Author's Note: This is a short scene that came to me one night after reading the Watchmen graphic novel, and after seeing the movie yesterday I decided to write it up. Since there aren't very many choices of female characters from the book (there's really only one choice, and she's, in my opinion, an irritating mess), I've decided to create my own. 'Katie' is another masked superhero who worked with Nite Owl and Rorschach during their crime-busting days. Katie retired when Nite Owl did.

That's about all you need to know. Enjoy.

Chapter 1 – Reunion

October 14th, 1985

As Katie was filling a teakettle with water from the tap, the antique grandfather clock that stood solemnly in the corner of the adjacent living room struck midnight. The familiar chime echoed through the dark house as she placed the kettle on the stove, cranked the heat, and fished a teabag out of a box on the counter. The only illumination that lighted the room was the faint, shifting white light that spilled into the kitchen from the muted television. She stood in front of the teakettle and covered her mouth as she yawned. With the other hand, she hovered her palm over the stove burner, checking to see whether or not the stove fire had caught.

The unexpected ring of her front doorbell made her jump. She hadn't been expecting any visitors, and certainly not this late. Arching her back and wiping her damp hands on the shirttail of her blouse, she crept out of the kitchen into the entry hall and narrowed her eyes at the door.

The stark blackness of the New York street outside was peering into her house through the two distorted windows on either side of her front door. The mid-October night was pitch black; the street light in front of her house was burned out. It had been burned out since she moved in seven months ago.

The growing sense of unease drove her to unearthing an old bottle of pepper spray from the small basket filled with miscellaneous keys that sat on a small end table next to the door. The label had been ripped off so that the can was unidentifiable. Just a small green canister that could have been spray paint.

She inhaled sharply and stood on her toes to get a glimpse through the peephole. A strange mixture of confusion, relief, and fear washed over her when she saw who was standing on her porch: an unmistakable figure – a man wearing a heavy brown trench coat, fedora, and mask over his face. She adjusted her grip on the pepper spray can and reached for the doorknob.

The door creaked when she opened it. The fear had not yet subsided, even as they gazed at each other, as close to eye-contact as could be achieved because of his mask. Neither of them said anything for a moment. When she finally broke the silence, her voice cracked and she had to clear her throat. "Fourteen years I've known you, Rorschach, and not once have you ever rung the doorbell until tonight."

Another moment hung suspended in icy silence. His left hand was pressed across his stomach and his posture slightly slouched, a pose that might make one think that he was shivering, but she knew better – his trench coat was unbuttoned and partially torn, and his hand was holding it closed.

When Rorschach finally moved, he spoke no greeting. He simply shoved her aside and barged through the doorframe, letting himself into the entry hall. She took a step backwards as he displaced her, and she stumbled backwards into the end table. The rattling basket nearly tipped over.

"Jesus Christ, Rorschach," Katie said as she steadied the basket and tossed the pepper spray back to the bottom. "What the hell are you doing here?"

He walked through the short entry hall and stopped at the archway into the living room, his wet shoes squeaking on the hardwood floor. He seemed to inspect the room, gazing at the yellow carpet and eyeing all the furniture before he finally spoke. "Came to talk to you," he said, glancing over his shoulder at her. Then he added, somewhat reluctantly, "Ran into some trouble on the way here." The shifting patterns of his mask offered no clue to his facial expression.

"Talk to me about what?" she asked. The rapid speed of her heartbeats still hadn't slowed.

"The Comedian is dead."

Her mouth twitched. She swallowed once, and the whistling of the tea-kettle on the stove mercifully summoned her away from Rorschach's gaze. Her bare feet padded across the carpet of the living room and onto the tile of the bordering kitchen. She removed the kettle, shaking her head slightly. "Tea? Coffee?" she offered, facing the wall.

Rorschach continued, ignoring her offer. "I think someone's killing off masked heroes," he said as he took a few steps into the living room. The squeak of his shoes fell mute as he wandered across the carpet, his masked face turning left and right, scouring the walls and furniture. He stopped in front of the television screen, where a muted image of President Nixon was giving some sort of speech. "Thought you should know. Already visited Veidt and Dreiberg."

Katie poured steaming water from the kettle into a china mug and dropped a tea-bag into the liquid. When she finally turned around, she found Rorschach on the other side of the island counter, leaning on his elbows, staring at her. His hand had abandoned the task of holding his torn coat closed, and it now hung partially open, revealing the top of an extremely ragged button-down shirt underneath. It was stained with blood.

"For Christ's sake, Rorschach," she said as her eyes fell to his coat. Blood was dripping from the buttons and pooling on the counter. He seemed not to notice. "What did you do to yourself?"

"Veidt and Dreiberg dismissed it, too," he said, ignoring her again. He perched his hands on the rim of the island counter, gripping the edge. When he continued, his voice was slower than usual. "Said I was 'paranoid.' Guess those two have to keep pretending that people like us are invincible." A small vase containing four white daffodils stood unassumingly on the counter in front of him, and he took one of the flowers between his thumb and index finger. He lifted it from the vase and rotated the flower in his hand, staring at it behind his mask. His blood-slicked gloves left red fingerprints on the base of the petals.

"When I retired, I put a lid on this stuff," Katie said, stirring her tea with a spoon. "Precisely for this very reason. I don't want to have deal with your–" She stopped mid-sentence and dropped the spoon into the mug with a quiet chink. She'd looked up just in time to see Rorschach drop the flower to the counter, his fingers shaking faintly. He was looking straight at the wall above the stove, and suddenly, his opposite hand which had been gripping the counter slipped away. Katie peered over the counter into the living room, and saw a thick trail of blood staining the yellow carpet along the path that Rorschach had patrolled her house.

Katie abandoned her tea and swiftly rounded the counter. "Sit down," she said, gesturing towards the couch. When Rorschach made no movements in response, she put one hand on his shoulder and pushed gently. "Knife wound? I can stitch you up."

"No," Rorschach answered quickly, tensing immediately at the contact. "I'm fine." He shrugged out of the touch and shook his head. "Not why I'm here. Came here to warn you, that's all. Owe you that much." He released the counter and began heading for the front door. "Going now."

His walk was unsteady, so she trailed after him, afraid to offer a hand yet feeling morbidly obligated to do something. He looked as if he was about to collapse.

She bounded in front of him and blocked the archway into the entry hall. "Rorschach, sit down," she commanded, steering him towards the couch. He seemed to glare at her as she blocked his path, the pattern on his mask twisting into a bewildered blob. It took only a moment before another wave of vertigo appeared to spin his balance. He followed her slowly, as if in a daze, and when he finally sat down he landed with a dizzy thump. "You've lost a lot of blood," she said. "Speaking of 'pretending to be invincible,'" she added quietly as she strode down the hall and disappeared around a corner.

When she reappeared a minute later, her arms were full of professional medical equipment – thread, one scalpel, tweezers, liquid anesthetic and a needle, bandages, and a disinfectant solution. She placed all of it on the coffee table and first reached for the anesthetic.

She was preparing to fill the needle's canister when a gloved hand grasped her forearm, smearing a bloody handprint onto her sleeve. "You know I hate that stuff," Rorschach said, his words slightly slurred.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "It'll help with the pain," she said, the needle still in hand.

"Doesn't hurt," he replied. He didn't release her forearm until she'd placed the needle back on the table.

"Fine," she said dismissively, shrugging. "But you need to show me the cut."

Rorschach's mask held her for a long moment, as if contemplating. Coincidentally, the shifting patterns twisted into something that looked vaguely like a frown, and the pattern froze for longer than she'd ever seen it remain still before. When Rorschach finally dropped his guarding hand from his stomach and opened his trench coat, the ink fell to his chin before resuming its normal constant shift.

The button-down shirt he was wearing beneath his coat was a gruesome sight. Katie had been expecting a knife-wound, but this looked more like someone had dragged him across the surface an enormous cheese-grater. "Jesus," she muttered, leaning in to inspect the damage. "What happened?"

Rorschach let his left hand rest at his side and took a deep, hoarse breath. "Was walking past that old warehouse about a mile down the street on my way here. Smelled gasoline, lot of it, coming from the inside. Decided to investigate," he explained, his voice still unusually slow and tinged with a slur. "Broke down door and climbed stairs. Found two men pouring gasoline all over the second floor. Looked like arson."

Hesitantly, Rorschach unfastened the buttons that remained intact on his shirt and opened it while he talked. Katie winced when she saw what his shirt had been concealing; his stomach was streaked with thick gashes that were each oozing a disturbingly large amount of blood. Small pieces of glass were jammed in between his flesh and under his torn skin. "And?" she asked, frowning up at him.

"Tried to stop them. One of them seemed to recognize me, though. He said something to the other – couldn't hear what he said – and then they both dropped the gasoline. They sprinted for the opposite staircase, the one near a large window that faced the street. I caught up to them, and tackled the one in back, picked him up, and threw him through the window." Rorschach raised his right hand to his face, examining it, as if looking for some sort of defect. "Didn't notice he'd grabbed a good hold on my sleeve."

Katie bit her lower lip. The entirety of his lower torso was a ragged mess of torn flesh. Silhouettes of his well-muscled abs were visible beneath the blood, expanding and contracting with each breath he took. His chest was mostly free of the glass wounds, but it was covered in a hypnotizing quantity of scars, some more faded than others. Katie found herself unable to look away.

"Man didn't let go of my sleeve. Dragged me through the window with him. Dragged me along the lower frame… glass teeth…" he trailed off. His speech was becoming increasingly slurred, and he didn't seem to notice the pair of probing eyes observing him with veiled unease.

She reached for the tweezers on the coffee table. Her blood was pounding in her ears, pulsing through her so quickly that it had almost reached a point of discomfort. Maybe it was the sight of all the blood; maybe it was the utter strangeness and absurdity of the fact that Rorschach, the reclusive man who she'd partnered with for nearly six years back in the day, the man whom she'd known for fourteen years and yet never seen his face, was laying nearly unconscious on her couch. When she brought the tweezers to his wounds and began to sift through the torn flesh looking for pieces of glass, her hands were trembling.

"Do you remember…" she whispered, trailing off. A slight incline of his head said that he'd heard her, but she couldn't bring herself to finish the inquiry. Rorschach didn't press the matter.

Katie worked in silence for several very long minutes, plucking glass shards out of him and setting them on the coffee table for lack of a better disposal container. His blood had begun to coagulate around the edges of the gashes, but each time she pulled a piece of glass, the clot surrounding it broke and began to gush with blood again. She was beginning to get worried – he'd lost so much blood – so she tried to work quickly.

Rorschach didn't make any indication that he was in pain throughout the entire procedure. Not a budge, not a flinch, not even a murmur. The only sounds that filled Katie's ears were the soft chinks of the glass pieces falling onto the coffee table and the rushing sound of her own blood and breath coursing through her. When she had finally fished out all the glass from his flesh, she reached for the bandages, and applied the disinfectant.

"This might sting a bit," she said quietly and started taping him up with the bandages. Rorschach still didn't move. Katie wondered if he really had fallen unconscious from blood loss.

She began bandaging from the bottom-most wound and worked her way up, all the while waiting for him to make some kind of indication that he was in pain, waiting for him to snap, waiting for him to swat her away. By the time she unrolled the last bit of tape and applied it to the final wound, his entire lower torso was blotted with patches of white bandage. She pressed down along the topmost strip of tape, making sure it was secure against his skin.

But she didn't stop there. She tilted her head and leaned over him, her dark blonde hair falling from behind her ears and dropping into her face. Her fingers never left his chest; they glided from the boundaries of the bandage to his skin, and very lightly traced the contour of one particularly large scar that stretched across the middle of his chest. His skin felt coarse and hot on her fingertips.

Now, suddenly, in the first sound she'd heard him make in over ten minutes, he groaned in protest. His dormant body lurched to life as he pulled himself upright against the back of the couch.

"Sorry," she said quickly, louder than she'd intended. She retracted her hand immediately, as if recoiling from a snapping dog. "I'm so sorry," she repeated as she sprang from the couch and stumbled towards the kitchen, one hand on her forehead.

Rorschach sat staring at the wall while she staggered back to the counter and began stirring her now-cold tea. He looked down at himself, observed the bandages, the perpetual expressionless face plastered onto his mask. Slowly, he turned his head towards her, and saw her standing at the counter, still stirring the tea with a spoon. "Sorry," she kept saying quietly, shaking her head.

In near slow-motion, Rorschach gripped the armrest of the couch and pulled himself to his feet. His trench coat and shirt were still wide open, making him look larger than normal, even more menacing. The white bandages on his stomach were a stark contrast to the darkness of the living room surrounding him. He was walking towards her, head slightly tilted, fedora just barely off-balance. She simply continued fumbling with her tea, unable to look at him, but fully aware that his footsteps were getting closer.

A cold gloved hand on the front of her neck made her gasp. He had halted next to her, masked face staring, his expression utterly unreadable. And then he shoved her by the neck against the white refrigerator door behind her.

He moved a few steps closer, cornering her against the refrigerator. He brought his face very close to hers, so close that she could hear the raspy breathing through the fabric of the mask. His smell was a pungent mixture of body odor and cheap cologne. She swallowed once, and the grip on her throat tightened. He stood in pensive silence for what felt like an eternity, simply holding his face an inch from hers. She chewed her lower lip, watching the shifting pattern of his mask twist and morph in befuddled patterns, studying its disturbingly beautiful symmetry.

He flexed his left hand and raised it to her cheek. Very gently, he traced the side of her face with his index finger, which was still caked with partially dried blood. The act left a thick smear of red on her pale skin. When he finally spoke, his words were sharp, deep, penetrating.

"You're very good at making me hate you."

His iron grip released her throat. He withdrew and strode towards the door, assuming an eerily calm pace. His hands went to the remaining buttons on his torn shirt and he re-fastened them, buttoned up his trench coat, and re-adjusted his fedora. When he reached the front entry, he pulled open the door and was swallowed by the dark streets of New York, leaving the doorway wide open behind him.