anactoria

Title: The Deadly Light
Author:

anactoria
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairing: Various, mainly Adrian/Dan.
Rating: PG for this part, probably R-ish overall.
Summary: Lovecraft-inspired 1920s supernatural horror AU.
Notes: Pseudoscience ahead. May make your head explode if you are a real scientist.
Thanks to

flyingrat42 for all her beta help. :) Any remaining mistakes are, of course, my own.
Previous chapters: 1

New York, 1925

Dan stands restless in his own front room. He lifts up his sweating glass, places it back on the table without taking a sip. He's frowning, reading over parts of the letter he holds in his other hand (written in sharp cursive, on thick, creamy paper, with impeccable politeness and a few oblique hints at knowing far more than it says outright.) He isn't nervous, exactly, but... well.

Lately, he hasn't been getting out much, and with Kovacs out of town, Veidt will be the first visitor he's had in at least a week. Dan isn't much of a social animal at the best of times, and it's been worse since the engagement.

The most galling part of it all is, he doesn't even have any right to feel this way. It's not as though he was ever likely to pluck up the courage to tell Laurel how he felt. And while Osterman might be unnerving, with that unchanging, detached expression, and his habit of telling people, with eerie accuracy, what they're about to say a second before they get around to saying it, he's never been less than polite to Dan. He can hardly be blamed for his condition. The best doctors in the country haven't managed to work it out, so it certainly wouldn't be fair for Dan to hold it against him -- even if a small, selfish part of him would very much like to.

He hasn't had the opportunity to talk to anybody about the whole situation, but then, that's probably for the best. Somehow, he doesn't think that Kovacs would understand. The idea of being openly pathetic in front of Sergeant Mason makes his skin crawl with embarrassment. About the only other person he could call a close friend is Laurel herself, and he'd rather not try to imagine how that conversation might go. It's been easier just keeping to himself.

Adrian Veidt's note, though, has gotten him interested. It's cryptic, giving away just enough to be intriguing -- and it was entirely unexpected, considering that they've never actually known each other very well.

Back in Dan's university days, they exchanged the occasional polite greeting, but the moneyed aesthetes in whose company Veidt was usually seen (when he was seen in company at all) certainly wouldn't have been Dan's first choice of companions, and so they never really got past the polite greetings. They couldn't, by any stretch of the imagination, have been called friends. Dan can still remember poking through one of the less-frequented corners of the library, stumbling across Veidt engrossed in some vast, dusty old tome in an unfamiliar language, and getting such an affronted look that he felt as though he'd just walked into a private residence by mistake.

That had been shortly before the library burned down. Veidt vanished from campus, and from New York society, too, pretty soon afterwards -- apparently to somewhere in the Middle East. There was a brief flurry of rumor and speculation at the time, but Dan's never been particularly interested in keeping up with society gossip, and he can hardly remember any of what was said. Truthfully, he hadn't even thought about the guy in years.

So when the bell rings and he opens the door to find Veidt proffering his hand with an easy, "Daniel. It's good to see you again," Dan finds himself caught off guard, blinking stupidly at the unexpected familiarity.

"Ah," he manages, after a second. "Ah, yeah. You too. It's been a long time."

"Too long," Veidt agrees, with a smile. It's a crisp, sunny smile, bright as an electric bulb, bright enough that you almost don't notice that it fails to reach his eyes.

Dan blinks back at the smile. "I should probably invite you in," he says, to distract it. "Can I get you a drink?"

"Just coffee, thank you," Veidt replies, casting an appraising gaze around the apartment as he walks in. The scrutiny to which Dan feels himself subjected is cool and measuring, and it makes him want to look childishly at the floor and scuff the soles of his shoes.

He feels his face go hot when that gaze lands on the tumbler of whisky and soda sitting on the table beside his chair. It isn't a regular indulgence. (But he isn't accustomed to talking about his work with anyone, let alone a near-stranger, and he needed to fortify himself for the task somehow.) And he really ought to be used to disapproval by now, given the frequency of his conversations with Kovacs. Somehow, he still feels ten years old, caught with his fingers in the candy jar.

But when Veidt glances back in his direction, his expression has softened, and he actually chuckles.

"Please, don't think that I'm passing judgement," he says. "To be frank, I'm of the opinion that the current system of regulation is ridiculous. I try not to over-indulge, personally; that's all." The corners of his eyes crinkle up. "But you didn't invite me here to listen to my opinions on the federal regulation of alcohol."

Actually, as far as Dan can remember, it wasn't him who did the inviting. But instead of pointing that out, he laughs and shrugs and occupies himself with lighting up the small stove in the corner of the room, suddenly very glad of the distraction. Thank goodness he keeps his own coffee-making facilities. "Of course not. Though-- honestly, I'm still not entirely sure why you did contact me."

"Of course." A twitch of amusement as Veidt arranges himself in the spare armchair without invitation, and Dan mentally kicks himself for his own thoughtlessness. "I'm sorry I couldn't be clearer when I wrote to you. But these kinds of subjects do tend to make people nervous. I've found that it's always wisest to test the water first."

"Oh, sure. I can understand that."

"I did mention, of course, that I was fascinated by your articles in Chrysopoeia."

Dan looks down at his hands. "Well, you know. It's just a niche publication. There aren't many people who take it seriously."

"With good reason, judging by much of the content. However." Veidt gleams at him. "I may be no scientist, but it's obvious even to a layman that your work is far more intellectually rigorous than the usual fare. And as for the subject matter... well, let's just say that it could be very important."

An involuntary, disbelieving chuckle breaks out of Dan. "You think? Most people seem pretty well convinced that I'm insane. It isn't exactly regular science."

"And if human beings always stuck with what was regular, we would still be living in caves and lighting fires with flint." Veidt's expression turns earnest, his voice gentle. "People are afraid of what they can't comprehend, Daniel. You shouldn't allow ignorance to interfere with something you know to be worthwhile."

"But I don't know that it is. I've had a few successful experiments at home, but-- well, I haven't managed to convince anybody that I'm not wasting my time yet. It probably looks crazy, chasing after some idea that a few half-mad European sorcerers wrote down in the Middle Ages. I'm not even sure if I really understand what I'm doing. It's half science, half..."

"Magic?" Veidt tips his head to one side, lips quirking. "I understand. One can feel a little embarrassed using such terms. But isn't magic, after all, just what humans have always called powers we don't understand?"

Dan blinks in surprise, and Veidt makes an expansive gesture, apparently happy to expound on his hint without further prompting.

"As I'm sure you're aware, the idea of unknown forms of energy, by-products of a kind of... rupture in reality, if you will, existed long before Olaus Wormius set it down. What surprised me was quite how far back it goes." Veidt's expression has turned dreamy, and his voice takes on a rhythmic, storytelling quality as he warms to his subject. It's startlingly easy for Dan to get sucked in by that voice, to surrender to it and let himself be pulled along. "All the way back, in fact, to the Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred. That's its first appearance in writing, though there are earlier inscriptions on record that hint at the existence of these energies, at the unfathomably vast events of which they are merely the residue. And at the ways in which they might be used. A few exceptional men, throughout history, have been fascinated by the idea. Most simply disregarded it as fantasy -- as magic -- out of scepticism, or out of fear. But you're making an attempt to understand it. That puts you at least part of the way there."

"That's just it," Dan cuts in, trance broken. "I'm sure there's a way of harnessing these energies, and I think I might know how to do it." He pulls a pencil stub out of his pocket, casts around for something to write on, and lights upon yesterday's Evening Post, folded on the arm of his chair. "I've been using this--equation, you'd probably call it, though in the original it's presented as an incantation of some sort. A spell, I guess." And the word still sounds ridiculous spoken aloud, a word from childish games and fairy-stories, but he doesn't feel half as embarrassed saying it in front of Veidt as he'd expected to. "It seems to work about half the time, anyway." He finishes writing and smoothes out the paper, offering it for inspection.

Then there's a whistling noise from the kettle, followed by the hiss of water boiling over, and he jumps to his feet again, muttering, "Damn, damn, damn."

"Mmm." Veidt regards the paper thoughtfully, apparently unconcerned by the minor domestic accident occurring in the corner of the room. "Wormius talks about 'dark' and 'light' forms of the energy, of course. It's my theory that one of those forms is given off by an opening in the fabric of reality, and the other by one of those openings being closed. You'd have to harness them differently, I suppose. Perhaps if you reversed this symbol..."

When Dan turns around, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a shirtsleeve dripping hot water, Veidt is writing, making a few deft alterations in his sharply sloping hand, and turning the newspaper around for Dan's perusal. His expression is opaque, betraying no trace of excitement. He could be filling out a crossword puzzle.

Dan passes him the cup and picks up the paper, holding it close to his face. "That... actually makes a lot of sense," he admits, after a few seconds' scrutiny.

And it does. It's an imaginative leap, and not one he'd ever have thought of making himself, but it might just work.

It might work. His fingers itch, already eager to be back at his workbench, finding the right parts and constructing a shape through which to channel it. He grins. "I don't suppose there's any chance of your giving up antiquarianism for a career as my brilliant assistant?"

Veidt actually laughs at that. "I can't see it, somehow. But I am fascinated by the work you've been doing." A moment's pause. "Perhaps, if it isn't too great an intrusion, you'd indulge my curiosity?"

"I don't usually show people what I'm working on," Dan says doubtfully, his grin fading, but there's a little curl of excitement in his stomach, tentative and new.

The only person who comes up to his rooms regularly is Kovacs, and while he does look genuinely impressed by some of the gadgets Dan's constructed, he isn't really interested in the mechanics of it all, or the theories behind it. (And when Dan talks about any of it for too long, he snorts, and his hands grip each other until the knuckles turn white, and he mutters that it's all speculation anyway, and surely there must be other avenues of research that would actually be of some use to society. At times like that, Dan can't help thinking that Kovacs sounds exactly like his father.)

The idea of showing his work to someone who understands it is, on the one hand, discomfiting, like he's being invited to submit the inner workings of his brain for inspection. But Veidt would hardly have gone to the trouble of writing to him if he wasn't genuinely interested, and he talked about the articles as though they actually deserved to be taken seriously, not dismissed as the credulous fantasies of an upper-class dilettante. And besides, he has this wide-eyed, expectant look on his face that makes saying 'no' seem unthinkably rude.

Dan looks down, swallows his uncertainty, raises his eyes. He smiles. "Sure," he says. "Why not?"

* * *

The large room that serves as Dan's workshop has two states of being: the semi-organized chaos he works in when an idea hits him and he has to make something out of it, now, or it will escape him forever and he'll never remember it again, and the compulsive neatness that serves him pretty well the rest of the time, tools and pieces laid out carefully parallel to one another, plans and notes organized according to his own obscure mental filing system. Today, thankfully, it's the latter.

Walking in here with another person still makes him want to flinch a little, and he finds himself talking faster, and at a fractionally higher pitch than normal, as he shows Veidt around.

"You, uh, probably know all of this already," he's saying. "But there are-- incidents, things people see-- that seem to indicate the presence of this kind of energy. A lot of the time they just get written off as hallucinations, hysterical fits. Or fakes, of course. Sometimes nobody notices anything at all. I guess the breaks in time and space are so tiny that our senses can't pick them up. But I figured if there was some way of detecting it, then-- well, then the whole idea might get taken a little more seriously." Habit makes him break off there, turning red and giving Veidt a cautious sideways glance -- but he's just smiling and nodding. "So, ah, anyway. That's what this is for."

It's a handheld device, the design based on that of the Geiger counter and scaled down a little, with a few of the strange, sinuous sigils from the illustrations in Wormius's volume incorporated into the wiring and inscribed on the outer case. Dan picks the detector up with both hands, holds it out, and tries not to draw breath too sharply when Veidt takes it from him.

Veidt is silent for a long moment, turning it over in his hands, tracing one of the inscribed characters with a fingertip. He stares intently at it for a moment, then blinks and looks abruptly back at Dan. "Decorations?"

"Not exactly." Dan frowns. "Having them there really seems to make it more effective. I haven't figured out how yet, but who knows. Maybe I will, one day. See, I used them here as well." He grabs another of his constructions, this one reminiscent of a small handgun, and runs his thumb along the barrel. The designs are repeated there, and on the handle, too. "This is what I've been using to direct the energy. It started out as a theoretical model, because in order to have anything to direct, you'd need to generate it. You'd have to create tiny cracks in the fabric of reality, basically. But when I added these, I started to get readings from it. I haven't had the chance to do a practical test, but it should work."

"Fascinating," Veidt murmurs, "If not entirely unsurprising. You have, I'm sure, heard of the Pnakotic Manuscripts? Characters similar to these occur there, and, naturally, in Alhazred, too. There is, I'm told, a theory that this didn't originate as a system of writing, but of visual representation. Originally, they were pictures of a different order of existence-- of creatures not entirely of this world. Of course, I have no way of knowing that this is true, but if they represent forms existent in a dimension parallel to ours, then... perhaps that's all it takes to bring two realities closer together. There are so many forces at work in this world that we still don't understand." A moment's pause, and Veidt's expression is so faraway that Dan isn't quite sure whether he's meant to respond, or even that his presence hasn't been completely forgotten. Then Veidt seems to gather himself, and he gives Dan a small smile. "May I?"

"Sure." Dan hands the pistol over. "Of course, with the alternative inscription you worked out earlier, I could probably work out another design. Something similar might work, but... I don't know. It's unidirectional-- it feels a little clumsy. I'd like to try something with a bit more flexibility..."

As he muses aloud, Veidt is turning the pistol over in his hands, inspecting it, testing its weight with smooth, precise motions that manage to look practised although he's never seen the thing before today, not a movement wasted.

Huh.

Before he has thought about manners or appropriateness, or given his own social awkwardness a chance to catch up with him, Dan's stepping forward, taking the pistol from Veidt and setting it down carefully on the table.

"Give me your hand," he says, and Veidt shoots him a curious sideways glance, but does as he asks.

It's not the sort of hand that belongs to someone accustomed to tinkering with bits of metal and wood and wire -- it's a scholar's hand, or a musician's, unblemished and graceful (and warm to the touch, though somewhere below the level of consciousness he's been expecting someone as immaculate as Veidt to be cool as polished stone.) Dan just traces its outlines with his thumb, the bare bones of a design taking shape in his mind's eye. Then he's scrabbling for paper and a pencil again, aware that he has to get his idea down on paper if he ever wants to recreate it.

Veidt just looks at him for a moment, a bemused smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. Then he retracts his outstretched arm, pushing both hands deep into his pockets, and waits, watching.

"Oh." Dan blinks at him, suddenly aware that he may have just been incredibly rude. "Uh, thanks. Sorry if that seemed a little..." He trails off.

"Don't mention it," Veidt says mildly, and somehow Dan can't quite manage to feel embarrassed.

Chapter 3