harvey dent is (dualfaced) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-02-22 03:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, door: dc comics, plot: switch, two-face |
who cat!wren and face!nick
what a drop goes horribly wrong
when recently
where gotham pd roof
warning guns? whippings, but not the fun kind?
Wren felt stranger than she'd let on during her conversation with Luke. It wasn't something tangible, and she wasn't sure she could explain it. It wasn't like the Lazarus Pit, and it wasn't anything like the confusion or lack of lucidity that had come from being sick after returning from Gotham recently. She was still herself; her feelings for things hadn't changed. She was terrified about Gus being alone with Jason, and she worried about Luke running around in a cowl and cape. She was still her, but there was something there that reminded her of how she'd been years ago, back between Florida and Seattle, back when she'd taught herself how to use a knife, and when she'd gone after everything she wanted along the way. Back then, she'd had aspirations that had everything to do with wealth, money and revenge for all the hurts of her childhood. She felt like that. It was, strangely, a nice change. She'd been terrified for months now. Scared, so scared, and so worried about losing things. She'd gotten into the habit of feeling powerless. She'd become some kind of victim, and maybe that wasn't new. That was old, old. It was Seattle old. When she'd first reached the rainy city, all those years ago, she'd been determined to finally claim what she wanted. But somewhere along the line, that had all changed. She'd slipped back into perceiving herself as worthless. She'd slipped back into being that poor girl on the side of the street, the one that didn't have enough self-respect to tell anyone no about anything at all. She'd handed herself over to be used, and she'd thought she deserved it. And that, that was gone. She still had her past, and her anger, but it was more like it had been after Florida, when determination blossomed and she'd really believed that she could do something. And she had, for awhile. Until Luke, and until falling in love had changed things. Until that freezer, and until Thomas Brandon had decided she was nothing. This was like a rewind, and Wren slipped on a catsuit that fit as if it was made for her. The whip around her waist felt like it had been crafted to rest in her palm, and she knew how to use every last thing on the utility belt that fit low on her hips. She tucked her blonde hair beneath her cowl, and she slipped the goggles over eyes gone green, and she headed off to the location that the teenage boys gave her. It was a museum, one that had a priceless pair of earrings on display for one night, and one night only. Police surrounded the place, and Gotham's elite lined up to look at one precious set of stones through unbreakable glass. And Wren, Wren felt a thrill. It was instinct, scaling the walls and prowling the roof, crawling through the ducts, and stealthily finding her way below the exhibit, into the basement, where (as soon as they began clearing out the crowd) she managed to cut the floor and let that unbreakable glass drop down. Had she been able to see her face just then, she wouldn't have recognized the satisfied smile on her lips. As for unbreakable glass? Nothing was unbreakable. Or, in this case, unmeltable. By the time the alarms sang, she was already two rooftops away, en route to the buyer of the priceless earrings. And, halfway there, she slipped the gems into her own ears, replacing the simple diamonds she wore. The earrings dangled against her cheeks, and the sensation almost made her purr. She was definitely feeling different. Nick had been working on some tech and gear for Spencer’s friend Blackbird, a hobby he’d picked up to keep himself busy enough to ignore the urge to go to the hotel. The one time he strolled through the door, he couldn’t remember a thing of what happened on the other side, had no idea what Dent did or didn’t do in Gotham. It was nothing like having Stephanie as a shared mind because he never felt so split. Like he was being dragged in three different directions. Having Two-Face reside in the corners of his mind felt like a burden, like he was shattered and cobbled together haphazardly. Three men in one body: Nick, Harvey, and Two-Face. It made him lose sleep and hours at a time and often he had the inexplicable itch to count in twos or came to at some place he didn’t remember going to in the first place. So, when he blinked back into consciousness in an unfamiliar, dimly lit office, he figured it had something to do with Big Bad Harv. Still, it didn’t prevent him from balking and nearly having a heart attack. He was alone in the room, a space modeled off Harvey’s DA office, but there were shadowed outlines in front of the opaque door window, indicating he wasn’t alone. He looked down and found himself in an unfamiliar suit, pressed and mismatched. One side dark and black, the other side a pale blue. Nick felt a shiver of apprehension and fear, but of something else, too. Something sinister whispering in the back of his mind. He didn’t need to raise his hand to check for scarring on his face; he could sense something was missing. He spotted an open planner on a desk and a two-toned note highlighted on the page told him of a meeting with a certain thief. And, Nick, as Two-Face or not, could not give up the opportunity to meet the Cat. So, he slinked out of the office and nodded to the lackeys out front, who did nothing but greet him back with a gruff See ya, boss, and he fought the urge to give them a nervous wave. That would not be good. He simply tried his best to hold his head high and not tremble at the weight of the .22 caliber handgun in the pants pocket. He was in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Old Gotham, and as he skulked away, men in pairs nodded at him until two followed him out and directed him to a 2002 Lincoln Towncar. Of course. Traveling Gotham was strange, but the clandestine meeting was set on the rooftop of Gotham PD. What more fitting place than where Harvey began to lose it all? Nick smiled a bright smile, something enthralled and dorky, when he spotted the building with the signal adorned on top, but he only felt half of his face actually smile. He finally caught his face in the rear-view mirror and nearly wretched at the sight. Half of his face, of course, was completely normal. Handsome, even. A tuft of dark brown hair sticking in all different directions, deep brown eyes, a thin mouth. But, on the other side was mangled, damaged mess. Acidic damage. No hair, pink dermis, a permanent smile curling up the side of his face. Sighing, he climbed out of the car when it halted and made his way to the roof through some secret passageway he seemed to know about inherently. He would be there just in time. When he finally opened the door to the roof, he immediately strolled over to the Batsignal and ran his hand over the cold metal. He wasn’t aware of his surroundings the way a rogue of Gotham should be. He was too busy geeking out. Wren knew nothing about Gotham, and she had no idea where the GPS on her phone was leading her for the dropoff. Even one rooftop away from Gotham PD, she was clueless. She was too busy chasing away the guilt of abandoning Gus yet again, and the self-directed anger that Luke had been selfless enough to do what she hadn't been able to do - send Gus to New York. In her mind, she knew that this was better for the little boy all around, and that made her angry too. All that anger seemed to fit perfectly well with the snug black suit, and all the climbing and swinging (who knew whips could even do that?) made forgetting easy, and she wondered if that was how Selina managed everything in her life. For once, Selina's endless pursuit of anything distracting made sense. Right then, Wren didn't want to think about her own life. After all, she hardly ever got to live it, so why spend time focusing on it. Maybe that should have been a clue that things weren't quite right with her, but she was too busy landing on the roof of the police department to care. Her booted feet found the concrete easily, and she was silent as a cat as she watched the man caressing the Batsignal. In truth, she wanted to go up and touch it too, but she couldn't just then, not with him there. She had no idea who he was, after all, and she wasn't innocent enough to think he was harmless. No, she stayed on the roof ledge and she silently balanced her way around it, fearless of the drop, of the grimy concrete below. No, she knew she wouldn't fall, and she wound around until she was in front of the man petting the brushed metal. She wasn't in his range of vision yet, but she would be soon, all black sway that was slower, more sensual than the younger Cat that usually wore this particular cowl. But that grace was just Wren, innate to the dominatrix and the sign of a woman was was too sexualized as a girl. She crouched, knowing the movement (given where she was) would catch his attention. And then she saw his face. The good half, that was. It was a face she remembered from her nightmares, and for that second she believed it was actually him, that Alexander had survived that warehouse somehow, that he was here, disfigured, alive. That he knew what had happened to him, who had killed him. For a second, she was frozen, and she was so unbelievably glad he couldn't see much of her with the cowl and goggles on. Nicholas smoothed his fingers across the slick metal of the big, bright beacon, drumming his fingers every now and then with a satisfying ding. Oh, this was geek paradise, and he had to center himself from completely freaking out about it all. Growing up, this was exactly what Nick dreamed of. Stepping inside Gotham and being a part of it all. Now, of course, he always imagined himself as a Robin, or even Batman on some of his most outlandish days. Not as the scarred-up, bipolar Two-Face. But, minor details, right? Here he was on the rooftop of Gotham PD waiting for the city’s resident kitty cat. It couldn’t get better than that. Still, he felt the whispers of something volatile and sinister creep up in the back of her brain. Something that wanted to possess him, something that ached for justice and fairness and something he didn’t have in his life on the opposite side of the door. In the real world, he hadn’t been afforded any sort of fairness. Neither had Alexander. The crouched figure caught his attention, however, and he twirled around to stare head-on. “Catwoman,” he said breathlessly, all geek-excitement and thrill. Oh, this was good. He cleared his throat but couldn’t help beaming over towards her. “This is incredibly thrilling. I have been reading about you since I was a child.” But, something seemed off, at least to him, and he tilted his head. Obviously, he didn’t know Wren, hadn’t seen her before, but this wasn’t Selina Kyle. What Selina would have done in this situation was anyone's guess. Gotham might have fitted itself to accept Wren as the Cat, but Wren wasn't feeling very feline just then. She was scared. There was no way around it. She was good at hiding fear, at least when it came to herself. But this wasn't about her. This was about Luke. About the knowledge this man might possess. Right then, she forgot Alexander had a brother (had anyone even told her Alexander had a twin?). Right then, this was her worst nightmare come to life. Maybe Luke hadn't killed him. Maybe he'd messed up, and maybe the scarring was from trying to destroy the body. See, Wren still didn't know Gotham. Whether it came from the disconnect with Selina or not, she wasn't sure, but she didn't have a mental download of villains and good guys. She knew the ones Luke or Selina or Bruce had mentioned, but that was all. She didn't know about Harvey Dent. His words were so harmless that she just stared for a second longer, and then she straightened. She had no idea when or how the whip ended up in her hand; she only knew it was there, and extension of black-clad fingers that had grown claws as she stood. "You're dead," she said. Nothing about how thrilling it was, or about what he'd read as a child. Maybe, if her heart wasn't beating so loudly in her ears, she would have realized that Alexander wasn't the type to read comic books. "You can't be here. You're dead," she repeated, unthinking. She wondered what it would take to turn on the Batsignal, but the thought was gone as quickly as it had come. She didn't want a beacon, and Luke was probably busy anyway. She'd already figured out that her husband wasn't going to be too concerned about her while he was here, and she could handle herself. Nick was inherently opposite of Harvey Dent, even before the comic book man morphed into his twisted alter ego. Where Dent and Two-Face both bled charisma, the other man curled into himself, all introverted shyness and passiveness. Nick didn’t have a violent bone in his body on a normal day, but having the Gotham rogue needling in the back of his brain and that overwhelming urge to keep the balance had him shook to the core. Still. He started when the Cat stood, skittish in a way Dent never was, and he scrutinized her through narrowed eyes. “Dead?” he asked quietly, eyebrows knitted together and a frown dragging his lips down. “Oh, I assume you mean that--yes, many people thought I was dead, but that was a different Harvey. Or, rather, I am a different Dent.” He didn’t think about the defensive stance or the whip in her hand. No, he was in geek heaven. The only thing that might trump this would be a meeting with Batman. One thing at a time, of course. He didn’t think about his twin brother then, either, or who might know him or mistake Nick for Alexander. No, it was all about the bright Gotham skyline in the night, that beacon waiting to be lit behind him, and the woman in the slinky leather before him. She didn't understand what he meant at first, that he was talking about whoever he was supposed to be in Gotham. She thought it was just Alexander toying with her, the way he liked to do, and she had less patience for it then than she normally had. Well, no, maybe she just felt less like a victim, and more like someone who talk back that victim status from whoever tried to foist it onto her. "That isn't what I mean, Alexander," she said, fingers closing around the handle of the whip, clenching tight, then loosening nervously. "You're not playing with me now, not here," she told him, and there was fear in the words, and old fear that tasted of scabbed over things. If she closed her eyes, she could see what he'd done, she could feel that helplessness. And even more, he was responsible for every single thing that was wrong with MK, every cut, every drug, every drunken stupor. All of it could be traced back to him, and to her because of him. "You're not playing with me anymore," she told him, and there was definitely a threat there. It was a threat that would never, ever have been present in Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, she had things and people and, save for that one gunshot to Alexander's groin, she had self-control. Here, here she had none of that. None of it came with the suit, and the whip, and the Cat. And maybe it was a tangible thing, when she smiled that Cat's smile. Anyone who knew the real Selina would realize the smile was a slower thing, more sensual and less hurried than her younger counterpart. But there wasn't anyone on that roof but the two of them. "Not your game, anyway." Nick stared and stared for a moment at the cowl-clad woman crouching in front of him, and he honestly had no idea what she was talking about for that split second. Alexander who? Playing what games? He didn’t know the woman right there, and what games did he or Harvey play with her. How did she know his now-deceased twin? It didn’t dawn on him all at once, but rather slowly and like a fog seeping through a cold winter street at night. A furrowed eyebrow, the only one on his face, loosened to one raised of surprise. If he had a full face, it would be comical, the look of shock. Mouth falling to an O, eyebrows high, but it only looked frightening. Bizarre. Unnatural. Two-Face probably never had such a stripped, raw expression on his face, not after the accident at least. But, Nicholas Pierce, oh he was shocked. “Alexander,” he said slowly. The threat was heard, and the rage bubbled in his stomach in a way so unfamiliar to him. He managed to keep his voice robot-even though. “I understand the mistake, I suppose, even with half of a face. We clearly are similar, given the fact that we are twins. Alexander is dead, however, as you ascertained, and he would certainly not be in Gotham. I do not know who you are nor what he might have done to you, but I am not that man.” He felt the weight of the gun in his pocket all the more, and his fingers itched to reach for it. He dug his hands into his pants pockets to assuage the urge, and he closed around that familiar coin. Taking it out, he looked at it for a moment as he turned it over in his hand. Scarred, then full. Scarred. Full. He suddenly felt the split, moreso than ever before, of being two men in one body. “Let’s not be rash now, Cat.” Nick finally looked up, and his brown eyes had a ruthless sharpness not there before. “We wouldn’t want to make any mistakes.” The O was terrifying in comedy, and Wren stared and wondered what she'd said to cause it. She knew how Alexander worked. She knew how he toyed and toyed, and how he loved stripping a person of every bit of control and inhibition they had. In all her years on the streets, Alexander was the only man who had forced her to give more of herself than just her body, and she would never forget how that felt the morning after. And there was MK, MK, and it took her a second to realize the man had spoken. "Twins?" she asked, and she sounded confused, as if life had played a cruel trick, just another one of many. And maybe, for a moment, she thought it would be okay then. Not Alexander, okay, and she thought of Spencer, of the man Spencer always said he cared for the, the one wound up in Alexander somehow. She couldn't remember if she knew his name. When his hand moved to his pocket, she shook her head. "Don't do that," she told him. "Don't." She was distrusting on a good day, on a day when everything made sense and nothing was out to hurt her. This wasn't that day, and her fingers closed around the whip with almost unnatural speed, body tensing in preparation of him pulling a weapon on her. "I'm never rash," she said, and it sounded false to her own ears. It sounded like something Selina might actually say, a hint of sarcasm in the words. It was the coin in his hand that finally made something break. No gun. A coin? And she almost laughed with relief, all while hating that he'd made her so terrified she stopped breathing for a second. It was just like Alexander, precisely the kind of thing he would do. And that ruthless sharpness when he looked up was unmistakable. She didn't even think before letting the whip come to life. She snapped it at his hand with frightening precision, the trajectory and force intended to snap his fingers open and make him drop that coin of his, all while leaving behind a leather sting and nicks from the fine metal barbs at the whip's tip. He didn't hear that warning, and if he could read minds, he would probably tumble into a panicked reassurance to salvage what little sanity this conversation had. If it had ever had sanity at all, honestly. Nick, for all his fanboyish tendencies, had little idea how actually interact with people, let alone people turned comic book character manifestations. The mention of his twin caught him completely off-guard as well, and the words weren’t his. No, he lost control of his lips, and the threat that had slipped out wasn’t Nick Pierce, but all Harvey Dent. All Two-Face, really. Nick blinked, and the glare in his eye was gone, and he looked at the Cat for a moment in wide-eyed wonder. As if he couldn’t believe the situation he was in. Ever since that tablet first appeared in his mailbox, nothing was normal, of course, but this might take the cake. Oh, this certainly took the cake. He felt a fracture in his mind, but Nick pushed against it. On this side of the door, he could do that. Could fight off Harv’s advances and fingers clawing against his brain. Free hand up defensively, he began to speak to calm the Cat down, even as that coin flipped around in his fingers, rolled over his knuckles in a subconscious, almost habitual sort of way. “I don’t wan-,” he started, but the crack of the whip cut off any of his words. The coin fell to the rooftop with a miniscule ding, and he cried out in pain, blinding and stinging pain, and he clutched his injured hand with his other. And when he saw the stain of red across his fingertips, he shook with rage. Unfathomable, nauseating, unfamiliar rage. His hand reached for the gun without a first or second thought, and he fired two shots, aimed at her booted feet. Both not aiming to hurt the kitty, but enough to scare her. Skitter about and know that that was a little rash. The sharpness was back, and while one side of his face curled into a permanent smile, the other dipped down low. “Bad, bad kitty.” While that rage was coursing through him, she tucked the earrings from her ears and tossed them at his feet. She didn't think to ask for payment for the job, and she didn't really think to make peace here. No, if there was one person than made any higher thought like that disappear it was Alexander. She told herself (over and over) that this wasn't him, that this was someone who looked like him (kind of), but it didn't work very well. He was still a nightmare, one that was standing there and looking her in the face, and there was nothing she could do to take that chill from her bones. And then he reached for the gun. Being shot at wasn't the norm for Wren, but she understood that the shots were down, aimed low, and that was all she thought through before the whip sang out again. The precision was just as good as the last time, but this time the end of the whip wound around the gun's grip, and she yanked as she moved away, back, up onto her ledge and the safety of the drop it promised. She didn't know enough about safeties to know it might be a bad idea to grab the gun that way. Her weapon of choice had always been a knife, and that day with Alexander in the warehouse was the last time she'd held a gun in her hand at all. But she just wanted the weapon where he couldn't pull the trigger any more, and then she'd be able to leave without fearing a bullet to the back. She didn't have Selina's confidence yet, didn't realize she could just drop and use the whip to control her fall. She wanted him distracted, and as soon as she made the move for the gun, she was tossing one of the small explosives in her belt at the Batsignal, figuring the shattering glass would be a good distraction. The earrings weren’t even acknowledged, and they fell to the floor near that coin. Nick had completely forgotten what he was there for in the first place; with the boyish glee of living in a comic aside, the blinding pain had him forgetting anything at all besides how he couldn’t make a fist with his left hand. The gun felt heavy in his hand all of a sudden, and he felt the shock shake through his body when the bangs of the bullets rang out. There was a fluidity to his consciousness, in and out, in and out. Like his brain was drowning, then breaking the surface long enough to look on in horror of what happened while he was gone. And it was in that moment of shock and appallment that the whip snaked around the gun. With a snap, it left his grip, and he growled with raw anger as it banged out another shot. The bullet ricocheted, thankfully, and lodged itself in the metal entrance door. Nick thanked his lucky stars, but that second man pushed himself through again and pulsed palpable anger. His jaw twitched, and if Wren looked, she could see his jaw sawing back and forth, back and forth on his exposed side. He was all Gotham rogue then, scrambling to find his gun to fire another shot, this time to shoot to hurt. Not to kill. And, on second thought, he couldn’t do that either. He needed the coin, and his hands ran over the concrete rooftop to find that familiar scratched up coin. As soon as his hands closed around it, he felt a semblance of sanity and moved to stand again. Just as the bombs went off into the Batsignal. Nick fell into a crouch, trying his best to dodge the shards of glass and didn’t think, for a moment, about what the kitty cat was doing or where she was going. Wren wasn't going to stay around long enough for him to find that coin. The second he dove for it, she was gone, using the safety of his crouch to jump down to the window's ledge below, and then to scale the rest of the way. She had no idea if the shards of glass had gotten him, if he had the gun back in his hand, if he was coming after her. She didn't look back; she ran. She was uninjured, and that felt as exhilarating as the fear had been terrifying. It only took a few seconds for her to send the whip's end around a fire escape, so that she could scale to another roof, and by the time she'd put a good amount of distance between herself and Gotham PD, she was high on the adrenaline of the escape. In the back of her mind, she knew the comedown would be terrible, but right then it didn't matter. If she was thinking clearly, she would have realized that she should have immediate concerns, immediate things to panic over, but right then there wasn't anything at all, and it didn't even worry her. |