Title: Night of October 21st
Pairing: RorschachxOC
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2208
Author's Notes: I have absolutely no claim on Aletha's character; she's the sole invention of my darling Sierra's, from her AU fic (which will hopefully be finished soon, because it's completely fantastic!), and I'm just borrowing her for a bit of fun. This is a present for Sierra, because she's so utterly marvellous—I love you, bb, and I hope you enjoy it!

NIGHT OF OCTOBER 21st

She sat at the statue's feet, her hand bare and cold through against the copper pedestal. The late fall night left the statue as cold as a block of ice, but she didn't notice the cold seeping through her coat to her bones. Her face was upturned, bright with quiet wonder, and she was looking out at New York City.

The skyscrapers were a blaze of light, tall and straight, their jagged skyline cutting the night sky in two. The city had an aura, a glow of life and electricity; no matter what it looked like from the inside, no matter that it was rotting and stinking, full of the worst hypocrites and second-handing beggars, whinging moochers and soul-sucking, charming, bright-eyed looters—New York had not gone under yet. Even if it could only be viewed from a distance now, the imprint of the men of a better time was writ in the very form of the city. The boldness of the skyscrapers still stood as a silent, unseen testament to that which nobody valued any more: the bold, unchained, audacious spirit of man.

At least, almost nobody.

She'd been expecting him, somehow, and when a quiet scuffle of motion from the other side of the pedestal and quiet footsteps clicking around to her side announced his arrival, she didn't jump. He stood silently and still, looking down at her with that unreadable face, and she didn't grant him the acknowledgement of glancing at him, so that when he dropped down beside her and unfolded his legs to dangle over the side just like hers, it was a small victory.

"Not meant to be here," he growled quietly. She marvelled idly at how little she noticed the smell of the man any more, looking out of the corner of her eye at the shifting shapes of his face, his face that reflected not his own psyche but hers.

"I'm only supposed to be at the base," she agreed, "but it's the Statue of Liberty." She said the words pointedly, conveying their own special meaning and significance, because she knew that he of all people would understand. "I'd rather sit at Her feet."

"Ennk."

She took it as a noise of agreement, and leaned her head back against the metal fold of the statue's robe.

"It's beautiful," she said, the words out of her mouth before she'd even considered them, an absolute truth. Beside her, Rorschach shifted uncomfortably.

"Dead city," he snarled. His hands, clad in purple leather stained and discolored with blood and dirt and time, rested in his lap. "Full of scum. Won't survive. Doesn't deserve survival. Killing itself."

She felt a stab of something too numb to be called pain in her heart, a stab and a twist. "I know," she murmured. The moonlight—it was a full moon—glanced off the sharp planes and angles of her face, the hollows of her cheeks and the set line of her mouth, giving her the appearance of something man-made, something steel and concrete, something more than the soft, warm woman that she was. It was only for a moment, but it stuck. "It can't survive." It was spoken as a revelation, but she'd known it all along. "It's got no will to survive; no more motive power."

Beside her, Rorschach didn't move a muscle. She kept talking; she didn't know why. Perhaps it was because she wanted to tell someone what she understood but had never said aloud; perhaps it was because it was Rorschach, and he alone would understand.

"I know it's condemned itself; I know what they all preach, sacrifice and selflessness and all these other words that they haven't realised mean death, in the end. I know it's drowning, self-suffocating, and there's no sense in trying to save it because it's voted with its feet, and it won't see sense no matter what we say or do." Her voice raised in volume as she spoke, unintentionally. "I've seen it—we've seen it, what it really stands for, what they—all their filthy lies and grasping hands and pleas and claims for the soul of the next guy over!"

Her voice broke with quiet realization, and she swallowed the emotion; erased it, eradicated it. It was the flicker of a moment, and then it too died and she was whole and cold again.

"But even so," she whispered, one frozen hand reaching up to sweep nervously and unconsciously through her hair, not noticing the dirt under her fingers. "you can't tell me you don't see it." A gesture, a lazy, sweeping gesture of her other hand to the solid, immovable magnificence spread out before them. "You can't tell me you don't understand what you're seeing. It used to be great, and that hasn't died yet. It won't die, can't die—until all this is smashed into the ground, until something sweeps it away. …It'd take more evil than this city has to do that. While they're all busy cutting their hearts out, they won't see… they'll sink lower and lower, but they can't destroy anything from down there. All they can do is lose it for themselves. It'd take something bigger, much bigger than a lot of pitiful second-handers to smash… that." A vague gesture of her hand, scrunching for a moment in her hair. "Us. Man. Human spirit."

Rorschach's head turned slowly to look at her, her unfeminine, brutal profile simultaneously silhouetted and picked out, the clarity in her eyes and the overt structure of her face like some kind of architect's vision, stark and uncompromising and real.

"I sometimes think," she continued, almost to herself, "I sometimes think that when it's like this… it's all for us. They don't see it, they can't see it, they're goddamn blind. They're not people, not any more, not human. They've got what they wanted, they've sacrificed the self and now they're paying the price." A pause. "I sometimes think we're the only ones left…"

Rorschach's face shifted silently, and now she turned to look at him, her cold, pale eyes wide and full of wonder. She couldn't pity the city full of looters laid out in front of her, couldn't feel regret for the loss of New York's magnificence or anger at those responsible, but she could feel happiness at the sight of the man in front of her, the only other living thing that truly understood.

"There's no sense in saving them, I know that. But I know you don't do it for them, Rorschach. You do it for you."

There was no miraculous revelation; she had stated the truth, nothing more and nothing less. Only the quiet, rough sound of Rorschach's breathing broke the silence, and she felt a quiet thrill at being in such proximity to a living human, a truly living human.

She reached out on impulse with one bare, pale hand, and took Rorschach's gloved hand in her own.

Rorschach stiffened when she made contact, even if it was through a layer of leather, but she gripped his hand in hers with a kind of determined authority, as though she were the stronger and he didn't have the power to crush every bone in her hand without trying.

He didn't. His body was tense, almost pulling back but never completing the intention, and he allowed her to hold his hand, curling his own fingers around hers after a moment or two. The leather felt warm against her numb skin, and she shifted closer to him, to the warmth of another living human body that she suddenly, desperately craved.

A freezing winter breeze stirred her hair, but she didn't so much as shiver, didn't notice it. A part of her found it odd, as she shifted to lean against him, his arm around her shoulders; odd that he allowed her so close, that this untouchable, living ideal of a man was warm and alive and human underneath his trenchcoat and his aura of acerbic hatred. Another part found it odd to realize that they were the same size; while she technically knew it to be true, she always seemed to see Rorschach as a moral value, and—like Liberty at whose feet they sat—put him on a pedestal, saw him larger than life.

"Aletha?"

His voice, harshness disguised by quietness, did little to break the atmosphere. It wasn't an illusion, a dream waiting to be shattered by reality. Such dreams were for those who did not and could not understand what it meant to love.

"Yes?"

"… …Ennk."

In its own way, Aletha supposed, it was a sort of consent. At any rate, his arm was still warm around her shoulders, and she didn't hold back from leaning her head against his shoulder, and then pressing her face to his chest, snuggling into the stinking clothing and body and warmth that was the physical form of her ideal, burying herself in the wonderful proximity.

Slowly, ever so gradually he relaxed, giving the impression of pushing her away as he held her less and less; she didn't care to wonder why, because it didn't really matter. What mattered was Rorschach holding her, truly holding her, still all solid, lean muscle and power and self-sufficiency, still stiff and quiet and unshakable. Nothing on this earth could turn him into something he was not; nothing could break that integrity, she thought to herself. It sent a shiver through her in a way that the freezing night air could not.

And so when she looked up and found her face inches away from the shifting black and white of Rorschach's mask, still thinking of the slow and helpless decline of the city around Rorschach's feet, the correct route of action seemed obvious.

It was just a matter of completing the implicit motion.

"Rorschach—"

"Aletha—"

"Please,"

They spoke at the same time, and Aletha's eyes narrowed. Rorschach's face was as inscrutable as ever, but Aletha gazed into it anyway, content to have her psyche judged and reflected by the moral standard set by herself and by the man before her.

"You understand," she whispered, not begging. "I know that you understand." Aletha was very aware of the statue towering above them, that obsolete guardian Liberty, blind eyes gazing out over the dying city that had rejected Her. There were still two that remained, that had not.

Rorschach grunted, his body stiff and awkward and trembling against her like a racehorse, and she thought that if this earned her a fractured face, so be it; nobody got anywhere without taking risks on what they thought was right.

She leaned up, eyes wide open, and pressed her lips softly to Rorschach's through the latex of his mask—of his face. There was no barrier, she corrected herself, as she felt the shape of Rorschach's mouth barely moving against her own.

Rorschach shuddered. Aletha was a woman, all too human, soft lips and soft skin and temptation. He could feel the gentle curve of her breasts against the side of his chest, the suggestion of that disgusting advantage flaunted by painted and half-dressed whores—but despite all that, his eyes were open and he could see Aletha before him, face unpainted, hair cropped and dirty, coat drawn tight around her body. He could see the stark, unapologetic lines of her face, unsoftened with artifice, unwilling to make excuses for what she was, and her words were still echoing in his head, the evidence of her understanding.

Slowly, hesitantly because he was lost, had no idea what to do, had never done this before and never wanted to, Rorschach parted his lips just slightly and returned the kiss. It was a soft give and take of pressure, any depth prevented by his face between them, and the pressure and heat of Aletha's mouth scattered the inkblots in wild patterns.

Aletha tilted her head to the side, eyes flickering shut as Rorschach's arms slid tentatively around her back, the feel of smooth latex and warm, too-strong hands burning into her memory. They both knew it would have to end soon, this physical expression of the value their sought and found in each other; physical expressions had only so much longevity. Nonetheless, neither seemed willing to break apart from the other. The kiss was not a grasping, frantic alleyway kiss, but it would have been wrong to say it was not passionate. There was an almost overpowering intensity between them, borne of mutual respect, of an understanding of the other's equality as a human being. It was enough for both; and when they finally broke apart, the feel of hard, thin lips covered with a layer of latex still echoing against Aletha's mouth, both retained their composure. They could not have fallen prey to any of the excesses of passion or the hysteria of a false love. They understood each other too well, respected each other too much for that.

Aletha laid her head back down against Rorschach's shoulder, and he pulled her close with a subtle shift of his arm, and they stared back out at New York City in silence.