Disclaimer: I am but a poor student living off bran flakes and orange juice. I do not own the Watchmen! Please don't sue! The only person I lay claim to is the narrator.

Note: This is a continuation of my first Watchmen fic, An Outsider Looking In. I suggest you read that one first, for the important reason that it introduces the anonymous doctor who

narrates the chapters.

An Outsider Looking Back

Prologue

I'm asking myself a thousand questions as I race down the train tracks to the cave that I haven't seen for ten years. What? Why? Most important, in my eyes at least, who? What could possibly have happened? Why have they waited so long before returning to protect the city once more? And who… who needs my help? Have they recruited some new members since I last saw them or is it the same crew as before?

Well it won't be exactly the same of course. Life and death have taken their toll. Dr Manhattan has left. Rorschach has vanished. The Comedian has died.

Not that the world knows that of course. According to the world a 69-year-old ex-military man fell through a window and had a fancy burial, but I knew the truth. I found out who they all were, one way or another, through either circumstance or fate, directly or indirectly, through third parties or straight from the horse's mouth.

I've always liked to think that I'm calm and collected, not given being starstruck. I'm a professional but it's still taken a while to come to terms with the revelations.

I prefer to think of them as faceless, nameless superheroes, trying hard to be superhuman but always failing…

But I know who they are now. I can match face to name to secret – and not-so-secret – identity.

There's a familiar glow of light at the end of the tunnel, and I can hear the hum of voices. I smile ironically; it's just like the old days.

Night Owl's voice stands out above the rest, the same voice I always recognise from the phone. I wonder if he lives above the cave, changing from Daniel Dreiberg – I can't get used to the name – to Night Owl simply by going down a set of steps.

I shake myself. This is no good. This is why I didn't want to know.

But it's too late for that now. We can't change the past. We can only reflect upon it…

Note2: Very short prologue, I admit, but I didn't really know what to put on the prologue that wasn't in the epilogue of AOLI. So without further ado… the first proper chapter shall be with you shortly.

If you haven't already guessed, this fic is going to detail the different circumstances in which the doctor came to find out the identities of the various watchmen… I'm doing them in the same order as before, so the chronology is a tiny bit messed up.