Heart's A Mess

Walter rams a fist into the bedding.

It does him no good; the bedding's too soft and absorbs the impact, but not his frustration.

Or panic.

He has no idea what to do. Nite Owl, this new vigilante, this kid—he's getting under his skin. It's taken Walter weeks to realize it, and now that he has, his new partner has already sunken in deep, through the pores and into the nerve endings. Too deep to be painlessly extracted.

Walter doesn't know what to do. He knows what he should do—dumphim,tellhimtofindanotherpartner,makehimlearnthehardway—but he can't bring himself to go through with it. Nite Owl is still just a fledgling. Cosseted by wealth and an easy youth. Without Rorschach, the wolves on the streets would eat him alive. Nite Owl is too naïve and green-horned for his own good.

Rorschach has to listen night in and night out to Nite Owl's prattling and liberal raving. He seems to voice his opinion on any issue that comes up, from the economy to gay rights to the environment. After several hours of listening to what spews from the man's mouth, Rorschach is ready to unleash his fury on the nearest available victim. In this case, his bedding. It'd been an entirely uneventful patrol, which meant more prattling and nothing to take his frustrations out on.

He doesn't know how much more of this he can take.

And at the same time, he knows he'll keep taking it, because Nite Owl is a good man, for a fledgling with weak, liberal morals. He's not much of a partner now—more like a sidekick, really—but he's getting better all the time and soon Walter thinks he'll measure up to a great man. A great partner.

For now, though, Walter's bedding is going to have to take a bit more abuse.

Call It A Day

Nite Owl is exhausted.

It'd by far been their longest, most tiring patrol yet. A record number of muggings, one of which led them to a more high-profile case, which turned into a chase all over the city. Archie had had to be left behind; they'd done the entire thing on foot. And now Dan hurts everywhere. He's beyond ready for a hot shower and warm bed, but first he has to man Archie back to the Nest. He slumps into the cockpit and makes a mental note to add in an autopilot.

Rorschach stands impassively behind him, close enough to invade Dan's space with his smell if not his actual body. Dan can't bring himself to care.

"I'm callin' it," he mutters, and Rorschach gives an unintelligible grunt.

Junebug

What they have is far from perfect.

Daniel knows this. He knows and accepts that they'll always have arguments that end in his tense apologies and passive-aggressive grunts from his partner, that they'll never have a decent conversation about anything other than "work", and that he'll never see the other man's face or know his real name. They're never going to go out to a bar and get drunk watching sports, they're never going to share a love of anything outside of instant coffee and being goddamn superheroes—not that Rorschach will ever admit to being a superhero, of course. He refuses to believe in superheroes on principle. It's just one more thing they disagree on.

What matters is their relationship works. Sure, it's only good for backup in dark alleyways, but when that's what you spend your nights doing, and one well-aimed knife or gunshot could land you six feet under, having the right person at your back means more than just about anything else. And Rorschach is always, always, the right person to have at your back. At Dan's back. Er, Nite Owl's—whatever. The point was, Dan took pride in their partnership and wouldn't do anything to jeopardize it.

Even if Rorschach was a bigoted, racist, homophobic, passive-aggressive, sugar cube-stealing jerk.

Dancing with Myself

Rorschach's first solo patrol after Nite Owl's retirement does not go well.

It's embarrassing to admit, but no matter how much of a lone wolf front he puts on, he's grown very much used to Nite Owl's presence. Without the familiarly ridiculous owl costume at his back during confrontations, without Archie to provide easy transport, without the police radio scanner and the ready supply of sugar cubes…

It was the longest, most tiring patrol of his life, physical priming or no. The fact was, without Nite Owl he was sloppy. Unused to going about the business of vigilantism solo.

His fighting skills and coordination and reflexes get better fast, but from time to time he still finds himself hearing a vast expanse of silence where there should have been meaningless chatter about the evolutionary adaptations of owls to different climates.

Makeover!

Laurie insists on changing their appearances, and Dan reluctantly acquiesces.

At her insistence, he switches to itchy contacts and polos and pastel colors that are truly unflattering, never mind the outrageously blonde shade of his hair. Laurie has definitely changed him, that's for sure.

Five years after…after everything, he wakes up in the morning and wonders who the hell he is. The face in the mirror is lined heavily with age, with a receding hairline and hideously blonde hair that is even more obviously unnatural now than it was before. He sees the beginnings of another potbelly, and this time he knows he won't be able to keep up exercising enough to lose it. He's old. So old.

He stops dyeing his hair later that week, and it bleeds out to a gray color peppered with a few remaining strands of brown. He starts wearing his old glasses again, but his vision's gotten worse so the lenses need to be replaced first. He falls back into nerdy sweatervests and owl-themed clothes, because he's old. And when you're old, things like being arrested by the leader of the not-so-new-anymore regime don't worry you. Little worries Dan now.

So he goes back to old habits, and ignores the pinched look on Laurie's face as the pastel-colored husband she'd manufactured melts away.