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Walter dreams of needles. Of white rooms and screams and hovering faces, of restraints and a cold table under his back. He always wakes crying, sweating through his clothes and his threadbare sheets. He comforts himself with the knowledge that these dreams are clearly false, there is simply not enough time unaccounted for in his life for them to have happened. His records are all in order; he checked, after a particularly bad run of the nightmare, every night for weeks. There are assignments and photos that he remembers being taken during his time at Charlton to prove that he was there.
After Kitty Genovese and her dress and her death, he dreams less. He is too tired most of the time even for that, and with too much knowledge of the real horrors of the world. But he still refuses to go to doctors or hospitals, even when Nite Owl tries to insist. The few times he stays over in the Nest, he wakes screaming, every time, but he never remembers in the morning and Nite Owl doesn't push.
After Blair Roche, he doesn't dream at all. Those were Walter's burden to bear, never Rorschach's, and they at least don't trouble him any more now. And if white coats still make him flinch, if he doesn't trust doctors or the government, those are perfectly reasonable, aren't they? Unsullied white is unnatural and untrustworthy in these streets, and the government is already beginning to turn against masks.
This forgetfulness lasts until Jon disintegrates him, but he doesn't end. There is pain like he has never known (but he has, hasn't he?) which at least is brief, and his body flickers out, then reforms, and suddenly he is so much MORE than he has ever been, and...
...oh. He remembers now, knows that the needles and the doctors and the table were real, were the most real thing that ever happened to him until Rorschach. He doesn't know why they let him live, if their experiment did what they expected or not, or how he ever got away, but he KNOWS now what was done to him, what they made him.
They wanted a god that they could control, never realizing that they already had that in Jon. They saw only a child that would not be missed, passing over the reasons that their new subject was the worst choice they could have made. Walter has never been passive, and Rorschach has never been weak, and now he (they? No. Walter and Rorschach are one now, passion and power united by this new understanding of self) has the power to change things, the power that Jon could never care enough to grasp.
He has choices to make, about how this world will be now, and his ideas are hard and cold and clean. But then he remembers a warm handshake, a trusted smile, understanding and comfort given without expectation, sustenance both mental and physical. Armageddon has come and gone and holding to his ideals never changed a thing, so perhaps now there can be compromise in the name of friendship. While there is life, there can be hope, mercy. While there is still one good man in this world, perhaps it may yet be saved.