cozzybob (cozzybob) wrote in cozzybabbles, @ 2008-02-25 23:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, gen |
[Batman] Two Birds
Two Birds
by cozzybob
Pair: Dick Grayson, Harvey Dent, mentions of the Joker
Warning: first-time (and probably last-time) Batman fic, Arkam-ness, Dick-being-broody-ness, angst-ness, language.
Note: My first ever Batman fic. Or DC fic. Or comic fic at all. Have no idea where it came from, didn't even know Batman had a fic fandom, although I suppose that was inevitable. I just sorta booted up Jarte one day, and this was sitting there laughing at me. (That's what I get for marathon-reading Robin and Nightwing comics, I tell you. To me, Dick Grayson is almost more interesting than Bruce Wayne. Boy's got issues.) But anyway... enjoy.
This takes place a few years after Nightwing: Year One (other comics thereafter excluded because I haven't got there yet), where Batman fired Robin for (I hope) the last time, and our favorite sidekick dissed the yellow and red Boy Wonder to become... well, Nightwing! There are mentions of the Teen Titans and Batgirl, but nothing specific. That's all you really need to know to understand this crazy thing.
Summary: Nightwing pays Two Face a little visit at Arkam, but it's for all the wrong reasons.
Fate is a double-sided coin. Harvey thinks he can toss the scarred side, come up with the face, maybe do a little dance and get a miraculous twofer where the coin just stands straight up and looks confused. Harvey's coin has two different faces, two different sides, but fate's all the same, and its edges are rounded. If Harvey Dent ever flipped the real coin of fate, it'd be heads every time. And Harvey would never understand that.
But Dick does. He doesn't know if that's good or bad, but he knows that's what he gets, because he knew full well what he was getting into when he went to see Harvey in Arkam. They have a crossing, Dick and Harvey, Robin and Dent, Nightwing and Two Face. Two Face is Dick's Joker. Harvey hadn't murdered his parents, he wasn't the reason The Boy Wonder and The Bat split, and he certainly wasn't the cause for most of the teenage angst Dick Grayson let himself suffer for the last few years behind locked doors simply because he was an idiot. The Titans thought he was turning into his mentor, training all the time, brooding all the time, getting darker all the time, like Robin's rainbow bright smartassed crime fighting was stomped out and pissed on by the Nightwing, the New And Improved Boy--scratch that--Man Wonder. Batgirl wasn't talking to him. Alfred was giving him that My Poor Lost Boy look again. The Bat was pretending he didn't exist, pretending to be too focused on Robin #2, who, by the way, Dick gave about two more years before he'd get 'fired' just as easily. The Bat was testy lately, and Dick had to wonder if he even knew what teamwork was anymore.
Still, the new Robin said he was picked up when a masked Bruce caught him stealing the tires off the Batmobile. Dick thought it was hilarious, once. He still does, but now he's left wondering how Bruce took that as an application to replace who Dick had been, and just days after the argument. After all, if Dick meant so little, then what did Jason mean, really?
Two years. Three, tops. Maybe when it's over, he'll give the kid his card and convince him to join the Rejects Of Bruce Wayne's Secret Club Club. He'd let him be Nightwing Jr, but Dick doesn't take sidekicks. He'd learned his lesson the hard way. Afterall, first Dick, then Donna, now this kid... maybe Bruce should go talk to Clark or something. Superman never needed a sidekick.
Dick wonders if this is the mid-life-crises equivalent for obscenely rich men who spend their lives dressed in black spandex, pretending to be bats flying high over Gotham's worst. It's funny, really. People see Batman and they run away screaming. Batman ain't like Superman, he ain't got no problem puttin' the scum right where it belongs. Bruce likes to tell people he took a vow about never killing, but Dick knows better, and so does Commissioner Gordon. The Joker, Two Face, Penguin, Mr. Freeze, and all of them all know better. The whole world knows. Even Clark.
People see Batman, they run screaming. People see Robin, they laugh their asses off.
"Tired of laying eggs, birdbat?"
"What's that, two-shitter?"
Harvey flips his coin. He's not supposed to have one, but he flips it anyway. Comes up scarred. His good side fades into the shadows of his cell, and the grotesque grin grins, all white and no plaque. "You bored?"
Dick doesn't randomly visit Harvey. He doesn't come here when he's bored anymore. He used to do it for a laugh, poke a stick at Joker just to listen to the roar. He'd laugh, the Joker'd laugh, and the guards would snarl at him and force him out. And Dick would break in and do it again.
Now, he's gotten older. He's gotten meaner. He's got bigger game, bigger amusements.
Two Face laughs again.
They put Harvey in a cell just like Joker's, the full front wall thick bulletproof glass with a little square for food entry and little holes to filter sound into the cell from the outside. The square is locked shut, the holes too tiny to spray even spit through. A guard sits at a desk two cells down right next to Joker reading his porn, and Dick can hear the maniac asking the guard by name if he likes Harley's tits, but the guard ignores him as probably painfully ordered to do so. Dick had seen the sign when he came in. On Joker's wall, in big bold capital letters, underlined several times, it says, DO NOT SPEAK TO THE INMATES. Under that, it says, DON'T ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS and IGNORE ALL PROVOCATION. That didn't stop a guard being found dead every month or so, but Gotham long ago quit trying to figure out how and why the Joker does what he does.
They've almost given up on Harvey and Nightwing. Like mentor, like pupil, as they say.
Anyway.
"No, two-shitter. I've got a question for you."
"What's that, then?"
Flips his coin. In the darkness, Dick can't see what side ends up, doesn't know if it matters. Harvey's dressed in filthy gray pajamas labeled with his favorite prison number, but his good side is back in the light and he somehow makes it look elegant. Harvey Dent had been the best attorney in Gotham once, and then Batman betrayed him. Fucked him up. The reason why Harvey and Nightwing never got along was because they had a lot in common--two sides to Harvey, two masks for Dick Grayson. All the fault of a crooked bat.
Dick shakes his head, but that's the only distraction he allows. The Joker bursts out laughing and calls for him--"Hey! Bunkie! I know you're there, ol' bat boy wondery pal!"--but he hears nothing beyond the clink of the coin, Harvey's fingernail flicking it up into the air again. Waiting.
"What's the difference between a villain and a hero, two-shitter?"
Harvey catches his coin, stares at Dick. It's the first time Dick's ever seen him surprised. When Robin or the Night wasn't smashing pixie boots into his face, anyway.
"Say what?"
But Dick folds his arms and glares. He's serious, these days. He still jokes every now and then, but he'd turned into Batman in almost every way but name. And even that isn't too far a stretch. Like mentor...
Harvey laughs again. "S'that what you came here for? Moral issues? Ask the lunatic a dumb question, get a dumb answer to make you feel better? Poor birdbat all puttered out?" He ticks his tongue. "So young too."
"No."
"No?"
"That's not why I asked, two-shitter."
A two-faced glare by the Two Face himself. "You won't get a peep from me by cheap insults, birdbat."
"I apologize, two-shitter."
Growl.
Dick smiles something cocky that the Bat never does anymore, his shrug an arrogant dismissal. "Answer the question."
"You know, killing you would be like killing two birds with one stone." Harvey stretches, leaning deeper against the rubber wall and flipping his coin again. His scarred side is grinning, grinning, grinning, and his good side lost in profile. "There's very little that keeps you out there and not in here with me." Happy reminders.
"I don't kill," Dick says. But that's denial.
"You've killed a lot of my men."
"Does that matter?"
It doesn't matter to Two Face either. He shrugs, just like Robin used to do. Just like Dick does now when he could give a rat's ass either way. Batman lives. Batman dies. Batman lives again.
He doesn't care.
Dick says, "Answer the question, Harvey."
"What question?"
"You know."
Harvey laughs. Joker laughs just because he can hear Harvey laughing. Somewhere down the line, Scarecrow, Hatter and Riddler join in, until the guard finally lets his eyes off Harley's tits to glare at Dick. DO NOT TALK TO THE INMATES, the sign says.
Fuck the sign. Dick punches the bulletproof glass, and Harvey laughs harder. "What's the difference, two-shitter? If anyone should know the difference, you should know it!"
But why?
He's desperate. He's desperate and vulnerable, and he should have never come here. The Bat had trained him better than this.
"Let's flip for it," Harvey says, and before Dick can tell him no, I won't play your goddamned games, it's face up. The good side grins that lawyer grin.
"Two--"
"Does it matter?"
Dick slams the glass again. He's frustrated because he knows that Harvey knows that he lied. He isn't bored, but he is having a crisis, and he's all out of mentors to make him feel better
The guard picks up a phone. Seconds later, back up arrives.
What's the difference between being on that side, and being on this one?
Dick gets to run away before the guards can catch him. Harvey just sits in his cell, flips his coin, and laughs.
--Fini