We apologise for the delay, and now back to our scheduled programming, we return you to your nightmare.
/coughs – Yeah this makes up for the short set up piece that was the last chapter xD
I listened to Shekel's 'The Number of the Beast' and 'This is Not Our Planet' - the filthiest dubstep ever whilst writing this.
Ror's POV
"Daniel..." It echoes around him, alone in an empty room.
Darkness creeping through gaps in the walls, slimy and ringing with butchered silence. Everything is the same, but everything is different. Twisted askew. Unfamiliar. Lays just the wrong way. The world is dizzy, he isn't, and the Brownstone has never felt so full; it has never felt so empty. Stiff legs carry him to the basement door. He finds it open- it's never open.
"Daniel?" His own voice seems like a distant entity lost in the chime of nothing.
The stairs beat black and brutal against his stinging heavy eyes. Locked in place by the empty space between him and what was certain to lie beyond.
"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
It's a screech, barely human and hardly words. Rips through his temples. Claws in his scalp. Throws him back against a wall choking and terrified. But only for a moment, only ever for a moment, because-
"Daniel."
The basement oozes with frozen fear. Broken metal littering the floor. Light from nowhere, showing everywhere. Empty space and all the dust between. And he can't move. None of it fits together. Locked in place. Wretched and ragged under the face as a Nite Hawk beats itself against the wall. Crashes against the tables. Scrapes across the floors.
Rorschach wants to run. Hide. Die. Cry. Pull away and never see this again. She tears open the chest and everything pours onto the floor. Leaves empty shells still moving through the dark. Bones breaking. Louder than any screams. Jutting forth and cracking out. One side of the room becomes another. Venom leaks from her lips over the floor as she tries in vain to be free of the skin she is in. Abandon the person who isn't beneath. Until only the monster stares out at him, hungry and seething.
And there isn't time. There's not enough time. Never enough time as broken bitter yellow teeth pull at torn lips. As it rears forward, going for his throat, going for his soul, going for his heart. It roars, whatever it is, the beast that is roaming free. He supposes there weren't meant to be words, but he hears them anyway-
"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
The knife that wasn't in his hand, not before, never again after, drives into the empty chest. Snaps her asunder and leaves her pooling over the floor. Bleak and black, hissing and slithering. A pool of blood, piss, vomit and brittle bone.
Now Rorschach runs, now Walter flees. Up the stairs and out of the door too soon. Too soon to see fingers sliding out through the slime. To see arms pulling out red hair and blazing eyes. To see rouge and rot. To see another monster born from the first.
"Rorschach?"
The kitchen calls with a voice absent in the familiar. Pulls at his heart and makes his ears bleed under the ink. Daniel stands in the doorway. Not Nite Owl. Not Nite Hawk. Not the woman who had fallen asleep holding his arms. But Daniel. His Daniel. Rolling a cup between cloth and fingers, glasses perched in his hair. Boxers and half buttoned shirt. Like... Like this never happened. Like this never stole a single day.
"You alright buddy?"
And if anything could have sounded more broken, more happy, more thankful, it would have been escaping hidden lips, turning salty with tears.
"Daniel..."
The distance between them seems infinite and confused. Not knowing whether to help or hinder as he reaches out to touch what surely has to be true. What has to be home. What has to be safe and his and real.
Until fingers crawl up behind him, tiptoe into brown beautiful hair and pull without complaint or fight from the man underneath. Red nails and painted lips kissing at Daniel's neck and murmuring foul sounds Walter has heard before. Has heard all of this before. Seen it in horrid halls and stained bedrooms.
She shouldn't be here. She should never be here. Not on Daniel. Not in his home. Not poisoning the air with her foul stench and drooling words. She shouldn't be tempting men away from him. Not now. Not ever. She was dead. She could not steal his Daniel.
Walter whines and stumbles away as his mother strokes at bare chest and licks at exposed temples. Smiles at him through glazed eyes and rotting flesh.
"No..."
Smiles until her teeth bear and drive into willing flesh. Tear out jugular, vocals chords, pieces of spine and skull. And Daniel screams. Like he should have the moment she touched him. Like he should have the moment he knew what she was, had been. He finally screams;
"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
Bodies hit the floor, heavy and horrifying. Eyes rolling into the back of his head, Daniel dies wheezing. Rorschach dies sobbing, all over again. He dies.
Mocking empathy. Stupid sounds. Floating from her lips. She can't make words with those teeth. He hears them anyway. Digging into his soul and pulling out the black, rubbing it over his skin like mud.
This time there isn't a knife. This time the monster gets him. Grips him by the throat and holds him high. Snaps and growls, spits and shakes. He doesn't care. He can't care. Her blackened teeth bearing down upon his face. A snake and its mouse. Rips through his chest and out through his lips. Tearing him open to sink in its teeth. She eats him alive. And at first he is glad. To be ending. To be dying. To be joining his partner, dead on the floor. Together at last. For eternity, evermore.
Her hands drive into his skin, tearing out flesh and organ, clothes and bone. And it takes too long. Too long for him to notice. Too long to fight back. Too long to make it stop. Too long to realise she isn't killing, she's burrowing in. Finding purchase on his marrows, taking up host in his heart. Too long.
"NO!"
Turn. Mirror. Wall of mirrors. Endless walls. A circle of glass closing him in. But no Walter staring back, no Walter. No man at all.
"Daniel."
She's in his clothes, holding his mask, black eyed and broken. Tears staining her face as she stares back at him through cracking glass. She's wasting away. Her cheeks shallow, her lips dry. The clothes fall loose and her fingers are little more than skin covered bone. He tries to find a way in. A way to reach. To touch her still. Because even though she's not right, she's still his Daniel, and he can't bear to see her die a second time. His gloves squeak against the panes. He can't get through. He can't get free. He can't...
Breath echoes around, ragged and reeling. Rising in the air like clouds of smoke. Sobbing through the latex, fingers slide over his spine. His mother writhing through his bones. Scratching his muscles and tearing his skin. He feels sick. So sick it can't be real. Like he's meant to die, but he can't. Not yet. Not yet.
But nothing changes. Daniel surrounds him, only bone and blood left. Nothing changes. He's forced to watch her fall apart, piece by piece, until she's screaming. Throwing herself against the glass to make it stop. To get to him. And he can't hear any of it. Not a sound as he howls into the dark. Closes his eyes. He can't watch her die again.
"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
The glass shatters about him as a body collides. Grinds in and bears down. Digs desperately, cold and queer. Skin fuses and bones break to get inside. Daniel taking over. Becoming one and the same. Forced in. Forced in to the only safe place she can find against his will. But she's safe inside. She should have been safe inside.
Sinew ripples and rolls him through the black. Tosses his organs aside as screams bubble in his arteries. Fear and fury clashing between. It rides on his nerves and breaks through his ears. Spreads out into the Brownstone. A war beneath. He wishes he would die. Convulsing and shaking, foetal and alone, he wishes he would die. He let her. He let her in. Both of them. He let her be consumed by the rot.
It takes hours. Maybe days. For his body to cease. To drop him down and leave him heaving, sobbing, screaming. Useless and weak. Stupid and speechless. Daniel had been better than this. Better than his rotting ruins. Better than his mothers words. Better than anything, even in the face of the devil, she was better than this. She hadn't deserved it. None of it.
She shouldn't have starved. She shouldn't have screamed. She shouldn't have been consumed. She shouldn't have been feared. She shouldn't have been left.
He should have stayed. He should have helped. He should have seen. Now it was too late. It was too late to say sorry. It was too late to say goodbye. It was too late to hold her and tell her-
"Hush then why do you cry?" There's sobbing in the dark that's not his own.
To the sides and all around. A bell toll calling for him to open his eyes. And she lies beside him. Fingers sliding between his. Words like wails of a children's pain. And he can do nothing else. He can see nothing else. As he pulls her in and grips her tight. Like she'll disappear if he doesn't. Like she'll die if he doesn't keep her here. In his arms. Alive. And she whimpers at him, stroking at his mask. Like she can see the stained face behind.
"It's you and me the same as before."
It is serene, it is heart aching, it is time stopping. She shakes in her skin, rocking on her knees, convulsing and rolling, naked before him, bones showing under the luminous pale. The madness of blood and black, and violence and decay fade away to her fingers on his face. Her eyes searching, longing, loving, deep and dark, just like Daniel.
He loses himself in her, his heart racing just like before, but not the same way. Never the same way. As she lifts the lip of his mask and kisses at his stubbly skin, wet with shared sadness and fear. She's so clumsy and can't find her way, sobbing around him, deafening him, killing him. Until he can wait no longer for her to find the place she seeks through the torment.
Gripping her cheeks he pulls her lips to his, and she whines something more broken, and relieved than he has ever heard. He feels it too under his skin, because she is Daniel, his Daniel, under his fingers shaking with acceptance and joy.
This one sinks into him without resistance. Without horror. Slides through the gaps and into the pores. Leaves him alone, clinging to thin air. Wrecked and weeping on his knees as she wriggles under his skin, finding place with the rest of the pieces. Bringing peace.
"Rorschach?" Distant and worried, broken and gravelly.
Everything slips and pools away around him. Brings with it dawn and dirt. The smell of blood and sweat. His eyes open to see her again. Bloody mouth. Blossoming bruise. And he couldn't have stopped himself. Not even if he tried.
His lips against hers. He sinks this time, not her.
"Daniel..."