Chapter Text
Where are you going? You know I can't let you do that.
-
They materialize aboard Archie in a matrix of scintillating light, Rorschach still clutching his mask in one white-knuckled fist. It takes Dan a moment to orient himself, a minute more for the nauseous lurch of his stomach to settle and the dissonance to fade, then he grabs Rorschach by the shoulder with the intention of steering him into the co-pilot seat and giving him a damn good lecture on the merits of self-preservation.
He freezes, the words dying on his lips when he realizes they are in flight, hurtling unfettered through the sky with ocean and cloud reeling out beneath them.
An ugly crackling from the control panels grabs Dan's attention and he jerks into action, falling into the pilot seat. He splays his hands on the dash and scans over the readouts, unable to focus enough on of the scrolling lists of data to make sense of their situation. Their displays are glitching, mosaiced into jagged blue squares that stutter across the screens.
Dan feels the blood drain from his face and a wave of adrenaline crashes over him, dredged from reserves that he didn't know he still had. He glances sideways at his partner, who has perched himself on the edge of the co-pilot seat.
"Buckle up," he snaps, and he can feel the panic swelling in him. The urgency of his words have little impact on Rorschach, who merely stares with those awful dark eyes. They scare Dan more than the mask ever did. "Buckle up." Louder this time, much louder, edged with desperation and punctuated with button-mashing. "Damn it, we're going down, buckle the fuck up."
Dan rises to shove Rorschach solidly into his chair with a distressing lack of resistance and straps him in, fumbling with the mechanism.
Archie jolts, dropping a few hundred feet when the displays cut out briefly, but then stabilizes into a steady decline. The smell of ozone is sharp in Dan's nose; his eyes water from the acrid smoke that seeps from the sparking electrics. The air is getting thick, harder to breathe. Dan's ears ache with the rapidly changing air pressure. Claustrophobia crowds him; he's all erratic movements and half-described gestures as he tries to assert control over both himself and the ship.
His fingers skate desperately over buttons and dials. He yanks at the thrust levers. Archie is becoming less and less responsive as Manhattan's energy dissipates. A chunk of Antarctic ice is melting over the altitude display; he laughs, verging on hysterical. The sound of it terrifies him almost as much as the rattling and creaking of strained metal, almost as much as Rorschach's dead-eyed stare.
Rorschach just slumps there, slack-faced, eyes down, hands worrying at his mask. He's twisting the hem through his fingers like a rosary, as if that's the only thing that can stop them shattering across the surface of the ocean.
And maybe it is. Blind faith might be the only thing that can save them now.
Dan lets the thought hang there for a moment, then there's another jolt, a starboard list, and there's no time for anything else when they plummet towards the glistering waves.
-
It's hot.
So unbearably hot.
The clammy, suffocating kind of hot, the kind that steals Dan's sleep in the heart of summer, plasters his hair to his forehead and brings deathly-still nights that make him kick his tangled sheets away in frustration.
The clinging, damp kind of hot that won't let him breathe, denies his lungs the relief of cool, crisp air. The kind that frays his temper to a thread, brittle and fragile and ready to snap over just about anything.
That kind of hot, but worse.
Worse, because he's stranded in a godforsaken wilderness who the hell knows where, with only the highly conductive shell of his very expensive, very fucking irreparable airship as shelter, and only his very somber, very fucking unhelpful partner as company.
"He's. Broken," he says again, words carefully released from behind clenched teeth. "Over the past day—has it only been a day? Two days? I don't know, Jesus. Over the past however long, he's been soaked, frozen and now he's being slowly boiled in a sea-salt marinade. Half the tools I need are in my workshop, the other half are scattered over the beach, and even if they weren't I wouldn't know where to start and I'm tired and I ache and everyone is dead and I don't fucking know where we are and I just want to. Stop. For a moment. Please?"
Rorschach's mouth bows downward a few more millimeters in rebuke. "Was just thinking we could move further inland, to jungle edge maybe," he says. "Hot here on the beach."
"I know!" Dan exclaims, sluicing sweat off his forehead in unnecessary emphasis. "I know, man. But it's a goddamn miracle we made it to dry land at all." Dan places a hand on Archie's hull, wiping an arc through the salty grime. "He's not—I can't fix him. He's just going to have to rust away, right here."
He sighs and hunches down onto the sand, running both hands through his damp hair. At least Rorschach has snapped out of his fugue, if only to make untenable suggestions. It's better than the eerie silence of Archie's cockpit after they'd survived the impact in one piece, the only sounds the groaning of metal and the feeble thrum of the remaining, failing engine as they crawled along without direction or purpose. Rorschach hadn't said a word in those uncertain hours, hadn't moved from his seat—had barely moved at all—ripples of shadow passing over his dour features as the ship surged along with the tide, hanging just beneath the surface of the ocean like a bloated corpse.
"Daniel." Rorschach casts a blissful pool of shade as he leans in to speak. "Should take stock of supplies. Even if we're here only for short time, must make sure we have enough water and food."
Dan raises his head to look at his partner. He's stripped off the stinking trench and jacket. The once-white shirt is soaked and clinging to all the vicious planes of his body, and his hair has darkened where it's damp and curling with perspiration.
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. We should do that. And, uh, I think there's some sunblock in Archie's med-kit," he says, touching the tip of his ear.
Rorschach mirrors his gesture with a lopsided grimace, and it's the first honest-to-god real expression Dan's seen on the man's face since they busted him out of Sing Sing.
-
Back in the sixties and seventies, Dan had prided himself in keeping Archie tuned up and stocked with enough rations to support two people for a month. After the Keene Act, despite his intention to keep things in order—just in case—his impetus had abandoned him and on days when the cupboards were bare and he couldn't quite summon the effort to go grocery shopping, the cans of food had steadily migrated from his ship to his kitchen.
Hence, the supplies they have consolidated into one plastic box are rather pathetic. Enough beans and tinned beef to last maybe six days, a crate of two-liter bottles of water, and about a year's worth of powdered milk. A bright yellow plastic picnic set and a small pan that Dan used to catch an oil leak once completes their salvage operation.
Rorschach drops a handful of sugar cubes atop of the cans, and steps back. "Outlook is grim," he observes. "Wonder what native wildlife tastes like."
"I don't plan on sticking around long enough to find out," Dan says from inside Archie. He reappears at the hatch, a wad of clothing under one arm. "I found some old civvies. Want a fresh shirt?"
"No." Rorschach plucks at his sticky clothing. "Pointless exercise."
"Suit yourself. My costume is beyond unbearable though, be right back." Dan dives back into Archie's roasting interior. He'd torn off the sleeves and dispensed of the gauntlets and boots some time ago; still, stripping off the layer of Kevlar that remains is an incredible relief, even if the slacks he's found are a little too tight around the waistband.
When he emerges back into the bright sunshine, Rorschach is nowhere to be seen.
"Oh, god damn," Dan says, raking both hands through his hair. "Goddammit, Rorschach."
He follows the indents of Rorschach's footprints, funneled and shapeless in the dry sand, until they get lost in the rich loam at the jungle edge. There's no sign of passage through the thick vegetation there, so Dan returns to Archie, sits on the side that offers the most shade and swears to himself, long and colorfully.
-
He knows Daniel will probably worry, but that is simply the man's nature. It's not a trait that Rorschach cares to pander to, and he needs some time alone to tug at the knots inside his head. The need to create purpose from the remains of his deconstructed life presses heavily upon him.
He misses the familiar weight of his journal, the crisp clarity that ink on paper brought.
He sets off along the jungle edge, feeling the sun prickle the back of his neck despite the hat tugged down over his ears. He's barely conscious of the way he obfuscates his tracks in the dark soil beneath the canopy. Old survival instincts, adaptable to any scenario.
Almost any.
He can still feel the way the air had crackled around him, how beneath his clothes his skin had raised in gooseflesh that was nothing to do with the cold. He can't quite recall how it had felt to cry for the first time in a decade, only that it wasn't cathartic. He'd stood on the edge of a familiar abyss, pinwheeling, only to once again fall the wrong way. Pulled instead of pushed.
He walks for hours, navigating the island's coastline. It's mostly all beach, occasionally thrusting into rocky outcrops and cliffs that require a detour up into the dense jungle.
By the time Rorschach returns to the airship, the sun is dipping below the horizon and casting searing red and purple across the clouds, not so different from the acid luminosity of his city's sky. The Archimedes is silhouetted against the sunset like a beached sea-creature, and Daniel is perched atop him with a crowbar. The tide has receded, leaving a long, golden strand.
"Where the hell did you get to?" Daniel tosses the crowbar into the sand with a muted thump, and slides down Archie's side. He's bare-chested, his shirt discarded in a sweaty, sandy pile. Rorschach notes the way his stomach bulges over the waistband of his khakis.
"Afternoon constitutional," he says, pointedly.
"Yeah, cute." Daniel snatches up his top and shakes it out. "What did you find? Indigenous tribesfolk? Pirate treasure? A five-star island resort?"
Habitually, Rorschach looks at his wrist although he knows his watch is still in a box in Sing Sing. It's an annoyance. It wouldn't correlate to the island's time, but that is irrelevant; he would have liked to know precisely how long he was gone. He makes a rough estimate instead. "Island is circumnavigable in... under four hours. Maybe three and a half. River tributary about two miles along coast to the east. Outcrop with caves a mile beyond that. Would be dangerous at high tide, no use as shelter."
"No sign of Gilligan and company, I take it." Daniel's voice is muffled as he pulls on his shirt.
"Island appears uninhabited," Rorschach replies, since despite Daniel's flippancy, it's a valid piece of information. As an afterthought, he adds, "Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Nite Owl."
Daniel purses his lips as if biting back a retort, then sighs. "Yeah. I'm sorry, man. It's just—everything." He stares out across the sea for a moment, then softens his face into a smile. "At least you found fresh water. That's... that's a major worry off my mind. Now, help me with this."
He has dismantled the external layer of the airship, pried out rivets and levered free the curved panels of metal. One section of the hull lies on the beach, the concave shell harboring drifts of sand.
Rorschach takes a moment to appreciate his partner's resourcefulness. It's not as sharply honed as his own, but then Daniel hasn't spent the past eight years living rough by day and evading the law by night. Nevertheless, it was something he had almost forgotten, even as the line and flow of his body in combat has remained so familiar. "Will make good cover, not so stifling like this."
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I unloaded everything from Archie and moved it up past the tide-line." Dan lifts one end. "Just give me a hand to carry it. We should set up camp before it gets too dark."
They prop the remains of Archimedes up into a lean-to, between a jutting boulder and the rough trunk of a palm. They disturb some large insects, beetles with shiny chitin and mean-looking claws. Rorschach crushes one and peels away the chitinous exoskeleton, thoughtful.
Daniel doesn't try to hide his disgust. "Whoa there. We aren't out of food yet."
-
The temperature drops dramatically once night falls, and Dan is glad of the small fire Rorschach has managed to set, courtesy of a matchbook from Happy Harry's and some hastily collected driftwood, stripped of its damp outer layers. Dan had wasted several matches and made use of some inventive profanity before Rorschach had snatched the matchbook away, annoyance writ plain on his features, and kindled the fire with acrid-smelling tinned food labels. For his part, Dan had thrown a couple of green twigs into the flames, hoping that the heavy smoke would keep the mosquitoes at bay.
Dan prods at the glowing embers with a stick, sending motes of searing orange into the night sky. The jungle is a black wall at their backs, the ocean an expanse like the sky, delineated from the horizon by reflected moonlight. The tide whispers, fluid and eerie.
"The city was always so bright," Dan says in a bid to spark a conversation, or to at least break the vast silence. "You forget just how dark it can be."
Rorschach is hunched over, hands clasped in front of his knees. The fire illuminates him, intensifying the red of his hair and the raw pink of his burned nose and cheeks. "No," he says into his chest. "Never had that luxury." He meets Dan's eyes only briefly, but it's enough to discourage him from any further talk.
-
The dream is familiar, an endless vista of cracked red earth beneath his feet, featureless sky overhead. Only it's not Laurie before him this time, nor the Twilight Lady: it's Rorschach, masked and uniformed.
Dan reaches out to him, like he always does. He glows at the seams, bright flares spiking from his body in a harsh supernova, burning up his layers like paper. His mask melts, sloughing off in rivulets of black and white. His eyes are as blue and intense as the glow that envelops him, and then all Dan can see is his skeleton, the silhouette of his bones as they flake away, blasted into the alien troposphere by the detonation that consumes them both.
The bright afterimage floats before Dan's eyes, surreal against sea and sand and palms that are a soft gold in the dawn light. He sits up, gasping at the ache in his muscles, and it's a long, bewildering moment before the morbid imprint behind his eyes fades and his sleep-addled brain accepts that the beach is reality and not another deceit, a dream within a dream.
Rorschach isn't there, of course, just a sandy indent in the trench coat he had spread out to sleep on. There are insects swarming around it; large ants and horned beetles, probably attracted to the smell. Dan grimaces.
The fire has burned out and left drifts of white ash in the sand. Dan pokes at it, turning over the blistered wood in the hopes of finding an ember still smoldering. No such luck, and they only have four matches left, god dammit. He wonders where his glasses are. He could probably use them as a magnifying glass if it came to that—or there's a bounty of 9-volt batteries in his gear, and he's sure he'd stashed some steel wool in Archie to scour down the displays. They need to light signal fires. Big bonfires. Something.
He gives the fire a frustrated prod, and disturbed ash swirls against the early sky. He closes his eyes for a second, chasing back the unease of his nightmare.
Rorschach is there when he opens them again, casting a long shadow, a shovel propped over one shoulder like a doomsday sign. "Good morning, Daniel."
"Morning, pal." Dan rocks back on his heels, feeling the tight pull of sunburned skin over his shoulders. "Been digging for Aztec gold?" Light banter this time, not acerbic sniping. Despite the disturbing dream, he feels a little better for getting some sleep.
"Aztec gold is a myth." Rorschach drops the shovel into the sand next to their meager pile of possessions. "Dug latrine. Men's room is behind rocks thirty yards that way. Tide will take care of it."
"Uh, great. That's great." Dan rubs at his chin, fingernails rasping over bristle and precipitating a tiny avalanche of grit. He laughs suddenly. "Hey, do you remember why we have that shovel?"
Rorschach nods. " 'Captain Dread'. Small-time crook. Preoccupation with pirates." He shoots Dan a pointed look. "Buried fruit of petty theft like dog. Left us selection of maps, X marks the spot. Childish game, thought we wouldn't bother. Or would keep us busier than it did."
"No job too small," Dan says with a grin. "To this day I can't figure out what he expected to achieve."
Rorschach snorts, crouching to hook a can out of the box of supplies. "Infamy through gimmickry."
"Well, we'd know a bit about that, I guess." Dan eyes the strip of red skin between his shirt collar and fedora brim. "Did you find the sunblock?"
Rorschach straightens up. "Fine without."
"No, seriously. You're gonna fry." Dan locates the bottle among their heap of supplies, squeezes some of the contents into his hand.
"Daniel," Rorschach growls. He wields his tin of beef like a threat, tilting it towards Dan in warning. "No."
Dan lunges at him, wrapping one arm around his waist and throwing his full weight into his side. Rorschach stumbles, loses his footing in the soft sand and lands on his ass. Dan makes the best of the opening and smears sunblock across his forehead and down the side of his face.
Rorschach heaves him away and fixes him with a baleful glare that could probably crumble buildings.
"You'll thank me for it later," Dan says.
"Stop it," Rorschach mutters, turning away to wipe a hand down his face. He's shaking as he climbs to his feet.
Oh, hell, Dan thinks. "Hey. Hey, buddy. I'm just trying to—"
"Know what you're trying to do, Daniel. Know what you—" Rorschach turns to him, eyes lit with anger, his face lively for one terrifying instant. "Not going to thank you for it."
Dan takes a step towards him. "This isn't about sunblock, is it," he says, and he knows it's a stupid question, but some selfish part of him wants Rorschach to be that petty, to say yes, Daniel, your incessant mothering pisses me off. I'm angry about sunblock and not because you—
"No," Rorschach says.
Dan's temper rises in frustration, and he lets the words bubble out, hoping they'll ease the twist in his gut. "So, what? You wanted me to just stand there while you..." He shoves his partner's shoulder, hard, then grabs at the front of his shirt. He kind of wants to shake him. "After all the years we spent watching each other's backs? In what reality do you think I could do that? What the hell, Rorschach?"
Rorschach hunches his shoulders, shrugs Dan's hands off him as he turns away. He stalks off down the beach without sparing Dan another glance.
Dan calls after him. He is ignored.
He breathes deeply, calming himself until his measured exhales turn into heavy sighs. He runs a hand through gritty, sweat-damp hair, and sets off in the opposite direction.
-
The beach has that pristine, idyllic quality that Dan had always thought was a fiction—a composite designed for the covers of exotic vacation brochures and billboards advertising rum. The sea and sky are almost the same color. Manhattan blue.
He carefully doesn't think about Laurie, where she might be and who she might be with, doesn't wonder if Jon will tell her where he is. Doesn't wonder if she thinks he's dead, whether she will mourn him.
He strips off his sweaty clothes and scrubs himself down in the sea, and he's concentrating so hard on trying not to think at all that he almost misses the flutter of paper. It catches the corner of his eye, an alien scrap in the natural landscape. He kept some paperwork on Archie, but it was all safely locked in a fireproof case and it all survived the impact. He wades out of the water, the sun rapidly evaporating the moisture from his skin and leaving it tight and dry.
He approaches the paper with hesitancy, plucks it between finger and thumb, almost as though he expects it to be poisonous. The side he looks at is blank.
He turns it over, and finds his caution may be warranted.
-