let me stay awhile

 

I felt like typing, so here you go.

I saw Watchmen twice already this week… would have been three times had I worked up the nerve to go on Tuesday.
Regardless… I was surprised.
Not at the translation to the silver screen, not at the casting, not at the special effects…but at my reaction.

I broke down and sobbed when Rorschach died in the novel. I’ll admit that.
It’s cruelly hard for me to cry unless something catches me off guard, you know. I knew he was going to die, but I didn’t expect him to go out like a martyr… for him to go out like I want to.
That gave him solid honorary hero status in my heart, as if his empathetically sad past and sadly twisted want for justice weren’t enough for me to love the guy already.

Then the question hit me.
I know he dies at the end… I’ve read the book many times already, and I’ve reviewed the scene in my mind on just as many occasions.
And yet, how will it be in the theater? Will it hurt more? Will it hurt less? Will I still cry? Will I still care?

When Rorschach declared to the world watching him that he would never compromise, I was surprised to feel sheer panic surge through my chest. I knew what was about to happen, but that didn’t mean I wanted it to happen.
He stepped outside and Manhattan followed… I remembered my naïve little prayer from July. Don’t kill Rorschach, please…
I was soft then… still a kid. I hadn’t donned my own inkface at that time.
But now, in March 2009, even though I’m now as much a broken vigilante as he is, I felt that unadulterated pain again as he stepped into the snow.

His eyes broke my heart.
The moment he took off that mask and I saw the tears on his uncompromising face, I swear my expression must have matched his.
In those last moments onscreen, I felt the exact same fear, panic, desperation, and empathy that I did on that night back in July.
Who am I kidding? I felt love, damn it. In spite of my hard exterior and hidden face, I loved that broken hero, but hearing his voice break like that just tore me apart.

The snow turned red.
Nite Owl screamed what I was secretly feeling.

The panic was gone, replaced by a helpless emptiness.
I couldn’t have saved him. I couldn’t have done anything to prevent it.
I didn’t even know if stepping in front of my fedora-donning friend would have been for the better, and that left me feeling sick and weak.
I hate feeling weak.

The credits rolled on my redhead’s words and I watched for Jackie’s name in the lineup.
I swear, that man is such a sweetheart… there’s an unmistakable softness in his face that transferred to Rorschach in an absolutely incomparable way.
No one could have played the part better.

I picked up my battered hat and swung my coat around my shoulders, giving a vague silhouette of my favorite twisted hero.
If anyone had glanced upon my face on Monday, I don’t know what they would have seen… maybe nothing, maybe everything.
I drove home in the dark and every song mourned Antarctica. My voice shattered like snowflakes when I tried to join them.

I pulled into my driveway and two tears fell from my tired eyes.
Took long enough.

Wednesday was different.
The emptiness lingered.
I tried to cry again… tried to get the empathy to burn a little more, but I couldn’t do it.
The terrible sorrow that hits you the first time quickly turns into a terrible ache.

Still, every time I see his green eyes fill with tears, my own do the same.

And yet it means so much to me that we both can still feel.