Six O'Clock, Batfic
Title: Six o’clock News
Fandom: Batman/Nolanverse
Characters/Pairings: Harvey Dent, Mary Brietup, and Frank Nataro.
Summary: They say that Harvey Dent did his best to save Mary Brietup but she ended up dead with Frank Nataro responsible. To Harvey Dent there were only two ways it could have gone. ARG Fiction.
Notes: This is along the lines of “Black, White, and Gray”, another fic I wrote to kinda…I dunno-flesh out my feelings about the ARG. This is an incredibly powerful idea and I’d love for someone to carry it to the full flex-y’know, it’s full potential.
I also really y’know, think this personifies where Nolanverse Harvey is coming from. Is he a killer? Is he a Hero? Speculations still out on that. Nolan said they’re taking a different approach to two-face, and I for one am incredibly excited about where that might go!
(Note: …This is Document number 22 on my computer. Coincidence? XD
Harvey Dent was eight years old the first time his father lost. Once upon a time they’d been big spenders, lived in an incredible house before Roger Dent started loosing cases. He was, by all concerned, a terrible lawyer.
He was eight when his father, standing over him like the wrath of God crossed the line no parent should ever cross, going from hero, from idol and god, to monster in a heartbeat.
“Heads I beat the crap out of you. Tails I don’t.”
It doesn’t really register to eight-year-old Harvey. He chews on the chocolate and M&M cookie his mother makes and stares as his father flips his coin and catches it on his hand.
“Tails. You got lucky.”
This goes on for eight days before Roger’s hand closes around the coin. He smiles; it’s a sick twisted smile. Lynette Dent muffles her ears with a pillow as her son screams for help. Ever after he lived in terror of that coin and his father’s smile, something he’d once worked for. His hero would descend from his mountains and somehow-magically-something would decide that he’d switch. That he’d take on a different persona, a different face. The man that Harvey Dent loved would become a different person, one to loathe and one to fear.
In desperation he sees these parallels everywhere. It takes one thing, one decisive factor to make people flip. Father to Monster, Mother to Mouse, protection to harm, life to death, Hero to Killer. In seeking to control it he found that it was everywhere and no-where-different things taking different forms. A thousand spinning coins deciding fate in the blink of an eye for a thousand screaming human beings. God-he decided-was the world’s biggest gambler. Heads you win, tails you loose. The trick was finding these little decisive corners, this devices-a trick that Harvey had mastered. It’s a crutch, a psychological tick that he ignores. Everyone has their ticks, he thinks. This is just one of mine. Nothing to be concerned about.
He is thinking of the six o’clock news.
Throughout the entire situation, the entire scenario. Nataro is yelling and Mary Brietup is crying and the thought that this might all be his fault is never in his mind. No, Harvey Dent is thinking of the Six o’clock news.
Because this could go one of two ways. Either Nataro could snap, a decorated police officer highly trained in using the weapon he has kissing Mary’s skull. He could snap and shoot them both. Harvey imagined his blood oozing across his chest, the woman’s scream being cut short like an edited noise in a movie. Nataro would be gunned down, labeled a killer, a psychopath. Gotham would mourn.
Or, Nataro could hear his words and see their wisdom. He could acknowledge the superior creature, do what he was told. Harvey imagined him letting Mary go, fingers trailing across her skin as he might have touched his wife with Mary running to the police outside waving her arms. What remained of her family would embrace her, his name cleared of all wrong doing in prosecuting a supposedly good cop-Harvey Dent would be labeled a Hero. The man who brought a dangerous fugitive down with only the power of his words, Gotham would celebrate.
Two possible outcomes, two halves, two things to be decided. It was simple, innocent or guilty, death or life, mourning or celebration, a cold-blooded apparently psychotic killer or a calm hero with a bright smile and a twinkle in his eye. Two sides.
And it would all go on the six o’clock news, the tiebreaker who’d decide. They’d look at the outcome and interpret it like a fortuneteller with their mystical tealeaves. He used to wonder what was in those leaves, just what plant they used to divine outcomes of things.
Two options. A killer and a Dead Man, a Hero and a broken criminal. He knew which one he liked, which one he wanted. The question was-would Nataro be accommodating?
“Stop Frank.”
Frank’s pulse is wild, his eyes frightened. He looks like a jackrabbit, like an animal caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck.
“Think.”
Think- is suddenly all the arguing Harvey Dent has ever done in his life. Think is suddenly Mary listening spellbound. Think, is suddenly the killer’s grip disentangling on her own, his fingers trailing across her arm as she starts to run-letting her go.
“No!”
The noise is sudden and abrupt, footsteps on the roof. Dent blinks. This isn’t right, there were two possible outcomes, only two-only two goddamnit. Who the hell had the right to introduce a third option? Who had a fucking right?
No- is the sound that Harvey makes when he jogs toward Nataro. No-is Mary’s scream, the noise of the reporters outside, the screaming and the crying. It’s all over in an instant.
No is the sound of the gun going off.
Mary slumps. She falls face first onto the floor, the crack her skull makes is loud enough to open flesh on the moon.
Nataro drops the gun in surprise. He is a cop; he knows that only two things can happen when people grapple for the gun. One or the other can succeed, get a grip, and disarm their opponent-
Or it can go off.
Ashamed, he drops his hands and falls to the ground staring at the woman with lifeless dead eyes. They had fought and he had lost.
Harvey Dent is in shock.
No, there were only two possible outcomes. Either he died and his cause was furthered or he came out a hero with the woman intact singing his praises. He approaches her as the SWAT and associated others gather outside squawking like pigeons, like hens, like rats. Who made that fucking noise on the roof? Who threw off his groove, tossed his luck down a manhole?
“…Please…”
He jerks. Another variable. Who added these things? What sadistic fool was playing with his mind? He kneels besides her, staring at her with wide blue eyes. He’s never seen a person die before.
Mary twisted, eyes staring up at him in mute appeal. His lips worked as she said it again-hand reaching for him, “…Please…”
Stay calm Harv.
“…Please help…”
There were two options; there are two options again. Get this woman to a hospital, save her life, be a hero.
“Please! Help…”
But if you do that Nataro could get away. Someone else could catch him, you let a dangerous criminal out onto the streets-what kind of DA would do that? Especially one caught on the six o’clock news?
Mary sounds like she’s crying, “…Please…” Why, why is he sitting there? Why isn’t he helping her to her feet as her blood oozes out of her in slow pulses? Why isn’t he doing his job? There was only one thing to do here, he looked like he was trying to make a decision when-if he were a decent man, an honorable man there would be only one reasonable course…
“…Help…”
She’s fading now.
“…I’m sorry.”
Harvey can hear them coming up the front steps.
The realization that he isn’t going to help her hurts worse then the bullet. She had seen her savior, seen her hero coming in through the door like a white knight-the white knight he claimed to be. He keeps talking as confusion replaces desperate undying need. She understands only a single sentence.
“…Galvanize the people, save lives in the end. It’s a mercy in any case.”
The knife through her heart. She twists, her killer standing beside her body, cleaning his blade.
-----------
The Six O’Clock News.
The deciding factor, the judge. He does not function well without the authority. They praise him as a hero who did all that he could.
“Let us hope that Mary’s death will galvanize the city into action. Her life was lost tragically but more lives-god willing-can be saved if we are willing to work together…”
Jim Gordon drowns it out, heading over to the coroner. He avoids looking at Nataro, staring at him with glassy eyes, “…Jesus, one to the back?”
“Severed the Femoral artery.” The ME shakes his head before pulling the sheet over her head. Gordon tries not to stare, “…Funny thing though. I poked my finger in? Boss might have to do a more complete autopsy but-“
“But?” Gordon prompted.
“But it looks like it was only knicked.” ME shakes his head again, “She would have been paralyzed, but she could have survived if she’d gotten medical attention quickly enough.”
“That’s an easy thing to say when the medical attention was out by the barricade.” Dent is taking questions. If Gordon understands correctly he was holding this press conference to quit the race.”
“Mr. Dent, Mr. Dent!”
“Sir, You’re a Hero-“
“Are you going to Quit?”
“Absolutely not.” Harvey holds up a hand, “Mary wouldn’t have wanted me to do that. Gotham wouldn’t have wanted me to do that.”
A thousand more questions, a thousand different tongues. Gordon shrugs it off as the ME stares at him, “…Guy like that-what-probably lift hundred pounds-maybe a little more?”
Gordon turned to him, the ME standing in his big blue coat like a child at the county fair watching the hawker and the barker work, “What are you getting at?”
“Nataro was down-wouldn’t you have done something?”
“Maybe he couldn’t.”
“He could have risked his own life.”
“He did risk his own life.”
“Did he?”
The question is so nonchalant that Gordon turns to stare at him, “…Harvey Dent did something no Civilian should do, that no lawyer should ever do. Don’t you watch law and order? Never works out well when things like this happen.”
“Look, if he cared half as much as he said that he does just a minute ago…” The ME points, “Then he would have carried her out bleeding, gotten her into an ambulance where we could have stopped it and-and-“
“And what?” Gordon chuckles, “What, you don’t think Dent’s a Hero? Think he’s some kind of killer?”
“…He didn’t kill her.”
The man shook his head, throwing a dirty glance in Harvey Dent’s direction before shrugging and getting the body ready for transport. He turned back to Gordon, speaking under his breath so the hawker couldn’t hear. This man’s decision is firm.
“He just let her die.”
----------
Six O’clock.
The news is full of the reports of what he did as he sits at home and nurses a bottle of beer-shaking his head. There were two options, just two.
He was waiting for a decision, ignoring the little voice that said this was a serious matter-obsessing in such a way.
“…Speculation in the ME’s office states that if Mary Brietup had gotten medical attention quickly she could have survived. This photograph shown here of Dent leaning over her body-was she already dead when this occurred? Was her death preventable? Is Harvey Dent a Hero as everyone claims? Or is he a killer who watched a woman die? Go online to our poll and vote, WWW. Waynemedias.com…”
Something in him makes his hands curl-the beer falling to the floor. He curses, moving to clean it up. He needed a decision.
He’d counted on it.
And they’d failed him. Killer or Hero-he tried to wrap his mind around it and failed. There were only two and they-the judge- the deciding factor had failed to pick one. They’d thrown him out, declared a mistrial. His heart pounds, he’d counted on them to pick, to choose-He couldn’t be left with that spectre smiling over him, smile grim as some thing small and silver drifted through the air…
He wondered why this bothered him so much, counting it to the stress of the day, to nearly dying to trying to save a life and failing.
…He’d done it twice before. As a kid, picking which marker to scratch off to win him some money and to decide who’d win a basketball game. He never thought about why he’d remembered it so well.
He assigned two answers to the sides of his father’s Susan B. His dad had carried it for years got it on the day he’d met his mother. Lynnette had patted his father’s arm and smiled, how far had that coin traveled to come to his father? How many years before coming to him?
He assigned the two sides and allowed himself a small “This is ridiculous” before flipping it. He needed a decision; he’d counted on people for once making one for him that wouldn’t require such deliberation, such painstaking thought. Didn’t they see that he was suffering? There had been only two options, casting so many other things into the mix was ludicrous, ridiculous…
He stared at the picture for a long time, beer soaking into his carpet. He closed his eyes, burying his face in his hands-fingers in his hair as he started to cry.
Fandom: Batman/Nolanverse
Characters/Pairings: Harvey Dent, Mary Brietup, and Frank Nataro.
Summary: They say that Harvey Dent did his best to save Mary Brietup but she ended up dead with Frank Nataro responsible. To Harvey Dent there were only two ways it could have gone. ARG Fiction.
Notes: This is along the lines of “Black, White, and Gray”, another fic I wrote to kinda…I dunno-flesh out my feelings about the ARG. This is an incredibly powerful idea and I’d love for someone to carry it to the full flex-y’know, it’s full potential.
I also really y’know, think this personifies where Nolanverse Harvey is coming from. Is he a killer? Is he a Hero? Speculations still out on that. Nolan said they’re taking a different approach to two-face, and I for one am incredibly excited about where that might go!
(Note: …This is Document number 22 on my computer. Coincidence? XD
Harvey Dent was eight years old the first time his father lost. Once upon a time they’d been big spenders, lived in an incredible house before Roger Dent started loosing cases. He was, by all concerned, a terrible lawyer.
He was eight when his father, standing over him like the wrath of God crossed the line no parent should ever cross, going from hero, from idol and god, to monster in a heartbeat.
“Heads I beat the crap out of you. Tails I don’t.”
It doesn’t really register to eight-year-old Harvey. He chews on the chocolate and M&M cookie his mother makes and stares as his father flips his coin and catches it on his hand.
“Tails. You got lucky.”
This goes on for eight days before Roger’s hand closes around the coin. He smiles; it’s a sick twisted smile. Lynette Dent muffles her ears with a pillow as her son screams for help. Ever after he lived in terror of that coin and his father’s smile, something he’d once worked for. His hero would descend from his mountains and somehow-magically-something would decide that he’d switch. That he’d take on a different persona, a different face. The man that Harvey Dent loved would become a different person, one to loathe and one to fear.
In desperation he sees these parallels everywhere. It takes one thing, one decisive factor to make people flip. Father to Monster, Mother to Mouse, protection to harm, life to death, Hero to Killer. In seeking to control it he found that it was everywhere and no-where-different things taking different forms. A thousand spinning coins deciding fate in the blink of an eye for a thousand screaming human beings. God-he decided-was the world’s biggest gambler. Heads you win, tails you loose. The trick was finding these little decisive corners, this devices-a trick that Harvey had mastered. It’s a crutch, a psychological tick that he ignores. Everyone has their ticks, he thinks. This is just one of mine. Nothing to be concerned about.
He is thinking of the six o’clock news.
Throughout the entire situation, the entire scenario. Nataro is yelling and Mary Brietup is crying and the thought that this might all be his fault is never in his mind. No, Harvey Dent is thinking of the Six o’clock news.
Because this could go one of two ways. Either Nataro could snap, a decorated police officer highly trained in using the weapon he has kissing Mary’s skull. He could snap and shoot them both. Harvey imagined his blood oozing across his chest, the woman’s scream being cut short like an edited noise in a movie. Nataro would be gunned down, labeled a killer, a psychopath. Gotham would mourn.
Or, Nataro could hear his words and see their wisdom. He could acknowledge the superior creature, do what he was told. Harvey imagined him letting Mary go, fingers trailing across her skin as he might have touched his wife with Mary running to the police outside waving her arms. What remained of her family would embrace her, his name cleared of all wrong doing in prosecuting a supposedly good cop-Harvey Dent would be labeled a Hero. The man who brought a dangerous fugitive down with only the power of his words, Gotham would celebrate.
Two possible outcomes, two halves, two things to be decided. It was simple, innocent or guilty, death or life, mourning or celebration, a cold-blooded apparently psychotic killer or a calm hero with a bright smile and a twinkle in his eye. Two sides.
And it would all go on the six o’clock news, the tiebreaker who’d decide. They’d look at the outcome and interpret it like a fortuneteller with their mystical tealeaves. He used to wonder what was in those leaves, just what plant they used to divine outcomes of things.
Two options. A killer and a Dead Man, a Hero and a broken criminal. He knew which one he liked, which one he wanted. The question was-would Nataro be accommodating?
“Stop Frank.”
Frank’s pulse is wild, his eyes frightened. He looks like a jackrabbit, like an animal caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck.
“Think.”
Think- is suddenly all the arguing Harvey Dent has ever done in his life. Think is suddenly Mary listening spellbound. Think, is suddenly the killer’s grip disentangling on her own, his fingers trailing across her arm as she starts to run-letting her go.
“No!”
The noise is sudden and abrupt, footsteps on the roof. Dent blinks. This isn’t right, there were two possible outcomes, only two-only two goddamnit. Who the hell had the right to introduce a third option? Who had a fucking right?
No- is the sound that Harvey makes when he jogs toward Nataro. No-is Mary’s scream, the noise of the reporters outside, the screaming and the crying. It’s all over in an instant.
No is the sound of the gun going off.
Mary slumps. She falls face first onto the floor, the crack her skull makes is loud enough to open flesh on the moon.
Nataro drops the gun in surprise. He is a cop; he knows that only two things can happen when people grapple for the gun. One or the other can succeed, get a grip, and disarm their opponent-
Or it can go off.
Ashamed, he drops his hands and falls to the ground staring at the woman with lifeless dead eyes. They had fought and he had lost.
Harvey Dent is in shock.
No, there were only two possible outcomes. Either he died and his cause was furthered or he came out a hero with the woman intact singing his praises. He approaches her as the SWAT and associated others gather outside squawking like pigeons, like hens, like rats. Who made that fucking noise on the roof? Who threw off his groove, tossed his luck down a manhole?
“…Please…”
He jerks. Another variable. Who added these things? What sadistic fool was playing with his mind? He kneels besides her, staring at her with wide blue eyes. He’s never seen a person die before.
Mary twisted, eyes staring up at him in mute appeal. His lips worked as she said it again-hand reaching for him, “…Please…”
Stay calm Harv.
“…Please help…”
There were two options; there are two options again. Get this woman to a hospital, save her life, be a hero.
“Please! Help…”
But if you do that Nataro could get away. Someone else could catch him, you let a dangerous criminal out onto the streets-what kind of DA would do that? Especially one caught on the six o’clock news?
Mary sounds like she’s crying, “…Please…” Why, why is he sitting there? Why isn’t he helping her to her feet as her blood oozes out of her in slow pulses? Why isn’t he doing his job? There was only one thing to do here, he looked like he was trying to make a decision when-if he were a decent man, an honorable man there would be only one reasonable course…
“…Help…”
She’s fading now.
“…I’m sorry.”
Harvey can hear them coming up the front steps.
The realization that he isn’t going to help her hurts worse then the bullet. She had seen her savior, seen her hero coming in through the door like a white knight-the white knight he claimed to be. He keeps talking as confusion replaces desperate undying need. She understands only a single sentence.
“…Galvanize the people, save lives in the end. It’s a mercy in any case.”
The knife through her heart. She twists, her killer standing beside her body, cleaning his blade.
-----------
The Six O’Clock News.
The deciding factor, the judge. He does not function well without the authority. They praise him as a hero who did all that he could.
“Let us hope that Mary’s death will galvanize the city into action. Her life was lost tragically but more lives-god willing-can be saved if we are willing to work together…”
Jim Gordon drowns it out, heading over to the coroner. He avoids looking at Nataro, staring at him with glassy eyes, “…Jesus, one to the back?”
“Severed the Femoral artery.” The ME shakes his head before pulling the sheet over her head. Gordon tries not to stare, “…Funny thing though. I poked my finger in? Boss might have to do a more complete autopsy but-“
“But?” Gordon prompted.
“But it looks like it was only knicked.” ME shakes his head again, “She would have been paralyzed, but she could have survived if she’d gotten medical attention quickly enough.”
“That’s an easy thing to say when the medical attention was out by the barricade.” Dent is taking questions. If Gordon understands correctly he was holding this press conference to quit the race.”
“Mr. Dent, Mr. Dent!”
“Sir, You’re a Hero-“
“Are you going to Quit?”
“Absolutely not.” Harvey holds up a hand, “Mary wouldn’t have wanted me to do that. Gotham wouldn’t have wanted me to do that.”
A thousand more questions, a thousand different tongues. Gordon shrugs it off as the ME stares at him, “…Guy like that-what-probably lift hundred pounds-maybe a little more?”
Gordon turned to him, the ME standing in his big blue coat like a child at the county fair watching the hawker and the barker work, “What are you getting at?”
“Nataro was down-wouldn’t you have done something?”
“Maybe he couldn’t.”
“He could have risked his own life.”
“He did risk his own life.”
“Did he?”
The question is so nonchalant that Gordon turns to stare at him, “…Harvey Dent did something no Civilian should do, that no lawyer should ever do. Don’t you watch law and order? Never works out well when things like this happen.”
“Look, if he cared half as much as he said that he does just a minute ago…” The ME points, “Then he would have carried her out bleeding, gotten her into an ambulance where we could have stopped it and-and-“
“And what?” Gordon chuckles, “What, you don’t think Dent’s a Hero? Think he’s some kind of killer?”
“…He didn’t kill her.”
The man shook his head, throwing a dirty glance in Harvey Dent’s direction before shrugging and getting the body ready for transport. He turned back to Gordon, speaking under his breath so the hawker couldn’t hear. This man’s decision is firm.
“He just let her die.”
----------
Six O’clock.
The news is full of the reports of what he did as he sits at home and nurses a bottle of beer-shaking his head. There were two options, just two.
He was waiting for a decision, ignoring the little voice that said this was a serious matter-obsessing in such a way.
“…Speculation in the ME’s office states that if Mary Brietup had gotten medical attention quickly she could have survived. This photograph shown here of Dent leaning over her body-was she already dead when this occurred? Was her death preventable? Is Harvey Dent a Hero as everyone claims? Or is he a killer who watched a woman die? Go online to our poll and vote, WWW. Waynemedias.com…”
Something in him makes his hands curl-the beer falling to the floor. He curses, moving to clean it up. He needed a decision.
He’d counted on it.
And they’d failed him. Killer or Hero-he tried to wrap his mind around it and failed. There were only two and they-the judge- the deciding factor had failed to pick one. They’d thrown him out, declared a mistrial. His heart pounds, he’d counted on them to pick, to choose-He couldn’t be left with that spectre smiling over him, smile grim as some thing small and silver drifted through the air…
He wondered why this bothered him so much, counting it to the stress of the day, to nearly dying to trying to save a life and failing.
…He’d done it twice before. As a kid, picking which marker to scratch off to win him some money and to decide who’d win a basketball game. He never thought about why he’d remembered it so well.
He assigned two answers to the sides of his father’s Susan B. His dad had carried it for years got it on the day he’d met his mother. Lynnette had patted his father’s arm and smiled, how far had that coin traveled to come to his father? How many years before coming to him?
He assigned the two sides and allowed himself a small “This is ridiculous” before flipping it. He needed a decision; he’d counted on people for once making one for him that wouldn’t require such deliberation, such painstaking thought. Didn’t they see that he was suffering? There had been only two options, casting so many other things into the mix was ludicrous, ridiculous…
He stared at the picture for a long time, beer soaking into his carpet. He closed his eyes, burying his face in his hands-fingers in his hair as he started to cry.