crack_van | Life or its reverse by theonlytwin (R)

Fandom: WATCHMEN
Pairing: Dan/Laurie/Rorschach
Length: ~7k total
Author on LJ:

theonlytwin
Author's website: /tag/fic
Why this must be read:

This fic's vivid, gorgeous, and hopeful; it's a love story and also a bit of an adventure, told engagingly out-of-order and evoking a great range of emotions in its course.

The story begins with an alternate ending for the novel where Rorschach survives, and has to live in hiding with Dan and Laurie. All three characters are shown to be deeply flawed, not just Rorschach. One line calls them "a couple of intense, neurotic, repressed, violent, affection-starved individuals, and Rorschach."

Since Watchmen was all about how the heroic can be contemptible, a favourite aim of Watchmen fanfic is to cherish or redeem the contemptible. That is what goes on in this fic: the characters are defeated fugitives leading squalid, makeshift lives, psychologically screwy as discussed above, and they tend to get on each other's nerves. But they're the heroes, and it's their love story.

Life or its reverse
Three times Dan, Laurie and Rorschach need to hide
Moral Winter: In the city's shadow
Moral Winter: At the hue of the skies