Chapter Text
"When in the hell you gonna go straight, Roy?"
Roy didn't respond as he grasped the bag of day-old bran muffins in exchange for a wrinkled dollar: Monday special. The money was offered in a shaking, freckled hand. Snatched away.
"You're an ugly son-of-a-bitch, and you're not too bright, neither," Frank--as in Frank's Bakery Frank--sighed upon further inspection of the mutilated state of the greenback. As good as trash, the way it was taped together with Washington's mug fractured down the middle. "But I'm only saying this 'cause I care."
Roy was too hungry to mind the verbal abuse. Moist, greedy noises came from him as he struggled to chew and swallow one of the stale mounds whole.
"How old are you?" Frank couldn't help but be curious about the vagrant who darkened his doorstep every week. The store owner barely gave him a chance to reply before assuming someone so low-down knew nothing about himself. "Don't know, huh? Christ, what raised you? You're not young, but you can't be that old with that goon haircut of yours. You're definitely not on the bright side of your thirties, that's for sure. Forty at the oldest... on account of your wrinkles but that just might be the effects of street-livin'."
The man in question shrugged ineffectually, staring at the baked goods in the glass display. Too old to turn tricks when he tried to fit in with the hustlers who lined the streets dressed as cowboys. Too young to fit in with the bum community who haunted Central Park after dark. Maybe the right age to be mistaken for a shell-shocked veteran when he sat strung-out on the front stoop of a condemned house, begging for change when times got particularly rough.
"Shit," Frank watched the window as customers approached the building. "The biddies are coming for their strudel. Quick! Get outta here before you scare ‘em away," Frank tightened the back of his apron self-consciously, his baker's paunch heaving in obvious distress. He walked out from behind the cash register and hustled the red-haired man out the door, shopkeeper’s bell ringing behind him. The change from the air-conditioned bakery to the blistering August morning sun was drastic enough to make Roy sputter out some of his food.
Due to the lack of funds he'd been involuntarily clean for a week now. He was in hell, and it was only yesterday he resorted to sniffing Elmer's at the grocery store before some kid and his Ma buying school supplies saw him. They'd stared at each other for a minute, caught in the headlights of two different worlds clashing. Roy had broke the awkward moment and slinked away before they got a hold of the manager.
Roy found a nice, secluded alley to rot in. He closed his eyes to allow his internal, compulsive narrative to take over. He thought of the ocean- unharnessed, filthy and far. Used for drowning, swimming, and catching raw fish that lay in orgies in the Chinatown market. When the days dragged by like wounded animals, Roy needed something to dream about.
It was then a pair of polished, impossibly black shoes cut through the dust and stopped in front of him. Roy did not startle, he sat up to gaze at his alley's guest. His brown eyes met the other man's through his sunglasses. "Mornin’," Roy began quietly.
"Good morning sir,"
Roy stood and hooked his tattered rucksack onto his right shoulder. He gave the stranger a once-over, unashamed in finding the guy's cleanliness and trim figure accentuated by his dark suit a pleasant departure from Roy's usual clientele. A turn-on, even. The guy was almost as attractive as someone like Adrian Veidt, sans the blonde hair. Though from the clinically detached manner with which the gentleman returned his stare, Roy could tell he wasn't cornering him for sex. He regarded the man's manicured hands regrettably.
"Would you like to make $5,000?" His tone was absurdly rational, rehearsed for accuracy.
Roy willed his expression to remain impassive, but his heart stopped and his ears burned.
"Are you interested?"
"Yeah," he had a death grip on the strap of his bag. Roy wasn't an idiot. He couldn't put a name to what he suspected he was agreeing to; he knew it was something bigger than him. The the kind of stuff you saw in movies.
The stranger exhaled as if he'd been holding it in for a while, revealing a smile that was nearly genuine. "I hope I didn't come off too mysterious. I'm not in the mafia or anything, you know. But I think we should discuss this in private. If you'll come this way Mister..." He waited for the street-urchin to fill in the blank, content to remain nameless himself because that inherently gave him power. The man placed a cold, guiding hand on his shoulder, and as they walked together towards the black car shimmering in the heat. Roy suddenly wanted to hit the pavement. His spine stiffened instinctively in fear; it seemed imperative that he back out now. Now or never. Run away and don't look back.
But.
"Chess," he replied as he climbed into the hearse-like vehicle. "Roy Chess."
-----
His claws, freckled and pale, flexed at the sound of feminine snickering outside. He pulled his gloves on, experimentally took them off again. There were still a few hours to be wasted between his lives, before nightfall. He swept the purple leather over his forehead, clammy and sweating. Humidity. Sick air seeped in under the door like a horror film. Hunched over like an invalid on his bed, Walter waited.
Rorschach's journal was on the overturned milk crate beside him, open to July 20th, 1985. The entry had been bothering him for sometime, and these occasional purgings required he get rid of anything which could be used against him in the case of his death. He reached over and carefully tore the page out, mindful of the binding.
The gloves were placed aside; he held only the sheaf in his trembling hand, regarding its deceptive delicacy. Walter scanned through the entry once more, familiar enough with it that he merely glanced at the text instead of churning through every sentence. The way he read his journal was much different from how he read other things. Books were nourishment, they saved his life in Charlton. He savored the experience of reading, regardless of whether it was Milton or a discarded geology textbook.
His own prose was a different matter. Rorschach took pride in his writing; it served as testament to his life’s work. But when Walter read the entries in moments of idleness it was a shameful act; he knew and felt things Rorschach couldn’t reveal.
The entry began typically enough, sprinkled with turgid language expounding on how society is like worms dying on the pavement the morning after a rainstorm. Walter could recognize that it was an off-night. The analogy led way to an actual account of the bust––the brief part of the entry that caused him grief.
Man selling crystal methamphetamine to minor; was only able to corner dealer.
Let him go.
Walter crumpled the page in his fist, shuddered in misery.
-----
Roy was escorted directly from the car into a warehouse. The stranger and his driver shrouded him, cutting off his view whenever his gaze searched for the nearest exit. He blinked in the sunlight streaming in through the high windows, relieved to have the blindfold off. Procedure, they'd explained, too casually and suddenly to Roy's protest when the black cloth was forced on him earlier in the car.
Inside it was blissfully air-conditioned. Boxes which could’ve housed army tanks littered the space as intimidating cardboard skyscrapers. Pyramid Deliveries, labeled each one. He was led through a series of fairytale doorways, up a flight of creaking stairs, and into a fluorescent-lit office with no view of the outside
"Mr. Chess," the surly driver left and only the attractive stranger remained. He sat behind the desk, inviting Roy to join him in the seat opposite. "You're warranted an explanation."
Roy could tell the stranger didn't really belong either, dressed up in his suit like a monkey in the circus. He was clean-shaven and composed, but the redhead could sense a deadness to his eyes, a darkness to his being, that he was on the brink of losing that calculated edge. Cleaned up. Maybe he started out the same way Roy did.
“What do you want from me?”
“Roy,” the stranger held up his hands disarmingly. “We just want to give you a job, clean you up. It’s sort of a... goal here. Taking young men off the streets.”
"The fuck did you blindfold me for?”
“Roy, you’re going to take part in a special project here. When we call on you, you must be ready. In the meantime, you’ll be working here, living here. We will prepare you. Discretion is all we ask for in return.”
-----
The door opened with no prelude of a knock or buzzing or his mother's slipper-padded footsteps. A ghost had entered. Walter sat in the dark on the kitchen floor and heard the familiar succession of murmurings lead to the mattress creaking in grim rhythm. Yet tonight there was almost something dignified in the noises, hushed and swift. There were none of the usual vulgarities that frightened Walter.
The ghost didn’t leave until the morning, and only then did Walter leave his hiding spot and enter her room.
"He came back!" she cried, a bewildered expression emerging through the smeared mask of makeup. She was helpless in the way she could never be clean. Walter climbed up into his mother’s bed and for the last time she didn’t turn away. “Everything’s gonna be different now.”