Author's Note:
This chapter is dedicated to DragonlordRynn, Reyel, Word Serendipity, megacoldfusion, ZoneTan1954 and so many other dear friends that I can't totally recall but I'll remember by the end of the chapter because their kindness, solidarity and sweet words of support and encouragement made this possible. You all rock and if anyone reading can support some of their work that would be great too. I think I statistically write better fics when I'm reading good fics to learn from and lots of people could learn too.
Also thanks to dragonlord0 for the quick reviews, we may havs our differences, we may not be on the same page because I'm too much of a raging bull at times and the poor guy picked me at a wrong time when he did his latest chapters of his main fics which led to me getting blocked but I want us to be professionals, civilized men that despite having different political views and theories on writing can at least trust each other to be objective on this. For the record, I never blocked him and if you're reading this, I hope you have a great day and time reading this as evidenced by your name popping up in the list of those who favorite this fic.
On a separate note, I thank Frank Miller and Alan Moore once again for their great creations and their huge impact on my writing. That's it for now, enjoy the fic. And I should have said this before but change the contrast from Light to Dark when you read this, it fits the narrative and makes all the difference.
Sin City was a dark place. So dark that even in the light of day it felt like nighttime. But last night had seen something of a spark. It had been such a long bad night in the city for both its police department and its crime syndicates alike and from the looks of it it was far from over.
There were pieces to pick.
The cops were still in the scene, picking charred corpses out of the water or the debris left at the docks and they weren't done yet. All scorched to the point where dental records would be needed to identify them. Not like anyone cared enough to do that.
They were all slime. Neo-nazis, drug dealers and slave traffickers. The typical scum, and while the local police often made deals with the scum and acted in complicity dishonoring their badges, today was a different case.
More specifically, it was detective Rodriguez and detective Miller's case.
The hospital was the first place that most people saw in their lives, at the moment of birth; and also the last one, at the time of death. At least generally. Such wasn't the case for a significant amount of people in Sin City and even outside. Lots of people were born in the streets like dogs, with nowhere else to go, and most of them died in the streets too, also like dogs. No one would bat an eye, no one would feel it. It was life and it was hard but it went on. The people knew it.
Marv and Rorschach knew it too.
Marv was born to a caring loving single mother who took it upon herself to raise him into a good man from the moment she cut off the umbylical cord herself at home with a kitchen knife. He sometimes had to wonder if he had done well and kept his promise to his mom. He didn't think highly of himself but for the hundreds of things he could have grown into, he figured he wasn't all that bad. If she could see him right now, he wondered what she would think.
Walter Josef Kovacs was born as an accident, a freak of nature. His "mom" reminded him of that every day. Hated everything he did or acted like as if he didn't exist as a person but rather as an object meant to take her abuse when she wanted to vent out. Locked him up in a closet all the time while she was busy pleasing her clients right in front. It was dark in there, but the darkness in turn had the effect of giving him (and by extension Rorschach) many valuable things: Desperation. Despair. Fear. Thirst. Hunger. Desire. Clarity. All of them gifts to him, very much appreciated, for they shaped him. All blackness to go along with the little white the world still had to offer. Never quite touching, the two of them, just flowing like the ink blots of his 'face'.
Rorschach had been born a piece at a time, a jigsaw puzzle planted in the deepest ends of Kovacs' mind and psyche, feeding on him until he became the only one. Kovacs died because he couldn't stomach the monstrosities that awaited them, so Rorschach took the light. And when he did, he never let go of it.
The worlds of Marv and Rorschach were eerily similar.
Black and white.
A hospital wasn't where they were born and it definitely wouldn't be where they died. That much they knew.
Death row and the electric chair. Being vaporized in the middle of the antarctic by an old friend. That was what their future had to offer, they should have known. They were fitting ends.
But still, this wasn't about them.
A hospital was where detectives Rodriguez and Miller now roamed in search for answers.
A hospital was where the children that were kidnapped now rested safe and assured, having been rescued.
A hospital was where any leftovers of the scum that had abducted the children now rested, not so safe and not so assured, waiting to be interrogated by those who cared for answers and came for them. And they would get them.
"Sunny? Sweetie?" Asked a voice, that of a loving mother, shifting the attention of her daughter to the man in coat who had just entered the room. Sunny was lost in thought, likely from the trauma and in attempts to get some rest after the experience. It pained both her mom and the man in coat to ask her any questions but there was a procedure and the police was working on a schedule so her mom continued.
"There's someone who wants to see you."
Sunny turned to the man in question with a very serious look in her face for her age. She was just seven, making her the oldest of the girls kept in the docks. Perhaps she had lost her innocence too soon. Sin City had that effect, one was to either sink or swim in it. Innocence didn't last for shit.
"This is detective Rodrig..."
"Please, just call me Bobby. If you want, of course." He said with a wave of his hand that put the girl at ease as he moved over to sit on a nearby chair next to her bed. He wanted to talk to her on her level, not as a pretentious adult, not condescending her.
He kept a smile all the time, not a forced one like all the other officers that had seen her earlier, not a false one like the doctors who treated her in the morning and definitely not a shit-eating grin like the men who kidnapped her. No, it was different, a real smile. Not of joy but a smile nonetheless. He either had a lot of practice and had done this before many times or he just really understood her position and feelings, unlike all the other adults she spoke with.
Sunny nodded, letting the detective know that she was fine with it.
Next thing Bobby did was join his hands and try to start a conversation, thinking his next words carefully. He looked aside for a second and then back at Sunny.
"Hey there. Your mom... told me you had something you wanted to say. That you wanted to talk about it with someone. Now just so you know, you don't really have to do anything you don't want to, anything at all. My partner, he is doing things pretty well, he... will get the answers we're looking for. I came because your mom told me you asked but if this is unsettling you in any way..."
"Yes." Sunny was quick to affirm, stopping the detective's modest talk. "There's something I want to talk about."
Bobby nodded and reached for a pencil to start taking Sunny's declaration.
"You're being a real hero now, you know?" Bobby told her, not joking. He was being sincere. It moved him to think that the girl had taken the choice of telling them everything about her kidnapping so that the other kids wouldn't be bothered with question. She was the oldest one after all and even if she only knew the others for a short time she took the responsibility of the others simply because it was right.
"Detective." She began, a few tears coming out of her eyes but there was no sadness in them, only gratitude. "I'm gonna tell you who the real heroes are."
On the other end of the spectrum, Rodriguez had a partner, and he was going pretty strong with his own investigation.
Detective Miller was like the old testament. He and his badge went all the way back to the darkest of ages. It did sound ridiculous, to say that a place as soiled as Sin City once had a darker age than the one they currently lived in, yet it was all true, Miller could bear witness to that.
Endless carnage in Old Town between the Wallenquist organization and the local hookers, the Roark family shedding blood and inspiring fear in every turn through the political power of Senator Ethan Roark and his brother, the cardinal, Patrick Henry Roark. He had seen the Projects go down in flames in attempts to fight back the occupation of the mobsters and their men, he watched the downfall of a fellow honest cop like John Hartigan, a man with guts and a heart that even if damaged and sick would always beat for justice. All that time he had been kept under pressure by his not-so-friendly colleagues and bosses in the department such as Liebowitz, unlawful fiends so crooked that they made him look like a big boy scout in blue but despite their views on him, he wasn't one.
He was a goddamn dark knight with only a basic set of rules, unmoved by the empty threats of those around him and hellbent on doing the right thing, no matter how hard it got to do it, and now he was standing in a hospital room, with a cigarrette on his mouth, more out of habit than anything since it wasn't lit up. He had respect for the norms and policies, what he didn't have respect for was the slimeball that was laid on a bed right in front of him, breathing only the air he allowed him to breathe and living the miserable life that he allowed him to live, if only to prove himself useful and say something for the investigation.
"Wanna know what the best part of your current state is? Not for you obviously but for me, you know?" He started as he walked towards the "man", a prey fallen into his clutch. He walked and talked like it was part of his routine, as if he was in broadway as the star of the show. He put on his hat, one that got him the nickname of "cowboy" in the force. His partner Rodriguez had one too, and they both took them off when they entered the hospital, but as he was right now, antagonizing the shit out of a suspect, he figured it was best to keep it on at all times.
The slimeball, named Swas, didn't say a thing, nor did he show a sign of being aware of what was happening other than keeping his one good eye open, the other one being too damaged. He knew he was screwed, knew that he wouldn't hold his own and yet for all that mattered, he very much prefered to be in this position, at the mercy of the police, than in the hell he had been put through by the "men" who attacked him in the warehouse. Not men, but rather demons as they looked in the middle of the fire they started, the hell they carried to his doorstep. He also knew he had it easy compared to most of his co-workers, but perhaps detective Miller would make him reconsider that statement.
Miller smirked at his silence, staring down at the slimeball with seemingly endless awareness.
"The best part of that, fatso, is that... nobody will tell or give a fuck if you have a few more bruises on you. That's how unimportant you are. The day you joined the brotherhood of the white trash, inbreds and loonies, you became, and no amount of white power can change this, the asshole of this city. And boy, did it shit last night."
The slimeball cried ever so slightly, maybe out of sadness, maybe coupled with horror. A life of drugs and bad choices flashed in front of his eyes and it was depressing.
Detective Miller had a way with words, and the words had a way with the slimeball, which ultimately got him into submission. Miller didn't even need to get physical to make him open up like a kid at the dentist. Granted that most times he did this stuff with Rodriguez by his side, playing a little good cop, bad cop routine. But today it was different, though with the same results. They had taken separate ways to one same end, sharing the same overarching goal. So while Rodriguez was a few floors higher in the same hospital, appealing to the youth and treating the innocent victims, Miller went down to have a word with the devil's reject that lay in bed to learn more about what happened last night with detail. They knew that whatever each one got in the interrogations, they would later piece together to get a larger picture of what went down in the warehouse.
While everyone else in the department had called it a day and was either slacking at the office or shoving the incident under the rug, Miller and Rodriguez took it very personally, trying to close the case properly and bring that same closure to all the families, and in doing so they wanted to be as meticulous as possible.
Funny, they felt like the only two people who gave a damn about the incident and doing their jobs. Alone in the world.
Except that they weren't. Not unlike them, out there were other two who took justice on their hands and devoted themselves to bringing it, hard. And soon, they would soon hear about them.
"Anything you want to say you better do it quick before they disconnect you. Any plans you may have for the future, you're gonna have to trust me when I tell ya to put 'em on hold. The only cards you've got are what you know about last night. Enlighten me."
The greaseball tensed before complying, reliving the events that took place just hours ago.
Sunny did the same.
After what seemed like the longest time taking notes, Miller and Rodriguez put the story back together from the pieces.
The warehouse was covered in nightshade except for a few emergency lights. He could manage now. It didn't take him long to find the part of the building that led down to the basement. He found it covered, bolted and locked meticulously. He could have silently picked the lock but he didn't have the time. He could have saved the time and shattered the thing but it wouldn't have been silent. The answer came clear when some voices and the nearby footsteps of a large goon became audible, closer and closer, louder and louder.
He moved out of the way, fled from sight and blended into the enviroment, watching as the fiend pulled a key out of his jacket and opened up the way to the basement.
The guard travelled down some stairs, guided only by the faint lights of the cigar in his mouth and a lighter. The weak wooden croaked under his weight at each step down, alerting the children of his presence.
Most of them shook in place, frightened, waiting for a blow that never came. The only thing keeping them in one piece and out of harm's way was the fact that virgin kids, healthy and well, were considerable more valuable to the buyers than any other kind. It didn't exactly stop their stay in the pit from being almost like a torture. They hadn't eaten for well over a day now.
"You motherfuckers better keep quiet or else you're gonna get it."
The goon produced a long rope from under his jacket and tossed it at the children, his intentions clear. They stared on in horror, shock and utter amazement, almost unnaturally so.
"Tie your asses up and come out. And don't you fucking make me wait."
There wasn't a protest but they weren't complying either, and it wasn't due to some sort of resistance or rebellion, it was just that the kids seemed way too shocked to even process what the man had to say, staring in his direction like they had seen the boogeyman.
And in a way, as a matter of fact, they had.
"Didn't you hear a fucking word I sai... NGHH!"
The strange and odd figure standing behind him brought silence as he put the man's neck under a vise-like grip and began crushing, stuffing his cigarrette into his mouth to silence him. Feet trembled and went limp. This figure had been so damn quiet and light on his feet that his footsteps on the stairs made absolutely no noise. The stranger was so short and dim compared to his victim that they almost didn't see him behind his prey, and yet in contrast there he was, squeezing the life out of their abductor like size didn't matter. He must have had some form of ant-like strength, unbound by his height or weight.
His victim tried to shake him off, to push him into the walls but all his momentum faded under the stranger's grip. He thrashed and elbowed, clinging onto life but watching his hold on it slip.
THRASH.
THRASH!
His legs went limp first, all the while he tried to scream for help, producing empty and low noises as he did, not unlike an animal. The stranger turned him back in semi-circles, turning his back on the children, which gave them a vague look at his build and attire. He pulled him back onto his heels, all the tremendous weight of the much taller man hanging from his arms and gloved hands. With an inhuman voice, he exclaimed a battle cry too low for the ones above to pick up but still enough to startle the children. Then-
KRACK.
The familiar sound of bone cracking and life fading. It was barely audible, just loud enough for the strangler to hear it as a signal to stop. He was fortunate that the kids didn't hear it too.
His neck cracked, the man's body went completely limp, trembling ever so slightly as the stranger kept turning him, dragging 278 pounds of weight in circles before letting them down on the floorboards.
THUMP!
...
The kids didn't know what to do. There wasn't much they could do actually. There really wasn't anything they could do other than watch and wait for the stranger's next move. When he slowly turned to see them, they couldn't help but be afraid, not only because of the stranger's gaze but rather the sight of what he called a face.
A mask of sorts, black and white, marked by the ink blots constantly moving in it.
Being that they were all paralyzed, frozen in place, none of them dared to scream or say a thing. The one in front of the rest was a little girl, considerably older than the others but still little nonetheless. She gathered all the courage she could muster and used it to walk ahead of the others as if to shield them and get a good look at the stranger. Granted that she was terrified, the others were even worse for wear, so she took it upon herself to be the brave one. But God, was it hard.
"Are you... are you here... for us?" She asked, going even further than she wanted to. Truth was, she recognized the stranger as the one called Rorschach from a series of newspapers and news reports that her mom often read and watched. They all pointed at the same, he was a vigilante, a freak of nature, just a crazy guy who was deemed in every bit as much of a criminal as the scum he chased. She personally didn't really pay much mind to all that, thinking it was just a ghost story that parents told their kids. And now that he was in front of her, she had to admit that while he looked like a ghost of sorts, he also seemed pretty much real.
All these thoughts and more passed her mind in just the two measly seconds that it took the now named Rorschach to reply to her previous question.
"Yes."
"You're- not a monster?"
Question answered not by words but acts. In an almost bizarre show of empathy, Rorschach removed his "face" and showed the ugly mug of Walter Joseph Kovacs, his actual mask, to the children.
This served the purpose, of earning their trust and reassuring them. He then proceeded. He knew all the kids, names and faces from the Missing posters and interviews with the parents.
"Sunny. Betty. Casey. Bla...Blaire." He struggled a bit to mutter that last one, touched by the memory of the night he came to be, the night when he found the remains of Blaire Roche. He had set to save the little girl but in the end he had to settle for avenging her when he put down the dogs who took her life. He wouldn't fail any of these girls like that, he wouldn't allow it. He believed in second chances and this was his, that was the reason it was so important. Selfish? No, he couldn't care less if he died trying but if there was one thing he cared about it was saving the innocent and protecting them.
Taking out the heathens was a bonus.
"Are you alone?"
Rorschach shook his head.
He raised his finger and pointed towards the source of the ruckus upstairs. He then brought it back to his face and hushed the little ones.
"Follow me."
This said, Rorschach led the girls upstairs, shielding them at all times as light came to fill the place. But ut wasn't daylight, the smoke in the air and the increasing heat said as much. With the element of surprise lost and the time ticking against them, Rorschach and the kids made a run for the nearest exit.
The only thought in Rorschach's mind at the time was protecting the kids. He could only hope Marv was alright.
Hope. Such a strange foreign concept to him. He didn't get it, yet he was hoping real hard now. For the girls and for his new partner.
Hope for the best, be ready for the worst.
"So the masked man led you kids out to safety while his partner stays behind and burns the place to the ground, is that right?"
Sunny nodded peacefully.
"And you didn't catch a glimpse of either of them?"
"It happened too fast. Everybody was shaking, when we got to the exit he told us to run as fast as we could and then wait for the ambulance. That's when you found us."
Rodriguez took it in and settled for a while. He could have asked some more but ultimately he chose against it. He understood what the girl was feeling, that the men who saved her life were pretty much heroes out of the pages of a comic to her and that even if she could have in any way contributed to identifying them she wouldn't have done it. In a way, Rodriguez himself thanked them in silence for doing the job that the department was either too crooked or too incompetent to do.
So detective Rodriguez just smiled and played along.
"Thank you." He then looked at the girl's mom. "That will be all. Get some rest you two. Doctor Moore will be here any second now to run a quick check on you and the other kids."
He left the scene more pleased than he had imagined. Honestly, the big fish at the department didn't care that much about catching the men. Rorschach had a bad rap, true, neither Rodriguez nor Miller exactly agreed with his methods but as far as they were concerned, it didn't matter, the man was getting shit done. He wasn't the hero the kids thought he was but he wasn't the scary monster the adults cranked him out to be either. He was just a man, whatever the hell that meant anyway. Maybe he was crazy, but everyone was going crazy these days. Long time ago, being crazy meant something but now it was the norm, the way people lived, some worse than others.
"You should have seen the look on the guy's face, kid. He was sweating bullets, confessing like I was some kinda priest." Miller spoke proudly as he joined his partner in the hallway. "So about the girl?"
"She said enough." Came the simple reply from Rodriguez as the two men left the scene.
Sin City was still a piece of shit place where crime, corruption and insanity reigned supreme but it was their home and life went on. At least they could sleep better at night knowing those kids were safe. There was no greater learning or message to be sent. Miller would pay the drinks. He always did.
Epilogue.
Rorschach and I took separate ways in no time. Once the kids were safe we scrambled, gettin' lost in the cold of the night. Not a look back, not a farewell or "thanks", we did what we had to, then got the hell out of that inferno. Very few sleazebags were spared from the blaze, I tell you. Felt good to have a partner, I guess. I ain't a sentimental and neither is he but I'll say, I liked the guy. Might miss him. Didn't think much else. I took the car, drove for a while until I was sure no one followed. The next day I went to the hospital, call it a conscience but I wanted to have a look at the kids, see that they were fine. Mission accomplished.
Hours later I went to Kadie's, figured it would be one of those nights. I wanted to take my mind out of the mess from last night so that I'd be too wasted to answer the cops if they started asking. I enter the bar and spot Dwight within the first minutes, we exchange looks briefly before I sit close to him. Shelley is talking to him but she takes a break to remember her job so she gets up and brings me my first cup of the night.
It's not long before Nancy comes in and does her dance, leaving most men drooling like dogs. Been a while since we broke into Roark's house to get her revenge. That was fun, just like last night. Her scars healed up a little but they remain there, a reminder of the darkness of her soul, her other side. Even soneone as pure as she was ain't got much hope to stay like that in this city.
I smile at her, figure that she's done healing from the inside too, everything back to normal. It's not the same for me. I haven't seen normal since I was a kid.
I choose to sit with Dwight and pass the time talking about nonsense, girls and the usual trivia. His eyebrows lift ever so slightly due to the entrance of someone new to the bar, someone who isn't here for pleasure. His silhouette takes up a lot of space for such a small guy (I wouldn't tell him I said that).
Rorschach just moves among the crowd without blending, like he's above them. He gets stares from everyone but no one does much else, they probs know better than to pick a fight with a guy like him, figures that whenever someone gets pesky he breaks their fingers.
He moves towards me, pays no mind to the music, the girls, the thugs and anything else that's just heathen to him.
He's right in front of me and Dwight, neither of us showing any discomfort or reaction other than stopping our brief drinking contest. It's what he says next that I keep thinking about:
"Thanks."
A tip of his hat and he's gone. My partner. Crazy or not he may have been the guy that made the most sense to me. I get back to my drink.
[THE END]
"I wanted to kind of make this like, 'Yeah, this is what Batman would be in the real world.' But I had forgotten that actually to a lot of comic fans that smelling, not having a girlfriend—these are actually kind of heroic. So actually, sort of, Rorschach became the most popular character in Watchmen. I meant him to be a bad example, but I have people come up to me in the street saying, 'I am Rorschach! That is my story!' And I'll be thinking, 'Yeah, great, can you just keep away from me and never come anywhere near me again for as long as I live?'"
—Alan Moore on Rorschach's reception.
Author's Note:
I always did like quotes like that from Moore. It serves to remind us of what a morally ambiguous and deeply flawed character Rorschach is, just like the rest of the cast of Watchmen. Most people here only know it as a cool action film by Zack Snyder. And I get it, I really do, I don't think Zack did a bad job, I respect his craft and I still love the film but I realized after looking at fics like The Watchman by MadHat 886, that most normies just saw it as a cool action movie or worse, a DCEU/MCU (They're like the same to me now) film for adults, not the deconstruction of the genre it was supposed to be.
You can like Rorshach and relate to him on a level but fics like The Watchman, while entertaining, prove to be conceptually bad stories. Never mind the basics like grammar and plot holes, these are fics where the authors go over their heads with their power fantasies like having Rorschach beat Batman in a fist fight (even if you're not a Batman fan you have to be delusional to buy this) by grabbing his balls (I'm not lying, that's an actual scene, I swear on Bladewolf101's deleted works). I can live with fics that awkwardly ship Rorschach with Nite Owl, messed up as it sounds because I don't hate gays, but I can hardly look at guys that claim they're Watchmen fans and then proceed to rape and destroy it without screaming internally. I'm not hating, I'm simply stating that guys like that tried to turn Rorschach into the Punisher instead of keeping it real.
I won't go on deeper because I don't want to impose my views and opinion over others but that said, please remember that a special part of Fanfic is the fan part, if you're not a fan of the subject you're writing and you can hardly understand it then think twice before posting and don't be so surprised if real fans want to eat you alive, they might be right to. Have a look at DC fics, how come most popular fics about DC are written by clearly biased authors who spend a significant portion of the fics crapping on Batman and Superman? You know what I'm talking about, right?
To continue with the thanks, I'd like to give a shoutout to VampireHunterDragoon, the Longcoat (whose Punisher x Saw fic Shades of Gunmetal greatly inspired me to do this the way I did), Vaikuntha, Waterangel-Crybaby, doom2099 and MaChaoJustice. Love you guys, thank you.
Please feel free to PM me if you wish to discuss my story and writing as well as future projects. Peace out.