AN: VERY proud of this chapter though xD

There's someone. Someone in his face. In Rorschach's face. Tearing at skin. Pulling apart flesh. Breaking bones. Screaming into the night like a rabid animal. In. His. Face. Forcing broken bottles into spines and crushing faces against concrete.

Three people dead. Lumped on the floor like morbid sculptures before he manages to force it off of the street, into a squat, and onto the floor. Kicking and screaming like a creature that knows it's about to die. Knows it's about to have its head torn off.

But as he yanks his face back, reclaims his property, Rorschach finds himself unable to breathe. Falling away he stares in absolute horror.

"Daniel?"

That face. That face! It's barely recognisable. Lolling under greasy sodden hair. How had a month brought her to this? Skin pulled tight against blackened eyes. Like she has not slept in weeks. Lids red and heavy. Like she has lost more blood than her body could even hold. Cheeks gaunt. Had she even been eating?

This. This was Daniel? This mess of a thief was Daniel?

Her eyes bore into him. They had been awed for only a moment. Now they were disgusted. Furious. Indignant and challenging. Tearing through his heart, holding the last month up in front of him like a judges sentence. A month alone had led her to this.

No! No this was not his fault! He didn't force her to do this. And the growl rips through him before he can even process his anger. Gripping her by the scruff of her pathetic, oversized coat.

Took it. Without permission. Stole it. Stole his face. Used it. Used it! Used it to be brutal and vicious and merciless. Used it to lie. To trick. To be a monster. Pervert its purpose. Pervert Rorschach's purpose!

His fists thrust her against a wall and leave her there to cower as latex is studied. Scrutinised. Checked for contaminants that are visible, not just psychological. Words aren't enough to express this... this violation. This betrayal. This breach upon his soul.

Had Daniel not taken enough of him already? Twisted his morals and views out of place just so they could be together in ignorant hypocrisy?

"Stole my face."

And it's barely a whisper, but a mouse sounds like an elephant in the empty space between. Pulsing and throbbing with strained loyalty, heartache and denial. With a million put off arguments and blatant abandonment. Tears and screams hung in the air like fog, suffocating them with expectance and adrenalin. With barely contained violence that was bleeding over the seams, ever since this nightmare began.

"Yeah, well" There is a hysterical giggle laced with anxiety, "I couldn't use mine."

The voice is too familiar. Even after a month of absence. Even with its purposefully burnt edges and feminine pitch. Broken and double edged with words that need to be said, but won't be, because they know they'll be shrugged off. It's too much like his voice. It's too much like before. It's wrong, completely wrong. Agonisingly wrong. Infuriatingly wrong. He's not ready for this.

And there is no warning roar. Nor steady escalation. The empty space between them closes in an instant. With a force fit for explosions. The wall groaning by her ears as she stares wide eyed and horrified at swirling ink.

[Closer than it had been in a month. Close enough to kiss.]

Clenched fists barely an inch from either side of her, the leather brushing her ears. And she tries to melt into the mortar. Tries not to flinch as the words are spat through the mask into her eyes.

"MY FACE!"

There are no excuses. This cannot be forgotten and brushed under the rug like everything else they have tried to ignore. There are no explanations good enough for this. To answer that wounded sound. Like a dog being whacked with a stick as fists tear into plaster. No bastion of innocence strong enough to endure this abuse, this defiance. Because nothing is the same!

"Whoa! Hey—fuck—Rorschach! Stop, man stop!"

Each slam rode through his body, and rang in her ears. Burnt at more muscles than it was worth. Brought tears to her eyes as the swing forced her heart to juddering halts then agonising jumps. She was frightened. No. She was terrified. Brought to screams under the unrelenting violence raining down about her. And soon she was cowering behind her own hands as plaster scratched at her flesh. And he hates that he cares.

His knuckles cracked and complained, bled. His fists just clenched tighter as he grazed her cheek. Forcing her to follow the flow into the wall. To see it crumble. Pass right through into the neighbouring room. Leaving blood and leather over the ragged edges. And the yell escaping her lips is so raw and aggrieved, so mortified and worried. The pitch is like a babies cry in his ears. Makes his mind stop and start, panic in a way it used to when Daniel cried out in pain. Only this time, it was worse. This time it made him want to vomit. He falls away.

Clutching his fingers they twitched and pulsed agonisingly and it doesn't matter. It never did. It was just a distraction from the pain he was feeling everywhere else. Skating through his veins like knives. A grief that seemed out of place, surrounded by such anger.

Everything was gone. Everything they had. Everything they had worked for. Thrown away for... for what? He could not forgive this. Could not bear to see it. To see Dan become a treacherous whore who whimpered and moaned and stole from him.

This was not Daniel.

And the broken sound that forced its way from his throat was almost like death. Perhaps it was. Because life without Daniel barely seemed worth the breath spent living it.

How could she do this to them? How could she break such bonds? How could she violate something so—not sacred— important, essential to his sanity? How?

"Why?"

The growl is laced with malice and distrust. With disgust and hatred. It's all he has left after all these years. And it hurts. Like nothing he's ever felt. And the eyes that wind their way up to his mirror the pain he is hiding behind the mask. It's wrong on that face.

It seems to run deeper, to pull at his chords. The softer plains and wider eyes pull him into the emotion without even realising. Had he ever been this weak to a woman's wiles before? To Daniel's intense and overbearing sentiment? His instincts felt wrong here. He did not want to protect her from this. From the pain she was feeling. That she had caused! Did he?

"I needed you." The words should seem hollow from her mouth, but Daniel's tones force their way through the grit and tears, and Rorschach listens, "Your way of... I needed to know I could do—."

"Nite Owl not good enough?"

"No!" And the shake of her head is so vigorous and desperate that he doesn't interrupt again, "I'm... I'm not good enough for Nite Owl."

The tears are wrong. Flow too freely. Even for this strange version of what was once his partner. There are dozens of feelings playing across that ever-readable face, and Rorschach wishes for the cowl and goggles that used to hide this. Used to give him an excuse for ignorance. So he could walk away and not have to deal with them swelling through himself.

Her bloodshot eyes were like fingers dipping into a calm pool. The ripples spreading as they lingered upon the surface. She's a weeping mess on the floor, curling into herself, overshadowed and judged. And if he had been there, over the last month, he would have known she had spent it curled up like this. Trying to disappear. Foetal and shivering.

"N... not like this. I'm... I'm not Nite Owl like this. I'm disgusting. I'm hideous. There's... fluids." And the word gets stuck in her throat like coughing up bile, "I'm wrong. Wrong shape, wrong size, wrong reasons. Just wrong."

"My face—"

"Was the only one I could use, okay?"

And the anger makes him flinch. Again it's too familiar. Too much like Daniel to deny, and yet he still tries as the words are spat at him in that clipped tone. A tone that is always followed by heavy sighs and forced calm.

"I can't be Nite Owl; I can't even look at him! So your goddamn face was the only thing I could stand to see in the mirror, alright?"

With that Rorschach fell to his knees, all the other words trembling from her mouth in the darkness, trailed by tears and rising bruises, faded into nothing. Just a warble in the subconscious as his heart pound in his ears.

He stared. Stared at the way she picked at her arms, as though trying to scratch away the skin. At the way she avoided looking at anything of her own body. Of her own existence. Tried to make herself seem small and unnoticeable. She even forced her voice to stay burnt and in mimicry of his, as though the natural register caused her pain.

It was like looking at himself. It was like looking at Walter. And with that Rorschach finally understood, that Daniel finally understood. She finally knew what it felt like. She knew what it was like to hate everything she sees behind the mask. She finally understood.

"Say it again..." The tone suggests a command, but it sounds like a request, gentler, because he knows now he should never have stayed away.

"What?" Confusion plays across her eyes as her train of thought is interrupted, and to anyone else it might have been cute...

"My face was the only one you could lo-"

"Look at in the mirror?"

Then as brown eyes widen to what they had just acknowledged, recognising the significance, a mask is pulled over brunette hair and tear cracked cheeks.

Before anything else could be uttered. Before anything else could happen. Could change. Could falter. He pulled what was left of Daniel up to her feet and straightened her collar. It was so domestic. It seemed very out of place in the circumstances. Two near-identical monsters watching each other in the dark, but that's why it mattered. This moment needed to last. It had to survive.

This was the first time they were ever going to be truly equal, now that he could see it. The ink swirled to fit to the curves on her face. It looked right. It was beautiful. It was frightening.

"Go home." This is an order, not to be argued with as he turns to leave through the window and not the door.

Fingers, however, curled into his collar bone and gripped with more power than he expected. But he had to remind himself this body was still Daniel, no matter how wrong, and Daniel was strong.

"Are you coming too?" The way it cracks, like a thousand bits of glass—

"Yes."