Fic: Solidarity 2/14 (Watchmen)
May. 1st, 2009 08:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anactoriaTitle: Solidarity
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anactoria
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairing: Dan/Adrian
Rating: R overall, PG-13 for this part.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters and am ill-getting no gains from writing this.
Summary: It's 1992 and this isn't Utopia.
Notes: I still have no beta, and I'd really, really like one. Someone? Anyone?
Chapter 1
March 1986
The nights are drawing out and Adrian, as usual, is at the centre of a crowd. All of them are young and promising, most brilliant, several beautiful and not shy about making it clear they're interested in more than his conversation. Adrian is polite, pleasant, even attentive, to all of them. He answers their bright-eyed questions with wit and a practised warmth that makes each feel he or she has been really listened to -- even if the words barely register, even if half Adrian's attention is swallowed by the list of names that runs endlessly through his head like a catechism, by the memory of killing cold.
He is freezing from the inside out. Sometimes he is sure that he will wake one morning unable to open his eyes, solid and immobile as marble. It does not matter. He never cracks.
There is a small flurry of movement to his left. Someone is moving through the room towards him. Adrian recognises the face -- Gregory Dyson, a rising star in the current administration and as irritating and rodent-faced a social climber as one could possibly hope to avoid meeting -- a split-second too late, and then Dyson has installed himself in front of Adrian and is shaking his hand with unseemly enthusiasm. Adrian just looks at him until he lets go.
Dyson gets to the point quickly enough, then. Nixon's popularity is still dropping, it seems, and all his grand words about new worlds, new starts and solidarity cannot stem its decline. At a time like this, popular perception is that the country needs -- stronger leadership. But with the right support... if the right public figures come out in his defence...
Adrian declines with impeccable but iron-clad courtesy. Dyson will understand, of course, the importance of his public neutrality. Image is such a large part of Adrian's currency. Becoming entangled in party politics would be, shall we say... impolitic.
The wry smile with which Adrian accompanies the statement is a full stop. Cowed, Dyson nods and retreats.
However.
Adrian's train of thought does not. After all, he has considered politics before now. He'd have little difficulty making his way into government; that much has always been obvious. And while wealth and connections allow him to wield a considerable degree of influence, it's behind-the-scenes, oblique. Perhaps a more direct approach would be more honest.
Honesty. Even the thought is bitter.
All of Adrian's patience dissipates at once. Abruptly, he sets down his champagne glass. It is two-thirds full.
"You're not leaving already?" exclaims the Hollywood starlet who has appeared at his elbow, shaking her head sadly. "That's the trouble with you big-shot business types. Always thinking about the next day's work."
"I'm afraid so," Adrian replies, with precisely the appropriate measures of regret and firmness. "There is, as they say, no rest for the wicked."
He is not thinking about tomorrow. He is thinking about November 2nd, 1985, about shattered glass and snow, and about the betrayed look in Daniel Dreiberg's eyes.
February 1992
According to the digital clock on Dan's windowsill, it is seven twenty-two. Indolent, by Adrian's standards. Force of habit wakes him before six most days, and he prefers to spend as little time as possible lying alone with his thoughts.
There are eight minutes remaining before curfew lifts; it is not yet safe to raise the blackout blind. The half-light seeping through beneath it is murky and grey.
Adrian's eyes adjust quickly to the darkness, and so he narrowly avoids treading on Dan's face as he climbs out of bed. Dan has obviously managed to find a spare pillow and blanket and is snoring softly on the floor, still wearing his glasses, with a small torch beside him and a heavy hardback -- Birds of Continental Europe (An Illustrated Guide) -- open, spine-up, on his chest. A thoughtless habit, and one that has irritated Adrian since he was old enough to know what a book was, but it's in keeping with the childishness of reading under the covers, with the fifteen years Dan's face seems to have shed in sleep. Moving very quietly, Adrian removes Dan's glasses, closes the book, and places both neatly on the windowsill.
The kitchen, which also appears to function as social space and impromptu meeting-room, is already occupied by a small circle of people, the tone of their conversation low and urgent. He recognises more than one face among them from the previous afternoon. Judith, the unofficial leader, is a freckled and good-humoured young woman little more than thirty, who nonetheless carries an air of stolid capability with her at all times like a shield. At this moment, however, the expression on her face is harried. It's one Adrian has seen frequently during the past few days, usually on members of the resistance -- if one can call it that, this network of disparate, scrabbling groups so unlike the organized movement bleated of fearfully by newscasters on Party-sanctioned TV channels.
"They got Martin," Judith is saying, "And we've no other way of getting medical supplies at the moment. We're running low. People are staying here longer, it's harder and harder to get them to the border and more dangerous when we do. What we have won't last long."
"I may be able to assist," Adrian says, without prelude, nodding by way of greeting. The urgent hum drops almost to silence the second he opens his mouth. Well, some things never change.
"What do you suggest?" Judith asks, eyeing him with surprise.
"I'm assuming you hold local information. Details of city hospitals, pharmacies. Names of senior staff. That sort of thing."
"Pharmacies have to be Party-licensed, just like in New York, but we've got hospital records. Maria?"
Ten minutes later, Adrian is scanning through a sheaf of papers. Five minutes after that, his eyes have seized upon the name that he needs, and he nods.
Yamada Terumi. A talented researcher, with a brilliant career ahead of her, until she discovered that the pharmaceutical company she worked for was preventing affordable, generic versions of its latest and most effective anti-malaria drug from being produced in Africa. Coincidentally, she resigned her position five days before Veidt Industries withdrew funding for all joint ventures, leading indirectly to the company's collapse. They've exchanged pleasantries in the intervening years, and she's likely to be sympathetic. She's also now head of immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
There is a Patrol van -- white, unassuming, and equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance technology, some of it originally developed by the research arm of Veidt Industries -- parked metres from the hospital's main entrance. A black-clad officer is planted on each side of the doorway. They stand out as baldly as concrete bollards, solid and entirely unlike shadows.
Their presence does not trouble Adrian overmuch. He is not officially being hunted, not yet, and the Patrols still hesitate to arrest respectable civilians in public, in broad daylight. It is the other, more shadowy branches of the police that do that work; the ones that operate after dark.
Adrian's expensive suit and air of cool assurance see him through the corridors unmolested, and then he is standing in a spacious, glass-fronted office. A discreet surveillance camera watches from one corner of the ceiling.
"Dr. Yamada."
"Adrian." She is visibly aged, harassed and wearied, but she looks at him with real warmth. "Terumi, please. Follow me."
She brings them to a deserted operating theatre where the overhead lights cast harsh, angled shadows.
"We shouldn't be overheard here. Apparently the Party still trusts us not to plot its downfall over the open chest cavities of our patients. For now." Her expression turns wry. "I get a couple of the unofficial radio stations. Heard you'd vanished. I'm assuming this isn't a social call."
"You were always perceptive. However," Adrian allows his voice to soften, "I do hope you're keeping well. How are you and Valerie?"
Terumi's smile dissolves. "Who?"
The tone is carefully indifferent, but the message clear, and it's one Terumi can't risk saying aloud, even away from cameras and listening devices. They got her.
"I'm sorry," Adrian says, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. And he is, but there's elation there, too, because in that moment it is clear that she will help them. For that, he feels only the tiniest flicker of guilt.
November 1988
Dan still doesn't watch much TV, but he scans the front pages when he gets the chance. It's the usual stuff today: summits with the EC and Russia, crime stats drop for the third consecutive year... Senate elections.
He knows he shouldn't be surprised when he sees Adrian's grinning face plastered under that headline, but his chest clenches all the same. He's not masochistic enough to read the accompanying spiel, though -- and anyway, he already knows what it's going to say. Meteoric rise. Immense popularity. Is there nothing this man can't do? Etcetera, etcetera, etfuckingcetera.
Turning away in disgust, Dan decides to forget about the paper for today. He buys a plastic bag of jawbreakers instead. Funny, how that kind of retro candy's so popular again. It's a nostalgia thing, which is kind of ironic when you can't turn a corner without being preached at about the bright new future we're all meant to be looking forward to. People ought to be buying Flying Saucers or something, maybe those freeze-dried strawberries they sell in silver packets labelled as astronaut food.
Laurie's still out when he gets home. He tosses the plastic bag down on the kitchen counter, and that's when he notices the tiny purple 'V' logo in the bottom right hand corner.
Even candy. There's no escape.
Okay, so Adrian probably isn't exactly involved with the company these days, what with helping run the world and all, but God. Dan knows it's childish, petty, stupid -- all the things, in fact, that Adrian's so good at making people feel -- but he flings the bag of sweets across the room, away from him, with sudden and searing violence. They scatter across the kitchen floor with a sound like heavy rain.
February 1992
When Adrian returns to the officially disused building half-seriously referred to as 'HQ', Dan is nowhere to be seen. He understands that he is being avoided, again, but has no time to dwell on the subject, because then Judith unceremoniously ropes him into helping mend a central heating pipe on the first floor.
"What did you do, before this?" he asks, to avoid silence as they work.
"I was a teacher. High school chemistry. And a damned good one too, if I say so myself." Judith looks round with light in her eyes. "It's great, you know? Showing kids they can be good at something they thought was boring as hell. Seeing them realise their potential."
Adrian nods. "The government still employs teachers of basic science. You didn't have to stop, or join the resistance. What changed?"
She turns back to the pipe. "My dad. Died in '85. And when Steele started using that as an excuse -- giving himself extra powers, getting rid of people whose politics he didn't like -- well, I couldn't just sit around. I had to do something."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Adrian's found himself saying that rather frequently today.
"Don't be. He was an asshole." Judith's voice slows, turns ruminative. "But still, he wouldn't have wanted this. You know?"
He knows.
By the time he next sees Dan, it is late. Adrian has been allocated a spare bunk, and he's sure Dan has no task to wait up for, but somehow when he wanders into the kitchen shortly after midnight Dan is still sitting at the table, a cooled mug of coffee half-full in front of him. It appears neither of them is doing much sleeping these days.
So they talk. Awkwardly, at first, and then a little less awkwardly, with the occasionally half-joke or sidelong smile. Trivialities, skirting the edges of the real questions. It's obvious Dan has no wish to discuss Karnak, or the intervening events, at this moment, and Adrian does not object. The unfaded memory is with him always, like pressure on a bruise.
"I can't help noticing you're alone here, Dan," he ventures, though, after a while. "If you don't mind my asking, where is Laurel?"
Dan's gaze drops to the table, and Adrian's heart sinks.
"In Paris, with her mom, last thing I heard. Europe was still safe then. She got out six months ago." He glances back up, directly at Adrian, but there is no rancour in the look. It's simply sad. "I haven't heard from her in two."
This time, Adrian doesn't say sorry. To do so would be pathetically, cheaply inadequate.
The knowledge he burdened them all with was awful, but he'd assumed that Dan and Laurie would share it, that they'd comfort each other. He was to be the only one to bear it alone.
Chapter 3
Author:
anactoriaFandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairing: Dan/Adrian
Rating: R overall, PG-13 for this part.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters and am ill-getting no gains from writing this.
Summary: It's 1992 and this isn't Utopia.
Notes: I still have no beta, and I'd really, really like one. Someone? Anyone?
Chapter 1
March 1986
The nights are drawing out and Adrian, as usual, is at the centre of a crowd. All of them are young and promising, most brilliant, several beautiful and not shy about making it clear they're interested in more than his conversation. Adrian is polite, pleasant, even attentive, to all of them. He answers their bright-eyed questions with wit and a practised warmth that makes each feel he or she has been really listened to -- even if the words barely register, even if half Adrian's attention is swallowed by the list of names that runs endlessly through his head like a catechism, by the memory of killing cold.
He is freezing from the inside out. Sometimes he is sure that he will wake one morning unable to open his eyes, solid and immobile as marble. It does not matter. He never cracks.
There is a small flurry of movement to his left. Someone is moving through the room towards him. Adrian recognises the face -- Gregory Dyson, a rising star in the current administration and as irritating and rodent-faced a social climber as one could possibly hope to avoid meeting -- a split-second too late, and then Dyson has installed himself in front of Adrian and is shaking his hand with unseemly enthusiasm. Adrian just looks at him until he lets go.
Dyson gets to the point quickly enough, then. Nixon's popularity is still dropping, it seems, and all his grand words about new worlds, new starts and solidarity cannot stem its decline. At a time like this, popular perception is that the country needs -- stronger leadership. But with the right support... if the right public figures come out in his defence...
Adrian declines with impeccable but iron-clad courtesy. Dyson will understand, of course, the importance of his public neutrality. Image is such a large part of Adrian's currency. Becoming entangled in party politics would be, shall we say... impolitic.
The wry smile with which Adrian accompanies the statement is a full stop. Cowed, Dyson nods and retreats.
However.
Adrian's train of thought does not. After all, he has considered politics before now. He'd have little difficulty making his way into government; that much has always been obvious. And while wealth and connections allow him to wield a considerable degree of influence, it's behind-the-scenes, oblique. Perhaps a more direct approach would be more honest.
Honesty. Even the thought is bitter.
All of Adrian's patience dissipates at once. Abruptly, he sets down his champagne glass. It is two-thirds full.
"You're not leaving already?" exclaims the Hollywood starlet who has appeared at his elbow, shaking her head sadly. "That's the trouble with you big-shot business types. Always thinking about the next day's work."
"I'm afraid so," Adrian replies, with precisely the appropriate measures of regret and firmness. "There is, as they say, no rest for the wicked."
He is not thinking about tomorrow. He is thinking about November 2nd, 1985, about shattered glass and snow, and about the betrayed look in Daniel Dreiberg's eyes.
February 1992
According to the digital clock on Dan's windowsill, it is seven twenty-two. Indolent, by Adrian's standards. Force of habit wakes him before six most days, and he prefers to spend as little time as possible lying alone with his thoughts.
There are eight minutes remaining before curfew lifts; it is not yet safe to raise the blackout blind. The half-light seeping through beneath it is murky and grey.
Adrian's eyes adjust quickly to the darkness, and so he narrowly avoids treading on Dan's face as he climbs out of bed. Dan has obviously managed to find a spare pillow and blanket and is snoring softly on the floor, still wearing his glasses, with a small torch beside him and a heavy hardback -- Birds of Continental Europe (An Illustrated Guide) -- open, spine-up, on his chest. A thoughtless habit, and one that has irritated Adrian since he was old enough to know what a book was, but it's in keeping with the childishness of reading under the covers, with the fifteen years Dan's face seems to have shed in sleep. Moving very quietly, Adrian removes Dan's glasses, closes the book, and places both neatly on the windowsill.
The kitchen, which also appears to function as social space and impromptu meeting-room, is already occupied by a small circle of people, the tone of their conversation low and urgent. He recognises more than one face among them from the previous afternoon. Judith, the unofficial leader, is a freckled and good-humoured young woman little more than thirty, who nonetheless carries an air of stolid capability with her at all times like a shield. At this moment, however, the expression on her face is harried. It's one Adrian has seen frequently during the past few days, usually on members of the resistance -- if one can call it that, this network of disparate, scrabbling groups so unlike the organized movement bleated of fearfully by newscasters on Party-sanctioned TV channels.
"They got Martin," Judith is saying, "And we've no other way of getting medical supplies at the moment. We're running low. People are staying here longer, it's harder and harder to get them to the border and more dangerous when we do. What we have won't last long."
"I may be able to assist," Adrian says, without prelude, nodding by way of greeting. The urgent hum drops almost to silence the second he opens his mouth. Well, some things never change.
"What do you suggest?" Judith asks, eyeing him with surprise.
"I'm assuming you hold local information. Details of city hospitals, pharmacies. Names of senior staff. That sort of thing."
"Pharmacies have to be Party-licensed, just like in New York, but we've got hospital records. Maria?"
Ten minutes later, Adrian is scanning through a sheaf of papers. Five minutes after that, his eyes have seized upon the name that he needs, and he nods.
Yamada Terumi. A talented researcher, with a brilliant career ahead of her, until she discovered that the pharmaceutical company she worked for was preventing affordable, generic versions of its latest and most effective anti-malaria drug from being produced in Africa. Coincidentally, she resigned her position five days before Veidt Industries withdrew funding for all joint ventures, leading indirectly to the company's collapse. They've exchanged pleasantries in the intervening years, and she's likely to be sympathetic. She's also now head of immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
There is a Patrol van -- white, unassuming, and equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance technology, some of it originally developed by the research arm of Veidt Industries -- parked metres from the hospital's main entrance. A black-clad officer is planted on each side of the doorway. They stand out as baldly as concrete bollards, solid and entirely unlike shadows.
Their presence does not trouble Adrian overmuch. He is not officially being hunted, not yet, and the Patrols still hesitate to arrest respectable civilians in public, in broad daylight. It is the other, more shadowy branches of the police that do that work; the ones that operate after dark.
Adrian's expensive suit and air of cool assurance see him through the corridors unmolested, and then he is standing in a spacious, glass-fronted office. A discreet surveillance camera watches from one corner of the ceiling.
"Dr. Yamada."
"Adrian." She is visibly aged, harassed and wearied, but she looks at him with real warmth. "Terumi, please. Follow me."
She brings them to a deserted operating theatre where the overhead lights cast harsh, angled shadows.
"We shouldn't be overheard here. Apparently the Party still trusts us not to plot its downfall over the open chest cavities of our patients. For now." Her expression turns wry. "I get a couple of the unofficial radio stations. Heard you'd vanished. I'm assuming this isn't a social call."
"You were always perceptive. However," Adrian allows his voice to soften, "I do hope you're keeping well. How are you and Valerie?"
Terumi's smile dissolves. "Who?"
The tone is carefully indifferent, but the message clear, and it's one Terumi can't risk saying aloud, even away from cameras and listening devices. They got her.
"I'm sorry," Adrian says, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. And he is, but there's elation there, too, because in that moment it is clear that she will help them. For that, he feels only the tiniest flicker of guilt.
November 1988
Dan still doesn't watch much TV, but he scans the front pages when he gets the chance. It's the usual stuff today: summits with the EC and Russia, crime stats drop for the third consecutive year... Senate elections.
He knows he shouldn't be surprised when he sees Adrian's grinning face plastered under that headline, but his chest clenches all the same. He's not masochistic enough to read the accompanying spiel, though -- and anyway, he already knows what it's going to say. Meteoric rise. Immense popularity. Is there nothing this man can't do? Etcetera, etcetera, etfuckingcetera.
Turning away in disgust, Dan decides to forget about the paper for today. He buys a plastic bag of jawbreakers instead. Funny, how that kind of retro candy's so popular again. It's a nostalgia thing, which is kind of ironic when you can't turn a corner without being preached at about the bright new future we're all meant to be looking forward to. People ought to be buying Flying Saucers or something, maybe those freeze-dried strawberries they sell in silver packets labelled as astronaut food.
Laurie's still out when he gets home. He tosses the plastic bag down on the kitchen counter, and that's when he notices the tiny purple 'V' logo in the bottom right hand corner.
Even candy. There's no escape.
Okay, so Adrian probably isn't exactly involved with the company these days, what with helping run the world and all, but God. Dan knows it's childish, petty, stupid -- all the things, in fact, that Adrian's so good at making people feel -- but he flings the bag of sweets across the room, away from him, with sudden and searing violence. They scatter across the kitchen floor with a sound like heavy rain.
February 1992
When Adrian returns to the officially disused building half-seriously referred to as 'HQ', Dan is nowhere to be seen. He understands that he is being avoided, again, but has no time to dwell on the subject, because then Judith unceremoniously ropes him into helping mend a central heating pipe on the first floor.
"What did you do, before this?" he asks, to avoid silence as they work.
"I was a teacher. High school chemistry. And a damned good one too, if I say so myself." Judith looks round with light in her eyes. "It's great, you know? Showing kids they can be good at something they thought was boring as hell. Seeing them realise their potential."
Adrian nods. "The government still employs teachers of basic science. You didn't have to stop, or join the resistance. What changed?"
She turns back to the pipe. "My dad. Died in '85. And when Steele started using that as an excuse -- giving himself extra powers, getting rid of people whose politics he didn't like -- well, I couldn't just sit around. I had to do something."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Adrian's found himself saying that rather frequently today.
"Don't be. He was an asshole." Judith's voice slows, turns ruminative. "But still, he wouldn't have wanted this. You know?"
He knows.
By the time he next sees Dan, it is late. Adrian has been allocated a spare bunk, and he's sure Dan has no task to wait up for, but somehow when he wanders into the kitchen shortly after midnight Dan is still sitting at the table, a cooled mug of coffee half-full in front of him. It appears neither of them is doing much sleeping these days.
So they talk. Awkwardly, at first, and then a little less awkwardly, with the occasionally half-joke or sidelong smile. Trivialities, skirting the edges of the real questions. It's obvious Dan has no wish to discuss Karnak, or the intervening events, at this moment, and Adrian does not object. The unfaded memory is with him always, like pressure on a bruise.
"I can't help noticing you're alone here, Dan," he ventures, though, after a while. "If you don't mind my asking, where is Laurel?"
Dan's gaze drops to the table, and Adrian's heart sinks.
"In Paris, with her mom, last thing I heard. Europe was still safe then. She got out six months ago." He glances back up, directly at Adrian, but there is no rancour in the look. It's simply sad. "I haven't heard from her in two."
This time, Adrian doesn't say sorry. To do so would be pathetically, cheaply inadequate.
The knowledge he burdened them all with was awful, but he'd assumed that Dan and Laurie would share it, that they'd comfort each other. He was to be the only one to bear it alone.
Chapter 3
