Ch. 43
It was hard enough dealing with something like this, let alone while pretending nothing had ever happened. At first, Laurie had hoped that Walter would come back, but he hadn't. After waiting for some time, Laurie had even wondered if she should talk to him. However, some part of her figured if that he hadn't told her where he lived, why should she have to bother looking him up?
Was that right? Was it right to think like that? Laurie couldn't even figure out if they had broken up or not. He had been so adamantly against it, as if her suggesting that he was implying it in his tone was outrageous to him. If that was the case, then why didn't he care enough to find her and work this out?
Laurie desperately wanted to tell someone -- she feared that her mother would laugh at her, that her father might get unnecessarily angry with Walter -- who else did she have after that? Dan? Laurie laughed bitterly at the thought. She hadn't even seen much of Nelly nowadays to talk to him about something like this. How could she even begin explaining to him now?
The months flew by, and Laurie slowly got better physically, but she only felt worse each passing day. The elections came and with them, a new president. Around that time, her father seemed to lose all luster for life, as well. She was probably contagious. Laurie's birthday came and went. Her father finished her armor in time to present it to her. She thanked him, but went into her room afterwards and quietly cried.
Her father, in a more aware state had asked her at some point where Walter was. She had told him he was busy. He looked disappointed and didn't ask again. Her mother was more persistent, and Laurie tried to avoid talking to her as much as possible. Laurie really didn't have anything left. So what else could she do besides go back out into the night?
Laurie put on her new costume, marveling at how protected she felt encased in thick leather. Her outfit hadn't changed drastically -- just more straps here and there, but she felt slightly heavier. Maybe she was out of shape, too. Or maybe it was her heart that weighed her down.
She patrolled lighter areas at first, and she was surprised to find the streets were pretty quiet. Agent Orange hadn't been heard from in six months, and the criminals were still cowering somewhere. Maybe they had all gone to the sewers like Underboss.
Laurie -- well, Nightshade -- wondered if Rorschach was out there somewhere, keeping tabs on everything; knowing where all the secret hideouts were. She ached to see him, but at the same time it scared her to think about him. She tried to put him out of her mind the best she could. In this state she could do without the distraction.
Nightshade made her rounds by herself, feeling unbelievably lonely. She looked around for Nite Owl II, even Ozymandias -- but everything was dead around her. She moved out into the crowded areas, and was surprised to find some wells of petty crime throughout. It seemed even the criminals stuck to public places now. Nightshade took care of some gang members mugging a man and felt better about herself. All the old moves were returning to her, and she was back out in the street again.
Nightshade had been out a few days before she realized that there was someone watching her. It was a man who stuck to the shadows, and at first glance he seemed to be wearing something bulky. On second glance she realized he was wearing a costume. A crime fighter?
The next day, he was all over the newspapers. A new kind of super villain -- Captain Carnage. Of course Nelly had to call for a well overdue Crimebusters meeting after that.
Nightshade really didn't want to go, but sometimes you just had to do things whether you liked them or not. Going to that meeting was like pulling teeth, but Nightshade went there anyway. She walked in to find Nelly setting up. Nobody was there yet. Good -- she could busy herself with something before everyone else arrived, minimize the embarrassment.
"Do you need help with anything, Uncle Nelly?" she asked.
Nelly looked up and seemed surprised.
"Oh, Laurie--" he said. "It's been so long since I last saw you. You've really grown up, haven't you?"
"I have?" she laughed. She never paid attention to that sort of thing. "I suppose so."
"Here, I've been trying to highlight the articles on Captain Carnage in various papers. Why don't you scan through to make sure I got all the facts down? I wrote them down here."
Nightshade sat down and did as she was told. She was nervous, and it was hard to read anything in that state of mind, but she tried. Half an hour had gone by before she realized that nobody else was going to show up.
"Well, I guess everybody is busy," Nelly said, looking disappointed.
"Yes, I suppose so," said Nightshade, trying to hide her anger. She went out into the street that night and was especially violent towards any law-breakers that she saw. She went home in a bad mood, only to find her father waiting for her. Whatever it was, it didn't look good. At first, she was sure Walter had befallen an accident, the way her father was looking at her. But no -- it was something else.
"Laurie," said Blake, as Laurie came in.
"Hi Dad," said Laurie, making a quick scan around the room. Was that a duffel bag at the foot of the stairs?
"Well," Blake straightened as he looked at Laurie, avoiding her eyes, "I'm leaving tonight."
"Where to?"
"Got called to 'Nam. Couple of hours ago."
"The war?" Laurie couldn't believe what she was hearing. "I thought... I thought you'd already been to war. World War II?"
"Yeah," Blake sighed. "I have. But I work for the government, and they want me to help them intervene."
"When are you coming back?"
"When the war's over."
"When will that be?"
"I don't know, Laurie."
"Can't you just not go?"
Blake was silent for a long while. He wasn't looking at her.
"No," he said, finally. "I have a duty to serve this country."
"Haven't you already served it enough, Dad?"
"Laurie--"
"What if you die out there?" Laurie wiped at her eyes. "What if I don't see you again?"
"I'm...I'm sure I'll be fine." Blake's eyes had gone glassy. "Don't worry about me."
"Of course I'll worry," Laurie said, shuddering from her effort not to cry. "You're my Dad."
"Yeah, and not a very good one, if you ask me."
"No -- you are." Laurie wanted to hug him, but she knew she would lose her control if she did. "Dad -- how could you just leave like this? I didn't even have time to prepare. You didn't either."
Blake looked horribly guilty. Laurie had a feeling he had known for quite some time now.
"I'm sorry, Laurie," he said. And he did indeed look sorry. "I'm really sorry, but there's nothing I can do."
"You can do something," she told him. "Tell them you won't do it. They can't make you."
"Laurie..."
"Where am I going to live?" Laurie started to panic. "I don't want to go back to Mom's."
"You don't have to."
"She'll say bad things about you; say I made a bad choice to stay here with you."
"Laurie, you don't have to go anywhere." Blake held out his hand. "You can stay here. The house isn't going to go with me."
Laurie looked around at the house that seemed so much bigger and colder now at the prospect of Blake's absence. And she didn't even have Walter, either. Laurie put her face in her hands and cried silently.
Blake stood by, looking stricken. Laurie looked up and approached him, putting her head on his chest because that was as far as she could reach.
"Dad, things have been terrible," Laurie told him. "I don't even know if I broke up with Walter or not."
"What?"
"I haven't talked to him in months, many months, Dad -- we fought about the stupidest thing; he couldn't tell me where he lived, and after that I never saw him again. Why would anybody break up over something like that? If we could have at least ended it then it wouldn't be so bad, maybe, but I hate being like this, being in limbo and strung along waiting for something that isn't happening." Laurie cried so hard she thought she was going to black out. "It's so hard, living with nobody but him and you and Mom -- I find it so hard to tell Mom things, and Walter's gone, and now you're leaving too."
"Laurie." Blake sounded astonished.
"Dad, you can't go -- you shouldn't have to go," Laurie looked up at him, pleading with her hands and her eyes. "That war is terrible. People say it shouldn't be happening. People say we never should have gotten involved. It's bad for us, and it's going to be bad for you, and when you come back you won't be you anymore, and I won't see you ever again."
Laurie moved away, pacing in the way that Walter so loved to do.
"Everything's lost around me, Dad -- what's wrong with me? I wish I could be normal like everybody else, have friends, be something other than a crime fighter. That's not an identity; that's just an excuse. Something we came up with to really avoid looking at ourselves. I look at myself and I don't see anybody but a scared girl who's lost a big part of her life to an emptiness that should never have been there."
Silence.
Laurie looked up at her father again.
"Please don't leave, Dad."
Blake looked down and shook his head.
Ten minutes later, he was gone.
Laurie didn't have any tears left to shed. She sat on the living room couch, dazed. Suddenly, she felt weak, so she lay down and fell asleep. When she awoke, the sun was deceptively cheery and bright and for one wonderful moment she thought the night before had been a terrible dream. Realization made it all the more painful than the first time she found out. Laurie stood up and went to the mantelpiece, touching the pictures, some of people she never knew, and some of people that meant so much to her. She pulled down the picture from 1940. The Minutemen. Brothers, comrades, friends, lovers, all of them, bound together by their cause -- brought together by the one thing they had in common. What a lie it all was. The Minutemen, with only each other to rely on, had torn one another apart. Seeing her father looking so young and carefree -- only slightly jaded, oh so very cocky -- a picture taken before a mistake that spiraled out into something beyond control, it broke her heart. She saw her mother standing behind him looking so radiant and innocent and beautiful. Regret, so much regret poured over Laurie then, over circumstances that were beyond her. Things that she couldn't have controlled even if she had existed back then. Regret for things that could have been, of her parents being together, of her living with both of their love from the start. Would she have been a different person, then? Laurie imagined how, growing up with her father, she would have just told him -- she would have told him she didn't want to fight crime, and he would have let her do what she wanted to do. She never would have gone out into the streets to show her mother; but then she never would have met Walter.
Laurie cried, not wanting to think too much about him, but he was all she had left to think about. Her head was telling her that she should move on and try to take some sort of control of her life, to let go of this man who had so much in him but could only give so little. But she couldn't do it -- she couldn't let go. Her heart was stretched beyond anything she could bear and it only hurt to think about him, but she still loved him and that was the most agonizing part of it all. She just couldn't let go. Laurie knew her father hadn't let go of her mother, either. And look how he was, trying to make some sort of sense in life, stumbling and finding nothing and in the end dying in a war that had no purpose.
Laurie didn't mean in the physical sense, either. That war tore a person apart and though she didn't like to focus on it, she had seen enough of it to know that this war was damning to them all. She was certain her father knew even better than her, and that was the worst of it. Her father had so much insight -- he saw into things that people would miss otherwise, and yet he continued on this path of destruction. He was digging a hole for himself to fall into and Laurie couldn't bear to watch it. She wondered how her mother, if she had ever loved him, could allow him to throw himself down like this.
Looking up, Laurie felt like a hypocrite. She wanted to learn from her parents' mistakes, and yet she was repeating them. Here she had a man that she loved, and she was letting him go down a dark road that was getting more difficult to turn back from with each passing moment. She knew she couldn't control his actions or make his decisions for him, but she could give him a light that he could follow out. Avoid this tragedy.
Setting the picture down, Laurie stood up and went to the phone book. She looked up a name. An address. Then she sat down and wrote a letter. She got showered, dressed, and went out. If the world was going to keep moving and leave her behind, she was going to do her best to keep up with it, even if she kept getting kicked down. She'd been stabbed before, and she could be stabbed again. She was just going to keep going until someone really did kill her -- and she wasn't thinking of it in a metaphorical sense, either.
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To be continued...