ms. fitzgerald knows the (universaltruth) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-06-10 14:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | fitzwilliam darcy, rorschach |
Who: Darice and Rorschach Mike
What: Darice is guilty, Rory is confused, and all is normal in the world.
Where: A hospital, which nobody approves.
When: After Rory is admitted into the hospital, and after he contacts Oracle.
Warnings: None. They don't even swear.
Being in the hospital, Rorschach had concluded, was much better than most people seemed to think. After all, the gurney was much more comfortable than his cot in jail, and it had buttons. Everything made noise and had a little light, and there was no shortage of things to read. There was a TV that broadcasted several distinct channels of static, and he had found all of them on his own. Perhaps later he’d realize that a lot of the appeal of this room was due to the fact that he had been filled up to his eyeballs with painkillers, but in the moment, he was quite content.
The only reason that he knew it was Friday morning was that one of the nurses had opened the blinds in his room, letting in a sheet of pale, weak sunshine. He wasn’t sure how many minutes he spent dragging the fingers of his right hand over his sheets, watching with a detached sort of glee as the light rolled over his skin. Everything felt numb, happy in a way he hadn’t been in a long time. Maybe ever. There was some pain in his head, itches from his stitches, but it all felt far away. Everything was fine, now. He had spoken with Oracle, and she would get him out. Once, he wouldn’t have cared. But maybe Darice was right. Maybe this wasn’t the end, for Mike or for Rorschach or even for Warren.
He walked his fingers over his knee, sitting forward as they reached his shin. The sound of a door opening to his right caught his attention and he looked over, turning his head much further than needed. The white eyepatch over his right eye cut into his vision, his left eye straining to see for both of them. He recognized the slick slip of a woman that stood in the doorway, a cracked half-smile slipping his face. The bristles of his unkempt beard crossed and crinkled with the expression, his slow breaths whispering over the stubble over his upper lip.
The white hospital gown that covered him had been left open in the back, its thin material slipping down over his shoulders. Scars of all shapes and sizes crawled across his skin: tiny puckered scars, long thin scars, rough ragged scars, and shiny friction scars. He vaguely remembered the nurse talking about them while he laid in the operating room, sedated, as she shaved the hair from his right temple to allow the doctor to stitch his head back together. The black stitches now stood out, holding his puckered skin together from the edge of his eyebrow and back an inch. They itched terribly, yet another reason why he hated stitches.
He tried to raise his left hand in greeting, the motion cut short when the set of handcuffs holding his wrist to the railing of his gurney snapped taut. With a small sound of annoyance, he dropped his hand, raising his right instead. The IV drip beside his bed had been slipped into his right hand, a covering of white gauze holding it in place. “First visitor,” he said, voice strangely good-humored. “Not surprised.”
Darice didn’t trust herself to speak immediately. When she had advised the man she knew as Mike Caulfield to convince the paper-pushers that he was crazy in an effort to move him, this was not what she had meant. She expected some small amount of personal damage, hair-pulling or scratches, some loud raving, something very visible but, all in all, not that damaging. This was overkill with an emphasis on the kill, and Darice felt personally responsible. Burdened by guilt and troubled sleep, Darice had taken extra care with her appearance, and she was sheathed in a dress the color of forest loam. Her eyes were rimmed with black that gave her gravity and hid any expression of her mouth unless you were looking carefully. Her hair gleamed in its professional but feminine coif.
Her heels clicked on the hospital floor and she brought with her a familiar, very faint breath of some floral perfume. White, juicy, thick: magnolias. She rotated on one heel, looking, and then pulled a chair over to his bed, the side opposite his chained wrist. She met his eyes for a moment, mouth trembling just slightly, and then she touched one eyebrow, betraying a headache--or something. “Oh, Mike.” She had never called him that before. It was always ‘Mr. Caulfield.’ The one time she had seen him in a mask she didn’t refer to him by name. ‘Mike’ seemed bizarre and intimate.
Once again, they stood as sheer opposites. She was controlled, perfectly manicured and neat. He, on the other hand, possessed more chaos than a landslide. He leaned back against the upright back of his gurney as she sat beside him, turning his head drastically to ensure that he could continue to see her. Finally, he dropped his head to lay against the back of the gurney, hiding his covered eye so that his left could watch her uninterrupted.
It was strange, watching her like this. To be fair, it was strange watching anyone like this. Rorschach wasn’t the sort of person that inspired care. People didn’t look at him with sad eyes and trembling lips. Even when Jack was rallying for his safety, it was rough. Jack didn’t look guilty like this, at least when Rorschach was looking. He let out a short huff, twisting his finger in the line of his IV. It was an absent gesture, not done to harm but rather to occupy. Normally, he would flinch at hearing this fake name. This time, his expression remained still. “Stop,” he said, curling his pinky finger around the railing of his gurney.
Darice didn’t know what that meant--but regardless of what it was, she didn’t stop anything. Her eyes slid behind all that charcoal to his hand to make sure he wasn’t doing anything hurtful and then back to his face and those awful stitches. “I didn’t mean to hurt yourself so badly,” she said, keeping her voice down and doing a fair job of keeping it steady. “This is too much! Look at you--this was not... this should not have happened.”
Darice twisted her fingers on her lap and glanced at the door uncomfortably. She was not used to getting worked up about clients, her own branch of the law being as far away from criminal courtroom as she could make it. She was technically not his lawyer, one of a team that would get her in a great deal of trouble if anyone sought deep enough, but still, he was a client, or a neighbor, and Darice just didn’t trouble herself over people she did not know.
He sighed, visibly sinking into the embrace of his gurney as she spoke. She sounded frantic, strangely so, and it made his head hurt. Overall, the guilt washing from her nearly drowned him, and he had to take a few steadying breaths after she fell silent just to stay conscious. Though the room was somber, pulled taut and tense, he flashed a hazy half-smile, rolling his head slightly against the gurney despite strict orders from the doctor to not put any pressure on his right side. “Not always about you,” he said lightly, almost teasing. “Some wounds necessary.”
Before she could protest, he reached his right hand for the shoulder of his gown. He pulled it down further, twisting to better show her his left shoulder. Sprinkled over its top was a series of two narrow, ragged scars that ran in short parallel. “Remember,” he said, touching a fingernail just below the scars. “Brought Joy home. Blood on shoulder, got on sleeve.” The young teenager’s arms had been locked around his neck for the entire trip back, her shirt smeared with the blood and gunk that he had practically bathed in that night.
The thought of her sister, the only thing she bore direct responsibility for, the only person that she loved and loved her in return, in all that blood and returning from hours--it felt like days, she couldn’t remember--the memory made Darice physically ill. She leaned over the side of his bed and put her weight on her elbows pressing into the sheets. She dropped her forehead and tried to breathe and suppress the nausea. She understood distantly he was trying to help, and she had a handle on her emotions a moment later. “I remember.”
She flexed one hand and spread it over the sheet between her and him in a gesture meant to calm herself, an unconscious echo of a move made before she’d entered. “...You need to take better care of yourself. It’s important when you get hurt, it should not have to happen.”
For a moment, he worried she was going to be sick all over the nice white sheets on his gurney. He let out a low sigh, closing his eye with a huff. He wasn’t good at this. He didn’t understand how to speak with people, how to talk to them in ways that didn’t make them vomit up their insides. Jack was much better at this. He could say everything that Rorschach meant to, and more.
Opening his eye, he covered up his shoulder and sat up slightly, careful not to disturb her hand on the gurney. It seemed to be the only thing keeping her upright. “This body,” he said slowly, gesturing to himself. “Is a tool. Tool I use. Screwdrivers, hammers, get chipped. But necessary. Does what needs, what’s necessary.”
Belying that assumption, Darice sat up straight, mirroring him and looking up slightly at him as he sat up straight. Her eyes flicked to the scarred skin of his shoulder before he covered it up, and there was a renewed composure that took over her features. “You’re not separate from your body, M--” she stopped, because she didn’t know how to refer to him now that she had breached some invisible gap. She went over it. “You are you, entirely, and when you hurt yourself you’re hurting all of you. You must be more careful, or you won’t have anything left to you.”
His expression sharpened slightly as he looked down, releasing a low breath. “Not separate. Am body. That’s all.” He was Rorschach, and there was nothing more to him than this. No soul. No redemption. He was this case on earth, this vessel. He was Warren Keller’s leftovers and Mike Caulfield’s base. But for some reason, thinking of this now made his head ache. If he was one man, one piece, then why did the others bleed into him? He finally looked over to her, jaw tight. “Not Mike. Not before. Not after.”
Darice was sitting still now, back straight, shoulders back, hands folded. She was waiting when he turned back to look at her, eyes on his face, breathing slowly in counts of three. She took a moment to process. “Then who are you? I mean, what is your name, if not that?”
Though he should have been expecting the question, it hit him harder than any fist or weapon could have. He bit down on his lower lip, dragging it over his teeth. He was Rorschach, he had to be. Warren Keller had died, his soul at peace. So why? Why did his jail cell feel like the ghost of an old memory? Why did the footsteps at night bring him back to when he was dehydrated, scared, pissing his pants and crying for his mother? His fingers on the railing of the gurney tightened, tension and pain etching itself into his expression as he looked to her. “Unsure,” he admitted.
This explained much. Darice didn’t look away, but she didn’t stare. Instead her shoulders relaxed a little into the careful curve of her spine, the cool green fabric shifting a little over shoulders and knees, causing no discomfort. “I see.” After a moment, she decided not to push him; she decided not to ask what name he had been born with, or what his friends called him. Instead, she asked, carefully, “What would you like me to call you, then?”
What he’d want her to call him, what was most appropriate, was too dangerous. His mind was hazy, the medication still wrapping him in a comfortable blanket to protect from the pain in his head and eye. After a few moments of thought, he grunted. “Mike safest,” he said on a sigh. “For you.”
Darice didn’t know precisely how to take that, but she was not a woman to refuse protection, particularly if it did not trouble her pride. She tipped her head just slightly to show she noticed the difference between ‘safe for her’ and what he preferred. “Mike, then.” She touched his elbow with cool fingertips. “You should lie back down.”
He stilled at the small touch, as if unsure of how to process it. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him for any reason other than restraining or injuring him. Confusion knotted his brows as he gestured with his chained hand to his own face. “See better sitting up,” he said.
“I’m not going to move, there’s nothing to see,” she said, in her cool voice, reassuring in its consistency. “Lie down. I need to tell you what I think will happen next, at any rate.” She touched him again, but this time it was a slight pressure on the top of his arm, pressing down. Darice was not a small woman, but the contact was not restraint at all, just suggestion.
Letting out a grumbled grunt, he pressed his thumb against the button on the gurney rail that lowered its back. It was less about not seeing her and more about not seeing the door, which bothered him immensely. But the gentle pressure on his arm told him that this was a losing battle. And so he laid back, letting the gurney lower a bit. He was still not completely flat, but rather reclining as if he were in a lounge chair. “Good?” he felt compelled to ask, raising a brow.
Darice nodded gravely. She did not smile much, nor did she ever laugh, but sometimes you could get a solemn approving nod. Joy, on the other hand, often lived up to her name. Or she had before the incident that had brought a bloody Rorschach to their door. Darice thought sometimes she was coming back. The piano helped. “Good. You’ll be here a while longer, until you’re better and they complete treatment. After that, pending some discussion, it’s very likely you’ll be transferred to a mental hospital facility. The security there will be heavy, especially if you’re on suicide watch, but it will be a better environment than where you were before. They won’t tell me a specific transfer date but I’ll probably have a general idea before you go. Any questions?”
It was difficult to listen to her without his mind substituting her words. Just a few days prior, he was apathetic about his fate. He had lost, he was caught, and he would die. But now, perhaps selfishly, he was beginning to fear the end. Oracle had promised help, a way out, but even that was uncertain. He very likely would be put in this place, this prison with white walls, and trapped. Suddenly, the reality frightened him. He tightened his fingers in the sheets, a flinch in his cheek visible as he gulped. “None. Makes sense.”
His reaction was clear to Darice, and it worried her. A very slight line that would no doubt deepen with age touched her brow, and she leaned slightly to the side so she could see him clearly, and his good eye could see her. “Are you alright?” Her fingers twitched.
Being asked if he was alright was strange. He hesitated a moment, following her with his good eye. What was alright? What wasn’t? Telling the difference, he realized, was difficult. It would have been better, maybe, to say yes. But Rorschach didn’t enjoy lying. “Can’t tell.”
Darice was silent for a moment. She was a woman of logic, and she preferred to believe she wasn’t entirely ruled by her emotions. ‘Hindbrain,’ was what she would call it. So she said, measuring her words, “When was the last time you remembered being content? Without trouble?”
Trouble seemed to be the theme of Seattle, or at least the lives of its Masks. Rarely was he not nursing an injury or tending to his aching muscles. Living with Jack called all of his scrapes and bruises to his attention, as the other man had a strange fastidiousness about him when it came to treating injuries. And living with Sam hadn’t been much better. When she wasn’t hating him, she was being tortured by the Night Terror. Back in Musings, Rorschach lived on the streets, fighting frostbite during the winter and heat exhaustion during the summer. He was an automaton, a wind-up robot set forth to complete God’s work. Warren Keller hadn’t been content either, always brimming and bubbling and threatening to spill over. But should he count Warren? Several months ago, he wouldn’t have. But now, he entertained the possibility.
After some silence, he let out a small sound, shaking his head. “Trouble everywhere. Price paid for this.”
“True. But you didn’t answer my question,” Darice suggested, gently.
That earned a grunt that nearly sounded like laughter, a slight half-smile pulling at his lips. “Answer difficult,” he said. “Someone else, maybe, long ago. Me, now?” He shook his head. “Not like this.”
“You mean you’re not the same person you’ve always been,” Darice concluded. “Then there’s no reason you won’t work out who you are now. And that person might be content, eventually.” She was satisfied with this logical conclusion, and gave him a faintly anxious look to see if he comprehended it.
The idea that things could be tied up so neatly was strange at best. Rorschach grunted, looking down, and sighed. “Maybe,” he said somewhat grudgingly. To be content, one had to have something outside of a mask, something beyond nightly excursions and torture. Rorschach existed for that and only that, nothing more. There was no way to have both - he watched it plague the other Masks, knowing it would destroy them. Without that weakness, without precious contentment, he couldn’t be harmed. “Hope not.”
“That’s not true,” Darice said, so sure and yet so wrong. She stood up then, gently nudging her chair back so it didn’t screech. She didn’t fix her jacket or smooth her skirt, but leaned forward instead. She put comforting fingers against his jaw where it met his neck, not wanting to touch the stitches, but wanting to bring him down to earth a little with his absent commentary and determination to be empty of value. “This time when I say take care, I mean it,” she told him, gravely.
Letting her believe that he would be content one day was, in a way, a lie. But he didn’t want to argue, and felt that she was likely tired of it as well. So he said nothing, instead relaxing on the gurney as she stood. He expected to watch her leave, maybe with a few parting words, and was caught completely off guard by what happened instead. The utter surprise and confusion on his face showed in his wide left eye and raised brows. His face, which was so often a brick wall, broadcasted a strange sliver of humanity there. Holding her gaze, he let out a small grunt. “Promised,” he said quietly.
“Yes... you did.” She took her hand away, but as confused as he, not smug nor startled, just confused. She never left conversations with this particular man with any sense of calm. “I’ll see you soon, I hope,” she said, aware one was supposed to say something in farewell and coming up with the obvious. This time she did straighten her jacket, and she turned around, just remembering to pick up her purse, and clicked out of the room.