The first thing Rorschach notices when he wakes is that his surroundings have changed.
He hadn't been asleep long, he knows that immediately; he rarely sleeps to begin with, a few hours snatched here and there when he can ill afford their absence, and even since his Arrival he has kept to the practice, seeing no reason to abandon routine now. He prides himself on his reactivity even when asleep, his ability to wake on a moment's notice the instant something in the environment changes, but he hadn't, not this time. It's concerning. Drugged, perhaps? It's the only explanation he can think of, the only one that makes sense, and the fact that it isn't the first time it has happened does little to ease his edginess.
The second thing he notices is that in addition to being in a room that isn't his own, even a borrowed one, his face is gone. It should be on the small table in the corner, and his clothes on the chair next to it, but both familiar furniture and his personal things (such as remain to him) are gone. He spends long moments tearing the room apart in search of it, frustrated and panicked at being left to face whatever lies outside unprotected, but he finds nothing but the clothes he is currently wearing, a few bare essentials that wouldn't be out of place in a standard motel, and the Thing he was given when he Arrived, shoved deep in the pocket of his pants as if he thought he could lose it that way if he only buried it deep enough. It isn't here. He quiets, and returns to the bed to think, carding long, knarled fingers angrily through greasy red strands gone coarse and wiry through years of neglect, as if the empty gesture will return the natural order of things.
The clinical, cold assurance the tablet provides when he finally brings himself to look soothes nothing, the words as empty and impersonal as the room. If anything it only feeds his frustration further, that their captors mock them with phrases that in different context would be meant as comfort. He dislikes confinement, even that which is claimed to be benign. Restricted freedom is never anything but a cage, no matter how well-intentioned its purpose.
If he were the type to give credence to it, he might interpret the circumstances as Divine Retribution, although he couldn't have said what he did to warrant being left this vulnerable, this...exposed, confined to Kovacs and his disgusting, pathetic, undeniably human weaknesses without even a glimpse at a means to rectify it. But such worries are useless, nothing but an exercise in futility. In a world where women are murdered while their saviors look on, frozen into impotence by their own apathy and morbid curiosity, a world where man's best friend consumes his children with slavering jaws and life goes on undisturbed...reading into the situation too closely is insanity. Another of their captors' experiments; release the mice in the maze and watch them scramble for the cheese, hoping a few tear each other apart in the race for the cats' amusement. Rorschach refuses to participate, refuses to be led where they want like cattle to slaughter. He will find his own way. He will keep a record of all he sees and hears, a record so that he can hopefully make sense of all this, so that a full account of all that transpires exists if it becomes necessary, so that, as futile as it may seem, at least later after the endgame is reached someone somewhere will know.
His journal is gone, the same as his face and the rest of his costume, left behind in the place outside that isn't here, but now that he has accepted the situation and has a Plan (albeit still rudimentary and half-formed) Rorschach is unperturbed. Paper is found, as is a pencil, shiny and unmarked and sharp as if it has never been used before. They will do. He leaves the cell slated to be his by groundskeepers he's never met and has no intention to mind and wanders out into the rest of the level before sitting down on the floor of the entryway to his new prison, amongst the doubtless equally artificial green. He fishes the tablet out of his pocket, dropping it on the ground nearby in case he finds a need for it, and begins to write.
[location: 16th floor - greenhouse]
He hadn't been asleep long, he knows that immediately; he rarely sleeps to begin with, a few hours snatched here and there when he can ill afford their absence, and even since his Arrival he has kept to the practice, seeing no reason to abandon routine now. He prides himself on his reactivity even when asleep, his ability to wake on a moment's notice the instant something in the environment changes, but he hadn't, not this time. It's concerning. Drugged, perhaps? It's the only explanation he can think of, the only one that makes sense, and the fact that it isn't the first time it has happened does little to ease his edginess.
The second thing he notices is that in addition to being in a room that isn't his own, even a borrowed one, his face is gone. It should be on the small table in the corner, and his clothes on the chair next to it, but both familiar furniture and his personal things (such as remain to him) are gone. He spends long moments tearing the room apart in search of it, frustrated and panicked at being left to face whatever lies outside unprotected, but he finds nothing but the clothes he is currently wearing, a few bare essentials that wouldn't be out of place in a standard motel, and the Thing he was given when he Arrived, shoved deep in the pocket of his pants as if he thought he could lose it that way if he only buried it deep enough. It isn't here. He quiets, and returns to the bed to think, carding long, knarled fingers angrily through greasy red strands gone coarse and wiry through years of neglect, as if the empty gesture will return the natural order of things.
The clinical, cold assurance the tablet provides when he finally brings himself to look soothes nothing, the words as empty and impersonal as the room. If anything it only feeds his frustration further, that their captors mock them with phrases that in different context would be meant as comfort. He dislikes confinement, even that which is claimed to be benign. Restricted freedom is never anything but a cage, no matter how well-intentioned its purpose.
If he were the type to give credence to it, he might interpret the circumstances as Divine Retribution, although he couldn't have said what he did to warrant being left this vulnerable, this...exposed, confined to Kovacs and his disgusting, pathetic, undeniably human weaknesses without even a glimpse at a means to rectify it. But such worries are useless, nothing but an exercise in futility. In a world where women are murdered while their saviors look on, frozen into impotence by their own apathy and morbid curiosity, a world where man's best friend consumes his children with slavering jaws and life goes on undisturbed...reading into the situation too closely is insanity. Another of their captors' experiments; release the mice in the maze and watch them scramble for the cheese, hoping a few tear each other apart in the race for the cats' amusement. Rorschach refuses to participate, refuses to be led where they want like cattle to slaughter. He will find his own way. He will keep a record of all he sees and hears, a record so that he can hopefully make sense of all this, so that a full account of all that transpires exists if it becomes necessary, so that, as futile as it may seem, at least later after the endgame is reached someone somewhere will know.
His journal is gone, the same as his face and the rest of his costume, left behind in the place outside that isn't here, but now that he has accepted the situation and has a Plan (albeit still rudimentary and half-formed) Rorschach is unperturbed. Paper is found, as is a pencil, shiny and unmarked and sharp as if it has never been used before. They will do. He leaves the cell slated to be his by groundskeepers he's never met and has no intention to mind and wanders out into the rest of the level before sitting down on the floor of the entryway to his new prison, amongst the doubtless equally artificial green. He fishes the tablet out of his pocket, dropping it on the ground nearby in case he finds a need for it, and begins to write.