Disclaimer - Well, if I was a megalomaniacal pseudo-Christ figure, I would create a fake alien to scare all of you into saying that I own this. But I'm not so I'll say that I don't own Watchmen or the song "Hallelujah".

Rating - K+

Summary - Adrian tries to convince Jon that he's done the right thing.

A/N-- Well, I'm officially addicted the fan fiction again! This is my third foray into the fandom of Watchmen and was inspired by my near obsession (okay, full on obsession) with the soundtrack from the movie - in particular, with the song "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, which has a couple of verses I haven't heard in any other version of the fabulous song.

This fic will be several one-shots, each focusing on a different character and a different verse of the song. They will vary in time period, with some pre-GN/movie, some during the GN/movie, and others post-GN/movie, and also in rating (so pay attention, kiddies!), and will go in the order of the verses. I've tried to give each verse its due and likewise each Watchman, but one of each has been slighted - the fourth verse (There was a time you let me know…) and Dr. Manhattan. That's because both are featured in my other one-shot Unquantifiable Abstracts and I didn't want to recycle the concepts I'd already explored. Plus, he'll be featured in this one! But if you like, hop one over to UA and get the full picture.

Here goes nothing!

The Baffled King

Adrian Veidt is twenty years old when they tell him that the Superman exists. He remembers sitting in front of his TV screen, wide-eyed with awe and wondering what they will think of it in India, where the gods are already blue. Not a year later, he (Ozymandias, that is) is granted the pleasure of meeting the man who was Jon Osterman. Static electricity jolts through his palm when they shake hands and this creature they call Dr. Manhattan tells him that it was interesting to meet him. He doesn't particularly like being called interesting, like he's a specimen pinned to a board. Years later, of course, Jon will call him the world's smartest termite - but that is not now.

Six years later he has decided that the world's problems are too small for him to tackle alone and so he calls together everyone else who's crazy enough to put on a mask and try and do something about it. Dr. Manhattan is there, serene, expressionless, with a woman on his arm. Their meeting appears to be a failure, but despite Blake's dire warnings they decide to go through with the plan anyway. Actually, he has Blake to thank for the beginnings of his grand plan - the cynic's words strike a deep chord with him. It's ironic that Blake is also the first to die for his plan, and even more ironic that Blake's death might just prove its downfall, too - but that is not now.

He wonders if Jon would agree with his musings on Blake's importance. They used to spend long hours debating the nature of time and existence together. For the first time, he feels like he has a peer, and as his grand plan takes form he tries to train himself to think like Jon thinks, in past-present-future instead of just one at a time. He draws on the past and he acts on the present and he plans for the future. He wants to tell Jon what he's planning, and he's on the verge of doing so, when he sees that look in his eyes - he's being interesting again. He doesn't like that there's someone who knows more than him. He doesn't like that Jon is drifting further and further out of orbit, like human affairs have lost their gravitational pull. He wants to lecture Jon, tell him that even though they stand above the common man they must hold his interest forever in their hearts, because that is their duty as Supermen.

So he decides that he will be Jon's downfall. He will prove himself more than an interesting specimen. Note by note he begins to build his symphony, takes Jon's power for his own, poisons those he loves. He begins to imagine faces - fat ones, skinny ones, old ones, young ones, male ones, female ones - and repeats a single statistic over and over again. Millions to save billions.

He feels no doubt at first, although he schools himself to humility. Pride comes before the fall, of course. He regrets the day that he must begin to cloud Jon's mind to hide the future with him. He wants to know if it will all work out - but he must keep going forward, note by note, orchestrating peace. When Napoleon fell they created a grand 'Concert of Europe'; when Dr. Manhattan falls, he will create a concert of the world.

Now Blake is dead. He flatters himself that this is justice served, but then a man who fancies himself justice personified starts following the trail of blood, and soon it's not just Jon that must be betrayed but Rorschach too. He regrets neither. This is for the greater good, and nothing must stand in his way - not Gordian knots. Not friends. He does feel sorrow to see Jon finally snap. In twenty-five years, he's never heard him raise his voice once. But he must fall, or this arms race will continue. He's certain that Jon will understand. Millions to save billions.

Then - at last! - he's done it. He's saved the world. He weeps with joy to know that he has accomplished his mission. After twenty-five long years of worry and debate, he has done the impossible. Enemies are becoming friends and there is peace, and a brighter future. At last, humankind can transcend itself and be what it was meant to be. He expects that Jon will understand why it had to be done this way - after all, Alexander cut the Gordian knot with a sword, not with a treaty - but instead he is met with a vengeful God, with the terror of Mozart's Dies irae, and desperately he tries to defeat the one man he ever really related to. It doesn't work. This is when Jon tells him he is the world's smartest termite.

But then he turns the TVs on. Ah, yes, the power of the television. It told him that the Superman existed all those years ago and now it tells the Superman that what he's really fighting against is world peace. Those tiny glass boxes transfix all of them and bathe him in the glow of glory, and all of them give in. All of them but Rorschach, of course, stubborn sociopath that he is. He almost feels pity for him when he goes out into the snow, when Jon follows him. Funny, he's the only man that Dr. Manhattan really killed that day.

He has retreated to meditate and allows himself to think that he is a god - like Rameses, like Jon. He is Shiva, the creator and the destroyer. And yet when his fellow deity steps into the room and regards him with those solemn white eyes he feels his heart seize up.

"I'm so sorry that your name had to be dragged through the mud for this, Jon," he says. "But it was a necessary sacrifice, surely you can see that. We each had to make sacrifices for this - it's why we're heroes, isn't it?"

"Everyone had to make sacrifices but you, Adrian. Or am I mistaken?" His question is nonchalant, almost. Almost. The toy universe whirls between them.

"I've made myself see their faces - every day I see their faces. And I am sorry about your - your involvement - " Suddenly, words are inadequate. This man was his peer - his only peer. And he has made him a murderer.

"By involvement do you perhaps mean my betrayal? The destruction of those I love? The fact that not five minutes ago you tried to kill me?" Jon shakes his head, casting his light this way and that on the room around him. "You say that you, too, have made sacrifices, Adrian, but whose name will stand on the monuments in twenty years? Surely not mine, or Rorschach's, or Dan's, or Laurie's. Whose name will it be, Adrian?"

He turns to leave, and he knows that if he doesn't stop him now he will never get another chance to speak to him again.

"Then you can see it, Jon? You can see my new world?"

He says nothing, does not move, is perhaps already eons and lightyears away from this moment.

"In the end, I did the right thing, didn't I?"

The man who was Jon Osterman turns, and smiles, and steps forward into the toy universe between them.

"Nothing ends. Nothing ever ends."

And then he's gone, and Adrian is alone.

In the years that follow, every so often, he thinks back on these words. It is always at the moments of his greatest glory - when he presides over charity banquets to benefit the reconstruction, when he is shaking hands with prime ministers, when he is standing in his office looking down on his blossoming new world - that he hears Jon's soft tenor in his ear, warning him.

He still convinces himself that he's triumphed, even when he hears those words. But then, strangely, human nature fails to change, and the notes of his symphony grow sour, until one day he's standing in his office with the morning copy of the New York Times in his hands. The first words of the headline article read "Tonight, a Comedian died in New York..." They'd surfaced before, of course, but never in so reputable a newspaper and never during an election, and never the morning after a devastating terrorist attack. He doesn't understand any of it; he'd handed humanity peace on a silver platter and now he was watching them tear it to shreds, and he simply couldn't understand why. Then Jon's words ring in his ear.

Soon they summon him to stand before a jury of his peers and answer for what he's done. He finds the choice of words strange - he didn't think he had any peers, not even in the U.S. Senate, and he thinks of telling them they should summon Jon to preside if they want his peers to judge what he's done. He's discovered a sense of humor in the last few days. He knows why Jon was smiling when he left. It's because in the end, he really was interesting. And it's because his words are a sword that cuts both ways. Rorschach's quest for justice never ended, and neither will his quest for peace - they will chase each other endlessly, a snake devouring its own tail, from here to Kingdom Come. He is both the world's smartest man and the world's smartest termite. He is Ozymandias, King of Kings, and he is nothing.

So when they ask the baffled king what he has to say for himself, all he says is this:

"Nothing ends. Nothing ever ends."

Now I've heard there was a secret chord

That David played, and it pleased the Lord

But you don't really care for music, do you?

It goes like this:

The fourth, the fifth

The minor fall, the major lift

The baffled king composing Hallelujah

A/N-- As you can see, I persist in refusing to choose either comicverse or movieverse; the scene where Jon speaks privately to Adrian in Karnak is in the GN but not in the movie, but I much prefer the movie's version of Adrian's plot than the comic's version, so I used that instead. I also didn't use the dialogue from the GN - save for Adrian's question about whether or not he did the right thing.

Let me know what you think, especially about whether you think the song excerpts should go at the beginning or the ending (for some weird reason my instinct is telling me the ending, but I could just be going insane). I'll get the next chapter up soon - it's going to be about the dear old Comedian.