Center

"A point, place, person, etc., upon which interest, emotion, etc. focuses."

His nose still ached, even a week after… their unfortunate incident.

Dan felt like an idiot, but he couldn't refer to it as anything else – the incident, the accident – it was impossible to put it to words that weren't euphemistic. Only at the deepest points of self-loathing, when it was four in the morning and Dan sat at his kitchen table with a lukewarm cup of black coffee and another cup brimming with sugar, could he say it. With the darkness as his witness, he could put his head in his hands and say that it wasn't an accident.

Rorschach killed a gang of boys, most of them with a wrench. Yes, he had lost himself in the blindness of rage and something Dan thought he'd never understand, but it was the furthest thing from a mistake. Even after Dan pointed at the bodies, practically shrieked at him and told him that those were his fault, he had been more concerned with the broken goggles than anything else. The goddamn goggles… Dan had those fixed in two days. Two days of sitting in his basement, trying to ignore the throb of his head and keep himself from glancing toward the tunnel.

The goggles were fixed. His nose wasn't broken (or at least, he thought not). The mark on his forehead faded until it was barely more than a dull blemish. It had been a week.

But Rorschach never came back.

The night after he fixed his goggles, Dan suited up as if it had been any other night and waited for three hours by Archie until he clued in that Rorschach was not coming. He had tried patrolling on his own, but it was practically disastrous. Distracted and feeling like he was missing his right arm (although his left would have been more appropriate), on one of the first cases of the night some punk kid had been able to nail him hard in the groin. It hadn't hurt thanks to his cup, but it had pissed him off enough that he didn't bother trying to incapacitate the kid – he just dropkicked him into the Hudson. Angry, tired, and more than a little upset with himself, Dan hopped back into Archie, flew straight home, tore off the costume, and jumped into bed, spending the next few hours staring at the ceiling.

He didn't go out again after that.

Instead, he pretended to make himself busy every night, designing new gadgets or shuffling boxes around so he could imagine he was cleaning his basement. He even stopped by the library the other day, picked up a new book off the "Recommended Reading" list, and didn't touch it again after setting it down in the living room. Dan even sat down in front of the television some nights, something he usually reserved for when the nightly news was on, and stared blankly at the screen until the broadcast went dead.

Inevitably, however, each night at about midnight he'd end up in the kitchen, and each morning at about eight, he would wake up with his face plastered to the table and a freezing mug of untouched coffee in his grip to match the one across the table.

Tonight was no different. After changing into his pajamas and a failed attempt to force himself into bed, Dan found himself shuffling onto the tile and reaching for the mugs. He set up the coffee maker, left one of the mugs on the counter, and sank down into a chair with a heavy sigh to stare at the other one. A whole week of this – sitting up all night for no reason, wasting his coffee and his sugar cubes on a partner that might never come back. It was ridiculous, juvenile even performing this ritual every night. It wasn't going to bring Rorschach back. Nothing probably would.

"I shouted at him," Dan said, turning his coffee mug full circle. A pattern of tacky, multi-colored owls covered it – a joke from his mother, many years ago, trying to say she was proud of him. "I should know better than to push it like that."

He should. For all the years they'd been partners, by now he should have known the golden rule: Rorschach did not like to be touched. He hated affection, and he hated threats. When confronted with affection, he would usually just shy away, but sometimes both would have his fist in your face before you could blink.

"It was my fault," he continued, speaking directly to the mug now. The cartoonish owls' eyes looked up at him, absorbing everything he had to say. "I pushed him to hit me. I was shouting…"

He didn't know everything about Rorschach, far from it, but he knew him enough. Dan knew him enough that a grunt could be a soliloquy, and that a jerk could be an almost frightened flinch, but he ran, flat out ran away after punching Dan in the nose. What was that saying? What was it saying about what Dan had done – yelled at him, accused him mercilessly until Rorschach had no choice but to get out of there as fast as possible?

The mug didn't look understanding anymore – instead, the beady eyes were accusatory. Your fault, they echoed, your fault he's gone, your fault he's not coming back.

Dan could handle hating himself, could understand his depressed, self-depreciative mood, but hell if he was going to take it from a cup. Coolly, incapable of feeling angry at anything other than himself, he flicked his wrist and sent the owls tumbling to the ground. The shatter was almost satisfying, for a moment, before Dan sighed and carefully got to his feet.

Sweeping up shards with a hand brush, knees aching against the tile, Dan felt a surprising lack of regret for destroying the mug. It seemed almost infinitesimal, a random collection of ceramic, as opposed to the mess he'd obviously made of his life. He was only mildly disappointed that he couldn't just sit there and leave it broken. Why was he always in such a hurry to pick up the pieces?

"Shit," he said dispassionately, more to hear the word aloud than for emphasis. Forget the coffee. He'd toss out the mug, dump the half-made coffee down the sink, and just go to bed. Lying alone and full of self-pity was no different from sitting in the kitchen with the same emotions. Pulling a resilient, minuscule owl's wing out from where it had stuck in his finger, Dan picked up the dustpan and wiped the blood on his shirt.

He froze, probably looking quite ridiculous in his bright blue pajamas with new streaks of thin crimson along the breast pocket, and stared in what felt like emotional nothingness at Rorschach. His partner stood in the doorway down to the basement, leaning up against the frame and his arms folded in on his chest. It was hard to tell whether he looked accusatory, defiant, or even frightened… it had been a week, after all, and a week was just long enough to forget some of Rorschach's social quirks.

"Hi," Dan said to break the silence, drawing out both letters long enough to express his confusion. Rorschach grunted, and Dan couldn't tell what it meant. "Need something?"

"Heard something break. Came to investigate. I see it was nothing." For a moment, Dan debated whether he should bring up the obvious, but when several long seconds had passed and nothing happened, he decided it was all right.

"So," he ventured, scratching the back of his head. "What were you doing in my basement?" Rorschach flinched, just barely, and turned his head down towards the floor. Suddenly, Dan remembered the dustpan in his hand. He fumbled his way to the garbage can, almost tripping over his feet while Rorschach watched with scientific detachment.

"Checking in," he said slowly, tilting his head to the left. Shards broke into even smaller pieces as they hit the bottom of the trashcan, and the dustpan went back under the sink. Dan would have to run a vacuum through here later, make sure he had gotten up all the pieces. For now, he would just be careful of where he stepped.

"Oh?"

"Making sure you are… well." Dan's nose ached, all of a sudden, as though perfectly aware Rorschach was alluding to it. When he turned to look at Rorschach again, he could feel his partner's gaze on his forehead. He smiled sadly.

"I'm fine, Rorschach. How, er… how are you?"

Rorschach jumped again, just a little. His body language seemed to be torn between coming further inside and bolting down the stairs again, as though he really did not want to be here. It killed Dan, and simultaneously pissed him off. If he didn't want to be here, why did he come in the first place? Why would he make himself come and visit Dan if he hated even being in the same room as him?

Rorschach moved a few steps toward the refrigerator, busying himself with examining the magnets and photos on the door. Even before he answered, Dan knew Rorschach was going to avoid the question. "Saw you repaired goggles. Good to see damage wasn't extensive," he said, reaching out to adjust a crooked, tacky souvenir magnet from Jersey.

"Not really. It was just a cracked lens. The infrared isn't really working, though, not yet." Dan glanced over at the coffee maker, having forgotten to turn it off, and sighed when the light that announced its completion came on. "That's not what you came about, though, is it? Coffee?"

Rorschach watched as Dan took out another mug. By now, he did feel a little guilty about smashing his mother's gift, but what could he do? It wasn't as though he could glue the pieces back together, and it really was his fault for throwing a tantrum like that.

It brought Rorschach upstairs, he realized, setting the new cup down on the counter and reaching for the other still on the kitchen table. Maybe that made it worth it.

"No." Dan raised an eyebrow; he had no idea what Rorschach was answering. He waved a hand in the direction of the counter. "No coffee. Saw what I needed to see. Can leave in peace now." With that, he turned on his heel and stalked back toward the stairs, looking defeated. It felt rather… anticlimactic. He was just going to leave? What if he really did never come back this time?

Trying to squash the desperation in his chest, unbidden and somewhat irritating, Dan turned back to the coffee machine and decided to take a leap of faith.

"It healed pretty quickly," he said, keeping one eye on Rorschach as he poured. "You… the wrench hit more of the goggles than my face." Rorschach put his hand on the door's frame and turned to glance over his shoulder. It was enough. "…I'm not mad at you, man. Really. I'm not. I kind of missed you, actually."

He shuddered. "Shouldn't. No reason to miss me."

"But I did." Dan turned back around, trying to look less serious than he felt. He slid one across the table, next to the container of sugar cubes, and leaned up against the counter with the other. "We're partners, Rorschach, and that means taking the good with the bad and continuing just the same." His partner seemed to eye the coffee mug suspiciously, as though wondering whether it was a lure into a trap. Dan glanced down into his cup. The steam brushed his face and fogged up his glasses. "I'm not excusing what you did. But I'm entirely capable of taking your good with your bad, even if the bad seems to have gotten a little worse over the years."

"Came up here to say goodbye," Rorschach said suddenly, fists clenching and unclenching. "You deserve a better partner than myself."

"That's absolute bullshit."

Bullshit.

The word slapped them both in the face, but this time, Dan didn't give it time to register. He looked up and stared Rorschach right in the face, in his eyes – he could feel him staring back. "You know we work best together. Who could I work with? Everyone else is gone or quit a long time ago. You're all I've got, and I wouldn't have it any other way." In the silence that followed, he took a hasty swig of bitter coffee – where did all that come from? He meant it, he really did, but he'd never thought about it that way before. Not once.

Rorschach seemed to be thinking along the same lines. Dan saw what must have been an Adam's apple bob up and down under the mask, and it pulled in a little around his lips. "Must be joking," he said, more to himself than to Dan. "After… after I… no. Won't risk such a mistake again. Find another partner."

"No."

"Daniel –"

"I said no." He set down the mug and took a few steps closer around the table, knowing the fight-or-flight urge was flooding through Rorschach's body. He remembered perfectly what happened last time – he still had the throb in his nose to remind him – but this time he had resolved himself. Even if Rorschach struck out, even if he attempted to leave and never come back again, Dan was not going to let him go. Not this time. "You're my partner. Whatever it is that made you… well, we'll get through it together. As a team."

So close to him, barely four feet away, Dan had to wonder if Rorschach was trembling. He could hear leather straining from how tight Rorschach's fists were, and his head seemed almost squashed into his chest. "Hurt you, Daniel. Sorry."

"Don't be. After all, it would have hurt me more in the long run if you'd just disappeared." Rorschach's shoulders shook; a wobbly, stifled choking echoed out from beneath the mask; and before Dan quite understood what happened, he took another step forward and pulled his partner into a hug. Rorschach gasped, choked again, and pulled back sharply as if he meant to jerk away – but he didn't. He stood there, clenching his fists and stiff as a board, as though he didn't know how to react to such a breach of his personal space. Dan could smell blood, a lot of it – it overpowered the other odors he had become accustomed to, but he held on.

And Rorschach let him.

Everyone needs a hug at some point, Dan reasoned as he relaxed his grip a little. He still remembered the way he used to feel when his mother would catch him in an embrace, when he was feeling sorry for himself or lonely, and how all the bad feelings seemed to melt away. He remembered what it felt like to unburden, to let someone else carry you instead of fighting so desperately to stay standing all on your own… If anything, that was what Rorschach needed – someone he could rely on. Someone who cared about him no matter what happened. Someone who missed him when he was gone.

He could do that. No, better - he would.

With a sigh, he let him go and took a step back. Rorschach immediately stood up straight. The weight of his sorrow and guilt had not ceased to exist, though it seemed a bit lighter, but his pride refused anything other than a rim rod spine. It was nothing less than what he expected.

"Will see, before long," Rorschach said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Am far too dangerous to be around. Will probably regret this later." Dan shrugged.

"I doubt it."

Rorschach hummed quietly and turned to go. "Will be back tomorrow, at regular time. Be ready, Daniel." His steps echoed up the basement stairs until they faded away, too far down the tunnel to hear anymore. Dan sat down at his kitchen table, examining his hands as though the skin held some kind of secret. The coffee Rorschach left untouched turned cold, but the sugar cube container's lid hung open and an abandoned wrapper sat beside it.

"…I will," he said, far too late, but it was all right. They would see each other in a few hours.

AN: I haven't checked, but it has probably been a month again, hasn't it? I'm sorry. As some of you know, I'm a senior in high school this year, and I have absolutely no time to do anything other than school. Even now I have both Japanese and math I could be doing, but I put it off to give you guys what I have been holding back on for a very long time. Originally, this was going to be the chapter before last, but since I had it finished and really, it could go anywhere, I decided to just get it over with. :)

This chapter is a continuation of the chapter where Rorschach goes nuts and smacks Dan with a wrench by accident, as you may have gleamed by now. There will be one more chapter that indirectly links to that particular plot, but other than that, I expect to be bringing out mostly original story lines. We'll have to see, though.

As usual, thank you very much for your continued support and patience, because it means the world to me. :)