Conversation Space IV.

[powersthatbe]

The small room is painted a dark beige, with stained wood paneling on the lower half, and lush burgundy carpeting. The ceiling, however, is cracked and bowed, sagging alarmingly, occasionally shedding chips of plaster. Wrought-iron lamp-posts in the corners suspend pale, wan globes of light, and between them along the walls run rows of painted sunflowers, all turned towards the center of the room as if listening attentively. A jutting spire of granite rises from the floor on a diagonal, its flattened top sporting a cracked wineglass from which the wine (a white) slowly spatters teardrops across the plinth. And there is no chair, but a therapist’s couch, blue with gold trim, and ornate scrollwork on the legs, beside which the fluted horn of a phonograph player pipes music into the room, quiet enough to just be background ambience.

Comments

[what_do_you_see]

Rorschach walks around the room, hands in his pockets, examining each aspect and element, but touching nothing, sitting down nowhere, interrupting nothing. After so many people have been in a similar space, he can guess what is happening, and he is very, very unhappy with it.

[powersthatare]

Time passes, and then, as he turns at one point, there will be a seven-foot tall, slender shadowed figure in the opposite corner of the room, draped in an enveloping black robe.

[what_do_you_see]

The mask tilts up and slightly to the side to examine the figure, but otherwise Rorschach does not move, does not approach.

"Which one are you?"

[powersthatare]

"I AM The Volcano and the hurricane," the figure says, voice beginning in a roar that echoes from the ceiling and ending in a distant whisper trickling up from the floor.

[what_do_you_see]

Rorschach doesn't react to the roar nor the whisper outwardly. But an internal, mental shiver goes through him - it is hard not to feel some awe in the presence of this kind of power. Exposure to Dr. Manhattan over the years has allowed him to perfect his blank body language, however, and he simply stands there as the being answers.

Death, Rorschach thinks at first, but that's not right, is it? He considers what he's learned of the cards since he's come here, what he's heard from others, and read from the books in the library.

"Tower," he says finally. What else would be associated with such destructive forces?

"What do you want from me?"

[powersthatare]

"Everything."

[what_do_you_see]

In his pockets, the redhead's fists clench.

"No," he says simply.

[powersthatare]

"I BRING Change, not choice."

[what_do_you_see]

"Can't have all I am, everything, no matter what change you bring," Rorschach says stubbornly. "Always my choice what I give up of myself."

[powersthatare]

The silence takes on a brooding quality. Then the voice speaks, rising and falling, doppler effect pronounced. It is as if the speaker is calling to Rorschach while he falls past him, again, and again, and again.

"WE MARK Those already like us.

TOGETHER WE Destroy the status quo.

BRING DISRUPTION To the complacent.

LET Institutions fall.

EVEN OUR Own system is corrupt.

BE OURS, And destroy it."

[what_do_you_see]

Rorschach pauses. It is the one thing, perhaps, that the Trump could offer that might tempt him. He fully intends to bring this system down, in whatever way he can. But to do so, to ally himself with one of those very captors and thieves of life?

He has seen, he has experienced his own death, and while that is something that has changed him irrevocably, there is still a constant in his life, an unalterable fact of his existence. "I never compromise. Never. Not even in the face of Armageddon."

[powersthatare]

"NOR Do we."

[what_do_you_see]

"Then you know why I don't make the choice to ally with you, even if we want the same things. Even if we both want to see this edifice of lies reduced to fetid, moldering rubble. Choose me, mark me, or throw me away, whatever you do, I do not accept it. I am mine."

Roraschach is not a stupid man. He knows he has no real power here. He knows his words likely will impact nothing Tower does here, that they are, in every practical sense, meaningless. But words are important to him. They are all he has - he is a walking dead man, the memory of someone who once was, preserved in amber. If he is not true to that, to his own will, then he is nothing.

[powersthatare]

"THEN CHANGE The game," the figure howls, the voice giving off a tangible force, a hot wind that shudders over Rorschach as the cadaverous form draws itself up taller.

[what_do_you_see]

Behind his mask, Rorschach closes his eyes in the face of the wind, though he stays squared off against Tower.

"Can we break this? Is it possible?"

[powersthatare]

"POSSIBLE? IT is necessary."

[what_do_you_see]

"How?"

[powersthatare]

"HOWEVER You can."

[what_do_you_see]

"No insight to offer?" Rorschach asks dryly, though he hadn't been expecting any real help. Nor does he expect an answer to the next question, but he asks it anyway. "How do we kill you?"

[powersthatare]

"A PIECE At a time," the figure says, then adds

"ALL At once."

[what_do_you_see]

"If we bring down this game, will you die, too?"

[powersthatare]

"Unknown."