For 31_days:
Oct. 1st, 2011 06:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unknownfateTitle: Downside to Survival
Day/Theme: 1. Remembering is the pain that breathes
Series: Watchmen
Character/Pairing: Dan
Rating: PG
The downside to surviving was that had to live with the past. There were times, the darkest, loneliest times, where he wished they had never found out in time, that they had still been in the city, taken their chances, and maybe died in the wreckage. Maybe it would've been better, or easier to bear. He was sure it was an outcome Rorschach would've preferred over betrayal and obliteration.
His mind always skirted over that last memory, like a tongue over a broken tooth. It hurt too badly to linger on, and even untouched, it ached just because it was there. He had been numb to it at first, but as days and weeks went by, the bodycount reached mind-breaking numbers, and all the deaths were lamented except for one, the pain had throbbed to life under his heart and every beat reminded him why.
It shouldn't have been this way and it was partly his fault. He had let it happen or at least failed to stop it, and then left it unavenged. He couldn't even mourn with the innocents because he knew what they didn't. He didn't know what to do anymore.
Rorschach would know know exactly what to do, even if it was insane, even it meant the ruination of all that had been gained. But gaining that had been at the expense of what had been built before, so if the past could be sacrificed at the whim of an egomaniac, than this present was not exempt from sacrifice either.
But Rorschach was gone. Millions of people were gone. A whole way of life was gone and Dan was having trouble living without them. He thought of the other survivors, drunk, miserable Byron Lewis, Sally wasting away, Laurie finally free to do whatever she wanted, Manhattan too far gone to miss anything, and Adrian in his ivory tower of lies and spiderweb manipulations. And Dan himself, still going on, but sometimes barely able to breath for the pain of remembering it all.
Day/Theme: 1. Remembering is the pain that breathes
Series: Watchmen
Character/Pairing: Dan
Rating: PG
The downside to surviving was that had to live with the past. There were times, the darkest, loneliest times, where he wished they had never found out in time, that they had still been in the city, taken their chances, and maybe died in the wreckage. Maybe it would've been better, or easier to bear. He was sure it was an outcome Rorschach would've preferred over betrayal and obliteration.
His mind always skirted over that last memory, like a tongue over a broken tooth. It hurt too badly to linger on, and even untouched, it ached just because it was there. He had been numb to it at first, but as days and weeks went by, the bodycount reached mind-breaking numbers, and all the deaths were lamented except for one, the pain had throbbed to life under his heart and every beat reminded him why.
It shouldn't have been this way and it was partly his fault. He had let it happen or at least failed to stop it, and then left it unavenged. He couldn't even mourn with the innocents because he knew what they didn't. He didn't know what to do anymore.
Rorschach would know know exactly what to do, even if it was insane, even it meant the ruination of all that had been gained. But gaining that had been at the expense of what had been built before, so if the past could be sacrificed at the whim of an egomaniac, than this present was not exempt from sacrifice either.
But Rorschach was gone. Millions of people were gone. A whole way of life was gone and Dan was having trouble living without them. He thought of the other survivors, drunk, miserable Byron Lewis, Sally wasting away, Laurie finally free to do whatever she wanted, Manhattan too far gone to miss anything, and Adrian in his ivory tower of lies and spiderweb manipulations. And Dan himself, still going on, but sometimes barely able to breath for the pain of remembering it all.
