The alley had collapsed into fragments—shattered brick, torn Web-threads, geometry that refused to stabilize. What remained was a void barely large enough to contain two bodies determined to destroy each other. No room for tactics. No space for strategy.
Just violence compressed into its purest form.
Rorschach drove his knife toward the Child's throat. The blade met resistance—threads woven beneath skin, denser than kevlar. The Child's counter came immediately: palm strike to the sternum, precise enough to stop a heart. Rorschach twisted at the last instant, took it on the ribs instead. Felt something crack. Ignored it.
His elbow found the Child's temple. The creature's head snapped sideways but its body didn't follow—already moving into the next attack, spider-limb whipping around to hook Rorschach's ankle. He jumped, used the momentum to drive his knee into its face. Mask met mask with a sound like breaking glass.
They separated for half a second. Both bleeding. Both already moving.
The Child came in low, webs firing from both hands—not to trap but to cut. Razor-edged threads that sang through the air like wire. Rorschach rolled under the first volley, grappling hook catching the second mid-flight and using it to yank himself forward.
He hit the Child like a wrecking ball, driving it backward into the remnants of a wall. Brick exploded. They went through together, still grappling, and hit the void beyond.
No ground. No gravity. Just falling without direction while they tore at each other.
Rorschach got his arm around the Child's throat, locked it in a chokehold refined through decades of killing things stronger than him. Squeezed until he felt threads starting to tear. The Child drove its elbow backward into his kidney once, twice, three times with mechanical precision. Pain exploded up his spine.
He held on.
The Child stopped trying to break the hold. Instead it grabbed his wrist, twisted with inhuman strength, and dislocated his shoulder.
Rorschach's grip failed. They separated in the void, both gasping, both already repositioning for the next exchange.
That's when Rorschach noticed it.
The Child wasn't reacting anymore.
It was anticipating.
His next attack—a feint left followed by a grapple right—died before it finished. The Child had already moved to counter the grapple, ignoring the feint entirely. Its web-shot caught him mid-motion, yanked him into a knee strike that would have shattered his spine if he hadn't twisted at the last possible instant.
He tried again. Different approach, different angle. The Child neutralized it before he committed, as if reading the attack from his preparatory stance alone.
Again. Blocked before completion.
Again. Countered mid-execution.
Every tactic he used—refined through years of combat, tested against every type of opponent—was answered before it finished. Not through prediction. Through recognition.
The truth crystallized in motion, not words.
The Child didn't predict him through precognition or spider-sense. It recognized patterns because it was the refined version of his thinking. No wasted motion. No emotional drag. No hesitation between evaluation and execution.
It fought like Rorschach would fight if he could optimize himself—remove every human inefficiency, every moment of doubt, every fraction of a second lost to anything except pure function.
The Child was him. Perfected. Stripped of the weaknesses he'd spent decades trying to eliminate.
And it was winning.
The Child's attacks escalated seamlessly. Venom-like paralysis from stolen powers, making Rorschach's left arm seize mid-block. Reinforced web-constructs that caught his grappling hook and used the momentum against him. Strength beyond normal Totem limits—not random bursts but precise applications, each one calibrated to exploit his exact position and vulnerabilities.
It cycled stolen abilities like a system running through optimal solutions, never overcommitting to any single approach, never hesitating between options. It fought like mathematics made flesh—every exchange a calculation, every strike the most efficient path to victory.
And it was designed specifically for him.
Rorschach felt his ribs break under another precisely-placed strike. Tasted blood. Felt his vision starting to blur at the edges. His body was failing—mortal, limited, aging. Every injury accumulated. Every blow took more out of him than the last.
The Child looked untouched. The wounds he'd inflicted were already healing, black blood knitting flesh back together with disturbing speed. It moved with the same fluid precision it had started with, showing no sign of fatigue, no indication that this fight was costing it anything.
He was losing.
Not might lose. Was losing. The outcome was inevitable—had been inevitable from the moment they started, from the moment he'd chosen to fight something that had learned from him and discarded his weaknesses.
Rorschach abandoned any illusion of victory.
His next attack came wild, brutal, personal. No technique behind it—just rage compressed into motion. His fist connected with the Child's mask hard enough to crack the patterns. It staggered backward, surprised for the first time.
He didn't follow with another calculated strike. He threw himself forward, both hands closing around its throat, squeezing with every ounce of strength remaining. Not trying to win. Trying to prove something.
That it wasn't inevitable. That the reflection could be denied. That fighting a losing battle still mattered if the alternative was acceptance.
The Child's spider-limbs wrapped around him, tearing into flesh. He held on. Its fists drove into his sides, systematic and devastating. He held on. It webbed his face, cutting off air, covering his eyes.
He held on.
Until the Child stopped trying to break the grip and simply calculated the optimal counter.
It went completely still. Let him squeeze. Let him believe for one moment that he was winning, that brute determination could overcome systematic superiority.
Then it moved.
The feint was perfect. A slight shift in weight that suggested vulnerability in its left side. Rorschach's combat instinct—decades of experience reading opponents—screamed at him to exploit it. His grip loosened fractionally, body already shifting to take advantage.
The trap closed.
Web-limbs punched through his side, all four at once, precise enough to miss vital organs but devastating enough to make his body lock up in shock. He gasped, grip failing, and the Child drove a secondary spike through his leg, pinning him in place.
Another limb tore through his shoulder, the one already dislocated. Rorschach felt the joint shatter completely. His arm went dead.
The Child lifted him effortlessly, carried him through the collapsing void, and slammed him against the last remaining fragment of the alley's geometry. The remnant of a brick wall, held together more by memory than structure.
The limbs pinned him there. Impaled. Bleeding heavily. Unable to move without tearing himself apart further.
His mask was shattered, ink patterns flickering weakly across the exposed portions, struggling to reform over damaged fabric. Blood ran down his face, into his mouth, copper and failure.
The Child stepped back.
Calm. Methodical. Studying him the way a scientist might study a completed experiment. Its wounds—the few that remained—were already sealed. The black blood had retreated back into its body, leaving only pristine patterns where injuries had been.
It wasn't even breathing hard.
"You could have won," the Child said quietly. Not gloating. Observing. "If you'd adapted. Changed methodology. Abandoned principle for pragmatism."
Rorschach tried to speak. Blood filled his throat. He coughed, tasted iron, forced the words out anyway.
"Would've... made me... you."
"Yes," the Child agreed simply. "Which is why you lost."
It tilted its head, patterns on its mask shifting to something almost gentle.
"You already proved my truth, Rorschach. Showed me that philosophy could be weaponized. That conviction without compromise was evolution. That isolation produced clarity." The Child gestured at the void around them, at the collapsing fragments of memory. "I exist because you demonstrated these principles could work."
The spider-limbs shifted, sending fresh waves of agony through Rorschach's impaled body. His vision was graying at the edges. Blood loss. Shock. System failure.
"You cannot defeat what you created," the Child said. "Cannot kill the refined version of your own methodology. Every tactic you use, I have already calculated. Every principle you stand on, I have internalized and optimized."
It turned away, dismissive.
"You are no longer necessary."
The Child began walking toward the darkness at the void's edge, toward whatever lay beyond this reconstructed memory. Its movement was unhurried. Confident. It didn't look back.
Rorschach hung there, impaled on the last fragment of the alley that had given birth to the thing now leaving him to die. Blood ran down the spider-limbs, pooling on what passed for ground, more leaving his body with every heartbeat.
His vision dimmed further. The Web's pulse—that constant background hum he'd felt since arriving in this place—was distant now, fading like a radio signal losing reception. His body was shutting down, systems failing in sequence, biology finally asserting its limitations.
But his mind raged.
Even as consciousness slipped away, even as blood loss dragged him toward the darkness, his thoughts remained sharp and furious. Cataloging. Analyzing. Refusing to accept.
The Child had to be wrong.
Had to be.
Because if it wasn't—if his philosophy really did lead inevitably to apocalypse, if isolation and certainty and the willingness to eliminate anything weak really was just genocide waiting for scale—then everything he'd built his life on was a foundation for ending worlds.
Every person he'd killed to maintain order. Every connection he'd severed to preserve focus. Every compromise he'd refused because principles mattered more than outcomes.
All of it feeding into this. Creating the demonstration that would prove his methods worked by using them to unmake reality itself.
The Child disappeared into the darkness, leaving only silence.
Rorschach's breathing was shallow now, ragged. His heartbeat stuttered, irregular. The spider-limbs holding him in place pulsed with faint corrupted energy, keeping him conscious just long enough to understand what was happening.
He was being left to die. Not finished. Not executed. Just... abandoned.
Because killing him would suggest he still mattered. That his existence posed a threat. The Child had made its point—demonstrated superiority, proven its methodology was his methodology perfected—and now he was simply unnecessary data.
The void around him continued collapsing. The last fragments of the memory-alley crumbled, brick turning to dust, Web-threads snapping one by one. Soon there would be nothing left. Just him and the darkness and the slow failure of a body that had survived too much for too long.
His vision was almost gone now. Peripheral darkness closing in, tunnel vision narrowing to a pinpoint.
But through it all, even as his mind began fragmenting, even as death wrapped around him like cold water, one thought remained.
Clear. Certain. Uncompromising.
The reflection must still be wrong.
Even if it survives.
Even if it wins.
Even if it's right about everything else.
It must be wrong about this.
Rorschach's eyes closed. His breathing stopped. The last spider-limb withdrew, letting his body crumple to the dissolving ground.
In the collapsing void, alone in the darkness, Walter Kovacs fell clinging to one final certainty—
That the monster wearing his philosophy couldn't be allowed to define what his life had meant.
The alley that gave birth to the Weaver's Child faded completely.
And the silence that remained was absolute.