So they both stood for a few moments, Walter's eyes wandering over the nearby graffiti and Dezzi staring at him trying to remember what she was doing there in the first place as she tried to block out the memory of his hands which were almost gloved from her sight. "Oh," it dawned on her, somewhere between the memory his hands and her fiddling with her necklace, the reason she'd been hunting him. "I found this." Rummaging through her pocket to find him the paper she pulled out her hand. She noticed in her half outstretched hand her fortune had gotten caught in the folds and neatly picked it out putting it back in its place.

"It was in the trash at 40th and 7th."

His hollow cheeks twitched and he snatched, perhaps a little too quickly, the paper from her hand. "From Moloch." Dezzi shook her head and the Walter's urge to gripe at her intruding ways grew. "The Irishman." "The Irishman..?" "Yes. He's this guy who sings-shut up. Don't give me that look. It doesn't matter. An Irishman dropped it into the trash can. And that's not Moloch's handwriting." "How do you know?" "I dated a handwriting analyzer for a while, learned a few things. And Moloch wrote his phone number down for me. That's not his handwriting, Walter." Walter felt the newly familiar pang of jealousy mix with his already natural territorial nature and he had to force himself to focus on what she said after 'I dated.'

"It's a trap. I'd bet anything." Walter shoved the note into a pocket inside his coat and turned to walk away. "Look! Walter!" Dezzi pushed back her aggravation and chased after unconsciously looking for screws along the walls in case she pushed him too far again. "If you never trust me on anything else. Trust me on this. I've got a knack for these things. At least let me go with you." Walter stopped and Dezzi followed his lead. "Look, the paper said 11:30. I'll meet you here at 11:00 and we'll go together?" The suggestion was left to hang in the air between them with nothing more spoken from either side.

Dezzi rubbed her bare arms to get the blood flowing. The note had said 11:30. He wasn't showing. She'd known at 10:58 he wasn't going to. If she wanted to be honest with herself (and she didn't) she would admit that she'd known he wasn't going to when she'd came up with the plan. By 11:15 she went against her own good judgment and disappeared into the shadows toward Moloch's home.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

Rorschach grunted throwing open cabinets as Moloch's soul escaped through the bean sized hole in his forehead. Dezzi was right! Dezzi was right! Dezzi and her handwriting boyfriend were right! Walter's voice raised and grew from his panic in his mind. Gritting his teeth he prepared for the battering ram he knew was coming. Dezzi, right or not, was safely outside the building somewhere and he hoped she was smart enough to stay right there.

The police sirens could be heard long before Fiasco could even get a glimpse of the apartment building. "Shit." She sped up her pace and stayed on the opposite side of the street where a small herd of siren chasers had gathered.

"What's going on?"

She merged herself within the murmuring hoard.

"No clue."

Dezzi leaned over and stood on her toes for a better look. Between the shoulders of men she could see the medics across the street rolling out a gurney. No remorse on their faces as they discussed breakfast for after their shift. They hadn't even bothered to pull up the white sheet and Moloch's pointed ears were clearly evident even from across the street. This seemed enough satisfaction for the crowd and they dispersed with whispers of 'Poor Mr. Jacobi.' Dezzi stood motionless until everyone had gone and understood there was no sympathy left for the dead. Especially not one poor, defeated, washed out villain. She stayed and felt her own shoulders slump, felt her spine bending and there was no more wall of man, no more shoulders to look over, nor to cry on or to wrap your arms around. There were no shoulders to kiss or for capes to rest upon. She thought of Walter's sign propped upon his shoulders, carrying the inevitable that no one wanted to accept. Fiasco caught the eye of one of the medics and was gone into the night by the time the man could do a double take. She inhaled the crisp air as she ran through the capillaries of the city. If indeed the end was near it would be the shoulders of man that that destruction fell upon, no god. She thought of Moloch and of Eddie and of her mother and of Walter and knew that, no matter what anyone said, they all stood fully on her shoulders.