(no subject)
Title: The Process of Belief
Fandom: Batman/OZ crossover
Characters/Pairings: Harvey Dent and Elphaba
Rating:PG for some language
Summary: A green woman and a legal man meet and talk about numerous things-among them the origin of species and the nature of belief.
Notes: Danii asked for Harvey/Elphaba. And I said-NO. eew. And then I got to thinking. Two incredibly cynical people both devoted to the causes of the little guy? Both outcasts
It’s pure curiosity and he hates himself for it. It has taken years of training both pushed upon him and applied by himself to control sudden urges. Human emotions, displays of emotion (except when the occasion called for it) Staring inappropriately.
It was nature to stare inappropriately. He consoled himself by telling him it was a natural human reaction to a potential threat. The threat was not in evidence, she was not wielding spikes or horns but she was green.
Green from head to foot save at the top of her head where black hair cascaded to shoulders where she sat hunched, nose in a massive leather-bound text.
“…Gee, that looks like a sleeping pill.”
Her eyes were green too, green and full of confusion, “…It’s nothing of the sort.” Though she checked the text just to make sure, muttering something about uneducated people under her breath.
He recovers his fumble quickly, “…What are you reading?”
“On the Origin of Species. It’s by some man named-“
“Charles Darwin.” He’d read it ages ago in a hapless effort to pass through High School. What little he’d managed to absorb when not staring out at the soccer field and Mary Bradshaw’s excellent backside ran back to him, “…The theory of evolution?”
“He makes several points.” The woman said, “My world has yet to discover.”
“Probably why it’s the source of such contention.” Harvey stares at the book with slight distaste, “The Evolution versus creationism theory.”
She folds elegant hands over the book, closing it, “I applaud a man who creates contention with fact rather then fiction. It takes real talent to illustrate the facts for someone versus showing them smoke…mirrors…magic tricks.”
Her eyes narrow as Harvey sits, “…Harvey Dent.”
She doesn’t take his outstretched hand. He is far too…normal. Almost absurdly so. Instead her mouth twitches, “…You’re a politician.”
Observant. “It shows?”
“You bear the excess of personality terminal to those in public office.” She said blankly, “Everything about you screams average. You ask others to trust you with just a glance, thinking they’ll fall under your sway. If we were from the same place you would be Gilkkin. Bred for looks and the political arena with little else to say and do but be a figurehead for some greater power. Go away, you are distracting me from my book.”
Hard won instinct and emotion gave way to confusion and anger. Like a spark of pain traveling up a dinosaur’s foot, Harvey sat back utterly stunned. Bred for looks and the political arena with little else to say and do but obey?
“Your world must be very backward.”
“Astute observation.” She turned another page, ignoring him.
Damn. He struggled for footing. He’d brought out his b-squad and the coach had called a time out.
“…I mean, not being aware of Darwin’s Origin of Species, coming to a place like this-“ he drew a hand around, “And struggling with those words…you know, I’m sure that if bar asked you could be provided with some sort of…” his voice trailed off, dripping slime, “Program. Hooked on Phonics is big in Gotham City School District.”
A grimace of annoyance, “ Wrongs that should have been righted decades ago might depend upon the discoveries in this book. I have little and less to occupy my time now, it would be good to have accomplished something in my life.”
He raised an eyebrow, “…Wrongs?”
There was very real anger in her eyes, “The parrot speaks every word his master hears. Wrongs. Have they evolved beyond them in your world? No wonder you say nothing and have nothing to say as a figurehead. How boring for you.”
“What we lack in wrong we make up for in advancement and understanding.” His words are curt, as hard as he can make them. It is the rarest of the rare for Harvey Dent to be outtalked by anyone-especially not green otherworldly women. Captain Kirk would be rolling over in his non-existent grave, “Small price to pay.”
An eyebrow rose, “You would sacrifice petty things like happiness and human feeling for understanding? For Reason?”
She sounded slightly interested now. Harvey Dent thought of his fanatical pursuit of justice and the lack of assistance he’d had, “…When the occasion arises.”
“I ask out of pure curiosity. What occasion would this be?”
“Tell me the wrong you’re trying to right.”
Her eyes roll to the side as she closes the book again, “Once upon a time a college student had a professor who believed in equality for all men and Animals. His radical views got him killed.”
“…Did they catch the person who did it?”
He knows that look. That’s what makes him sit up and take notice of this green woman. His attention riveted on her, on those deep eyes like the forest sprawling grounds of his mother’s estate, of Gotham University-
“…Justice was served.”
It was her turn to be surprised as he stared at her. She mentioned no court and spoke with an absolute certainty. No one spoke with that much certainty, no lawyer, no criminal, no family who had just seen the man who killed their loved ones put on the welfare of the state to be fed like an animal in the zoo…
“You killed the person who did it.”
It is not a question.
The Green woman lowers her gaze, moving the book to her lap before folding her hands over its cover and staring at him. In such a pose he sees something familiar, something that gives him paws.
“Those are the occasions that I am willing to set aside human emotion, human pity and human feeling for.” Harvey’s mind spirals back to the trial eating him alive and finds something cold and hard, circular, never-ending in his subconscious, “Justice and its pursuit.”
“A Legal Scholar. A man of the courts.” She snorted, “…I should have guessed by your unctuous scent, the slime dripping from your pores.”
He hesitates, “This is Chanel for Men. My Fiancée bought it for me.”
“She has terrible taste in cologne.”
He closed his eyes, “I did you the courtesy of introducing myself, the very least you could do is offer me a name.”
“You probably already know me.”
She pauses, “you do. I can see it in your face, in your eyes. They all know me and condemn me simply on sight by learning that I am. I have been condemned enough by a complete stranger. My name is my own-the more I give it out the less it is mine and I have lost far too much as it is. I will keep my name.”
“Look, back home-traditional conversation usually requires one person to call the other by name.”
She hesitates again, “…Elphaba.”
“Alright, stately figurehead with nothing to say or not-there is no way I’m going to be able to pronounce that.”
“Then perhaps we shouldn’t engage in conversation Mr. Dent.”
“Call me Harvey.”
“…Mr. Dent.” She rose, “It has been an experience meeting you. I wish you luck and commend you for understanding that in certain occasions setting aside emotion and feeling is the best way to proceed.”
When she swirled away he realized she was wearing combat boots. There was something beautiful about her, something distinctly familiar he couldn’t apparently put his finger on. He orders tea and doesn’t remember that it exists. By the time he picks it up the water is a murky green that leaves him swirling-lost in thought.
----------
Their second meeting is a little less acidic.
He’s outside in a suit and tie needing-needing to flee the world in all its incomes as he stares into the heavens. The world is impossibly green and blue, he could get used to colors like this. Nothing blurs, the world has blurred too much lately.
When a branch moves he jumps back as something black and green alights on the ground a few feet away.
She stares, “…Mr. Dent.”
“…El-“ He nods mutely, “El.”
“…That’s a new one.” She picks up her broom and catches him staring, “Never seen one of these before?”
“I have.”
“I didn’t think men like you did their own housework.”
That hits a little too close to home, “Yeah, when you’re a single parent raising an only son you can just direct the servants to do it with a smile and a “Please Franklin, be sure to take care of it before young Harvey comes home.”
Her expression sours, “I have offended you.” She spoke as if discussing the impossible day or dinner plans, “You think that you’re the only one who’s had a difficult childhood?”
“My childhood.” Harvey snaps, “Wasn’t difficult. It was my mother’s life that was difficult.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
There is a noise in his head. A sound on his back as he closes his eyes suddenly thrown. The memory is vivid, stark naked against his mind he sees her standing over him weeping and stealing angry glances at her only burden.
El’s expression has softened, “…It is a parent’s prerogative to make their child feel miserable about their existence.”
Harvey shakes it off; turning to her, “…Guess we’ve all got stories.”
“To be young is to be used.” El’s voice is bitter. She sits on the grass a few feet away and he finds himself moving to sit beside her, “To be told we are a burden, a curse upon the ones who brought us into the world. No man wants to acknowledge that he is not the last, that he is not the beginning and the end of the world. The cycle continues. We scream and beat our hands against our cage because in the end we are all pawns and we know it and we can’t stand it.”
“Pawns of who? Pawns of what?”
“The Universe.”
He snorted, putting a hand on the grass. She blended with it, one color against another like a haphazard child drawing, “…Thought you were going to say God for a minute.”
“I’m not a believer.” She shrugged, “In anything. I have no soul, there is nothing to tether me to anything in such a way.”
He looks at her, head tilting to the side, “…I feel sorry for you.”
“Do you have such a tether?”
He thinks of Rachel. He thinks of Gotham. He thinks of all the things he wanted to accomplish before he died and what he was willing to do, to set aside to get them.
She was watching him now-it gave him the shivers. The woman’s green eyes bore into his own and he thought for one minute he was back at the beginnings where people had to judge him.
He twitched.
“I pity you Harvey Dent. If any man has a tether it is only a matter of time before it becomes all he lives for. It pulls upon him, wrapping a rope tight around his neck and squeezing. The tighter you reach for it the more it pulls before it snaps and you are adrift with nothing.”
“You sound like you know somebody with that…ah…” He frowned, “Singular problem.”
“My father believed.”
“In what?”
“In that all people can be redeemed.”
“People can cross over.” He emphasizes the word can; “Going from good to evil, making that leap isn’t all that hard. Innocent until proven guilty is something we pride ourselves on.”
“One day Harvey Dent.” El rises, “The law will abandon you. It will abandon you at the end and ask you to choose. Will you accept what it offers? Or will you deny it and find your own path? Because tethers will pull you, and without a hand to take you from the water they can do little else.”
“The law will never abandon me.” He says stoutly, “…I’m the District Attorney. I am the law.”
“Then you are a tyrant and I have nothing to say to tyrants. Tyrants are figureheads spewing water from their mouths and I have nothing to do with water.”
It dawns on him then, who she is as she walks away half sashay half glide across the water. He didn’t picture her thus; he pictured her old, a spinster, and a thousand fears of childhood flitting across his face like insects…
“…How can you think that your father’s belief punished him?”
She turns and flies.
It’s nothing jerky; there are no wires and strings. He is in the presence of sorcery, of magic and this is enough to make him blink backing up several steps as she stares at him-the object hovering.
“…It sent him me.”
She jerked it off, riding it like a horse into the impossibly blue sky above as he closed his eyes and shook his head in wonder. Somehow, “I’m Melting” did not convey the philosophical thought that the Wicked Witch of the West apparently possessed.
----------
At the end he stands before her half in shadow as she stares at him with pity in those deep green pools.
“I did try to warn you.”
“You did.” Harvey Dent has difficulty speaking now. It hurts to talk too much, he’s still healing, “…But in a world so advanced as ours sometimes we set aside common sense in favor of reason and advancement.”
She laughed, the noise musical, as her eyes lowered, “I can’t fix you.”
“No.” Two Face Growls, “You can’t.”
“Where did the tether pull you?”
To wrong and right. Harvey thinks. His hands find the coin he has kept with him, running his fingers along the surface, I believed and was punished.
Seemingly having read his thoughts, she nods, “Never believe in anything.”
“Won’t make that fucking mistake again.” Two-Face says, “There are two. Law and Crime. Good and Evil. Nothing else.” No emotion, no love, no caring.
She stands, hand on her broom, “…I hoped you’d be the one to have a happy ending.”
“There are never happy endings.”
Harvey Dent weeps. He understands what she said when it hurt to cry, “…Not for anyone.”
“Knowledge that comes with a price.”
He disappears in the shadows of the booth. She takes off and flies, not coming down until the sun hits the horizon in an impossibly perfect day.
Fandom: Batman/OZ crossover
Characters/Pairings: Harvey Dent and Elphaba
Rating:PG for some language
Summary: A green woman and a legal man meet and talk about numerous things-among them the origin of species and the nature of belief.
Notes: Danii asked for Harvey/Elphaba. And I said-NO. eew. And then I got to thinking. Two incredibly cynical people both devoted to the causes of the little guy? Both outcasts
It’s pure curiosity and he hates himself for it. It has taken years of training both pushed upon him and applied by himself to control sudden urges. Human emotions, displays of emotion (except when the occasion called for it) Staring inappropriately.
It was nature to stare inappropriately. He consoled himself by telling him it was a natural human reaction to a potential threat. The threat was not in evidence, she was not wielding spikes or horns but she was green.
Green from head to foot save at the top of her head where black hair cascaded to shoulders where she sat hunched, nose in a massive leather-bound text.
“…Gee, that looks like a sleeping pill.”
Her eyes were green too, green and full of confusion, “…It’s nothing of the sort.” Though she checked the text just to make sure, muttering something about uneducated people under her breath.
He recovers his fumble quickly, “…What are you reading?”
“On the Origin of Species. It’s by some man named-“
“Charles Darwin.” He’d read it ages ago in a hapless effort to pass through High School. What little he’d managed to absorb when not staring out at the soccer field and Mary Bradshaw’s excellent backside ran back to him, “…The theory of evolution?”
“He makes several points.” The woman said, “My world has yet to discover.”
“Probably why it’s the source of such contention.” Harvey stares at the book with slight distaste, “The Evolution versus creationism theory.”
She folds elegant hands over the book, closing it, “I applaud a man who creates contention with fact rather then fiction. It takes real talent to illustrate the facts for someone versus showing them smoke…mirrors…magic tricks.”
Her eyes narrow as Harvey sits, “…Harvey Dent.”
She doesn’t take his outstretched hand. He is far too…normal. Almost absurdly so. Instead her mouth twitches, “…You’re a politician.”
Observant. “It shows?”
“You bear the excess of personality terminal to those in public office.” She said blankly, “Everything about you screams average. You ask others to trust you with just a glance, thinking they’ll fall under your sway. If we were from the same place you would be Gilkkin. Bred for looks and the political arena with little else to say and do but be a figurehead for some greater power. Go away, you are distracting me from my book.”
Hard won instinct and emotion gave way to confusion and anger. Like a spark of pain traveling up a dinosaur’s foot, Harvey sat back utterly stunned. Bred for looks and the political arena with little else to say and do but obey?
“Your world must be very backward.”
“Astute observation.” She turned another page, ignoring him.
Damn. He struggled for footing. He’d brought out his b-squad and the coach had called a time out.
“…I mean, not being aware of Darwin’s Origin of Species, coming to a place like this-“ he drew a hand around, “And struggling with those words…you know, I’m sure that if bar asked you could be provided with some sort of…” his voice trailed off, dripping slime, “Program. Hooked on Phonics is big in Gotham City School District.”
A grimace of annoyance, “ Wrongs that should have been righted decades ago might depend upon the discoveries in this book. I have little and less to occupy my time now, it would be good to have accomplished something in my life.”
He raised an eyebrow, “…Wrongs?”
There was very real anger in her eyes, “The parrot speaks every word his master hears. Wrongs. Have they evolved beyond them in your world? No wonder you say nothing and have nothing to say as a figurehead. How boring for you.”
“What we lack in wrong we make up for in advancement and understanding.” His words are curt, as hard as he can make them. It is the rarest of the rare for Harvey Dent to be outtalked by anyone-especially not green otherworldly women. Captain Kirk would be rolling over in his non-existent grave, “Small price to pay.”
An eyebrow rose, “You would sacrifice petty things like happiness and human feeling for understanding? For Reason?”
She sounded slightly interested now. Harvey Dent thought of his fanatical pursuit of justice and the lack of assistance he’d had, “…When the occasion arises.”
“I ask out of pure curiosity. What occasion would this be?”
“Tell me the wrong you’re trying to right.”
Her eyes roll to the side as she closes the book again, “Once upon a time a college student had a professor who believed in equality for all men and Animals. His radical views got him killed.”
“…Did they catch the person who did it?”
He knows that look. That’s what makes him sit up and take notice of this green woman. His attention riveted on her, on those deep eyes like the forest sprawling grounds of his mother’s estate, of Gotham University-
“…Justice was served.”
It was her turn to be surprised as he stared at her. She mentioned no court and spoke with an absolute certainty. No one spoke with that much certainty, no lawyer, no criminal, no family who had just seen the man who killed their loved ones put on the welfare of the state to be fed like an animal in the zoo…
“You killed the person who did it.”
It is not a question.
The Green woman lowers her gaze, moving the book to her lap before folding her hands over its cover and staring at him. In such a pose he sees something familiar, something that gives him paws.
“Those are the occasions that I am willing to set aside human emotion, human pity and human feeling for.” Harvey’s mind spirals back to the trial eating him alive and finds something cold and hard, circular, never-ending in his subconscious, “Justice and its pursuit.”
“A Legal Scholar. A man of the courts.” She snorted, “…I should have guessed by your unctuous scent, the slime dripping from your pores.”
He hesitates, “This is Chanel for Men. My Fiancée bought it for me.”
“She has terrible taste in cologne.”
He closed his eyes, “I did you the courtesy of introducing myself, the very least you could do is offer me a name.”
“You probably already know me.”
She pauses, “you do. I can see it in your face, in your eyes. They all know me and condemn me simply on sight by learning that I am. I have been condemned enough by a complete stranger. My name is my own-the more I give it out the less it is mine and I have lost far too much as it is. I will keep my name.”
“Look, back home-traditional conversation usually requires one person to call the other by name.”
She hesitates again, “…Elphaba.”
“Alright, stately figurehead with nothing to say or not-there is no way I’m going to be able to pronounce that.”
“Then perhaps we shouldn’t engage in conversation Mr. Dent.”
“Call me Harvey.”
“…Mr. Dent.” She rose, “It has been an experience meeting you. I wish you luck and commend you for understanding that in certain occasions setting aside emotion and feeling is the best way to proceed.”
When she swirled away he realized she was wearing combat boots. There was something beautiful about her, something distinctly familiar he couldn’t apparently put his finger on. He orders tea and doesn’t remember that it exists. By the time he picks it up the water is a murky green that leaves him swirling-lost in thought.
----------
Their second meeting is a little less acidic.
He’s outside in a suit and tie needing-needing to flee the world in all its incomes as he stares into the heavens. The world is impossibly green and blue, he could get used to colors like this. Nothing blurs, the world has blurred too much lately.
When a branch moves he jumps back as something black and green alights on the ground a few feet away.
She stares, “…Mr. Dent.”
“…El-“ He nods mutely, “El.”
“…That’s a new one.” She picks up her broom and catches him staring, “Never seen one of these before?”
“I have.”
“I didn’t think men like you did their own housework.”
That hits a little too close to home, “Yeah, when you’re a single parent raising an only son you can just direct the servants to do it with a smile and a “Please Franklin, be sure to take care of it before young Harvey comes home.”
Her expression sours, “I have offended you.” She spoke as if discussing the impossible day or dinner plans, “You think that you’re the only one who’s had a difficult childhood?”
“My childhood.” Harvey snaps, “Wasn’t difficult. It was my mother’s life that was difficult.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
There is a noise in his head. A sound on his back as he closes his eyes suddenly thrown. The memory is vivid, stark naked against his mind he sees her standing over him weeping and stealing angry glances at her only burden.
El’s expression has softened, “…It is a parent’s prerogative to make their child feel miserable about their existence.”
Harvey shakes it off; turning to her, “…Guess we’ve all got stories.”
“To be young is to be used.” El’s voice is bitter. She sits on the grass a few feet away and he finds himself moving to sit beside her, “To be told we are a burden, a curse upon the ones who brought us into the world. No man wants to acknowledge that he is not the last, that he is not the beginning and the end of the world. The cycle continues. We scream and beat our hands against our cage because in the end we are all pawns and we know it and we can’t stand it.”
“Pawns of who? Pawns of what?”
“The Universe.”
He snorted, putting a hand on the grass. She blended with it, one color against another like a haphazard child drawing, “…Thought you were going to say God for a minute.”
“I’m not a believer.” She shrugged, “In anything. I have no soul, there is nothing to tether me to anything in such a way.”
He looks at her, head tilting to the side, “…I feel sorry for you.”
“Do you have such a tether?”
He thinks of Rachel. He thinks of Gotham. He thinks of all the things he wanted to accomplish before he died and what he was willing to do, to set aside to get them.
She was watching him now-it gave him the shivers. The woman’s green eyes bore into his own and he thought for one minute he was back at the beginnings where people had to judge him.
He twitched.
“I pity you Harvey Dent. If any man has a tether it is only a matter of time before it becomes all he lives for. It pulls upon him, wrapping a rope tight around his neck and squeezing. The tighter you reach for it the more it pulls before it snaps and you are adrift with nothing.”
“You sound like you know somebody with that…ah…” He frowned, “Singular problem.”
“My father believed.”
“In what?”
“In that all people can be redeemed.”
“People can cross over.” He emphasizes the word can; “Going from good to evil, making that leap isn’t all that hard. Innocent until proven guilty is something we pride ourselves on.”
“One day Harvey Dent.” El rises, “The law will abandon you. It will abandon you at the end and ask you to choose. Will you accept what it offers? Or will you deny it and find your own path? Because tethers will pull you, and without a hand to take you from the water they can do little else.”
“The law will never abandon me.” He says stoutly, “…I’m the District Attorney. I am the law.”
“Then you are a tyrant and I have nothing to say to tyrants. Tyrants are figureheads spewing water from their mouths and I have nothing to do with water.”
It dawns on him then, who she is as she walks away half sashay half glide across the water. He didn’t picture her thus; he pictured her old, a spinster, and a thousand fears of childhood flitting across his face like insects…
“…How can you think that your father’s belief punished him?”
She turns and flies.
It’s nothing jerky; there are no wires and strings. He is in the presence of sorcery, of magic and this is enough to make him blink backing up several steps as she stares at him-the object hovering.
“…It sent him me.”
She jerked it off, riding it like a horse into the impossibly blue sky above as he closed his eyes and shook his head in wonder. Somehow, “I’m Melting” did not convey the philosophical thought that the Wicked Witch of the West apparently possessed.
----------
At the end he stands before her half in shadow as she stares at him with pity in those deep green pools.
“I did try to warn you.”
“You did.” Harvey Dent has difficulty speaking now. It hurts to talk too much, he’s still healing, “…But in a world so advanced as ours sometimes we set aside common sense in favor of reason and advancement.”
She laughed, the noise musical, as her eyes lowered, “I can’t fix you.”
“No.” Two Face Growls, “You can’t.”
“Where did the tether pull you?”
To wrong and right. Harvey thinks. His hands find the coin he has kept with him, running his fingers along the surface, I believed and was punished.
Seemingly having read his thoughts, she nods, “Never believe in anything.”
“Won’t make that fucking mistake again.” Two-Face says, “There are two. Law and Crime. Good and Evil. Nothing else.” No emotion, no love, no caring.
She stands, hand on her broom, “…I hoped you’d be the one to have a happy ending.”
“There are never happy endings.”
Harvey Dent weeps. He understands what she said when it hurt to cry, “…Not for anyone.”
“Knowledge that comes with a price.”
He disappears in the shadows of the booth. She takes off and flies, not coming down until the sun hits the horizon in an impossibly perfect day.