Damn glasses. Must find girl. Get rid of them. Feel just as fragile as they are. Don't like it. Bad fight. Calf wound. Glass bottle. Dangerous and delicate. Terrible substance.

So Rorschach's thought process went as he sewed up his wound at his apartment. His landlady had long since been concerned about the trails of blood, the late night outings and the smell that came from his room. He had nothing to worry about. The glasses and his trench coat sat together on his bed stand, and glasses still intact other than the initial crack. He still couldn't track the girl. She was either a hermit or a ninja.

He doubted the latter. So he assumed that she hadn't been out of her house in a while. When Walter had asked the newsvendor where she lived, the old man laughed, winked at him, and said that he wasn't the only one who had asked where she was. Apparently there was some guy named Parker who had asked where she lived and why she wasn't there too. Strange person.

After wrapping up the wound, Rorschach absentmindedly put the scalpel, extra sutures, and surgical needle into his trenchcoat pocket. He stood up and put his foot on the ground. The shallow wound hurt less than he had expected upon seeing the plethora of dried and coagulated blood on the side of his calf.

He looked out his tiny window and saw the pleasantly blank brick wall. He had finally remembered to tear down that poster.

Walking out the door, he limped ever so slightly, making his way out of the horrid building slower than his usual 4 or 5 seconds interval. He preferred to be out on the streets. They were his real home, since home is, as they say, where the heart is. And his heart was long torn from his chest and staked to the middle of that wretched city.

Brygida woke up. It was 10 PM. She got up and thought to herself...

'I missed my voice lesson...' She went over to her pitiful excuse for a phone and looked at the answering machine.

No calls...

Strange...

She picked up her bag, threw on a heavy coat and walked out the door. Without wasting any time, the girl hastened to her vocal studio, which was thankfully close to her apartment.

As she walked into the building, she heard Mozart's Sull' Aria coming from inside.

She loved that piece.

She walked in and said hello to the receptionist, but the usually chipper and kind woman was oddly melancholy that night, and didn't lift her head to return the greeting. Brygida blinked and kept walking. She went to the room where she heard the Sull' Aria coming from, and gently opened the door. The voices suddenly stopped. She opened the door fully and saw everyone staring at her with wide eyes and slightly open lips. The two singers, her friends Jane and Michelle, turned away.

"What's going on...?" She asked tentatively, feeling her stomach tighten into a knot.

Jane walked up to her and put her hand on her shoulder, "Bridget, I think you should—"

The door slammed open.

"Didn't you get my message?" Said the overbearing, heavy-set, terrifying artistic director of the New York Vocal Training and Performance Center, Anja. Pronounced "Ahn-Yaa".

"I didn't..." She was very confused.

Anja sighed, taking the girl by the shoulders and walking her out of the room with the rest of the girls.

"Brygida..." She said with her big, Russian accent, "We have to let you go as a student here."

Brygida stood there for a moment... She didn't quite understand if this was a joke or not, and if it was, it was not funny at all...

"I'm... sorry? I don't..."

"You're just not good enough, darling. We don't see you going any further than how you are. You must go now. The girls are upset by your presence here."

Brygida stood there, her eyes slack, her lips closed, taking it all in as she—

"You're a horrible person, you know that??" She cried, pushing past her, "I'm a great singer. I'll get into the Met Opera without you and your horrible breath and your fatness and your disgusting, cold, 15 day old coffee!!"

She slammed the door.

Walked to the curb.

And cried.

'What am I supposed to do now...?' She thought, miserable and still halfway in shock as she hyperventilated.

'My dreams, my career, my love... All of it gone, because she gave up on me... Because she didn't think I was good enough... She didn't even let me give up on MYSELF. She did it for me! That horrible old woman, I should burn down her school, tear out her innards and feed them to her, stab her eyes out with her own conductors wand—'

She felt something snap inside of her. The tears suddenly stopped and she stood up, a blank slate. She started to walk down the street, her slow gait, a disparaging walk, like that of a young person walking to the concrete wall where they would be shot down by a firing squad.

She spotted a young mother on the corner, rubbing her little boy's arms for warmth. Neither of them had a coat or anything even remotely warm on. She walked up to them, and they looked at her, confused.

Brygida took off her jacket and the sweater underneath and left the pieces of clothing at the mother's feet.

After a moment of stunned and confused silence, the woman called after Brygida, "God bless you!"

'What God...?' She wondered, continuing to walk. She didn't know in what direction she was walking in, nor did she care. Her life was gone. She had nothing to look forward to in life. What was left...?

A terrible apartment.

Life as a newsvendor.

That creepy man named Parker...

'Speak of the devil...' She thought bitterly as Parker Jones, a 42 year old man, balding, unhappily married, rounded the corner, and stopped, falsely flabbergasted by her being there.

"Bridget!" He said, fondly and familiarly, "How good it is to see you here!"

"Wish I could say the same." She replied, and kept walking. She knew that all he wanted was pity sex. And he thought that his good friend Bernard would help get him in with her, but Bernard was smarter than that, and warned her early on.

Parker thought he was smart. He was an old guy, so he couldn't directly approach young women without being considered a creepy pedophile. So he thought, "Oh look, I have an older friend who is friends with the girl. I'll get in through him!"

Except not really.

"Oh please don't be like that." He cooed, walking next to her, "I just got in a fight with my wife. Mind if I talk to you?"

"Yes. Go away."

"Aww... But I'd really like to—"

She suddenly turned to him, stopping him in his tracks as he saw in her eyes a hatred that no words could even describe. A hatred that only the devil himself has ever felt for the God that flung him down into Hell. A hatred that terrified Parker Jones. A hatred that made Parker Jones almost piss himself.

He waddled off.

Brygida kept walking.

And walking.

And walking.

Until she felt like she needed to go faster. Go faster, she thought, and maybe the hurt would disappear faster, would leave her alone.

So she started to run. She wouldn't need her eyesight. The wind blurred her eyes with tears anyway.

She ran faster.

Further away from that lie. Anja told her that she would be amazing. She told her that she would be fantastic. She told her that she would get into the Metropolitan Opera with her help.

But lies are easily believed by people who want to believe that they will become a reality.

'Even with my glasses...' Brygida thought, her heel cracking on the cement as she toppled over, 'I was blind to everything... Nothing makes sense anymore. I'm... I'm unhappy...'

She stood up, took off her heels, and kept running, despite the twisted ankle and skinned knee, she ran on adrenaline, on loss, on disbelief. No one was out at the time, but she could feel people watching from windows, probably thinking to themselves that they had a new crazy person on the block. Some girl, crying and bleeding, running down the street in a tank top and some jean shorts in just above freezing temperature.

No one knew who she was.

Central Park came into view in all its barren, cold, icy glory. Most of the leaves were gone from the trees. The only green that she saw was in the murky water. Sitting on the bridge and staring down into the lake, she saw a person that she had never seen before.

... Or maybe it was just the water.

"Suicide?"

Brygida laughed despite herself, "What a stupid thing to think about..." She turned, "You have my glasses, don't you?"

Rorschach stood there, almost condescendingly so, as he stared down at Brygida, his hands in his pockets. He drew one hand out, a pair of glasses in his hand. Something clinked to the floor beneath him, but neither of them paid it any mind as Brygida took her glasses and smiled for the first time that night, "Thank you..."

"Welcome."

She put her glasses on and got off of the ledge and knelt down to pick up what he had dropped...

And immediately recoiled.

"Why... did you have a scalpel in your pocket...?" She asked, her pupils shrinking as her hands started to shake.

"Was cut. Had to take care of it." He replied, either not noticing Brygida's obvious terror or not caring.

"O-oh... Must have been painful... Can you put it away please...?" She asked, turning away from the surgical knife.

Rorschach picked up the scalpel and shoved it back into his pocket, "Afraid of knives? Didn't seem too afraid when mugger attacked you."

"I... had a bad experience when I was younger, with a scalpel..." She explained, "I woke up in the middle of surgery... And the drugs had paralyzed me, but hadn't numbed me. I couldn't scream, I couldn't move, I could barely think... I felt the entire procedure..."

Rorschach stayed silent.

"When I got back to my room, they drugged me up again, and I was out... But the only thing I dreamt about was what happened. I woke up screaming. They said that I was incoherent. That I was still on the drugs. That I didn't actually wake up during the surgery, and I had just had a nightmare." She stared out into the lake, "The hospital was just trying to not get sued... And my family isn't rich. We couldn't handle trying to sue them for malpractice; doctors have too many connections, too much safety..." She chuckled, "I'm sorry, I'm rambling. I'm sure you have other places to be. People to save and whatnot."

"Who was the surgeon?"

"What?"

"Surgeon who did your surgery. Who?"

"Oh... Um... Dr. Marcus at the New York City hospital... And the attendants I don't remember. Why--?"

But he was gone before she turned around. Sighing, Brygida started home...