A/N: LOL! Kinky Bootz, would you believe me if I told you, that until I posted this on the kinkmeme, I didn't even think it was scary? Maybe Angsty, but no scary? So when you say you're seeing dirty thing, there is a large chance they're there, and I just haven't noticed them xD.

ENJOY EVERYONE - This one is only short, the next one will be longer. Promise.

Daniel felt like she was dying. Not the same way she had before. Not from the inside, with black dots and acid, but choking herself with her own hands and tears. Scratching at her throat, trying to scream out the horror, but all that comes is broken moans and ruined words. All that comes is an inhuman roar.

She is trapped inside zips and clips. Scratching at her insides. Pulling apart her soul. The monster laughing in her ears like some rabid hyena. Tearing her mind asunder with anger and chaos and an absence of control. Mocking her. She is terrified. She clutches Rorschach, and see's the fear in him too. She screams, and this time the words are there, lost in the noise, but they're there.

"Get me out of here!"

xxx

Everything is disjointed. Sliding in and out. Rocking back and forth. Screaming in the sweat. She's sure there are hands trying to hold her together. But they're just overlaying mass, breaking seams. Clinging for dear life. Writhing in horror. Their faces and their eyes and their blood and their mouths contorting past her eyes like some broken movie reel. She could have- She almost-

She wanted to vomit. Pull her stomach out through her throat and rub it on the floor. Get the taste out of her body, not just her mouth. The taste of hate and torment.

"Not on you, Daniel." Comes his whisper, the dawns early light pouring through the living room curtains.

But, yes it was! It was all over her. Sliming across her skin, suffocating her from the outside in as she threw herself onto the floor. Scratching against the carpet, like a dog scraping off fleas, she groans into the thread. Her body burns, turning shades of irritated red and she hates it. Naked, and dying, falling apart all over again. The only difference now is that he is here, grabbing at her shoulders and pulling her up to look at him. The only difference is he isn't running this time.

"It's in you." He breathes over her cheeks as she pulls him close, needing the contact now more than ever, "Right where it always was, where it belongs."

xxx

"Too much Daniel!" Rorschach's voice is distant and admonishing, but dripping with anxiety.

He's trying to hide it, but she hears it anyway, even if the words don't get through. They are just background noise as she trips over boots, and is yanked from her armours legs. Torn from the chest and left bare. To crawl over a dusty floor. Shivering like an animal thrown out into the cold.

It is akin to being gutted or born. Stripped of identity and self. Of sin and decay. Left stinking but clean on the cold basement floor, but whatever Nite Hawk is, she is crawling through her veins like a disease. Crippling. Digging her claws in. Finding a place to stay.

Scalding fingers grab at her skin, she can't tell if it's leather or callous, and the contact on her pores is enough to make her moan. To shut Nite Hawk up and allow her to be lifted from the floor and carried out of the basement, retching into a chest that's dark and distant.

"Did too much."

xxx

He's right. She knows he is, and it makes her whimper, pull him closer. Whatever Nite Hawk was, she had always been there. She'd just never been needed. Not needed like Walter needed Rorschach. Not like Nite Owl was needed, as a disguise to protect her from the world's eyes. She was needed just to breathe, to move, to function at all in the dark beyond the brownstone. She was the only thing keeping Daniel standing.

She felt like her body was just buzz and blood. No skin, no heart, no mind. She needed him closer; she needed to feel real and as his forehead meets hers, her entire body quivers. When he stays as rigid as a board, it only makes her sob.

Yes Nite Hawk was horrifying, yes she was cruel, yes she was merciless, but she was freedom. Freedom from being trapped here, like this, bubbling in her own skin. Daniel was lost in her shadow, but maybe that's how it was supposed to be. Maybe all she had to do was remember who was under the mask, just like Walter did. Remember that no matter what the masks made her into, she was still Daniel. Somewhere. She would always be Daniel.

xxx

Daniel grips his mottled lapels. Stops Rorschach – Walter – from leaving her here on the floor. From running, or hiding, or whatever it was he planned on doing. Gripped him hard, pulled him down onto his knees.

"No." She gasps as he closes in around her fingers, "Need you. Don't- still not..."

He doesn't say a word. And she is glad, again, because words are so trivial in times like these. He just unfastens his coat, opens it wide and pulls her inside. The very act itself has her breathless, choking, shaking. He guides her hands around, like she's a child who doesn't know what to do. Doesn't know how to hug. He lets her wrap her legs around him as he lies back against the sofa front.

There are no soothing hands, no rubs against her bare back, he only pulls his coat around her emaciated body and holds her. Listening to his heart beat, as fast as bird's wings, he's so frightened of this, but it is completely enough. This one show of tenderness is completely enough.

"There's always someone in here, Daniel, waiting." He whispers after what seems hours, the very words making his skin vibrate against her unsure fingers, then his arms do tighten, as if to put weight in the words, "Promised I wouldn't go anywhere."