Watchmen: untitled
Aug. 5th, 2010 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
what_we_dreamTitle: Untitled
Series: Watchmen
Pairing: None
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A night of crime-fighting; Silk Spectre joins Nite Owl and Rorschach
“Your partner drives me nuts,” says Silk Spectre, arms crossed, watching the shorter man disappear into the misty pre-dawn twilight.
“He just doesn’t have the strongest social skills,” says Nite Owl, with a kind of tired resignation.
“‘So glad you took them to heel’?” Silk Spectre turns back to him, outraged. “It would be one thing if it was a joke, but he never jokes. Just insults me, to my face, constantly.”
“He doesn’t really mean it, he’s just… dealing with people isn’t something he gives a lot of thought to.”
“No. Dealing with women is something he doesn’t give any thought to. Don’t deny it,” she adds, raising a finger when Nite Owl threatens to break in. “Rorschach’s the worst misogynist I know, and you know what kind of circles I run in. When’s the last time you saw him treat a woman, any woman, with respect? It wouldn’t matter if I wore a dress from neck to heel; anyone without a dick is a prostitute, and a prostitute is as bad as a child molester to him.”
“That’s unfair,” says Nite Owl quietly. Doesn’t expand.
“Is it? Because let me tell you, I honestly believe if he walked in on a woman – on me – being raped, he’d probably pull the bastard off, then blame her afterwards. Say she asked for it, she wanted it, she flaunted myself. God, I hate to think of his mother trying to raise him.”
“That was probably part of the problem.” Nite Owl crosses his arm. “Look, you’re right. Rorschach’s views about women, and plenty of other things, are… unfair and untenable. I can’t agree with them, and sometimes they make me mad as hell. Mad enough to take a break for a couple of weeks, sometimes. But there’s a difference between belief and action. A lot of the time I’m pretty sure Rorschach’s line of right and wrong is nowhere near mine, not even parallel. But whatever he thinks, he does recognize what society considers illegal, and that’s what he acts on. Yeah, maybe he would disagree with the motivation of the criminal, but in our job isn’t stopping the bastard what’s important?”
“Doesn’t make me hate it any less. I don’t know how you can stand it.”
Nite Owl shrugs. “He saves lives. More than I could, a lot of the time. And that’s what’s really important to me.”
Silk Spectre lays a gloved hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good man, Nite Owl. And if you can use that bastard of a partner of yours for good, it makes you all the better.”
Nite Owl smiles. “Thanks. Can I give you a ride – somewhere?”
Silk Spectre flashes him a bright, fun-loving grin. “No thanks. I’m a big girl. I can pound down crooks all the way home.” She gives him a wave and strides away, long, confident movements, leaving him alone.
----------------------------------------
They don’t work together often. For one thing she’s partnered with Jon, for another she can’t stand Rorschach, and for a third the problems that require three or more of them are few and far between. Not to mention she’s pretty sure Rorschach guards both his turf and his partner pretty closely, and suspects he organises his affairs to ensure they don’t need outside help. Probably worried she’ll corrupt Nite Owl with her feminine wiles.
Still. They don’t always avoid each other successfully, and they don’t always do as good a job as they would like to on keeping down crime.
They meet, purely by accident, in the middle of a street war between Knot Tops and Sharks. Jon is away in the Bronx tracking down a child prostitution ring, but it’s a long hard haul and he can do most of the work – hell, all of it – on his own and after a few hours of looking at the pictures and the testaments she needs something to punch.
The Knot Tops favour blades and, when they can’t get them, street weapons. Pipes, scraps of rusty metal, chains, anything heavy and swingable with, if they’re lucky, the bonus potential to transmit tetanus. The Sharks, a smaller more modern group, have nearly a hand-gun apiece. Larger numbers against more advanced technology. And, on three different sides, three masked heroes battering their way in towards the centre.
She comes across the fight entirely by accident and doesn’t even realise that Nite Owl and Rorschach are there until she spots a cape swirling in the distance as Nite Owl executes a sweeping roundhouse kick and some punk goes flying into a nearby chain fence. She spots Rorschach a few moments later as he springs up like a jack-in-the-box from where he’s been scissoring the legs out from a combatant and doing God knows what to him once he’s got him on the pavement.
It’s enough to know the two of them are holding their own. Group combat is always dangerous; group combat with longer-range weapons like chains or the long bars of steel that look like they’ve been ripped off fire-escapes which some of the Knot Tops are swinging can be exceptionally dangerous. Group combat with firearms is quite potentially fatal. It’s said that Ozymandias can dodge a bullet, but she can’t, and with idiots firing off their guns everywhere in the throng it’s quite possible she could be hit by someone not even aiming at her.
She lays a Knot Top out with a boot to the sternum followed by a kick to the head, and punches out another with a three-blow combo. Rolls on into a Shark from the back, takes him down with a dive and keeps him down by slamming his head into the concrete. Pours the remaining bullets out of his gun with a quick-silver move and then pitches it at a man far off in the fray, stunning him long enough for his opponent to take him down.
Between the two groups fighting and the three vigilantes, the original group of nearly fifty is down to less than twenty in what seems like minutes and certainly is less than a quarter of an hour. She’s not sure when her two comrades notice her presence; for all she knows they picked up on her before she saw them. Nite Owl is still over by his fence, tackling a pocket of the fighters who seem intent on trying to break away to brawl further down the street where they will only do more damage to property. Rorschach is slicing his way steadily in her direction, leaving heaps of carnage on both sides behind him, although a quick glance reveals not much that won’t heal – in a few years.
In her immediate vicinity there are three Knot Tops remaining, two going after her and a third fighting at close quarters with a Shark who’s either lost his pistol or was one of the unfortunates not to start out with one. She takes down one of her two in less than a minute, and pays for it with a hard blow from a pipe to the ribs.
It’s not her first blow of the evening; her arms must be black and blue with blocking them, and she’s let a couple by her, none bad enough to even temporarily incapacitate her. This one doesn’t either, although it slows down her reaction time enough that instead of knocking out her man on the first try it takes her three to put him down. By which time the third Knot Top has taken out his Shark and is turning around to see where his friends are.
There are very few men left standing now. In fact, she only counts two – her Knot Top and a Shark some ways behind him. Rorschach is somewhere off to her right, Nite Owl way off in the distance starting to make his way towards the last Shark, now levelling his gun at her guy.
Silk Spectre isn’t a pacifist. But she’s not a killer, either, and it’s not her job to judge these men. She can’t let one man blow another’s brains out in front of her.
She makes a run at the Knot Top, who’s lining up to whip his chain at her. His face is contracted in fury, whether at her or his unconscious friends or his lone-survivorship she has no idea. And then his face opens into an expression of extreme surprise as the front of his forehead explodes outwards in a burst of foaming red. Silk Spectre stumbles to a halt as he slowly crumples, knees giving out first and pitching him slowly forwards onto the concrete.
She’s still staring when something hits her from the side, tackling her full-force to the ground. She has no time to try to catch herself, simply goes down under the moving weight and hits the pavement hard, knocking the air out of her lungs.
The combined instincts to breath and not be stabbed in the ribs combine to force her to fight her way free of the weight on top of her and roll over to her hands and knees where she coughs and gasps until she manages to break the vacuum in her lungs and suck in air again. It’s only now that she records the sound of the second shot and looks up, head ringing. It takes her a minute to orient herself, and then she spots Nite Owl pounding the Shark into the ground.
Behind her there’s a rustling of fabric and she swivels around so fast she whips her ponytail into her face with enough force to sting. Rorschach is picking himself up at a sharp angle to her, adjusting his fedora with the arm closest to her – his left. Silk Spectre can’t tell whether he’s looking at her or not, but suspects not. She realises she’s waiting for him to ask her if she’s alright and, as soon as the thought flashes in, knows how stupid that is. She’s saved having to thank him for slamming her into the ground when Nite Owl jogs over, all concern and contrition.
“Are you okay? God, that – if he – are you hurt?”
She smiles, partially for him and partially at him, and tries to black out the image of splattering red from her mind. “Fine, just a bit sore.”
“Apologies,” says Rorschach gruffly from behind her. “Next time will allow bullet to hit target.”
She turns and, before Nite Owl can speak, cuts in herself. “I don’t think that’s very damn funny,” she says.
“Not laughing,” answers the man. “Don’t expect gratitude. Don’t expect complaints, either.”
“So now I’m ungracious?”
Rorschach snorts.
“Look, I’ve had it up to here with your chauvinism and your misogyny and your constant insults. If you have something to say, say it to my face.”
Nite Owl, predictably, interrupts. “I don’t think now is really a good time, guys. Maybe we could argue after the police turn up to book this bunch?”
The sirens are already nearing. Silk Spectre ignores them, crosses her arms.
“Nothing to say,” grits out Rorschach.
“And there’s nothing I can say, is there? Nothing that will make you believe I have as much right as you to be out here, and can do the job just as well.”
“Wasn’t aware you were competing for my favour.”
“I don’t want your approval. I want you to admit that you won’t ever give me a chance to even earn your respect.”
“Guys, I really think –”
“Now you’re competing for my respect? Fighting for recognition, rather than justice.”
“You just twist everything I say – everything any woman says! Just admit – you think you’re better than us. You honestly believe we’re worthless, don’t you?”
“Enough!” Nite Owl steps between them. “The police are going to be here in a minute, and they are not going to find us squabbling like children. They do not really need to find us at all, because that will mean paperwork and headaches all around. So let’s just agree to disagree for now, and go home, okay?”
She’s mad, but not mad enough not to see the sense in that. “Fine. But don’t expect me to give him a hand until he apologizes.”
“For saving your life?” questions Rorschach roughly, and Nite Owl gives her a look filled with request that says: either you walk away or I’m going to have to drag him away, and I don’t want to do that.
“See you around, Nite Owl,” she says, and turns.
“Yeah, see you.” There’s a whispered conversation behind her, and then a muffled exclamation. The sirens suddenly leap into prominence as the cars round a corner, and Silk Spectre steps into the shadows of an alleyway to look back at the two other men’s retreating figures. Nite Owl is – she frowns unconsciously as she struggles to focus – almost hovering over his partner, who is walking stiffly with both hands in his pockets. They pass under a streetlight, and she suddenly sees in its slanting glow, that the entirety of his right sleeve is painted bright red.
Silk Spectre walks home, and wishes she knew what that meant.
Series: Watchmen
Pairing: None
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A night of crime-fighting; Silk Spectre joins Nite Owl and Rorschach
“Your partner drives me nuts,” says Silk Spectre, arms crossed, watching the shorter man disappear into the misty pre-dawn twilight.
“He just doesn’t have the strongest social skills,” says Nite Owl, with a kind of tired resignation.
“‘So glad you took them to heel’?” Silk Spectre turns back to him, outraged. “It would be one thing if it was a joke, but he never jokes. Just insults me, to my face, constantly.”
“He doesn’t really mean it, he’s just… dealing with people isn’t something he gives a lot of thought to.”
“No. Dealing with women is something he doesn’t give any thought to. Don’t deny it,” she adds, raising a finger when Nite Owl threatens to break in. “Rorschach’s the worst misogynist I know, and you know what kind of circles I run in. When’s the last time you saw him treat a woman, any woman, with respect? It wouldn’t matter if I wore a dress from neck to heel; anyone without a dick is a prostitute, and a prostitute is as bad as a child molester to him.”
“That’s unfair,” says Nite Owl quietly. Doesn’t expand.
“Is it? Because let me tell you, I honestly believe if he walked in on a woman – on me – being raped, he’d probably pull the bastard off, then blame her afterwards. Say she asked for it, she wanted it, she flaunted myself. God, I hate to think of his mother trying to raise him.”
“That was probably part of the problem.” Nite Owl crosses his arm. “Look, you’re right. Rorschach’s views about women, and plenty of other things, are… unfair and untenable. I can’t agree with them, and sometimes they make me mad as hell. Mad enough to take a break for a couple of weeks, sometimes. But there’s a difference between belief and action. A lot of the time I’m pretty sure Rorschach’s line of right and wrong is nowhere near mine, not even parallel. But whatever he thinks, he does recognize what society considers illegal, and that’s what he acts on. Yeah, maybe he would disagree with the motivation of the criminal, but in our job isn’t stopping the bastard what’s important?”
“Doesn’t make me hate it any less. I don’t know how you can stand it.”
Nite Owl shrugs. “He saves lives. More than I could, a lot of the time. And that’s what’s really important to me.”
Silk Spectre lays a gloved hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good man, Nite Owl. And if you can use that bastard of a partner of yours for good, it makes you all the better.”
Nite Owl smiles. “Thanks. Can I give you a ride – somewhere?”
Silk Spectre flashes him a bright, fun-loving grin. “No thanks. I’m a big girl. I can pound down crooks all the way home.” She gives him a wave and strides away, long, confident movements, leaving him alone.
----------------------------------------
They don’t work together often. For one thing she’s partnered with Jon, for another she can’t stand Rorschach, and for a third the problems that require three or more of them are few and far between. Not to mention she’s pretty sure Rorschach guards both his turf and his partner pretty closely, and suspects he organises his affairs to ensure they don’t need outside help. Probably worried she’ll corrupt Nite Owl with her feminine wiles.
Still. They don’t always avoid each other successfully, and they don’t always do as good a job as they would like to on keeping down crime.
They meet, purely by accident, in the middle of a street war between Knot Tops and Sharks. Jon is away in the Bronx tracking down a child prostitution ring, but it’s a long hard haul and he can do most of the work – hell, all of it – on his own and after a few hours of looking at the pictures and the testaments she needs something to punch.
The Knot Tops favour blades and, when they can’t get them, street weapons. Pipes, scraps of rusty metal, chains, anything heavy and swingable with, if they’re lucky, the bonus potential to transmit tetanus. The Sharks, a smaller more modern group, have nearly a hand-gun apiece. Larger numbers against more advanced technology. And, on three different sides, three masked heroes battering their way in towards the centre.
She comes across the fight entirely by accident and doesn’t even realise that Nite Owl and Rorschach are there until she spots a cape swirling in the distance as Nite Owl executes a sweeping roundhouse kick and some punk goes flying into a nearby chain fence. She spots Rorschach a few moments later as he springs up like a jack-in-the-box from where he’s been scissoring the legs out from a combatant and doing God knows what to him once he’s got him on the pavement.
It’s enough to know the two of them are holding their own. Group combat is always dangerous; group combat with longer-range weapons like chains or the long bars of steel that look like they’ve been ripped off fire-escapes which some of the Knot Tops are swinging can be exceptionally dangerous. Group combat with firearms is quite potentially fatal. It’s said that Ozymandias can dodge a bullet, but she can’t, and with idiots firing off their guns everywhere in the throng it’s quite possible she could be hit by someone not even aiming at her.
She lays a Knot Top out with a boot to the sternum followed by a kick to the head, and punches out another with a three-blow combo. Rolls on into a Shark from the back, takes him down with a dive and keeps him down by slamming his head into the concrete. Pours the remaining bullets out of his gun with a quick-silver move and then pitches it at a man far off in the fray, stunning him long enough for his opponent to take him down.
Between the two groups fighting and the three vigilantes, the original group of nearly fifty is down to less than twenty in what seems like minutes and certainly is less than a quarter of an hour. She’s not sure when her two comrades notice her presence; for all she knows they picked up on her before she saw them. Nite Owl is still over by his fence, tackling a pocket of the fighters who seem intent on trying to break away to brawl further down the street where they will only do more damage to property. Rorschach is slicing his way steadily in her direction, leaving heaps of carnage on both sides behind him, although a quick glance reveals not much that won’t heal – in a few years.
In her immediate vicinity there are three Knot Tops remaining, two going after her and a third fighting at close quarters with a Shark who’s either lost his pistol or was one of the unfortunates not to start out with one. She takes down one of her two in less than a minute, and pays for it with a hard blow from a pipe to the ribs.
It’s not her first blow of the evening; her arms must be black and blue with blocking them, and she’s let a couple by her, none bad enough to even temporarily incapacitate her. This one doesn’t either, although it slows down her reaction time enough that instead of knocking out her man on the first try it takes her three to put him down. By which time the third Knot Top has taken out his Shark and is turning around to see where his friends are.
There are very few men left standing now. In fact, she only counts two – her Knot Top and a Shark some ways behind him. Rorschach is somewhere off to her right, Nite Owl way off in the distance starting to make his way towards the last Shark, now levelling his gun at her guy.
Silk Spectre isn’t a pacifist. But she’s not a killer, either, and it’s not her job to judge these men. She can’t let one man blow another’s brains out in front of her.
She makes a run at the Knot Top, who’s lining up to whip his chain at her. His face is contracted in fury, whether at her or his unconscious friends or his lone-survivorship she has no idea. And then his face opens into an expression of extreme surprise as the front of his forehead explodes outwards in a burst of foaming red. Silk Spectre stumbles to a halt as he slowly crumples, knees giving out first and pitching him slowly forwards onto the concrete.
She’s still staring when something hits her from the side, tackling her full-force to the ground. She has no time to try to catch herself, simply goes down under the moving weight and hits the pavement hard, knocking the air out of her lungs.
The combined instincts to breath and not be stabbed in the ribs combine to force her to fight her way free of the weight on top of her and roll over to her hands and knees where she coughs and gasps until she manages to break the vacuum in her lungs and suck in air again. It’s only now that she records the sound of the second shot and looks up, head ringing. It takes her a minute to orient herself, and then she spots Nite Owl pounding the Shark into the ground.
Behind her there’s a rustling of fabric and she swivels around so fast she whips her ponytail into her face with enough force to sting. Rorschach is picking himself up at a sharp angle to her, adjusting his fedora with the arm closest to her – his left. Silk Spectre can’t tell whether he’s looking at her or not, but suspects not. She realises she’s waiting for him to ask her if she’s alright and, as soon as the thought flashes in, knows how stupid that is. She’s saved having to thank him for slamming her into the ground when Nite Owl jogs over, all concern and contrition.
“Are you okay? God, that – if he – are you hurt?”
She smiles, partially for him and partially at him, and tries to black out the image of splattering red from her mind. “Fine, just a bit sore.”
“Apologies,” says Rorschach gruffly from behind her. “Next time will allow bullet to hit target.”
She turns and, before Nite Owl can speak, cuts in herself. “I don’t think that’s very damn funny,” she says.
“Not laughing,” answers the man. “Don’t expect gratitude. Don’t expect complaints, either.”
“So now I’m ungracious?”
Rorschach snorts.
“Look, I’ve had it up to here with your chauvinism and your misogyny and your constant insults. If you have something to say, say it to my face.”
Nite Owl, predictably, interrupts. “I don’t think now is really a good time, guys. Maybe we could argue after the police turn up to book this bunch?”
The sirens are already nearing. Silk Spectre ignores them, crosses her arms.
“Nothing to say,” grits out Rorschach.
“And there’s nothing I can say, is there? Nothing that will make you believe I have as much right as you to be out here, and can do the job just as well.”
“Wasn’t aware you were competing for my favour.”
“I don’t want your approval. I want you to admit that you won’t ever give me a chance to even earn your respect.”
“Guys, I really think –”
“Now you’re competing for my respect? Fighting for recognition, rather than justice.”
“You just twist everything I say – everything any woman says! Just admit – you think you’re better than us. You honestly believe we’re worthless, don’t you?”
“Enough!” Nite Owl steps between them. “The police are going to be here in a minute, and they are not going to find us squabbling like children. They do not really need to find us at all, because that will mean paperwork and headaches all around. So let’s just agree to disagree for now, and go home, okay?”
She’s mad, but not mad enough not to see the sense in that. “Fine. But don’t expect me to give him a hand until he apologizes.”
“For saving your life?” questions Rorschach roughly, and Nite Owl gives her a look filled with request that says: either you walk away or I’m going to have to drag him away, and I don’t want to do that.
“See you around, Nite Owl,” she says, and turns.
“Yeah, see you.” There’s a whispered conversation behind her, and then a muffled exclamation. The sirens suddenly leap into prominence as the cars round a corner, and Silk Spectre steps into the shadows of an alleyway to look back at the two other men’s retreating figures. Nite Owl is – she frowns unconsciously as she struggles to focus – almost hovering over his partner, who is walking stiffly with both hands in his pockets. They pass under a streetlight, and she suddenly sees in its slanting glow, that the entirety of his right sleeve is painted bright red.
Silk Spectre walks home, and wishes she knew what that meant.
