Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2014-03-11 01:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, door: dc comics, two-face |
Who: The Bat & Harvey Dent
What: A friendly chat, except not.
Where: Gotham Shipyard.
When: Pre-Gothtopia.
Warnings/Rating: Violence.
It rolled across the ground. The otherwise gentle sound of a spinning coin across concrete seemed to be inexplicably loud in the controlled stoicism of the warehouse. Maybe because of all the empty space, high ceilings and a low quality of life. Crates were stacked against some of the walls, but for the most part, the space was a gaping concrete slab. Four men were in the warehouse tonight, and every eye was on the coin as it began to make small, concentric circles, which grew tighter and tighter as the seconds rolled on. Round and round it went until its spin ultimately wobbled. Three of the four held their breath without intention as the silver prepared to fall. Time seemed to slow down, and it must have been agonizing for the three that were on their knees. Outside, somewhere way off, a docking ship blared its horn against the night. It made for some haunted mood music. The sound, all guttural bass, echoed through the warehouse and made the lightbulbs sway from up above. Finally, the coin went flat with its scars facing up. Somebody swallowed nervously.
It was a gunshot broke the tension, and kneeling man in the middle fell back. The man laid there between the other two, a rapidly leaking hole in his head. The warehouse lights had a harsh, yellow quality and it made the blood seem cartoonishly red as it expanded quickly across the concrete. One second it was a puddle, the next a pond. Harvey knelt to pick up his coin where it rested in the spreading muck, and upon standing, he took a moment to wipe the blood off by using the clean edge of his suit jacket. "Now, lets try this again, gentlemen.."
"You shot Benson! You fucking shot him.." One of the men gawked at the body, and the other tried with unease to edge away from the pooling blood. He managed to stop fidgeting when the gun was pointed at him next. The interrogation had begun with a lot of tough talk and smirking denials, but there was none of that now. Harvey held his coin up to the light in demonstration. There was still blood deep in the grooves of the coin's face, and the two men on their knees stared at it with dawning horror. "We told you, we don't work for Malroni anymore. Haven't in years! We don't know where he is -- You can't fucking do this, Dent!" The thugs were pale, and blood flecked the sides of their faces from when their friend in the middle had gotten shot a moment earlier.
Another coin toss. When the coin hit the ground at his feet, Harvey stepped on it to keep it from rolling away. Both thugs swallowed, glancing from the pointed handgun down to the shoe that obscured their verdict. He'd told them that he'd consider letting one of them go, if they told him what he wanted to know. They could flip for it at the end, to see which one of them was lucky enough to get a second chance to flip for their life.. if they told him where to find Malroni. But they couldn't tell him what they didn't know, and even if they did know, telling Dent that kind of thing would end up a death sentence either way. "We don't work for Malroni anymore!" One of the men was shouting now, desperate as the gun barrell stared right back at him. "We work for the Mask now. Do you have any idea what you've done? Who you've messed with? You're a dead man.."
Harvey smiled, but the expression was frightening with the way only half of his mouth worked properly. The exposed tendons stretched, and both of the thugs looked like they were going to be sick. A dead man, was he? "Just half," he said as he cocked the gun.
Whispers were common in Gotham. Very little was ever spoken of openly, save for mundane gossip and harmless conversation that maintained the surface beauty of the city, hiding the rot and corruption beneath, though the facade weakened at night and barely existed at all for those who knew where to look. And the Bat did. He knew how to listen to the whispers, too, how to start with so very little and end up leaving behind a nice catch of Russians or Italians or street gang thugs trussed up for the police to stumble upon, as they always did. Batman took care of the hard part and left the cops to do the one part of their job an oversized bat couldn’t do; he worked outside the system, after all.
Tonight there were whispers, and he followed the breadcrumb trail to a warehouse by the docks. Criminals liked warehouses; it was part of their pattern. The Bat found most criminals terribly predictable. But predictability was familiar, and in the familiar he could fall back on instinct, letting everything else go numb so he didn’t have to think, didn’t have to feel. He existed on guilt. He breathed it, dreamed it when he slept, and it kept him alive even as it tore him apart. But he could forget. Whatever was happening in the warehouse, a drug deal or an arms exchange or even revenge, something he could understand, it was forgetfulness. Become something subhuman, and all emotion went away. Any psychiatrist would tell him it was a terrible coping mechanism but he hated psychiatrists and hadn’t seen one since he was eight, since he’d thrown a fit and Alfred had never taken him back.
When the Bat arrived, taking advantage of the high ceilings and the darkness, one man was already dead and one half of the remaining two was shouting something about not working for Malroni anymore; they were working for the Mask now. He took note of his claim but he was more interested in the shooter, in who had brought these men here and made them kneel. To find his answers he needed to get closer, and he used his cape to glide, near soundless, from a higher perch to lower, to get a better view. But it was the gunman’s voice that made him freeze before he managed to get a good look; he would never forget a voice, especially not that of a man who was dead. Who should have been dead. He could still remember how it’d happened. Another failure, another life he couldn’t save. Wasn’t this fitting?
It made sense, then. These men. The gun. The coin was there too, it had to be, and for a moment the Bat considered leaving. Yet guilt drew him down, the belief that he deserved to come face to face with a ghost from his past who’d already shot him once; he could still remember the pain.
“They’re not lying, Harvey.” The Bat spoke from somewhere behind him, half-shadowed. He didn’t care about them. He didn’t care if they lived or died. But it was true; Sal Malroni was no longer the man he’d once been. There were others now, like Black Mask, criminals from another Gotham who earned loyalty more easily and possessed more power. Harvey Dent sought revenge too late; time had passed. Things had changed.
Interruption came in an envelope addressed to a past he'd never run clear from. Harvey. He'd neglected his name for so long that it seemed like a fallen soldier at his feet. Harvey seemed like somebody to be mourned, but ultimately moved past on one's way deeper into the fields of war. The last time he'd heard that voice, it'd been the night. The night that he'd lost so much that he'd opted to let the man he'd been die right along with the rest of it. Right along with Rachel, with the white knight, with any hope for the future. Harvey was no longer a man of gleaming visions that involved the clean up and restructuring of Gotham. To be fair, he wasn't even Harvey any longer. He'd seen Gotham's true face that night, and Gotham had given him a true face in return.
He whipped around, gun leveled at the dark that thrived off of a towering stack of crates against one warped, wooden wall. Shadows with the voice of a friend, someone he'd thought he could count on, a symbol he'd once rallied behind in every way he could. No, a symbol Harvey had rallied behind, and one that ultimately fallen short when he'd needed it the most. Two Face could see the Bat's outline, a living night cut out of armor. He blinked down at the gun in his hand, loaded and cocked ready. "Is that bullet-proof?" It was a straightforward question that expected an honest answer, even if he knew that there was only one way to find out for sure.
From behind him, he could hear both of the surviving gangsters scrambling in escape that took them deeper into the warehouse. Two Face never got a chance to check and see how the coin beneath the sole of his shoe had landed in deciding the fate of one, and it seemed a bit unimportant at the moment. "If they're telling the truth, then there's no point in keeping them alive." That much was obvious. Two Face didn't really need two men, who were now potentially scarred for life(which was ironic) running off to whomever they worked for and initiating a city-wide manhunt for him before he completed his mission. Although he couldn't really imagine the life of one gangster being enough to involve any of Gotham's criminal elite. They had so many other things to worry about, like the Batman.
Any rational person would have reacted to having a gun pointed at them, but not Batman. He remained still, unmoving and quiet, more like a statue and not human at all. Harvey Dent was guilt, a representation of his failures, someone who had once symbolized hope and was now broken dreams. Being sorry wasn’t enough. Wishing things were different, that wasn’t enough either. Harvey had fallen too far out of reach even though he desperately wanted to believe otherwise. “It’s meant to be,” he said of his kevlar being bulletproof, cool and calm. Perhaps this Harvey didn’t remember that he’d already tested it out. He might try again, but somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to be concerned about the possibility of being shot. He had no fear left for death, at least not his own.
“No,” he agreed, eternally toneless. “But what do you accomplish by killing them?” He wasn’t going to argue on behalf of the gangsters and their lives. But, however jaded he became, he wouldn’t stand by and allow Harvey to kill them either. “It’s been a long time, Harvey.” Simple fact, and perhaps he was testing the waters a little. He moved, to the right, shadows shifting and resettling over his form.
When Batman confirmed that the suit was made to withstand close range gunfire, Harvey nodded in agreeable silence. The more functional side of his mouth twisted, contemplative when he stepped back and nudged his coin across the cement so that the light befell its unblemished half. It seemed like it was somebody's lucky day, shame they ran off in such a hurry before witnessing the verdict. Oh well, there was still another person to flip a coin for. Two, if Batman stuck around. Harvey kept the gun aimed at the Dark Knight when he knelt carefully to recover his coin from the cold asphalt.
"What do I.. accomplish?" He had to squeeze his good eye shut like he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. Of course, Harvey didn't know why he should have expected anything to be different in the Bat's unyielding philosophy on the importance of life. He thought he'd understood it once, that crossing that line meant sinking to a level that one couldn't return from. It meant crawling into the pit with the diseased, and even if you managed to crawl back out again, you carried a little piece of that infection inside you forever. Harvey understood that, but it didn't seem like enough of a deterrent from where he was standing. Not anymore.
There were things to be sacrificed in the war of good and evil. Sometimes that meant sacrificing what you believed in, what you stood for. That's what a real hero would do. He aimed the gun at the shadowed Bat once more. "You think by not killing them, you don't have blood on your hands? Because you do."
There was a part of him that, even then, still wanted to save Harvey. He remembered the man he’d been before the Joker; a man full of optimism and hope for Gotham’s future. A good man. The Bat wanted to believe that that man still existed, somewhere. Perhaps it was a weakness but he could never fully accept that he was a lost cause, not when he carried so much guilt over his transformation. It was why he didn’t immediately move to take Harvey down, why he remained in sight despite the gun. He waited as the question was repeated. Waited for an answer he could, in turn, respond to.
Of course he had blood on his hands, he would never argue otherwise. Literally, and figuratively, but no matter who Harvey Dent hunted down and killed it would never be enough to bring back what he’d lost. Firefly’s death hadn’t brought Damian back. But he knew what it was like to want vengeance, regardless of the cost. “I know I do,” he told him somberly. “But you don’t have to. You can stop, before it gets too far.” His gaze dropped to the gun. He could move, in time, if it came to that. Still, he felt no fear.
If Batman wanted to hold onto the hope that there was something left of the Harvey Dent that he'd once known in the man that now stood before him, that was his problem. A problem created out of the guilt, guilt that he knew the man felt over what had happened that night at the warehouses in Gotham. But guilt wasn't enough to change the past or improve the future, not anymore. It wasn't near enough.
"Its too late for that." Even the words tasted like blood and ash, they tasted like charred failure, they tasted like wounds that would never heal right. There was a part of Harvey that knew it was psychosomatic, that the nightmares that constantly tore him awake weren't real. He wasn't still burning, and even if he was, deadened nerves ensured that he wouldn't feel anything on that part of his face. Rachel was long gone, and it wasn't really the sound of her voice that jarred him loose from sleep night after night. He could hear her now, and it felt like deeper parts of him were burning all over again. The gun wavered.
"She knew it," the rasp of his voice was failing, slipping, it tripped on the strain of emotion. "She knew you were going to save her." They'd both known it, and it had been okay. She'd told him that it would all be okay, and he knew it would be because she would be alive. Of course, they'd been wrong. "Up until the moment she died, she thought you were coming for her!" He understood that time was strange here. Or he understood it as best he could, all things considered. He knew that the Joker was still alive and that nothing had changed. He knew that everything that had happened, it'd been for nothing. He knew the taste of failure, it was as raw and real as the taste of nightmares. Blood and ash.
Too late. Was it too late? Should he accept that Harvey was a lost cause, and instead have him detained and taken somewhere he could harm no one, not even himself? The Bat contemplated whether or not he was capable of it. As a last resort, perhaps.
But not yet. Not when he’d barely even tried to reach him. So many failures and still, still he persisted.
“No, it isn’t too late. It doesn’t have to be.” He had a choice. But maybe, he reflected, it wasn’t much of one. Rachel was gone, what did Harvey have to go back to? What motivation could he possibly give him to become the man he’d once been? The likelihood of him stepping back into the role of DA was very, very slim; he wasn’t even supposed to be alive. The lie concocted between himself and Gordon to paint Harvey as a fallen hero only worked if he was fallen. Dead men couldn’t talk, after all, nor could they seek vengeance. But if he kept on like this word would inevitably spread, even though it didn’t matter as much here, in this Gotham, where so many worlds and timelines collided. He did not argue when Harvey moved on to Rachel, when he flung his words like knives; not accusations, just the truth. The Bat had gone to save her, and his unthinking selfishness had cost her her life. Had he thought, he might have realized that it was so very like the Joker to play such a trick. He’d thought he was ahead, the Gotham PD had thought they were so very clever, but in the end they’d all been fools and the Joker had the last laugh.
He didn’t think of Rachel often anymore, and admitting that to himself made his chest constrict with guilt. “I meant to save her. The Joker… he gave me the wrong address. I didn’t know,” he admitted. It wasn’t an excuse, merely fact. He breathed silently, a deep inhale and a long exhale. “Put the gun down, Harvey.”
Harvey stared at him, searching the portions of mouth and eyes that were not constricted or hidden away by a matte black face mask. He stared like there was something he was waiting to be revealed, but of course, when the Bat spoke, nothing new came to light. He hoped, in now knowing that the Bat was Bruce - and how dear Bruce had been to Rachel all her life, that there might be some kind of explanation, something that made sense of the way that everything had happened that night. Of course, it was foolish to hold, even fleetingly, onto that kind of hope. Hope had long ago proven to be its own kind of pain.
Because there was no justification for Rachel's death, no clarity that could be derived from talking to the man that he held responsible just as much as Harvey held himself responsible. "You.. didn't know," he repeated. Did the Bat even hear how useless that was? To say that he didn't anticipate what should have clearly been anticipated? If pleading ignorance alleviated the the vigilante's guilt, how nice for him. Perhaps the Bat thought that blame belonged wholly on the Joker, but Harvey didn't see it that way. The Joker had done his job, he'd been successful in what he set out to accomplish, it was Batman and Gordon who proved incapable, unprepared, oblivious.
He'd been holding the gun up for some time now in a stationary aim, and it made his hand shake. Not out of nerves, but through the effort of already-damaged muscle trying to exert itself. He wouldn't be able to hold it up much longer as a deterrent, he would either have to shoot or put the gun down, as the man across from him asked. Since he couldn't quite decide, he tossed the coin, and it hit the concrete again, rolling. "That was always your problem, Batman. You didn't expect the Joker to give you the wrong address because you expect everybody to play fair. Well, don't worry. I am fair." A glance down with his good eye showed the coin went scarred side up. Tails, you lose. He pulled the trigger.
There was nothing the Bat, or Bruce for that matter, could say to make sense of Rachel’s death. He had the facts, he had the truth, but neither changed what had happened. He and Gordon had underestimated the Joker. And, in a way, Harvey had too. The three of them had believed Gotham could reach the dawn spoken of but, in the end, only a lie had preserved the city. A lie that, here and now, held no meaning. It made what had transpired all the more tragic, as it was rendered meaningless. Rachel had died for nothing, because this Gotham was not theirs. It was worse. Not beyond saving, no, but sometimes he doubted whether he would live to see its salvation.
His gaze followed the coin as it was tossed, but nothing more. There was no use in repeating that he hadn’t known; Harvey had heard. Had he expected the Joker to play fair? Or perhaps he’d underestimated the man. He’d expected rules when there were none and he’d let emotion cloud his judgment. Which was, no matter how it was said, his fault. “I know it was my fault,” he began, but then he saw Harvey glance down and he knew he needed to be prepared to move should the coin rule against him.
Before, he hadn’t had a chance to move and the bullet had hit at close range; kevlar was the only reason he was still alive. Now, he did move. Swift and back into the shadows, and the bullet only clipped his side; out of the suit, it would have been worse. Maybe it was intentional, a manifestation of guilt, moving just a touch slower than he could have, but he didn’t think. He didn’t dwell. Instead he emerged from the darkness and came at Dent from the side, to catch him off guard before he could pull the trigger again.
A shot was fired into the dark where shadows swallowed up the bullet. The loud, ringing aftermath of the shot made it difficult to tell if the bullet landed on its intended target or if it embedded itself in the wooden frame of a shipping crate somewhere in the back. Harvey waited a moment, the sound of blood rushing with adrenaline in his ears when he ultimately fired again, this time blindly into the same dark. Another second ticked by like a lifetime, or maybe just half a second, time was strangely relative in times like these, he was rapidly discovering. Harry had the disheartening realization that he hadn't wounded Batman. If he had, the man would have been bleeding out on the floor just like the unlucky man with the fresh hole in his head. Yet there was no Bat to be seen.
And just as the ringing of the gunshot was beginning to think of echoing into a nothing quiet once more, there was a surge of black flanking him from the left. It was enough to catch him off guard, tumbling sideways down onto the concrete with the bloody rorschach pattern glistening in sticky red. Another stray bullet went wild, pinging off of the metal hood of some overhead light now swaying wildly in the distance, like it'd been pushed by an angry hand.
Even after all this time, the sound of gunfire sparked something deep within him. But the Bat was no longer a child, and he evaded the bullets rather than being rooted to the spot in fear; he certainly wasn’t going to meet his end bleeding to death in this warehouse no matter how much guilt he felt. He wished it hadn’t come to this, but it had, and he couldn’t simply turn his back and leave Harvey to his revenge. Duty, responsibility, it wouldn’t allow him to do so even if he’d wanted to.
The stray bullet, the gun firing again, was ignored. He had him down, the next step was to get the weapon out of his reach. The Bat’s target was the hand holding the gun, stubbornly so, but a boot to his chest and a twist of Harvey’s wrist, painfully on the edge of snapping without crossing that line, he thought that would be enough. “Let it go, Harvey.”
His arm wrenched, hand bent back painfully so that the fingers spasmed on their own instinctive accord. The gun fell out of his grip, hitting the concrete with a loud sound in the sudden quiet of absent gunshots. The boot to his chest ensured that Harvey wasn't getting up anytime soon, and the good side of his face twisted with a frustrated growl. But he did not reach for the gun again, couldn't with the way that his wrist was bent all wrong like a lean in the other direction might make it snap. The pain was sharp, but it wasn't any more crippling than the pain that Harvey walked around with every day.
Out of breath and momentarily defeated, Harvey tilted his head just enough to stare up at the Bat, envisioning him as Bruce made him grit his teeth, flushed with an anger so deep and sudden that it was nauseating. He smiled though, small except for where the destroyed side of his mouth was forever contorted in hate. "Is this the part where you take me to jail and keep pretending you're the hero?"
There was no satisfaction when the gun hit the ground, only a grim sort of silence as the Bat stared down at the man who had once carried Gotham’s hope upon his shoulders. In truth, though he would never admit it, he wasn’t entirely sure of what to do with Harvey next. He couldn’t just let him go of course, but some part of him balked at the idea of jail. Regardless, they couldn’t stay here. He had that much figured out.
“I’m not a hero, Harvey. I’ve never pretended to be.” He sounded tired, and he didn’t answer about jail. Instead he reached into his belt for a set of restraints, ones that would hold for as long as he needed them to.