Summary: Something's only truly lost when all the lines are cut; even a single thread can lead the way home.
Notes: Dan goes into deep cover in a cult for investigative reasons and needs help getting back out. Out-of-sequence narrative.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13.
Characters/Pairings: Dan, Rorschach
Disclaimer: Don't own any of this, of course.
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"I already told you," Daniel says, leaning over the mess of electronics on his workbench. He's soldering something delicate and small, and the air smells like hot metal. "If you want to be the one going in there, you have to lose the mask now. I'll need to be able to pick you out in a crowd, in case something goes wrong."
"Can handle myself." Rorschach levels an even glare across the table. Maps and technical schematics shift under his hands, fisted against them. "Stronger will than you."
"This is something to do with the decadent dollar-fifty Chinese takeout you found in the fridge, isn't it?" Daniel's tone is musing, idle; only halfway paying attention to the conversation.
And Rorschach ignores the interruption, because it's important that Daniel understands the implications of what he's suggesting. "Can resist more... persuasion."
Daniel hmms around a thin screwdriver pursed at the corner of his mouth, reaching to unclip the jeweler's stone from his glasses. "Yeah, that right there? That's bullshit, and I think you know it. If we were talking brainwashing like in stupid late night sci-fi movies, maybe." The last drop of solder goes into place, and he hisses through his teeth when he accidentally catches the side of his finger on the iron. Winds a thin coil of wire carefully with one hand, sucking briefly on the injured finger. "But if they're using drugs to pull this off – and there's a good chance they are – then we'd be pretty equally screwed, buddy."
Under the mask, Rorschach grimaces. Tries to imagine himself forcing some vile, malicious chemical out of his system by sheer force of will, but has to concede to reality in the end; physiology is what it is.
"And if it comes down to forcible extraction, we both stand a better chance if whoever it is knows who they're looking for. Look." The tools settle quietly to the workbench surface, and hands that have always seemed too large for this sort of work wedge the casing closed. Finished, it's meant to be a communication device, a constantly transmitting one-way bug with the option for two-way comms at the flick of a tiny, tiny switch. The diagrams spread between them are so much Greek but Rorschach knows a vital tool when he sees one. "I know if an investigation really hinged on it, you'd do what you had to. But I also know how much it means to you, and there's just no reason for it this time. I can handle myself as well as you can, and you know how to use the monitors here just fine."
The radio gear is spread along one desk, abutted to the nearest wall, and Rorschach turns to walk its wires, fingers tracing lightly over each interconnect and junction. "Don't like it," he says, crouching to look into the transceiver's speaker grille even if he knows perfectly well there's nothing there to see. "Too much of a risk."
"Everything we do is a risk."
A drawer opens and closes, out of sight. Papers rustle as they're twisted into haphazard rolls. They're estimating two to six weeks on the inside, and that's too wide a range, too long a time to spend regarding a cold metal radio housing as his only–
"And if this guy's really into the shit we think he is..."
A low grunt, and Rorschach stands again, rolling his fists in his pockets. "Yes. Has to be done."
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Dan's done undercover work before, to varying degrees of success, and he knows that this is the hardest part: walking up to the first mark sick with the anxiety churning up his gut, trying to keep his story straight, his characterization solid. The first sentence, the first word; getting his mouth to form around that first sound and after that it's like giving a graduation speech or an address to the Ornithology Association. The words flow, liquid and silver and so natural, like he'd been born into his cover story, as long as he doesn't stop for long enough to start worrying.
They always have room for new people, they say, smiling and with an emphasis on new that feels less predatory and more childishly excited than he'd expected. Pamphlets are pressed into his hands, sweat stains darkening them everywhere the dedicants have touched them. Blown pupils follow his every move, nervously jitter back and forth when he holds still for too long, make their eyes look black in the poor light of the converted office space.
Where did he hear about them, they want to know?
Dan looks straight into those dark, unfocused pits, and lies.
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At the first gathering, he sits inconspicuously in the back row. He doesn't need to take notes or appear suspiciously attentive; he knows without having to toggle the radio to ask that Rorschach is taking down reams, in the yellow legal pad on the desk or in his own notebook, pencil scratches echoing in the cavernous room. He wishes he were there too, suddenly and fiercely, in the same way he'd once wanted out of that early morning New England dew-grass a moment before a high-ceilinged heat lightning storm had sent a bolt into the old oak he'd been standing by. The fine hair on the back of his neck is standing on end, and the air feels electric.
"The past is a burden on your present," the man on the stage says, and Dan's sure he's seen that in the pamphlets, word for word. "Only by discarding out fixation on the past – letting nostalgia, regret, and yes, even memory itself fade away – can we truly be free to enjoy each day's unwinding surprises as we are meant to."
There's more – cynicism and expectation and entitlement, and the joy of infants set loose anew on the world, and the beauty of simplicity, but after a while, Dan finds himself tuning it out. It isn't their rhetoric he's here for, and for all the trappings, they don't pass around any suspicious refreshments; no strange-smelling gas leaks from any of the vents. He supposes he's safe, for now.
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Far away, Rorschach listens to the sound of breath evening out and calming, losing its attentive edge, and he frowns at the radio. His fingers are white-knuckled around the pencil stub, and he taps it restlessly on the benchtop, listening, thinking.
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They offer him lodging on-site almost immediately, and he accepts it. Worry about being followed aside, the longer hours he has access to this place the better. There are a lot of dark corners to snoop into, rocks to turn, shadows to empty out. Filing cabinets to break into, and he wishes he had Rorschach's skill in picking locks, but he'll manage something.
"Thank you," he says with as much false geniality as he can muster, and the boy smiles blankly and wanders away, leaves him standing before a room more primitive and sparse than his dorm room in college had been. The walls are bare, the lightbulb in the ceiling is bare, the hardwood laminate of the floor is curling up in rough, delicate strips, cracking away under his shoes. The mattress smells like old sweat, and he supposes he isn't meant to notice.
He shoves his duffel under the bedframe, sits carefully on the edge, ignores the stink. Keys up the radio. "Hey. Just checking in."
"Any information to add?" the radio crackles, and he's grateful suddenly that he went with a lower frequency; this is barely on the functional range as it is, any higher and it wouldn't have reached, wouldn't have made it through the walls.
Dan glances at the window, at the old, leaded glass, at the painted-over sill. Wonders if he has anything he can tape to the panes, some kind of identifier. "No, not really, just... just wanted to..."
The static waits patiently, swimming in an out of aural shapes and patterns, just like–
"I just needed some human contact, you know?" Dan finally admits, smile full of self-deprecation in the dark.
"Hrm. Plenty of human contact where you are."
And that's true, but they're braindead and they're unfamiliar and it isn't the same. "You know what I mean."
Another patient silence, quieter, like Rorschach's keyed down but isn't saying anything. Then: "...yes. I do. But excessive contact is dangerous. Room could be bugged–"
"I know, I know," Dan says, pressing a hand to his forehead. He can feel the note of panic rising in his voice, like a claustrophobia he doesn't have. "I'll go somewhere more secure next time. Hallway in the basement or something. I just..."
"Nite Owl," the voice says, quietly, as if speaking softly to the radio will keep it from being monitored on the other end. "Always here. Listening. Not alone in there."
"Yeah. Yeah, I know." A sharp exhale, looking to the window again. "Thanks, man."
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"I remember... glass. And cold, and..."
The girl trails off, eyes roving toward the ceiling. There are hands moving over her arms and shoulders, soothing murmurs encouraging her, pulling the memory out by thin, fragile threads. They're seeing a sister in faith, caught up in whatever these people do instead of communing with aliens or speaking in tongues, and to them it's surely a beautiful moment. Dan only sees a teenage runaway, seventeen if she's a day, with the hollowed out face of a survivor of many horrors and the faded bruises of old track marks down her arms. Nothing fresh though, and she seems to have more weight on her than the alley-raised waifs they come across sometimes, wasted on ennui and heroin, cradled in the arms of neglect.
"Is she getting better?" he asks a woman at his elbow.
"I don't know," she says, running twitching fingers over the bulky weave of her sweater. "I think so? Everyone gets better here eventually, and she's stayed with us a long time, but I can't quite remember..."
Dan glances at her sharply, infuses his voice with something that will hopefully catch Rorschach's attention. "Stayed with you? You mean people leave here after a while?"
"Mm." Now along the bottom edge, yarn bits knobby and dense, and it's easily eighty degrees in here. "I think they'd have to. We're always full but never more than full, and new people are always joining, so people must be leaving, too? But I guess some people take a lot longer to heal up. The past is a poison, and it affects some more than others..."
Dan says nothing; just lets her trail off, and in a few minutes, she won't remember the conversation. He just stands and narrows his eyes, and watches the lost girl among the raptors, bleeding off her memories for the sake of a peace that she honestly probably deserves.
He thinks about the resiliency of young bodies, and how clean living can affect them, can heal all of their systems back to a fresh pink perfection. Thinks about all the missing person reports, and this family of goldfish surrounding them, memories too short to care where they've gone. Thinks of an assembly line, a conveyor belt, leading straight through this place, and what exactly comes out the other side?
"... and he cut my face, and pushed me into..."
"Let go, let go," the crowd murmurs, circling her like prey, and she suddenly looks as though something heavy has been lifted away, like these things never happened. Like she's free.
Dan closes his eyes, takes a breath, and tries to keep the talons from striking bone.
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"We know he's involved in human trafficking," the voice bursts over the static, and Rorschach has one finger on the transmit switch, the other hand flipping through his notes as Daniel talks to him through the radio's tinny filter. "We just didn't know who he was selling them to, or what for."
"Assumed prostitution," Rorschach mutters, still searching for something specific. "Standard pattern. Drug into docility, sell to highest bidder."
"Yeah, I know," and Daniel's voice sounds strange, like he's in an echo chamber. A tunnel, maybe. "But I don't think so now. They're not selecting for attractiveness, just physical health. Rorschach, I... I think they're doing organ harvesting."
The papers still under his hands. For a long moment, neither Rorschach nor the radio speaks, and the wheels turn and turn. The theory eventually renders up as sound and very possible, even probable, in light of the evidence. "Hrm. Would explain why none of the missing people have turned up in the usual quarters."
"Yeah, exactly. I was wondering about that from the start. I mean, I'm not sure, but Jesus, if they really are..."
Another silence, too much turned inward for speech; it's such an ugly idea, and it makes this so much more dangerous. Rorschach shifts against the edge of the table, and he's not thinking about what good condition Daniel's in, how he never smokes and rarely drinks, and what a body looks like when everything's been scooped out of it, an empty shell disposed of like garbage. He isn't. "You're not eating their food?"
"God, no." A bark of laughter, sharp through the noise. "Of course not."
He leans back in the chair, and if the sigh of relief isn't professional, is an unacceptable breach of some code or another, it's been a trying enough week that he can allow himself the lapse. Anyway, he's alone here. "Good. Don't."
.
It's easier said than done, really.
The communal meals are tricky. In the vast cafeteria, surrounded on all sides and exposed, it's a very touchy thing to palm the food away into bunched napkins and pockets, to not touch the water and juice and greasy-golden broth. In his room, stuffed into the duffel he came here with, are a month's worth of completely functional, tasteless ration bars and two quarts of water. The water will need to be refilled somehow, and he isn't sure how he's going to manage that.
When he walks in one evening and finds the supply disturbed, it occurs to him that he probably should be worried about that, but the reason is slippery and he can't quite find it in the dark.
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"What dagger of the past sticks in your heart, brother?"
Dan pauses, his hand on the doorknob. He isn't sure when they'd started calling him that, isn't sure when it'd stopped bothering him. You're playing your part well, is all, and it's true, but something niggles. "Oh, ah. Why do you ask?"
The man shifts to his other foot, and like all of the others here, he doesn't look like what the word cultist conjures. He's smallish, pudgy, with thinning blond hair and wireframe glasses and everyday clothes, no robes or sheets or cloaks. He's bundled, like he doesn't feel the heat. "You seem burdened," he says, thin reedy voice empty of any malice. "And you don't speak much at the forgettings."
Dan rubs the back of his neck, self-conscious. "Well... I mean, I'm not as comfortable yet with all of that. As the rest of you are."
"Yes, yes I understand," the man says, nodding. "We all evolve towards simplicity at our own pace. It's not an easy thing for some people, to let go of the past. Even when they recognize its necessity and seek out our help."
Dan bites his lip, jitters his hand over the doorknob.
"Would it be easier to talk about if there were only one other present?" the man asks, looking at him imploringly, and Dan feels something in the back of his head toggle, a rusty knife switch that creaks loudly as it slips home.
"I... maybe," he says, horrified at the words as soon as he hears them hit the air, but he can't seem to hold anything back all of a sudden, not under this patient, benevolent gaze. He can feel memory rising up like a black sludge: shouted arguments and slamming doors and nights spent huddled under a tree in the front yard rather than beg to be let back in, and his degree torn in half and how long it'd taken to get it replaced and everyone dressed in black, solemn, as the will was read... his hand relaxes from the doorknob, stops seeking escape. "I had some... some issues with my father?"
Hands on his shoulders now, having to lean up to reach him, just like, just like–
He's listening, common sense pokes at him from the corner, drowned out in whatever this is, ignored.
"He never... he didn't approve of my life, said I was a disgrace," and the words are slipping free like beads on a string and he isn't the one pulling the string, he isn't–
"Keep going," the man says, and his eyes are like black holes, gravity wells.
And Dan does, haltingly, spilling his secrets in the hot, churning belly of this devouring beast, letting them wash over and past. In the end, he has said everything he can remember, worked it out from under his skin like poison ivy, and he feels empty and light and he can't quite remember what he'd been so upset about, can't find a reason to care what one old man had said years ago now that he's slumped against his door, scrubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands, watching his brother walk away. Hollowness has never felt less like the salt-stinging taste of tears and late nights curled on a kitchen floor, has never felt less like fear.
He's starting to understand. And he is a lot of things, but he is not afraid.
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Three weeks on, the girl with the track marks is healthy now, is young and strong and flush with the joy of life lived as if every moment were the first or the last. She'll be leaving soon, she says, they say, and this should be distressing but he can't really pin down a reason. Instead he finds himself happy for her, watching from the sidelines as she speaks lucidly of the last five minutes and how wonderful they've been with more clarity than she's ever shown, more clarity than Dan's ever felt. He can't quite remember her name.
"It's wonderful," he says to the teenage boy next to him, unprompted, who smiles and nods. "I wish I could..."
Then he feels the weight of the transmitter under his collar as he shifts his head, and he remembers his home, the basement, Archie's hull shining a broad curving smile in the dark, a figure slumped over the radio table. Hanging on his every word. He's suddenly resentful, and jealous of these people for their unfettered joy; they, who don't have a judgmental ass listening over their shoulders, ready to chastise every time they call home like a father he's long since outgrown.
So he doesn't call in that night, but instead sits in the dark, pawing through pamphlets with fingers that leave dark sweat marks wherever they touch. The air is cold.
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The next morning, he looks in the small mirror over his sink and black, endless eyes stare back at him, the thin ribbon of brown constricted out to the edges. It's beautiful.
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Everyone has a job here and his is cleaning, at night, when the others have gone to sleep. He has a long push-broom but no bucket or dustpan, so it mostly consists of shuffling dirt from one location to the next, creating the pretext of cleanliness without actually removing any of the filth. These are busy hallways during the day, and feet careless in their love for the moment don't hesitate to stir it back up, spread it thin and even, and every night he must begin again.
He thinks vaguely of a suit of Kevlar armor and the heavy press of rubber gaskets around his eyes, and of a small figure in swirling leather and swirling black and white, and the way bone and muscle feel under his fists. Rope and handcuffs and hushed words spoken into payphones, unbelieving voices echoing up from the depths. They are all just specks of dirt, shifted around, always more ready to swarm in and fill the gaps they leave and will their work ever be over?
The thoughts are unpleasant and not entirely grounded, so he pushes the broom and tries to let them dissipate away.
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"Don't you... I don't know. Think sometimes, that maybe we're wasting our time?"
The crackling voice on the radio sounds anxious but guarded, careful, as if speaking to a skittish child. "With this investigation? No, Nite Owl. Will save a lot of lives."
Dan stands at the end of the hallway, peering into the darkness like he does every night - every few nights. Every week, now. It has a pull, like something exotic, like the tunnels he used to... used to... well, it isn't there when he digs, but he knows there were tunnels, and that he was much smaller. "No, I mean, in general. We can't stop all the crime all on our own. We can't be everywhere at once. It's... too big, too much."
He takes a drink from his water bottle; it's sweet, has been sweet for as long as he can remember now but that's as it should be. Water should be clear and sweet and cleansing, washing everything away.
"Hrm," the static-voice says, flat. "Sound like Comedian."
Dan feels his eyebrows knit, and it's an interesting sensation. "Comedian? I don't know..." The word sits like a label, like a person's name, but he can't place it, can't put a face or a personality to the sound of it. He's not even entirely sure who he's talking to anymore; the thread of a conversation runs through his mind but the trailing end of it is lost, flagging in a dying wind.
"Nite Owl?" a voice asks, and the worry in it is plain.
He looks at the tiny radio transceiver in his hand – marvels at its construction, wonders who could have built such a thing – and thinks he really ought to say something, but every thought he has skitters away before he can–
.
The voice on the radio doesn't sound like Daniel anymore. It isn't Daniel, never has been; just an electronic reassembly of the idea of him, the impression of sound and meaning as it passes through the air. The memory of a voice.
When only memory is left...
"Nite Owl?" he asks again, and he knows that his tone is betraying more than he should but this is his partner, is Daniel. Is important.
"It just seems like..." the static resolves, and the echo is stronger now than it's ever been. "Things could be a lot simpler. If we stopped holding the past against these people... I mean, whatever they did, it's over and done, and if we can't let that go, then... we're stuck on it, we're letting the past burden our present and... it could all be so much easier, you know?"
The voice wavers on the last few words, almost pleading, and if it weren't the middle of summer, Rorschach would almost think the basement had just shed twenty degrees of heat. Even knowing, his finger hesitates on the transmit button, his usual ease with words deserting him, because what do you even say to...
["Know what you're getting into, Nite Owl?" It's 1965, and the city is dark, and they've just fought their first scrabbling fight together, won their first victory. "Isn't an easy life."]
[Nite Owl laughs and laughs then, and asks if anything worthwhile ever is.]
The switch clicks into place, and his hand is as steady as he can manage it. "...coming for you, Daniel," he finally says, because they have all the evidence they need, and he's already working out the phone calls he'll need to make, to the police, to the city council. To Mason, because the aftermath of this may be beyond his ability to handle alone. "Will take a few more days. Keep the radio on."
No response; just a looping, circling hiss and the sense of an empty space growing wider and wider.
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(c) ricebol 2010