DENT (Part 4/??)
Title: Dent (4/??)
Previous Parts: | Prologue | One | Two
Fandom: Batman (general comics continuity)
Characters: Harvey Dent/Two-Face, Gilda Dent, Bruce Wayne, Jim Gordon, Vincent Moroni
Genres: General, Drama, Angst, Romance
Rating: PG-13
This story contains: Alcoholism, brief mentions of child abuse, graphic violence, swearing, character death, sexual content
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.
A/N: To make up for the delay, today's chapter is coincidentally extra long, and one of the toughest ones to nail so far. This one bears some of the most visible remnants of the novel's original iteration, which was written with the intention of reconciling all of Harvey in canon, fleshing out other aspects of canon, and on occasion, incorporating Harvey into other canon where I felt he'd be better suited. Thankfully, these scenes have evolved in leaps and bounds since then, but you might notice the roots to other stories here or there.
I can't believe I'm going to see Wayne Manor again. But then, I can hardly believe I ever saw it in the first place.
It seems unreal that a punk kid like me could ever have been granted access to this castle, but that's a testament to the goodness of Martha Kane. You'd think that after she married the prestigious Dr. Wayne, she would have given no thought to her college friend Alice Helfer, who had married my less-than-prestigious father. But Mrs. Wayne never forgot a friend, especially not one who had fallen as ill as Mom.
For a brief period when I was five or six, Mom would bring me along with her on her visits to Wayne Manor, escaping into another world far, far away from Dad. Those visits healed us emotionally and psychologically, even though Dr. Wayne couldn't have healed her physically. She'd spend a half hour with him, then two hours over lunch with Martha, while I'd explore the mansion with Bruce, one year my junior. We weren't really best friends, but we were kids together, if that makes any sense. Playmates who didn't have anyone else to play with. Even after Mom died, the Waynes made it a point to have me visit for both my sake and Bruce's, to try and give us some semblance of a normal childhood. That dream died shortly thereafter, right alongside his parents.
After that, we drifted apart. I was stuck with Dad, while Bruce went further inside himself. Years crawled by, many years of pain and anger and loneliness so profound that I had honestly forgotten how to live any other way. It wasn't until meeting with yet another therapist that I realized just how much I missed Bruce, but our paths seemed unlikely to ever cross again.
After finally escaping Dad, I went to study pre-law at Hudson U, while Bruce was bouncing from one Ivy League school to the next, always spending more time sulking in his mansion than at classes. By my sophomore summer, I landed a clerk position at the DA's office, just in time for the trial of the decade.
I was grateful that Bruce gave me a chance to explain, to try and get him to understand why we were offering Joseph Chilton-"Joey Chill," the Iceman himself-a commuted sentence in return for his testimony. Bruce didn't see things that way, a position he made abundantly clear when I returned to the manor for the first time in years.
"He was rotting in Blackgate," Bruce said, hunched over at the table. The kitchen was one of the only places in all of Wayne Manor where the furniture wasn't draped in sheets. "He should have stayed there."
As I sipped tea so fine that it could only have been prepared by an Englishman, I found myself nostalgic for Alfred's oatmeal cookies. Nothing I'd had since could compare. They probably wouldn't even taste as good as I'd remembered if I had them again. Another relic of childhood, lost in the past.
I said, "Yes, he should. But please Bruce, you need to understand what he's offering. The things he learned being Vincent Moroni's cellmate…"
"Do you think it matters? Even if you put Moroni away, there will always be someone else to take his place."
"That doesn't mean that Moroni shouldn't pay for his crimes," I said, knowing that he wouldn't care. "You don't know what it's like out there, Bruce. The mob doesn't just control rackets and bump each other off anymore. They're in the business of corruption, and it's the only business that's booming in this economy. They churn out new Joe Chills every day."
"Only one Joe Chill killed my parents," Bruce said.
"Your parents dedicated their lives to fighting the kind of scum that-"
His look shut me down in an instant. Too far. I clamped down with a sigh, inhaling to catch another ghost of cinnamon and brown sugar seemingly infused in these walls.
"So you won't be coming to the hearing."
"No, I'll come," he said, which surprised me. I bowed my head and nodded solemnly, not sure if I was thanking him or apologizing. When I looked back up, his blue eyes held mine with intensity. With cold resignation, he said, "It's not fair."
Life ain't fair, a voice echoed from long ago, but I didn't believe that. I couldn't.
"It will be," I swore to him. There was fairness, there had to be. Even if we had to make it ourselves.
"I know," he said, turning his back to me. "One way or another."
Something about the way he said it should have warned me about what would come next. But I didn't listen. I didn't want to believe it.
Not that it mattered once Chill was shot on the courthouse steps. A sniper's bullet punched through his chest, and within seconds, he was drowning in his own blood. The DA uttered a curse with weary familiarity. The press swarmed around the dying man as if they'd been rehearsing for the moment. I felt like the only one who was naïve enough to think that this would have gone any differently.
I tried to take comfort in the thought that this might finally give Bruce some peace. Then I saw his eyes burning with cold fury, staring at the pandemonium around Chill, and I knew. Whatever he wanted, this would never be enough.
I didn't see Bruce's immediate reaction to the news that Chill survived, barely pulling through on the operating table. The DA hoped that he would be vindictive enough to still testify against Moroni. It was nice to hope, even if it came to nothing. But at least when Chill was sent back to Blackgate with no chance at parole, I felt like some justice was done.
That's what I thought, anyway. But I wouldn't know the full story for two more weeks, when I saw Bruce one last time, after he'd learned the full extent of my role in Chill's appeal. Even now, whenever I think of Bruce, I don't think of the fleetingly happy child I knew, or the boozy exploits of the millionaire playboy you read about in the gossip rags. I think of that afternoon, the meltdown that I thought destroyed whatever friendship we had, and the endless questions of how much I was to blame for the whole disaster.
So why did he offer to host this party? Why would he even want to see me again? If the tabloids are to be believed, perhaps this Bruce is a pod person. But at least, as the door opens before us, I realize that some of the best people never change.
"Welcome back, Mr. Dent," Alfred says, warmly reserved as always. "The festivities-such as they are-are well underway."
"Alfred, you haven't aged a day."
"The gray hairs Master Bruce has given me in the intervening years beg to differ, sir," he says. "May I take your coat?"
Handing the wool garment over, I turn to Gilda for introductions, only to realize I've forgotten the butler's last name. Far as I knew, he never had one. "Gilda, it's my great pleasure to introduce you to Alfred."
He takes her hand as only a most proper gentleman could.
"How do you do, Mrs. Dent," he says, and I almost correct him. It's still bizarre to think of her with my name.
She smirks and asks him, "What's it all about, Alfie?"
He looks puzzled. "I beg your pardon, madam?"
"Erm..." She blushes and ducks her head with embarrassment. "Never mind."
His eyebrows rise briefly, but he shrugs it off. "This way, please."
And then, he leads us into a realm I haven't seen for eight years.
Usually when we revisit old childhood haunts, we're amazed by how small they seem to us now. Not here. Wayne Manor is every bit as expansive, more like a cathedral than a playboy's mansion. These halls echo with memories much older than my own.
Alfred escorts us into the ballroom, grounding me in the present. The cream of Gotham greets me with champagne, wine, all manner of intoxication, and polite applause. I take in the room, from the grand dual staircase to the fully stocked bar and...bandstand? He hired a band? No, he hired two bands? He did. Oh god. On one side of the massive room, a string quartet plays something snooty; while on the other, a pianist and bass player meander their way through an instrumental version of "Something's Gotta Give."
Through the clenched teeth of a forced grin, Gilda utters from beside me, "Kill me now, honey."
A grinning blonde in the crowd excitedly waves at me, gesturing to one of my corny campaign slogan buttons affixed to her tangerine and salmon striped cocktail dress and I reluctantly wave back. I recognize her as last year's Miss Gotham, though now she looks like a walking piece of Laffy Taffy.
"Only if you kill me first," I say.
"You're not big on logistics, are you?"
"I think that should be obvious by now."
People gradually start drifting over to us to socialize, but I recognize few faces, and none from the press banquet. These aren't the movers and shakers, the manipulators and the dealers. These are the bored and the idle, looking for whatever shiny object catches their fleeting attention next. These are Bruce's people, but they were never the people of his parents. But where is he? He teases me for not being at a secret party when he's not even here himself?
I wade through the crowd, only to catch the sea's attention. Putting on my best politician face, I mingle with the likes of Veronica Vreeland and J. Devlin Davenport, and in the process I somehow lose Gilda in the mass of affluence. The socialites grin and chat and joke with me as if they're actually here for my benefit and not the free champagne. For nearly an hour I get passed around from old money to new money to just plain money, suffocating in the throng by the time I'm accosted by a pompous boob by the name of Pierce Chapmen.
"If you ask me," he says in a Locust Valley Lockjaw accent, "Mayor Hill is over the."
"Over the...what?"
"Hill, dear boy." He slaps me on the back with a nasal chortle.
I've got to get the hell out of here.
I eyeball the wide-open courtyard as my salvation and then scan the cluster of faces, searching for my wife. I finally find her cornered by Henry Claridge, a private curator of supposed renown. He leans in towards her, one hand braced against the wall, the other occasionally trailing up her bare arm and suddenly, I'm ready to shove that stupid little toupee down his throat. But as I approach, she catches my eye, gives me an 'I've got this' wink, and waves me off.
She's dealt with her fair share of Claridges over the years, and she can handle this one too. I have to remind myself of that as I retreat into the fresh air outside. Claridge is just another art-prick, and maybe he's more interested in her work than getting in her pants. This is important, especially since she just quit her Gallery job last week. Being surrounded by the artwork of others left her no energy to create her own, but she was reluctant to quit just in case something went wrong.
But how could it? After all, the election was a lock.
Jesus, I hadn't even considered that I might have burned her bridges as well as my own. Damn it. No. I don't want to think about that. Not here, not in the lush courtyard where I spent some of the best moments of my life.
It's been so long that I'd almost forgotten that those memories were real, that I really did use to come here and run wild with the boy prince, playing tag, cops and robbers and the Gray Ghost. I'll never understand how two boys from both ends of Gotham's class spectrum could bond so easily.
For a while, anyway. Until that night.
"You've got some nerve, showing up here after what you've taken from me," comes a voice from behind.
And here we go. I turn, and god, I forgot how tall he is.
"The people have spoken," I say. "Sorry you had to settle for second place."
"I'm still 'Gotham's Sexiest Bachelor.'" He emphasizes the last word, faux pride mingled with faux bitterness. "So I might as well be number one."
I feel like we should drop this charade and just… I don't know, hug already, or something. Start talking, catching up, like the friends we're supposed to be, but there's something awkward, almost fake, about our interaction, under the facade of surface familiarity.
"Congrats about… Gilda, isn't it?" He raises his glass in salute. "You two almost make it look worth trying."
"Almost. But not enough for you, Bruce?"
He plays coy, but seems intrigued, like an artist anxious for a fan's feedback. "Don't believe the tabloids, Harv. They love to blow things out of proportion."
"So you didn't purchase an entire shopping mall for a pair of supermodels?"
"God, no!" He almost looks insulted by the absurdity of such a suggestion. "It was just a couple of the shops themselves. With everything those D'Aramis twins wanted to buy, it just seemed more sensible to cut out the middleman."
He grins, still swirling his drink, but never taking a sip. I keep waiting for him to wink, to let me in on the joke.
"What?" he asks, looking upward. Faux innocence. Faux everything. "Is my hair mussed?"
"We thought you were dead, Bruce."
"I didn't think anybody would notice I was gone," he says, with more honesty than I think he wants to let on.
"Well, I did. Considering how we parted ways, how could I not?" I ask. "And look, don't get me wrong, I get why you had to do it. Gilda did the globetrotting thing for a few years, and it was exactly what she needed. With everything that happened, you probably did the right thing, but-"
"You should try it. It'd be good to find yourself."
"Is that what you did?" And is this what you found?
Slapping me on the back, he uses the snifter to punctuate his words.
"I just learned that life is too short to waste being a wet blanket. Hell, you remember what I was like. Don't tell me you miss that old grouch."
Why are we dancing around the elephant in the room? Should I apologize? Should he? Or should we just keep dancing?
"You had every reason to be angry."
"Yes. But not at you." He waits, but I can't bring myself to make the move. "C'mon, Harv. I thought you'd be happy. I'm finally me again, just like in the old days."
"I remember that kid, Bruce. You aren't him. You can never be him again."
"So consider this the new and improved model. Bruce Wayne, two-point-oh!"
There's just no point. With a sigh, I abandon the line of questioning. Time to cut my losses and dive back inside, but Bruce catches me.
"That was some speech today, by the way. You didn't really mean it, did you?"
"You know me, Bruce," I say, just as I thought I knew him. "What do you think?"
"I think you should pray they don't know you like I do," he says, eyebrow cocked. "You really had them fooled with that puppet act of yours, for the most part. You could have kept at it, you know. Kept biding your time. At least until after you won the election."
"If you think I screwed up, Bruce, then just say it."
He holds up his hands, all peacemaker.
"I just want to make sure you know what you're doing. It's a good thing everyone thinks you're a joke. You should use that against them before they wise up."
"I have a plan," I say, thinking about tomorrow. No matter what happens, I'll still be an assistant district attorney long enough to make my move against Moroni's master of protection rackets, Tony Zucco. I've already secured testimony from a rare honest cop that will put Zucco away for life. That'll send a message to all the right people.
"You need more than a plan, Harv. You need friends."
"That's what the speech was for," and I'm amazed at my candor. "I'm hoping that the good guys just needed someone to speak up for them."
"Even if it means upsetting some very powerful people. I notice that Hill and Thorne didn't accept the invitation to support their local ADA. I'm wounded."
"Hell with 'em," I say, and god, it feels good to say that. To let the sweet bitterness flow. "I'm sick of pretending to be something I'm not. I can't play the fool, Bruce, not like…"
I stop myself. But he smiles anyway.
"Like me?"
The picture doesn't come into place, but the pieces move closer together. Now I'm smiling too.
"C'mon, let's go back inside," he says. "No point standing out here. And I've got plenty more wonderful rich and useless friends for you to meet."
"I think I'd rather be alone out here than alone in there."
"But you're not alone, Harv," His heavy hand on my shoulder, he says, "I'm here, for whatever you need. You've got my word. And if the election doesn't go...favorably, hey, you could always be my personal attorney. Lucius says with all the trouble I get into, I need a good one."
"Bruce, I don't think-"
"Bruuuuucie!" a nasal falsetto coos from within the mansion. "I can't find my panties! I think I left them on the pooooool table!"
"Be with you in a minute, Trixi," he calls back. Turning to me, he says, "It's Trixi with an 'i.' Adorable. Sorry, Harvey, but it's bad form to keep a lady waiting."
"Does she qualify as one?"
"Only where it counts," he laughs, slapping me on the shoulder. As his fingers slip away, I take his arm, grabbing hold of as if he were an excited Labrador. He stops, looks at me, as if already knowing.
"Bruce… I'm sorry."
And with his first genuine expression tonight, he smiles and says, "Don't be, Harv. I'm the one who's sorry."
"Maybe you were right."
"No. No, I wasn't. You only did what you thought was right. And you were right. Never doubt that."
I don't. But hearing it from him, a wound open for eight years finally heals over in a wash of gratitude. Calling from within the mansion, he shouts, "And hey, if it's any consolation, my hand hurt like hell!"
I shout back, "Not as much as my face!"
And then he's gone.
Just like that, we're okay? Eight years ago, I wouldn't have believed it could be this easy, let alone possible.
I don't know how long he'd been sitting outside of my dorm, waiting for me to leave for class. Maybe he'd been there an hour. Maybe he sat there all night. But once I left, already running late for Professor Rexford's brutal Pre-Law 201, I found myself thrown into the azaleas outside the building.
I almost didn't even recognize my assailant. He hadn't shaved in days. He shared the desperate look of men who huddled with the homeless in Tent City, or squatted in slums down in the Alleytown.
"… Bruce? Oh, Bruce…" I pulled myself out, the twigs scraping against my skin, snagging in my coat. "Look, if this is about Chill, I know you're angry, but..."
He snarled, "You don't know the half of it."
"What do you want me to say?" I reasoned from my knees, not trying to stand just yet. "Look, it sucks, it's unfair, I know. But try to remember that you've still got your own justice. Chilton's going to rot in Blackgate for life. The DA made sure of that."
A bitter confirmation filling his eyes, he scoffed, "Now that's funny. You really believe that. You don't even have a clue."
"What-"
"I asked around. Moroni was so grateful to Chill for not testifying, he made him his personal representative in Blackgate. Smuggling, information, cash, men... Chill's in charge of it all. That creep is living like a king, better off now than he was on the outside, and it's your fault!"
Oh. Those words. The three words that cut straight to the heart of everything I fear. I didn't even notice my hands starting to shake.
"Even if that's true, it… it wasn't my fault, Bruce. I'm just a clerk. The DA, the ADA, they're the ones who-"
"Don't you dare!" he shouted. "It was you! You're the one who came up with the bright idea use Vincent Moroni's precious cellmate as a bargaining chip! You gambled with the killer of my parents!"
How… how could he have known…? But no, it wasn't like that. I was working with the ADA assigned to fight Chill's appeal. His sentence could have actually been overturned, too. All on a technicality, always the technicalities. I saw a chance to take down a bigger monster. I talked to the ADA, who talked to the DA, who talked to Chill. Everyone thought it was a good idea. Everyone.
"I… I just wanted to see justice done."
"All you cared about was making a name for yourself at the DA's office."
... What? I mean, sure, yes, they were impressed by my thinking. Yes, they personally appointed me to work in the Moroni trial. Yes, I was proud, more proud of anything I'd ever done with my life. But it wasn't… I wasn't…
"That's not true," I said, the sweat starting to bead on my forehead. I couldn't even feel that it was coming. It was all starting again. "It's not. Bruce, you know me."
"Yes, I do. I know why you got into law. I know what you're escaping from. I know that you're so ambitious, so obsessed, that you'd sell out your own mother if it meant getting ahead. Just like you sold me out. Me and my parents."
I tried and failed to ignore that low blow. A breeze carried the stale stench of his breath over to me. I don't know if he'd ever been drunk before. I tried to tell myself that this wasn't really Bruce, that this was just a twisted doppelganger, perverted by booze and rage. I knew this, and I held fast to that logic, struggling to maintain control.
"I'm not just doing this for myself. I'm doing it for people like your parents. They believed in Gotham City when no one else would."
"If they saw this city for what it was, maybe they'd still be alive."
"You don't… you don't mean that," I said, nearly pleaded, as my heart pounded in my ears, harder, faster, louder, "Jesus, Bruce, you knew why we had to do it! You understood! That's why you were there! You were with me that day because you wanted to see that justice was served!"
"Yes, I did," he said, reaching into his pocket. And even then, I didn't want to believe it, that he couldn't have it in him. But there it was. A silver .22, almost like the one Joe Chill used. A pitiful weapon. A coward's weapon. "And now even that's been taken from me. All because of you."
Only the feeling of my fingernails digging into my own palms made me realize that my hands were white fists. And Bruce knew it. He saw the sweat rolling down my face, my body shivering and tense, my lips curling to bear teeth, without understanding the full extent of what he was seeing. Or maybe he did. If he knew about Chill, maybe he also knew my own history, everything I fought and hoped I'd finally overcome. Maybe he knew exactly what he was doing when he said, "You're no better than your father."
At that moment, it didn't matter what he knew. Nothing mattered. Nothing but the burning desire to grant his every wish for obliteration.
"Well?" he shouted, holding his arms outstretched, presenting himself to me on a platter. The gun dangled from his finger, the handle swinging in the air with impotence. "Go on! Do it!"
How... dare he? My mind blazed with blind violence. After all I'd done, everything I'd struggled to beat, how DARE he…? I could just… I just want to… I'm GOING to… but no, I'm not... Using every ounce of willpower to hold back, channeling my rage out through clenched teeth, I seethed:
"Your parents… would be ashamed of you."
And he hit me. Clocking me with a clumsy right cross, sending me back into the azalea bed. I rolled with the punch, as I'd learned from hard experience, but the pounding in my head only intensified. He could have turned the gun on me for all I knew or cared, it wouldn't have mattered. I knew what was coming. The anger, the adrenaline, the pulse rushing in my ears...
No. Remember what the therapist said. Beat it back. Take control.
Bruce wasn't making it easy for me. He looked down on me with loathing pity that went far beyond either of us. He turned, and as if forgetting he ever held the gun, the .22 dropped, clattering on the sidewalk. He stumbled off campus, back into the heart of Gotham, and soon thereafter abandoned the city entirely.
There was no one else in sight, with everyone off at class. No one to see me pull myself out of the bushes, shivering with fury. No one to see me reach for the gun, studying it the way Bruce must have, with the desperation that this-this-could be the answer to some maddening question. No one to see me put it inside my coat pocket and head back to campus, threatening to boil over with every passing second.
But no. No, I told myself. I couldn't lose it again. Wouldn't lose it again. Not after I'd been so good, so very good for these last few years. I tossed the gun into the man-made lake on campus, but even that wasn't enough. I had to cool down. I had to find my head.
I looked around for any distraction that I could find and went for the only escape in sight: the art gallery. They were hosting a visiting exhibition from New York college students. A place to be alone, where everybody was lost in their own worlds.
I paced through the maze, pretending to care about the paintings and photos and pottery and sculptures as my heart pounded away, my mind reeling over Bruce, over Moroni, over Joe Chill and how justice cuts both ways, just like I told Bruce, but injustice cuts deeper...
… when a sculpture caught my eye. Amid all this crap, there was this bust of a man, straight out of some old sitcom. It should have been corny, as forgettable as the rest, but something there hooked my eye and held my feet.
"What do you think?"
It surged up again with a sharp, "What?" which deflated the second I whipped around and saw her for the first time.
In many ways, this girl was unrecognizable compared to the woman she would become. It wasn't just the glasses, nor was it the cropped hairstyle that she wouldn't grow out until we settled down several years later. Maybe it's because she hadn't yet made good on her promises to slip away, to see the world, and at this point, only had vague dreams of escape. I can only wonder what she thought of me, a fevered kid meeting her with a sneer.
"Sorry, geez!" she recoiled, ready to back off.
"No, no, I'm sorry, I'm just..." Trying to salvage the moment, I asked, "Is it yours?"
Caution mixed with relief, as if it were the first time anyone asked.
"Yeah. Thus why I asked, before you got all snappy-pants at me."
Snappy...? "Er... sorry. No, I like it. It's interesting."
"Why?"
"I dunno, it's... interesting. I'm not a critic, I don't know."
"Sure you do," she said, issuing the first of many little challenges. "It made you feel something. Or it got you thinking. Or maybe he looks like someone you know. Tell me what you got out of it."
I honestly didn't know, but considering that Professor Rexford had spent a whole semester forcing me to argue any point, any perspective, I figured that this was now a field test.
"Well..." I grasped for the words, straightening my disheveled hair. "I guess I was just caught by the... straight-lacedness of it. You've got all this arty crap hanging around here, no offense..."
"None taken. It's not my arty crap."
"... and amidst it all, there's suddenly this portrait of the typical, white-bread, working-class 'Ward Cleaver' figure. All that's missing is a pipe."
I'd meant to stop there, but her lack of reply as she waited, staring at me with those pretty green eyes, caused me to give the bust a deeper examination. New details rose to the surface, and without my full realization, the words kept falling out of my mouth.
"It's strange, though. I hadn't noticed till just now, but the eyes are a little narrow. The eyebrows are down-turned. The tight smile doesn't even look like a smile at all. It's kind of... cold, with malice beneath the... the exterior of civility. Wow. I actually see what you were going for here. It's commentary, isn't it? Yeah, you're evoking that whole era of hypocrisy, back when people thought that assimilation, repression, and denial could ward off their personal demons. I see it now. Y'know, the sickest part of that era? The joke was on them. Those demons didn't go anywhere, did they? Instead, they were just given new places to hide."
Realizing that I hadn't been gauging her reactions the whole time, I turned to find her blinking at me with her mouth opening and closing as she struggled for a response.
I asked, "Shit, was I off? Sorry, I was just pulling something out of my ass."
Unable to quite vocalize her thoughts, she blushed, smiled, and darted her eyes and cocked her head toward the side of the pedestal, where my powers of observation neglected to catch the piece's title, scrawled in pen:
"My father, Myron Gold," by Gilda Grace Lamont, Sophomore
"... Shit."
Whatever my face did in that moment, it was enough to make her laugh so hard that she had to steady herself on the pedestal. Self-consciousness duked it out with penitence, leaving me feeling like a perfect picture of humiliation.
Red with giggles, she managed a golf clap and said, "Oh, well done, Roger Fry!"
"I don't... I mean, who's..." it didn't matter, I got the idea. "I'm so embarrassed."
"Don't be! It's fine, really!"
"No, it's not! I just intimated that your father was... was..."
"A hateful, manipulative sociopath under a carefully maintained veneer of normalcy?"
Is that what I was going for? "... Well, yes, pretty much!"
"Well, you weren't wrong," she said matter-of-factly.
"I wasn't?" She just shrugged and blushed, making it clear that she was just as flustered as I was. As her words sank in, I asked, "Jesus, I was right?"
Marveling at the bust, as if seeing her own work for the first time, she breathed a sigh of relief and said, "You are literally the only person to have seen it. No one else has, not even my teacher. She and everyone else, they just see what the rest of the world saw in Daddy, not the way he really was. And here I thought I'd done too good a job capturing him."
"God, I'm sorry."
With an indescribable smile, she said, "Don't be, seriously! I thought I was going nuts, that maybe it was all just in my head all those years."
Those words hit me in places I'd spent the last few years trying to forget.
"I know the feeling."
She scoffed, mainly out of reflex. Then she actually looked into at me, and the incredulousness vanished.
"You do, don't you?"
I could have completely lost myself in those green eyes of hers.
"So we're all right?" I asked. "I didn't make a total ass of myself?"
"No, but if we're talking anatomy, you were a bit of a dick."
Flushing with shame, I said, "I'm sorry."
"It's fine," she waved it off.
"No, it's not, this one's really not. Geez, I nearly bit your head off there. I shouldn't have done that. I should have been better than that, I... ugh." Apparently, I had nothing left but to melt down into a pit of my own self-loathing.
She raised an eyebrow and asked, "Do you beat yourself up a lot? Is this, like, your thing?"
I gaped. My face went hot.
"Teasing," she said, giving my shoulder a playful punch.
I laughed a little, then added, "I, uh... I have issues."
She shrugged and said, "Eh, who doesn't? I have a whole newsstand."
I blinked.
She said, "Of... issues?"
After another blink, I laughed harder than was probably necessary, and then said, "God, please tell me that all New York girls don't have your sense of humor."
"No," she lamented, "sadly, some aren't funny at all."
"Aren't I lucky, then?"
With a sly grin, she said, "Boy, aren't you?"
Offering my hand, I ignored the pain it caused to smile and said, "I'm Harvey."
And taking it, "One of my favorite movies. I'm Gilda."
"Hey, and that's one of mine," I said. I didn't even realize how big my smile had gotten until the pain hit. "Are you, uh... are you free tomorrow?"
"Afraid not. We're heading back to New York at six."
"Oh." If she said that to gauge my disappointment, then I didn't let her down.
"So if you're asking me out, you should do it now."
"... Oh! Well, uh... I know a great joint for coffee nearby...?"
"Yes, please," she said, brushing against my body, leading the way into my own city.
Leaving the gallery behind, I asked, "Are you sure it's all right? They don't need you here?"
Waving a hand, she slipped outside and said, "It's an open exhibition, not like a personal showing for me. Not yet, fingers crossed."
Catching up to her, I held up both hands, displaying my intertwined digits.
"Then I'm pulling double duty for you."
She smiled prettily, and was kind enough not to mention that crossing the fingers of both hands was actually bad luck.
As Gilda joins me out here in the manor's courtyard, I can tell from her averted gaze that her streak of bad luck remains unbroken. Damn it. She shuts the glass doors, silencing the bustling partygoers who've barely noticed my absence.
Knowing the answer, I ask, "So… how'd it go with Claridge?"
She forces a smile, but it's a wan one as she hunches over her folded arms in the chilly fall air.
"He's a schmuck," she says. Which he clearly is, but that's beside the point.
"So he wasn't interested?"
"Oh, he was interested all right, just not in art. Next thing I knew, he was chasing Bruce Wayne's leftovers. Bambi or somebody."
"Was a pool table involved?"
"How'd you know?"
"Wild guess." I slide my hand into hers, giving a squeeze. "Wanna ditch?"
"That'd be silly," she says sensibly. "We've only been here for a couple of hours."
I see right through that one. "That's a yes. Shall we go?"
"But I have to play the dutiful, long suffering politician's wife," she protests.
"Tomorrow you may be a dutiful, long suffering janitor's wife. Until then, I don't want to spend another second of my last night as a civil servant in Trust Fund Tuxedo Junction."
She gives me a look.
"Shut up, I'm tired."
"And adorable." Gilda grins.
Summoning up all my lawyerly authority, I very sternly begin, "Now, do you want to schmooze with guys like Pierce Chapman-"
"Adorable!" The grin gets wider and even more maddening.
"Or do you want to go?"
"Go?" she asks innocently. "You mean back to the house?"
"No," I say, "Back home."
She smirks the smirk to end all smirks. "See? It didn't kill you to say it."
"Come on." I pull her back into the ballroom and we somehow manage to quietly slip away without notice, giving our farewell intentions only to Alfred, as Bruce has vanished, probably eaten by his own house. A master of discretion, Alfred understands and calls the limo, all business as he sees us on our way. I wave goodbye, and he nods once. Nothing more is needed.
It's only as the gates to Wayne Manor close behind us that Gilda notices the box on the seat. A small green box, no note, no wrapping. I open the lid, and the old scents fill the limo. A tin of oatmeal raisin cookies, wrapped in cellophane.
I take a bite, the cookies still warm, and find that they're every bit as good as I'd remembered. Even after all this time, some good things still live up to the memory.
"Look at that," Gilda says, yoinking one for herself. "The night wasn't a total loss."
To be continued...
Previous Parts: | Prologue | One | Two
Fandom: Batman (general comics continuity)
Characters: Harvey Dent/Two-Face, Gilda Dent, Bruce Wayne, Jim Gordon, Vincent Moroni
Genres: General, Drama, Angst, Romance
Rating: PG-13
This story contains: Alcoholism, brief mentions of child abuse, graphic violence, swearing, character death, sexual content
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.
A/N: To make up for the delay, today's chapter is coincidentally extra long, and one of the toughest ones to nail so far. This one bears some of the most visible remnants of the novel's original iteration, which was written with the intention of reconciling all of Harvey in canon, fleshing out other aspects of canon, and on occasion, incorporating Harvey into other canon where I felt he'd be better suited. Thankfully, these scenes have evolved in leaps and bounds since then, but you might notice the roots to other stories here or there.
I can't believe I'm going to see Wayne Manor again. But then, I can hardly believe I ever saw it in the first place.
It seems unreal that a punk kid like me could ever have been granted access to this castle, but that's a testament to the goodness of Martha Kane. You'd think that after she married the prestigious Dr. Wayne, she would have given no thought to her college friend Alice Helfer, who had married my less-than-prestigious father. But Mrs. Wayne never forgot a friend, especially not one who had fallen as ill as Mom.
For a brief period when I was five or six, Mom would bring me along with her on her visits to Wayne Manor, escaping into another world far, far away from Dad. Those visits healed us emotionally and psychologically, even though Dr. Wayne couldn't have healed her physically. She'd spend a half hour with him, then two hours over lunch with Martha, while I'd explore the mansion with Bruce, one year my junior. We weren't really best friends, but we were kids together, if that makes any sense. Playmates who didn't have anyone else to play with. Even after Mom died, the Waynes made it a point to have me visit for both my sake and Bruce's, to try and give us some semblance of a normal childhood. That dream died shortly thereafter, right alongside his parents.
After that, we drifted apart. I was stuck with Dad, while Bruce went further inside himself. Years crawled by, many years of pain and anger and loneliness so profound that I had honestly forgotten how to live any other way. It wasn't until meeting with yet another therapist that I realized just how much I missed Bruce, but our paths seemed unlikely to ever cross again.
After finally escaping Dad, I went to study pre-law at Hudson U, while Bruce was bouncing from one Ivy League school to the next, always spending more time sulking in his mansion than at classes. By my sophomore summer, I landed a clerk position at the DA's office, just in time for the trial of the decade.
I was grateful that Bruce gave me a chance to explain, to try and get him to understand why we were offering Joseph Chilton-"Joey Chill," the Iceman himself-a commuted sentence in return for his testimony. Bruce didn't see things that way, a position he made abundantly clear when I returned to the manor for the first time in years.
"He was rotting in Blackgate," Bruce said, hunched over at the table. The kitchen was one of the only places in all of Wayne Manor where the furniture wasn't draped in sheets. "He should have stayed there."
As I sipped tea so fine that it could only have been prepared by an Englishman, I found myself nostalgic for Alfred's oatmeal cookies. Nothing I'd had since could compare. They probably wouldn't even taste as good as I'd remembered if I had them again. Another relic of childhood, lost in the past.
I said, "Yes, he should. But please Bruce, you need to understand what he's offering. The things he learned being Vincent Moroni's cellmate…"
"Do you think it matters? Even if you put Moroni away, there will always be someone else to take his place."
"That doesn't mean that Moroni shouldn't pay for his crimes," I said, knowing that he wouldn't care. "You don't know what it's like out there, Bruce. The mob doesn't just control rackets and bump each other off anymore. They're in the business of corruption, and it's the only business that's booming in this economy. They churn out new Joe Chills every day."
"Only one Joe Chill killed my parents," Bruce said.
"Your parents dedicated their lives to fighting the kind of scum that-"
His look shut me down in an instant. Too far. I clamped down with a sigh, inhaling to catch another ghost of cinnamon and brown sugar seemingly infused in these walls.
"So you won't be coming to the hearing."
"No, I'll come," he said, which surprised me. I bowed my head and nodded solemnly, not sure if I was thanking him or apologizing. When I looked back up, his blue eyes held mine with intensity. With cold resignation, he said, "It's not fair."
Life ain't fair, a voice echoed from long ago, but I didn't believe that. I couldn't.
"It will be," I swore to him. There was fairness, there had to be. Even if we had to make it ourselves.
"I know," he said, turning his back to me. "One way or another."
Something about the way he said it should have warned me about what would come next. But I didn't listen. I didn't want to believe it.
Not that it mattered once Chill was shot on the courthouse steps. A sniper's bullet punched through his chest, and within seconds, he was drowning in his own blood. The DA uttered a curse with weary familiarity. The press swarmed around the dying man as if they'd been rehearsing for the moment. I felt like the only one who was naïve enough to think that this would have gone any differently.
I tried to take comfort in the thought that this might finally give Bruce some peace. Then I saw his eyes burning with cold fury, staring at the pandemonium around Chill, and I knew. Whatever he wanted, this would never be enough.
I didn't see Bruce's immediate reaction to the news that Chill survived, barely pulling through on the operating table. The DA hoped that he would be vindictive enough to still testify against Moroni. It was nice to hope, even if it came to nothing. But at least when Chill was sent back to Blackgate with no chance at parole, I felt like some justice was done.
That's what I thought, anyway. But I wouldn't know the full story for two more weeks, when I saw Bruce one last time, after he'd learned the full extent of my role in Chill's appeal. Even now, whenever I think of Bruce, I don't think of the fleetingly happy child I knew, or the boozy exploits of the millionaire playboy you read about in the gossip rags. I think of that afternoon, the meltdown that I thought destroyed whatever friendship we had, and the endless questions of how much I was to blame for the whole disaster.
So why did he offer to host this party? Why would he even want to see me again? If the tabloids are to be believed, perhaps this Bruce is a pod person. But at least, as the door opens before us, I realize that some of the best people never change.
"Welcome back, Mr. Dent," Alfred says, warmly reserved as always. "The festivities-such as they are-are well underway."
"Alfred, you haven't aged a day."
"The gray hairs Master Bruce has given me in the intervening years beg to differ, sir," he says. "May I take your coat?"
Handing the wool garment over, I turn to Gilda for introductions, only to realize I've forgotten the butler's last name. Far as I knew, he never had one. "Gilda, it's my great pleasure to introduce you to Alfred."
He takes her hand as only a most proper gentleman could.
"How do you do, Mrs. Dent," he says, and I almost correct him. It's still bizarre to think of her with my name.
She smirks and asks him, "What's it all about, Alfie?"
He looks puzzled. "I beg your pardon, madam?"
"Erm..." She blushes and ducks her head with embarrassment. "Never mind."
His eyebrows rise briefly, but he shrugs it off. "This way, please."
And then, he leads us into a realm I haven't seen for eight years.
Usually when we revisit old childhood haunts, we're amazed by how small they seem to us now. Not here. Wayne Manor is every bit as expansive, more like a cathedral than a playboy's mansion. These halls echo with memories much older than my own.
Alfred escorts us into the ballroom, grounding me in the present. The cream of Gotham greets me with champagne, wine, all manner of intoxication, and polite applause. I take in the room, from the grand dual staircase to the fully stocked bar and...bandstand? He hired a band? No, he hired two bands? He did. Oh god. On one side of the massive room, a string quartet plays something snooty; while on the other, a pianist and bass player meander their way through an instrumental version of "Something's Gotta Give."
Through the clenched teeth of a forced grin, Gilda utters from beside me, "Kill me now, honey."
A grinning blonde in the crowd excitedly waves at me, gesturing to one of my corny campaign slogan buttons affixed to her tangerine and salmon striped cocktail dress and I reluctantly wave back. I recognize her as last year's Miss Gotham, though now she looks like a walking piece of Laffy Taffy.
"Only if you kill me first," I say.
"You're not big on logistics, are you?"
"I think that should be obvious by now."
People gradually start drifting over to us to socialize, but I recognize few faces, and none from the press banquet. These aren't the movers and shakers, the manipulators and the dealers. These are the bored and the idle, looking for whatever shiny object catches their fleeting attention next. These are Bruce's people, but they were never the people of his parents. But where is he? He teases me for not being at a secret party when he's not even here himself?
I wade through the crowd, only to catch the sea's attention. Putting on my best politician face, I mingle with the likes of Veronica Vreeland and J. Devlin Davenport, and in the process I somehow lose Gilda in the mass of affluence. The socialites grin and chat and joke with me as if they're actually here for my benefit and not the free champagne. For nearly an hour I get passed around from old money to new money to just plain money, suffocating in the throng by the time I'm accosted by a pompous boob by the name of Pierce Chapmen.
"If you ask me," he says in a Locust Valley Lockjaw accent, "Mayor Hill is over the."
"Over the...what?"
"Hill, dear boy." He slaps me on the back with a nasal chortle.
I've got to get the hell out of here.
I eyeball the wide-open courtyard as my salvation and then scan the cluster of faces, searching for my wife. I finally find her cornered by Henry Claridge, a private curator of supposed renown. He leans in towards her, one hand braced against the wall, the other occasionally trailing up her bare arm and suddenly, I'm ready to shove that stupid little toupee down his throat. But as I approach, she catches my eye, gives me an 'I've got this' wink, and waves me off.
She's dealt with her fair share of Claridges over the years, and she can handle this one too. I have to remind myself of that as I retreat into the fresh air outside. Claridge is just another art-prick, and maybe he's more interested in her work than getting in her pants. This is important, especially since she just quit her Gallery job last week. Being surrounded by the artwork of others left her no energy to create her own, but she was reluctant to quit just in case something went wrong.
But how could it? After all, the election was a lock.
Jesus, I hadn't even considered that I might have burned her bridges as well as my own. Damn it. No. I don't want to think about that. Not here, not in the lush courtyard where I spent some of the best moments of my life.
It's been so long that I'd almost forgotten that those memories were real, that I really did use to come here and run wild with the boy prince, playing tag, cops and robbers and the Gray Ghost. I'll never understand how two boys from both ends of Gotham's class spectrum could bond so easily.
For a while, anyway. Until that night.
"You've got some nerve, showing up here after what you've taken from me," comes a voice from behind.
And here we go. I turn, and god, I forgot how tall he is.
"The people have spoken," I say. "Sorry you had to settle for second place."
"I'm still 'Gotham's Sexiest Bachelor.'" He emphasizes the last word, faux pride mingled with faux bitterness. "So I might as well be number one."
I feel like we should drop this charade and just… I don't know, hug already, or something. Start talking, catching up, like the friends we're supposed to be, but there's something awkward, almost fake, about our interaction, under the facade of surface familiarity.
"Congrats about… Gilda, isn't it?" He raises his glass in salute. "You two almost make it look worth trying."
"Almost. But not enough for you, Bruce?"
He plays coy, but seems intrigued, like an artist anxious for a fan's feedback. "Don't believe the tabloids, Harv. They love to blow things out of proportion."
"So you didn't purchase an entire shopping mall for a pair of supermodels?"
"God, no!" He almost looks insulted by the absurdity of such a suggestion. "It was just a couple of the shops themselves. With everything those D'Aramis twins wanted to buy, it just seemed more sensible to cut out the middleman."
He grins, still swirling his drink, but never taking a sip. I keep waiting for him to wink, to let me in on the joke.
"What?" he asks, looking upward. Faux innocence. Faux everything. "Is my hair mussed?"
"We thought you were dead, Bruce."
"I didn't think anybody would notice I was gone," he says, with more honesty than I think he wants to let on.
"Well, I did. Considering how we parted ways, how could I not?" I ask. "And look, don't get me wrong, I get why you had to do it. Gilda did the globetrotting thing for a few years, and it was exactly what she needed. With everything that happened, you probably did the right thing, but-"
"You should try it. It'd be good to find yourself."
"Is that what you did?" And is this what you found?
Slapping me on the back, he uses the snifter to punctuate his words.
"I just learned that life is too short to waste being a wet blanket. Hell, you remember what I was like. Don't tell me you miss that old grouch."
Why are we dancing around the elephant in the room? Should I apologize? Should he? Or should we just keep dancing?
"You had every reason to be angry."
"Yes. But not at you." He waits, but I can't bring myself to make the move. "C'mon, Harv. I thought you'd be happy. I'm finally me again, just like in the old days."
"I remember that kid, Bruce. You aren't him. You can never be him again."
"So consider this the new and improved model. Bruce Wayne, two-point-oh!"
There's just no point. With a sigh, I abandon the line of questioning. Time to cut my losses and dive back inside, but Bruce catches me.
"That was some speech today, by the way. You didn't really mean it, did you?"
"You know me, Bruce," I say, just as I thought I knew him. "What do you think?"
"I think you should pray they don't know you like I do," he says, eyebrow cocked. "You really had them fooled with that puppet act of yours, for the most part. You could have kept at it, you know. Kept biding your time. At least until after you won the election."
"If you think I screwed up, Bruce, then just say it."
He holds up his hands, all peacemaker.
"I just want to make sure you know what you're doing. It's a good thing everyone thinks you're a joke. You should use that against them before they wise up."
"I have a plan," I say, thinking about tomorrow. No matter what happens, I'll still be an assistant district attorney long enough to make my move against Moroni's master of protection rackets, Tony Zucco. I've already secured testimony from a rare honest cop that will put Zucco away for life. That'll send a message to all the right people.
"You need more than a plan, Harv. You need friends."
"That's what the speech was for," and I'm amazed at my candor. "I'm hoping that the good guys just needed someone to speak up for them."
"Even if it means upsetting some very powerful people. I notice that Hill and Thorne didn't accept the invitation to support their local ADA. I'm wounded."
"Hell with 'em," I say, and god, it feels good to say that. To let the sweet bitterness flow. "I'm sick of pretending to be something I'm not. I can't play the fool, Bruce, not like…"
I stop myself. But he smiles anyway.
"Like me?"
The picture doesn't come into place, but the pieces move closer together. Now I'm smiling too.
"C'mon, let's go back inside," he says. "No point standing out here. And I've got plenty more wonderful rich and useless friends for you to meet."
"I think I'd rather be alone out here than alone in there."
"But you're not alone, Harv," His heavy hand on my shoulder, he says, "I'm here, for whatever you need. You've got my word. And if the election doesn't go...favorably, hey, you could always be my personal attorney. Lucius says with all the trouble I get into, I need a good one."
"Bruce, I don't think-"
"Bruuuuucie!" a nasal falsetto coos from within the mansion. "I can't find my panties! I think I left them on the pooooool table!"
"Be with you in a minute, Trixi," he calls back. Turning to me, he says, "It's Trixi with an 'i.' Adorable. Sorry, Harvey, but it's bad form to keep a lady waiting."
"Does she qualify as one?"
"Only where it counts," he laughs, slapping me on the shoulder. As his fingers slip away, I take his arm, grabbing hold of as if he were an excited Labrador. He stops, looks at me, as if already knowing.
"Bruce… I'm sorry."
And with his first genuine expression tonight, he smiles and says, "Don't be, Harv. I'm the one who's sorry."
"Maybe you were right."
"No. No, I wasn't. You only did what you thought was right. And you were right. Never doubt that."
I don't. But hearing it from him, a wound open for eight years finally heals over in a wash of gratitude. Calling from within the mansion, he shouts, "And hey, if it's any consolation, my hand hurt like hell!"
I shout back, "Not as much as my face!"
And then he's gone.
Just like that, we're okay? Eight years ago, I wouldn't have believed it could be this easy, let alone possible.
I don't know how long he'd been sitting outside of my dorm, waiting for me to leave for class. Maybe he'd been there an hour. Maybe he sat there all night. But once I left, already running late for Professor Rexford's brutal Pre-Law 201, I found myself thrown into the azaleas outside the building.
I almost didn't even recognize my assailant. He hadn't shaved in days. He shared the desperate look of men who huddled with the homeless in Tent City, or squatted in slums down in the Alleytown.
"… Bruce? Oh, Bruce…" I pulled myself out, the twigs scraping against my skin, snagging in my coat. "Look, if this is about Chill, I know you're angry, but..."
He snarled, "You don't know the half of it."
"What do you want me to say?" I reasoned from my knees, not trying to stand just yet. "Look, it sucks, it's unfair, I know. But try to remember that you've still got your own justice. Chilton's going to rot in Blackgate for life. The DA made sure of that."
A bitter confirmation filling his eyes, he scoffed, "Now that's funny. You really believe that. You don't even have a clue."
"What-"
"I asked around. Moroni was so grateful to Chill for not testifying, he made him his personal representative in Blackgate. Smuggling, information, cash, men... Chill's in charge of it all. That creep is living like a king, better off now than he was on the outside, and it's your fault!"
Oh. Those words. The three words that cut straight to the heart of everything I fear. I didn't even notice my hands starting to shake.
"Even if that's true, it… it wasn't my fault, Bruce. I'm just a clerk. The DA, the ADA, they're the ones who-"
"Don't you dare!" he shouted. "It was you! You're the one who came up with the bright idea use Vincent Moroni's precious cellmate as a bargaining chip! You gambled with the killer of my parents!"
How… how could he have known…? But no, it wasn't like that. I was working with the ADA assigned to fight Chill's appeal. His sentence could have actually been overturned, too. All on a technicality, always the technicalities. I saw a chance to take down a bigger monster. I talked to the ADA, who talked to the DA, who talked to Chill. Everyone thought it was a good idea. Everyone.
"I… I just wanted to see justice done."
"All you cared about was making a name for yourself at the DA's office."
... What? I mean, sure, yes, they were impressed by my thinking. Yes, they personally appointed me to work in the Moroni trial. Yes, I was proud, more proud of anything I'd ever done with my life. But it wasn't… I wasn't…
"That's not true," I said, the sweat starting to bead on my forehead. I couldn't even feel that it was coming. It was all starting again. "It's not. Bruce, you know me."
"Yes, I do. I know why you got into law. I know what you're escaping from. I know that you're so ambitious, so obsessed, that you'd sell out your own mother if it meant getting ahead. Just like you sold me out. Me and my parents."
I tried and failed to ignore that low blow. A breeze carried the stale stench of his breath over to me. I don't know if he'd ever been drunk before. I tried to tell myself that this wasn't really Bruce, that this was just a twisted doppelganger, perverted by booze and rage. I knew this, and I held fast to that logic, struggling to maintain control.
"I'm not just doing this for myself. I'm doing it for people like your parents. They believed in Gotham City when no one else would."
"If they saw this city for what it was, maybe they'd still be alive."
"You don't… you don't mean that," I said, nearly pleaded, as my heart pounded in my ears, harder, faster, louder, "Jesus, Bruce, you knew why we had to do it! You understood! That's why you were there! You were with me that day because you wanted to see that justice was served!"
"Yes, I did," he said, reaching into his pocket. And even then, I didn't want to believe it, that he couldn't have it in him. But there it was. A silver .22, almost like the one Joe Chill used. A pitiful weapon. A coward's weapon. "And now even that's been taken from me. All because of you."
Only the feeling of my fingernails digging into my own palms made me realize that my hands were white fists. And Bruce knew it. He saw the sweat rolling down my face, my body shivering and tense, my lips curling to bear teeth, without understanding the full extent of what he was seeing. Or maybe he did. If he knew about Chill, maybe he also knew my own history, everything I fought and hoped I'd finally overcome. Maybe he knew exactly what he was doing when he said, "You're no better than your father."
At that moment, it didn't matter what he knew. Nothing mattered. Nothing but the burning desire to grant his every wish for obliteration.
"Well?" he shouted, holding his arms outstretched, presenting himself to me on a platter. The gun dangled from his finger, the handle swinging in the air with impotence. "Go on! Do it!"
How... dare he? My mind blazed with blind violence. After all I'd done, everything I'd struggled to beat, how DARE he…? I could just… I just want to… I'm GOING to… but no, I'm not... Using every ounce of willpower to hold back, channeling my rage out through clenched teeth, I seethed:
"Your parents… would be ashamed of you."
And he hit me. Clocking me with a clumsy right cross, sending me back into the azalea bed. I rolled with the punch, as I'd learned from hard experience, but the pounding in my head only intensified. He could have turned the gun on me for all I knew or cared, it wouldn't have mattered. I knew what was coming. The anger, the adrenaline, the pulse rushing in my ears...
No. Remember what the therapist said. Beat it back. Take control.
Bruce wasn't making it easy for me. He looked down on me with loathing pity that went far beyond either of us. He turned, and as if forgetting he ever held the gun, the .22 dropped, clattering on the sidewalk. He stumbled off campus, back into the heart of Gotham, and soon thereafter abandoned the city entirely.
There was no one else in sight, with everyone off at class. No one to see me pull myself out of the bushes, shivering with fury. No one to see me reach for the gun, studying it the way Bruce must have, with the desperation that this-this-could be the answer to some maddening question. No one to see me put it inside my coat pocket and head back to campus, threatening to boil over with every passing second.
But no. No, I told myself. I couldn't lose it again. Wouldn't lose it again. Not after I'd been so good, so very good for these last few years. I tossed the gun into the man-made lake on campus, but even that wasn't enough. I had to cool down. I had to find my head.
I looked around for any distraction that I could find and went for the only escape in sight: the art gallery. They were hosting a visiting exhibition from New York college students. A place to be alone, where everybody was lost in their own worlds.
I paced through the maze, pretending to care about the paintings and photos and pottery and sculptures as my heart pounded away, my mind reeling over Bruce, over Moroni, over Joe Chill and how justice cuts both ways, just like I told Bruce, but injustice cuts deeper...
… when a sculpture caught my eye. Amid all this crap, there was this bust of a man, straight out of some old sitcom. It should have been corny, as forgettable as the rest, but something there hooked my eye and held my feet.
"What do you think?"
It surged up again with a sharp, "What?" which deflated the second I whipped around and saw her for the first time.
In many ways, this girl was unrecognizable compared to the woman she would become. It wasn't just the glasses, nor was it the cropped hairstyle that she wouldn't grow out until we settled down several years later. Maybe it's because she hadn't yet made good on her promises to slip away, to see the world, and at this point, only had vague dreams of escape. I can only wonder what she thought of me, a fevered kid meeting her with a sneer.
"Sorry, geez!" she recoiled, ready to back off.
"No, no, I'm sorry, I'm just..." Trying to salvage the moment, I asked, "Is it yours?"
Caution mixed with relief, as if it were the first time anyone asked.
"Yeah. Thus why I asked, before you got all snappy-pants at me."
Snappy...? "Er... sorry. No, I like it. It's interesting."
"Why?"
"I dunno, it's... interesting. I'm not a critic, I don't know."
"Sure you do," she said, issuing the first of many little challenges. "It made you feel something. Or it got you thinking. Or maybe he looks like someone you know. Tell me what you got out of it."
I honestly didn't know, but considering that Professor Rexford had spent a whole semester forcing me to argue any point, any perspective, I figured that this was now a field test.
"Well..." I grasped for the words, straightening my disheveled hair. "I guess I was just caught by the... straight-lacedness of it. You've got all this arty crap hanging around here, no offense..."
"None taken. It's not my arty crap."
"... and amidst it all, there's suddenly this portrait of the typical, white-bread, working-class 'Ward Cleaver' figure. All that's missing is a pipe."
I'd meant to stop there, but her lack of reply as she waited, staring at me with those pretty green eyes, caused me to give the bust a deeper examination. New details rose to the surface, and without my full realization, the words kept falling out of my mouth.
"It's strange, though. I hadn't noticed till just now, but the eyes are a little narrow. The eyebrows are down-turned. The tight smile doesn't even look like a smile at all. It's kind of... cold, with malice beneath the... the exterior of civility. Wow. I actually see what you were going for here. It's commentary, isn't it? Yeah, you're evoking that whole era of hypocrisy, back when people thought that assimilation, repression, and denial could ward off their personal demons. I see it now. Y'know, the sickest part of that era? The joke was on them. Those demons didn't go anywhere, did they? Instead, they were just given new places to hide."
Realizing that I hadn't been gauging her reactions the whole time, I turned to find her blinking at me with her mouth opening and closing as she struggled for a response.
I asked, "Shit, was I off? Sorry, I was just pulling something out of my ass."
Unable to quite vocalize her thoughts, she blushed, smiled, and darted her eyes and cocked her head toward the side of the pedestal, where my powers of observation neglected to catch the piece's title, scrawled in pen:
"My father, Myron Gold," by Gilda Grace Lamont, Sophomore
"... Shit."
Whatever my face did in that moment, it was enough to make her laugh so hard that she had to steady herself on the pedestal. Self-consciousness duked it out with penitence, leaving me feeling like a perfect picture of humiliation.
Red with giggles, she managed a golf clap and said, "Oh, well done, Roger Fry!"
"I don't... I mean, who's..." it didn't matter, I got the idea. "I'm so embarrassed."
"Don't be! It's fine, really!"
"No, it's not! I just intimated that your father was... was..."
"A hateful, manipulative sociopath under a carefully maintained veneer of normalcy?"
Is that what I was going for? "... Well, yes, pretty much!"
"Well, you weren't wrong," she said matter-of-factly.
"I wasn't?" She just shrugged and blushed, making it clear that she was just as flustered as I was. As her words sank in, I asked, "Jesus, I was right?"
Marveling at the bust, as if seeing her own work for the first time, she breathed a sigh of relief and said, "You are literally the only person to have seen it. No one else has, not even my teacher. She and everyone else, they just see what the rest of the world saw in Daddy, not the way he really was. And here I thought I'd done too good a job capturing him."
"God, I'm sorry."
With an indescribable smile, she said, "Don't be, seriously! I thought I was going nuts, that maybe it was all just in my head all those years."
Those words hit me in places I'd spent the last few years trying to forget.
"I know the feeling."
She scoffed, mainly out of reflex. Then she actually looked into at me, and the incredulousness vanished.
"You do, don't you?"
I could have completely lost myself in those green eyes of hers.
"So we're all right?" I asked. "I didn't make a total ass of myself?"
"No, but if we're talking anatomy, you were a bit of a dick."
Flushing with shame, I said, "I'm sorry."
"It's fine," she waved it off.
"No, it's not, this one's really not. Geez, I nearly bit your head off there. I shouldn't have done that. I should have been better than that, I... ugh." Apparently, I had nothing left but to melt down into a pit of my own self-loathing.
She raised an eyebrow and asked, "Do you beat yourself up a lot? Is this, like, your thing?"
I gaped. My face went hot.
"Teasing," she said, giving my shoulder a playful punch.
I laughed a little, then added, "I, uh... I have issues."
She shrugged and said, "Eh, who doesn't? I have a whole newsstand."
I blinked.
She said, "Of... issues?"
After another blink, I laughed harder than was probably necessary, and then said, "God, please tell me that all New York girls don't have your sense of humor."
"No," she lamented, "sadly, some aren't funny at all."
"Aren't I lucky, then?"
With a sly grin, she said, "Boy, aren't you?"
Offering my hand, I ignored the pain it caused to smile and said, "I'm Harvey."
And taking it, "One of my favorite movies. I'm Gilda."
"Hey, and that's one of mine," I said. I didn't even realize how big my smile had gotten until the pain hit. "Are you, uh... are you free tomorrow?"
"Afraid not. We're heading back to New York at six."
"Oh." If she said that to gauge my disappointment, then I didn't let her down.
"So if you're asking me out, you should do it now."
"... Oh! Well, uh... I know a great joint for coffee nearby...?"
"Yes, please," she said, brushing against my body, leading the way into my own city.
Leaving the gallery behind, I asked, "Are you sure it's all right? They don't need you here?"
Waving a hand, she slipped outside and said, "It's an open exhibition, not like a personal showing for me. Not yet, fingers crossed."
Catching up to her, I held up both hands, displaying my intertwined digits.
"Then I'm pulling double duty for you."
She smiled prettily, and was kind enough not to mention that crossing the fingers of both hands was actually bad luck.
As Gilda joins me out here in the manor's courtyard, I can tell from her averted gaze that her streak of bad luck remains unbroken. Damn it. She shuts the glass doors, silencing the bustling partygoers who've barely noticed my absence.
Knowing the answer, I ask, "So… how'd it go with Claridge?"
She forces a smile, but it's a wan one as she hunches over her folded arms in the chilly fall air.
"He's a schmuck," she says. Which he clearly is, but that's beside the point.
"So he wasn't interested?"
"Oh, he was interested all right, just not in art. Next thing I knew, he was chasing Bruce Wayne's leftovers. Bambi or somebody."
"Was a pool table involved?"
"How'd you know?"
"Wild guess." I slide my hand into hers, giving a squeeze. "Wanna ditch?"
"That'd be silly," she says sensibly. "We've only been here for a couple of hours."
I see right through that one. "That's a yes. Shall we go?"
"But I have to play the dutiful, long suffering politician's wife," she protests.
"Tomorrow you may be a dutiful, long suffering janitor's wife. Until then, I don't want to spend another second of my last night as a civil servant in Trust Fund Tuxedo Junction."
She gives me a look.
"Shut up, I'm tired."
"And adorable." Gilda grins.
Summoning up all my lawyerly authority, I very sternly begin, "Now, do you want to schmooze with guys like Pierce Chapman-"
"Adorable!" The grin gets wider and even more maddening.
"Or do you want to go?"
"Go?" she asks innocently. "You mean back to the house?"
"No," I say, "Back home."
She smirks the smirk to end all smirks. "See? It didn't kill you to say it."
"Come on." I pull her back into the ballroom and we somehow manage to quietly slip away without notice, giving our farewell intentions only to Alfred, as Bruce has vanished, probably eaten by his own house. A master of discretion, Alfred understands and calls the limo, all business as he sees us on our way. I wave goodbye, and he nods once. Nothing more is needed.
It's only as the gates to Wayne Manor close behind us that Gilda notices the box on the seat. A small green box, no note, no wrapping. I open the lid, and the old scents fill the limo. A tin of oatmeal raisin cookies, wrapped in cellophane.
I take a bite, the cookies still warm, and find that they're every bit as good as I'd remembered. Even after all this time, some good things still live up to the memory.
"Look at that," Gilda says, yoinking one for herself. "The night wasn't a total loss."
To be continued...