2014.03.20 - Quid Pro Quo

You’d hardly guess that last night this place was the scene of a bustling nightclub. In the last rays of the setting sun, the interior of the old brick warehouse looks positively grotty: flaking brick and mortar, grimy and fractured windows set high in its three story walls all festooned with a liberal amount of sticky plastic cups and drifts of trash. A rickety looking metal catwalk encircles the interior of the building, looking a lot like an invitation for curious vandals to come plummet to their grisly deaths.

Grisly deaths are actually a lot easier to imagine taking place here than happy fun times. And in that you wouldn’t be wrong. Agent Henrietta Black is, in fact, making her way up from the depths of the cellar where the concrete is still stained with the blood of the two young college girls that met their ends here last night, wanting to go over the scene one last time. The rest of the forensic agents have been gone at least a quarter of an hour, but she seems inclined to linger. Her heels click against the concrete as she makes her way over to the staircase, lowering herself to sit on the third step. She props her chin up in her hand and her eyes get a far-away look as she loses herself to the replay of last night’s events in her mind.

Rorschach is never surprised by grisly things. The grisly things are the real things, what happens when you peel away the false skin of the respectable to see the dripping heart of humanity. Everything smells like blood to Rorschach. He's been waiting patiently in the shadows within the warehouse, utterly still. He'd been approaching to do his own investigation, expecting everything to be long over, only to discover this woman lingering. Her suit betrays an official capacity, but she doesn't fully have the agent posture. An advisor, a specialist. Not a cop, not at heart.

Soft.

Rorschach's not impatient. He doesn't get impatient. But he does know that he's running out of time. Evidence degrades and decays. He needs to see the pattern. Suddenly, above him, a rat scrabbles, it's place on the catwalk lost as it tumbles from above to fall at Rorschach's feet with a loud thump.

At the moment it draws Henrietta's attention, Rorschach's foot comes down, adding the grisly snap of ruined bone and spine as he snuffs the filthy thing out. "Hurm." he murmurs.

These old buildings make noises. They settle. Pigeons smack into windows, either to their dismay or destruction. What they don’t do, however, is squeak shrilly in the throes of death. ‘Etta’s head turns sharply at the sound, freezing the unexpected figure fills her vision.

Bum? He looks rumpled and dirty and this is a warehouse on the grubby fringes of Manhattan. But somehow the thought seems entirely wrong. He’s too still, for one. And just... feels...

She resists the urge to move as an instinctive shiver runs up the length of her spine. “You shouldn’t be here.” She says in a level voice sharpened by her accent. She rises slowly from her perch on the catwalk step, turning a bit to face him and keep him squarely in view. “You might have noticed a bit of tape outside indicating as much?”

Rorschach walks forward slightly out of the shadows, although his hat keeps his face shaded at first, his head tilted slightly forward to keep his mask darkened. Best they see his face last, he's learned. Works better. His voice, as he speaks, is half-rasp, half-croak. The cloth muffles it somewhat, but that doesn't make him hard to hear. He's not shouting, yet his voice carries.

"Shouldn't be. Am," he says. His hands are thrust in his pockets and he steps a few more steps forward. There's still plenty of space between the two of you, but there's still an element of stalking. He reads like a predator. "Tape keeps out intruders. I'm not." he says. And then he lifts his head and you can see the mask, the inkblots squirming on his features as his body heat and breath radiates through.

Rorschach. There's no mistaking. Most people don't think he really exists. Oh, there was a Rorschach, once, no doubt. A minor hero, nothing notable, only getting attention because he fought the fight when there were few masked men. Then he vanished. Went underground. Most people assumed he died. But there were rumors. Dark rumors. Violent rumors. You may have even treated a man or two who'd claimed to meet him. Rorschach. The man with no face. The breaker of wicked men.

In this moment, Etta feels distinctly disadvantaged for any one of a dozen different reasons. Not the least of these is the time it takes her to process the wealth of visual information he offers up during her slow reveal. The first hint of the rough cloth covering his face makes her eyes narrow slightly. The first hint of /movement/ across it makes them widen again. That should be enough, but... in her defense, she’s not from around here, so it takes just a fraction of a second for it to click.

She draws a sharpish little breath past her painted lips.

The silence feels tense and endless, at least for Etta. She’s rather amazed, with a detached sort of surprise, that when she does speak her voice sounds almost quietly buoyant and perfectly natural, though with the echo in here it seems to reach her ears from a distance. “So you are. Or aren’t.” She pauses a beat before adding for good measure, “Bloody hell.”

Rorschach starts to walk again, taking some gratification from the fear. His reputation has been carefully watered and nurtured, enough to be effective, not so great as to bring down too much heat. He moves forward until he's about five steps away, just five, and then stops. His posture remains ramrod straight, like a schoolboy who'd learned the hard way the price of slouching.

"Won't hurt you. Same purpose. Different method." he says, "Mine works."

He seems to inhale, a soft shudder running through him. He can smell you, amidst the stink. A woman. His hidden eyes close for a moment and then flutter back again. Focus. "Tell me." he says, as if he were a colleague asking for an briefing and not a madman in a trenchcoat staring you down.

She’s never been on a safari. You have to work somewhere that involves vacation time to do things like that. But the thought occurs to Etta as the gravel-voiced figure pads towards her that this is probably roughly what it feels like to encounter a lion in the wild; a kind of heady sort of blend of rapt fascination and instinctive unease emanating from the deepest bits of the brain. Little electric-chemical warnings that this thing in front of you is dangerous.

She gives her fascination plenty of slack in the bit, her coppery head tilting a bit to one side as she rakes her eyes over every detail of him, up and down, and then back up to... well, where you sort of imagine the eyes /would/ be, if they were visible as he breathes in the smell of violet-scented soap that clings to her beneath the patina of warehouse dust. “I’m with SHIELD. Our investigations are classified, even from most other law enforcement agencies.” She says, though it doesn’t sound exactly like a rejection, and in fact turns out to be more of a preface. “Two girls. Last night, in the basement. We only found one of their heads.”

Rorschach won't think of what the smell reminds him off. Bathtubs. Mother's legs. The razor. Another rapid-fire blink and he's back in the present. "Knew that much. SHIELD should use local cops. Locals know where homeless sleep. Got overheard by bum," he says.

He moves again but now angles to the side so that he walks. He can feel that tension, and he wants to see how you react. Will you flinch? Falter? Run?

"Details." he says, now standing beside you, you facing out while his mask tilts down towards the stairs you just rose from. "Will look for myself. Easier if have some idea of what's been changed. Moved. Spoiled."

“We’d have to trust them to use them. It’s easier to maintain standards if you work in-house. “ Etta answers, her voice /sounding/ even at least. She watches him out of the corner of her eye as he starts to circle her, sensing that he’s testing his limits and her defenses, which seem to include a gun holstered beneath her black jacket. She waits until he’s about to slide entirely out of her peripheral vision before turning back towards him to keep him in her line of sight.

”There won’t be much left for you.” Henrietta sounds almost apologetic about this fact, the tone lending her voice a gentle and almost sympathetic quality. “We’ve had our teams through. And we have the man directly responsible in custody.” Her body, having adapted somewhat to the extra jolt of adrenaline that his appearance inspired, relaxes just a little as she adds with the faintest upturn at the corners of her mouth, “But you’re right that we could probably benefit from someone with experience in... different circles than we tend to run in. I thought we’d kept this very hush-hush.” She’s clearly impressed, but that’s entirely secondary to her obvious fascination at encountering a myth made manifest. “I’d ask for your number but it feels oddly forward.”

Rorschach gives a sigh of almost disappointment at hearing someone is in custody. He was in the mood for a hunt, but apparently the prey has already been taken from the wild. Penned up. "How certain?" he says in regard to the suspect. He doesn't turn to look at you - in fact, someone of your skills might note that he's almost conspicuously keeping his gaze averted, his head always slightly canted at an angle. As if looking at the woman head on is too difficult.

His hands are out of his pockets now, one hand flexing slighly in the gloves, the backs of them bulging slightly with the weights he uses to enhance blows. "Different circles. Yes. Circles in circles in circles. Webs work that way." And now his head does swing towards you, "Do I look like a fly to you?"

Etta has no such difficulty looking at him. If anything, she’s doing enough of it for both of them, caught up in the subtle shift of dark and light that spread across the space where a face ought to be. “You strike me as more spider than fly.” She says in a soft murmur, actually seeming to have invested thought in the assessment, though its bookended by a wry quirk of one corner of her mouth. “...and I have a bit of experience with arachnids of late.”

”Quite certain.” She says in belated answer to his earlier question. “With that much blood, red-handed is fairly easy to spot.” The thought deflates her fascination a bit, making it seem almost perverse. She gives a little shake of her head that sends coppery hair skittering back and forth across her shoulders. “If we’d have been ten minutes sooner....” A sigh flows past her lips, the rote response to her unasked question dredged up automatically. “If we’d have been ten minutes sooner, we’d still have been twenty too late for the carnage before that. Still, it stings a bit.”

Rorschach makes a small grunting sound, "Regret. Useless," he murmurs. He doesn't quite know what to make of this woman. Women make him uncomfortable, but it's usually mutual. this one keeps looking at him, though. She doesn't seem like a whore, but they don't always. "If already caught...why are you here? Doubts? Nightmares?" he says.

His own nightmares rise up in him, just briefly. The burning city. The bodies. The bones in the mouths of dogs, snapping like kindling. He shudders and breathes out, "Hurrrm," he mutters, "Spiders wait. Set traps. I hunt."

It’s the funniest thing, the way she just sort of stops breathing as the wave of memory crashes over him, like some invisible hand were gently but insistently coiling itself tighter and tighter around her throat. She blinks a few times in rapid succession, a frown of unease and faint confusion touching her mouth for an instant. “Some of them seem more patient than others. Some spiders are wolves. Others, I’m told by the internet, punch well above their weight and eat the occasional hapless bird.” The words flow more easily after a moment as she pushes past the eerie feelings that emanate from him so intensely. She looks away at last, ready for a breather and modestly certain he isn’t about to come at her with a rusty straight razor. Modestly being the operative word in that statement.

”I wanted to make sure that we’d gotten everything. And then... “ Another thoughtful frown. “I don’t know. Part thoroughness, part communing with ghosts. I thought nobody but us knew. And to everyone who traipsed through here today, this is a case number. They’ll only see bits and pieces, not two girls out on a lark who made some bad decisions and paid more than they should have.”

Rorschach nods at the response, seeming to take in the words. "Weight class. No such thing for us. All evil is equal. Punishment is always due," he says. Rorschach isn't sure about ghosts. He's felt the presence of the dead, certainly, in memory and in the weight on the back of his neck. He doesn't like to think of such things, it reminds him of those who've died, that should stay dead. Of eyes he doesn't want upon him. He hates feeling watched, always did, but privacy...privacy is a commodity that costs.

"Sentimental," he says. "Bad decision to live here at all. Country has good air. Fields. I've seen pictures," he says. "They got what they got. Now he'll get what he gets." he says, "I'd have given him worse."

Etta opens her mouth to deny his assessment of the situation. She feels the defense of her beloved SHIELD teetering there on the tip of her tongue, but in the end, she swallows it. “Probably.” She concedes, though she adds, “But our way will at least take longer. It really depends on what he’s afraid of, pain or powerlessness. If I find out, I’ll let you know.”

Break’s over. She fixates on him once more, blue-green eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “I wasn’t made for the country, at least not the country you mean.” She actually takes a step towards /him/ now, treading an inch or so closer to the borderline psychopathic bubble of his personal space. “Apple harvests and hay rides and the post office that also sells rock candy and picture postcards of the summer fair.” She clicks another step closer, then hesitates, lost in the study of him. “All evil is equal? Do you really think that?”

Rorschach trembles slightly, although it's not with fear. It's as if there's something inside him, something deeply contained, under pressure. Almost volcanic. Tremors, that's a good word for it. American moviegoers associate that word with worms, just beneath the surface, bursting out to rend and kill. That's what it feeels like to Rorschach, sometimes. That smell in his nose, and he closes his eyes, not able to look, although she can't tell through the mask. "I don't kill. Much. He would have suffered pain. Long pain. Hard pain. Just pain," he hisses, almost whispering.

To the question of evil, his voice has a strange lilt to it, almost as if he's imitating someone, "The wages of sin is death. God have mercy on the souls of the wicked.'" he says, his tone disembodied and eerie behind the featureless mask. "In the eyes of god, all sin is equal. A blemish is a blemish. A stain a stain. Only the clean shall enter paradise. As for the rest...they burn," he says, "-We- burn."

It’s oddly breathtaking. The speech, the sentiment behind it, so intense its palpable. Harsh as a vat of acid and cold as the grave, but breathtaking nonetheless. She just stands there within arm’s length of the seething cauldron of rage and absolutes and lets it wash over her. “From what I’ve seen, there are things for which there are no fires hot enough.” The words come out in something barely louder than a whisper. “They’re mostly above my pay-grade, mind. But they’re there.”

”I don’t think you were made for the country either.” She says after another little pause. “Though I believe people are people. They’re just more spread out on the edges, so you notice less. But everything that makes this happen...” she says with a gesture that encompasses the warehouse, the trash, the grit, the fractured glass and lingering subterranean blood stains. “It’s there too.”

Rorschach gives a soft laugh, although it almost sounds like a wheeze, like a dry bellows blowing dust from lack of use. "Of course it is. Don't you see?" he says, forcing his hands back into his pockets. He doesn't trust them, not with you so close to him, digging his fingers hard into his palms. "It's all there because only the filth is left. We're already burning. -We just don't feel it yet-," he snarls, then pushes himself back almost as if staggered, taking a deep inhale.

A beat. Two. His heart races. His eyes fog, then clear. "No one who sees..." he says, and his head swivels towards the site, the charnel, whatever else it may become, however clean it may be, it will always be that. Now. Forever. "Can stay clean. Can stay whole. How long can you pretend? Pretend not to see?" he whispers.

Etta’s lips go slack as another wave of untempered intensity smacks her square across the face. A muffled, tiny noise tumbles out of her as he staggers a step back and she just... stands there, trying not to literally reel under the weight of it. “How is it so... much with you... when I can’t see your face?” She wonders out loud in a murmur, giving her head another shake to clear it.

”I don’t think I pretend.” She says when she’s steadied herself with a few shallow breaths. “Not really. You give yourself up to it. And you want to say that you do it because its right, or noble... because you believe in justice. But the truth is that you do it because you have nothing else. You’ve already been sacrificed, and there’s no clawing yourself out of the volcano. So why argue with it? You turn around, and go the other way, and dive in headlong because it’s the only choice that you /can/ make.”

Rorschach actually seems to listen, his body hunching forward a bit. He looks almost as though he's about to be sick, but he isn't. Not in that way, anyway. Still, your words do seem to have an effect. Although he might sometimes seem oblivious, in his own world, he always listens. He always sees. He straightens slowly and now swivels his frame until he's facing her directly. "You see my face. You're looking at it. Right now," he says.

"Noble. Justice. I believed. Once. But you are right. There is no choice. Not anymore. You have gone down the rabbit hole. Through the looking glass. Watch out for the jabberwocky," he says. "You're not a cop. Not really. I haven't seen your badge, but it doesn't matter. I see through you. You remind me of the social workers. They'd come and hold my hand. Tell me it was going to be all right. They lied. Are you going to lie to me, too, woman with no name?"

Can that be right? It must be. Because she reads faces and his is so loud it’s like a buzzing running through the sinews in her body. Harp strings plucked by a meth addict. She leans towards him, teetering unsteadily on the toes of her shoes, lost in the blobs of black and white that slide across the rough landscape of his features like clouds in an Escher drawing. They make her feel so funny, like she can almost, but not quite, grasp the point he’s driving at so intently.

”Henrietta.”

The name hangs there as she watches him with a faintly glazed look, lips parted slightly in captivation. It’s an afterthought, and not the point at all. What was the point? It seems a bit fuzzy now.

”No. I don’t lie. I hate lies. They’re everywhere and when I couldn’t run away from them, I decided to root them out. And I do that now. It was a terrible decision because, of course, they don’t stop. They come from all corners, all quarters, endlessly. They’re rain.”

Rorschach seems to follow that particular metaphor. Which surprises even him. His tendency to speak in the figurative usually leaves the few people he talks to staring or frightened or walking away. Even the morgue attendants, with their necrophiliac erections and their strung-out eyes, pillpopping their way through another night in the cold. He's always the freak. The outsider. "Henrietta," he says, a hint of huskiness in the way he says it.

"A flood, yes. You can see them. Interesting. Useful. What do you want with me, Henrietta? Your mystery is solved. Your perp caught. And you know who I am. What I've done. Some of it. Not all," he says. "No one knows it all.'

"Why aren't you frightened?"

“I have no idea.”

It’s a completely honest answer, obviously so as it falls from her lips so instantaneously that there literally isn’t room in the space between his question and her answer for artifice or deception. She seems as confused by it as him in truth, with that faint touch of something fuzzy hazing her expression. Cotton wool. Or a mask.

Her brows pull together ever so slightly as a thought winds its way through the echoes of his infectious presence reverberating inside her copper-blonde head. “I was. Frightened. A little. And fascinated. “ Her eyes snap to his face sharply, like she was making up for her previous lack of focus. “But now... I just want to understand. Now I’m not. Frightened. I want to know.”

Her hand lifts, hovering in the air between them, her index finger extended in his direction. Stretching towards him a millimeter at a time. But even hazy, she can’t bring herself to actually touch him. In the end she settles for tracing the curve of the most prominent of the black blobs on his cheek in the air, like it might prove to be the key to some sort of code that would explain... everything.

Rorschach is almost like a deer in headlights, frozen himself as that hand approaches him. It's not a threat. Not a blow. But he almost flinches nonetheless, the mask crinkling slightly. You react to him like no one he's ever encountered. He's not used to being unsure of himself. Certainty has been something he has always relied upon. You are a mystery to him in your own way and, as such, he's fascinated in return. Trying to see the pattern.

"What do you want to understand? To know? Some things cannot be known. Or told. Some can. Some things are like the bodies you saw last night. Can't take them back," he murmurs. He considers for a moment Curiosity he understands. But how long until it turns to horror? To hatred? To sickness and fear? "Is that what dampens your petals, woman? Danger? Monsters? Devils in the dark? Am I just another substitute, another project...another butterfly to pin on your board?" he whispers and now he's moving forward, almost surging, until, yes, her fingers touch, touch the mask, the warmth of his breath kissing against those fingers even as the ink oozes and spills around it...

The breath goes out of her as surely as if he’d hauled off and punched her in the stomach with one of his lead-weighted fists. She blinks and blinks, all but panting in a vain attempt to get her lungs to behave normally, but her hand stays where he’s placed it. And eventually, it distracts her from everything else. It feels a little rough. And warm for something that has the semblance of something liquid. She drags her finger downward, tracing the edge of a blob that seems to flee from her touch across the bridge of his nose, the sight so captivating that her head lists a bit to one side.

”I don’t know.” She says in a quiet murmur that sounds like it comes from a distance. “I’ve forgotten the questions.” She seems just a little sad about it. It quiets her tongue for a moment, but eventually the rest of the words float to the surface of her mind and she shakes her head, “No to the rest. Its not the monster that I love. If I love anything, it’s the opposite of that. But the reflection can’t exist without the thing, so... maybe yes after all. Or maybe you can’t pick parts. Things are. They can’t be otherwise. You can’t be otherwise.”

Having followed the dark cloud across his cheek, she jerks her hand back and stares at him as something clicks. “You. That’s it. You were the question.”

Rorschach has no context for this. All his experience, none of it prepared him. There's the shudder again, rolling through him, and his arms pull from his pockets to wrap around himself, hugging himself until he pulls back from the hand as if burned. He turns away, his hat coming askew and falling to the ground, the mask sealed around his face, swallowing his head entire. "What are you doing to me?" he whispers, half to you, half to himself.

"Questions. Understanding. Patterns. Whore. Blood. Dogs. Her. Soap. Dead. Dead," he gasps, almost spitting each word until he gives another long, low shudder from deep in himself, as if he's purging something, "Hurrrrrrrrrrrm. Hurrrrrm. Hurrrm." Slowly, he starts to straighten, his gloved hand reaching down and plucking up the hat. Fitting it to his head. The flood. The fire. The wicked. The damned. No salvation. No release. No mother. No Walter.

Just Rorschach.

"Hurm."

The spell, whatever it might be, is well broken now. Etta turns away and takes a half-dozen somewhat shaky steps in the opposite direction as he curls into himself, finding breathing easier when the gap is wider. She doesn’t rush to speak, giving her head another shake to clear it before she says, “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day...” She says, though doubt is writ across every word.

It’s better though, over here, easier to think with a bit of space, even though it’s darker, out of the last bit of twilight leaking through the dirty windows overhead. It’ll be full dark soon. And she’ll be alone in the dark with him.

She turns her head and looks back over the round of one dark-suited shoulder at his mythical masked figure, a frown tugging at her mouth as she wages an internal debate that ends with, “I’m going to leave you my phone number. You needn’t ever use it. But I’m going to anyway.”

Rorschach has full possession of himself again. His mask has stilled, the shifting ink frozen in place, almost looking like something normal. But, of course, nothing about Rorschach is normal. He's reminded of a movie he saw once, one of the few that stuck with him. Most movies are mindless shit, dribbles of something that flow through the mind like wind, empty, meaningless, just a noise against the windowpanes. But this one stuck in his head. The images in it. The actors. Their voices. Whoever made it had touched something real. Madness. Despair. Death.

"Quid pro quo, Clarice." he rasps.

He steps forward again and reaches into his pocket. He hasn't left a calling card in a long time. It was easier not to be announced, to sign his work. Took the heat off. But he drops it on the ground and the ink seems to spread over the card, making an inkblot. A rorschach. Once, he tucked them into his victim's clothes. Now he's offered her one. He's not even sure why. It's not like it has his phone number in return. "You know things. Hear things. I'll call. You can ask questions. I will ask questions. Exchange. Mutual benefit. Quid. Pro. Quo."

Why does this feel so much like making a bargain with the devil at some lonely and storied crossroads? She watches the card tumble from his fingers from a moderately safe distance. She looks from it to his mottled face and, after the smallest of hesitations, she dips her chin in terse nod.

She takes a breath before moving towards him again, pausing a few feet away and sinking into a crouch that leaves her balanced on the sharp stakes of her black heels. She collects the little square of paper, turning it over in her hands to examine it thoroughly before tucking it in her pocket. Whatever she thinks about it is a mystery as she doesn’t offer a comment and stays hidden behind the veil of her bright hair.

At least until she looks up at him. The fascination is there still, but edged with a touch of something wary and maybe even the barest hint of something mournful. She seems to have run dry of words entirely though. Her pale hand slips from her pocket, extending an offering of a card up towards him in turn from her crouch. Quid pro quo.

Rorschach reaches out and takes the card, his middle and index finger scissoring around it. His gloves are rough, as if from wear, and you can see a stain that can only be blood, impossible to see except for up close, long since dried and soaked into the leather. He draws back and tucks the card into his pocket. "Take Third street back to your car. More streetlights. Restaurants. Market Street has a pimp and two dealers. For now," he says. "Good luck...Henrietta."