Ror's POV

He has been curled up here for hours. Since that woman ran screaming out of the room, since Daniel ran screaming from him. He should have followed, he knows he should have, but Walter can barely move. Every attempt turns into a series of almost seizure like twitches. His body reacting to the shock his mind cannot process.

Walter doesn't know how he's supposed to cope with this. How he's supposed to behave. All he knows is he's scared. More scared than he's ever been in his life. Scared that everything good he's ever had is about to implode. Leave him quivering in the crater, because he can't cope with this.

Words fail him when he tries to call for help, though he isn't sure whether it's because he can't ask, or is afraid to. Afraid to call down the nightmare he was refusing to believe.

How can he believe it? His partner, his best friend, his touch stone, his anchor was mutated and twisted into something wrong. Something not Daniel. Eating away at everything he'd ever let himself feel. Tearing away his sanity. His hope.

Hours pass, but none of it fits together. Like time skips back and forth. He doesn't even know if he sleeps, he barely knows if he is awake. It all seems like a bad dream.

All his thoughts are disjointed and broken and it hadn't been Daniel's face under the mask. Not his face. The wrong shape the wrong size, the wrong everything. Nothing familiar everything alien. Wrong. And it doesn't seem real. He questions whether it is. He questions his sanity as the screams ring above him like a siren.

Rorschach had heard Daniel scream countless times before. Cries of pain, fear, anger and triumph. He'd heard them all, and been drawn to them. But like this, high and feral, they seem to grip inside his very skull, nails digging into his scalp, removing all reason, all instruction. The only thing left is blind instinct. To move. Move now.

After hours of barely being able to twist a finger, Walter disappears behind latex, and a monster sprints up into the Brownstone. Scrambles onto the second floor, and then skids to a halt. He should have stayed in the basement.

A woman stands naked and bloody in the hall, gripping the doorframe like it's her lifeline. Tears streaming down her face. The gulp he emits is almost audible as she catches him in her sights.

"Rorschach." It gasps at him, and the voice is wrong.

It holds all the same ups and downs, the same pieces of relief he's heard before, but it's not his voice. She advances, everything moving with her. Rocking back and forth, catching the light and showing everything he didn't want to see. Then she stops, shocked, her eyes turn inward, to herself, and fingers scratch at the skin, at her legs and stomach and arms and chest, like she's trying to tear it off.

"Look at me!" She cries, and Rorschach almost vomits.

He feels like he's eight years old. Watching things he shouldn't. Feeling like his nightmares are tangible and not just illusions that fade with the darkness. That at any moment a hand is going to collide with his face and he's going to be told he's not wanted. Never was. Never will be.

"Look at me Rorschach! Look at me!" Tears roll anew as she stumbles towards him crying out for help he can't even begin to comprehend giving.

He looks for an escape, because he can't look at her. He can't see that advancing body that almost wants to attack his very soul. But her fingers grab at his collar and pull him in. Her face so close and he sees the fear in her eyes.

"Look at me." She hisses desperately, but he turns his head and pulls away.

Staggering back like he's been punched in the stomach, she scrabbles after at him wild as an animal. Words bustling together in a mad rush or yells and sobs, and Rorschach can't cope. He can't take the noise and the sight of it. He can't take it as he falls into a heap on the floor. Pushing back into a corner, slapping away hands like a petrified child. But she isn't stopping; she's screaming and grabbing at his face. Grabbing at what's left of his control.

"Look at me Walter!"

But he can't! He just can't! It's wrong, it's disgusting, it's right in his face and he can't look at it. He can't accept it. He can't- he just can't. And as the latex is torn away he scrunches his eyes and wrenches his head to the side. Half crying, half screaming.

Silence. It rings in his ears, and spreads through the Brownstone like smog as his screams are met with silence, but he daren't open his eyes. His heart pounds in his ears and he can't open his eyes because he knows it's going to be there, poisoning him when he does...

"Get out."

Walter's gut feels like it's fallen out onto the floor as his head swirls, and now he looks, at those bloodshot and tearing eyes, filled with disappointment, disgust and horror. So much like what he remembers of-

"GET OUT!"

Leaving her behind, leaving Daniel behind, leaving his face behind, Walter is through the window before her screams can start again. Only hearing the thud of what might have been knees against the carpet as his feet carry him as far away as they can, never looking back.

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