Fic: Syncopation Chapter 5/6
Title: Syncopation: Chapter Five (of Six)
Pairing: Clark/Bruce
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Series Notes: Syncopation is part of The Music of the Spheres, a combined Superman Returns/Batman Begins series. The whole series can be found here.
Rating: PG
Summary: Batman searches for the missing Harvey Dent and finds more than he expected. Some moments in this story will make more sense if you've read "Whole" and "Shattered," but it's not necessary to follow the story.
Word Count: 2900
Bruce woke up slowly in an empty bed from dreams of someone holding him and singing to him, very softly. Something about mockingbirds and diamond rings.
His head hurt.
Alfred was standing next to the bed, holding a tray with a glass of orange juice on it as though he had nothing at all better to do. "Mister Kent left just a little while ago," he said as Bruce blinked at him. "He made me promise not to leave your side until I got some orange juice into you. He seemed concerned that you would come down with a cold."
Bruce started to sit up and winced, touching the back of his head. "I think the concussion is more of a concern than a cold."
Alfred bounced very slightly on the balls of his feet. "A little orange juice won't hurt either way, sir." Bruce saw the sharp, wary concern under the solicitude in Alfred's eyes as he drank the juice, but chose not to address it.
"I'm going down to the cave," he announced as he pulled himself out of bed.
"Martha's made you pancakes. You're not going down until you get a good meal in you, at the very least." Alfred looked at Bruce's set face. "Don't do this to yourself, to all of us who care about you. For God's sake, Master Bruce," he whispered.
Bruce almost smiled. "You haven't called me that for...almost fifteen years."
Alfred looked chagrined. "I'm sorry, sir."
Bruce pulled on a t-shirt, stretching aching muscles. "It's all right, Alfred. I have to admit I've missed it."
"You have?" Alfred sounded rather surprised.
Bruce paused at the door, looking back. "Tell Martha I'm sorry I don't have time for the pancakes. Truly."
He went down.
: : :
The receiver in his ear beeped. He grimaced into the darkness of the cave, then opened the channel.
"You should have let me help." He had expected Clark to sound angry, but he didn't.
"You were busy."
"I meant after your fight, while you were trying to get home on your own with a concussion. I could have saved you a long walk in the cold."
"Batman can't rely on Superman, Clark." Bruce paused, then added, "I relied on you about Harvey's truthfulness, and it only led to disaster."
"There was more than that leading to disaster, Bruce."
Bruce was busy staring at a map of where Harvey had struck over the last three months of his rampage. "I'm not going to play should-haves right now, Clark. I have to find Harvey. For all I know, he's dead somewhere. Or dying." He swallowed.
Clark's voice was small. "Isn't there anything I can do to help?"
Bruce tried to put warmth into his voice. "You can come and eat your mother's pancakes before they get cold."
: : :
A few hours later, Alfred's voice behind him. "Sir, I think you'll want to come upstairs for a moment."
"Is this another attempt to trick me into eating a good hot meal, Alfred?"
Alfred grimaced. "I wouldn't dream of it, sir. No, it's Lieutenant Gordon here to see you."
Bruce's hands paused on the computer keyboard. "Did he say why he was here?"
"He said he had some questions about--about Mister Dent, sir. Mister Kent is talking to him right now."
Bruce looked up at Alfred, oddly irresolute. Then he sighed. "Tell him I'll see him soon."
"I gave him the impression you were recovering from something of a bender last night and might take a while to collect yourself."
Bruce made a sound close to a laugh. "That's an interesting way of putting it."
Jim Gordon stood up to shake Bruce's hand as he entered the sitting room. Bruce shifted a half-empty champagne bottle from one hand to the other for the handshake. "Hair of the dog," he said cheerfully. "Like some?"
"No thank you, Mister Wayne," said Gordon politely. "I was just talking to Mister Kent about Harvey Dent's behavior over the last few months."
Bruce dropped into a large leather chair, looking blankly at Gordon. "Why are you asking questions about ol' Harv?"
Gordon's lips thinned. "Perhaps you hadn't heard. Last night, someone that we have reason to believe was Harvey Dent kidnapped Luigi Maroni and myself and threatened to kill us."
Bruce's face registered polite shock. "Harvey? Good Lord, that's appalling news if it's true."
"Mister Kent was telling me about the incident at the casino charity last month. Did you have any suspicion at the time that he might be capable of criminal acts?"
Bruce rumpled his hair with a hand and tried to look bleary and clueless. It was surprisingly easy, he thought bitterly. "No."
"Even though he was clearly not stable?"
Bruce looked up sharply at Gordon. "Lots of people are unstable without becoming criminals." He looked away and got his face back to "hung over" before continuing. "Harvey obviously needed help. I guess...I guess he didn't get enough."
"We tried," Clark added softly, looking at Gordon. "We got him to see a doctor, at least."
"Too little, too late," Bruce said. "Far too late." He forced himself to smile up at Gordon. "I hope you don't think we're in cahoots with him or anything. How terribly ghastly."
Gordon asked a few more questions, then headed to leave. Clark and Bruce showed him out. At the door, he paused for a moment and looked back. "Mister Wayne?"
"Mmm?"
"I never thanked you for Junior's computer. She loves it." Gordon's voice was mild and diffident, conversational. "I just wanted you to know...that I appreciate all you've done for my family. For the city."
Bruce swallowed hard and nodded. "Least I could do. Really. Great kid. Great--" He coughed slightly. "--great city."
Gordon held out his hand and clasped Bruce's. "Keep up the good work." Then he turned and made his way down the walk, his trench coat blowing in the spring breeze.
Clark watched Bruce's face carefully. "I've got to head back to Metropolis. Will you be okay?"
Bruce nodded, still watching Jim Gordon's hunched, retreating figure. "I'll be okay."
: : :
Batman was investigating a potential robbery. The last two weeks had turned up no sign of Harvey Dent, and he was beginning to think that his old friend had indeed died from his wounds. He hoped he could find at least a body. Bruce Wayne had never been able to help Harvey's soul find rest; perhaps all that was left was for Batman to lay his body to rest.
Superman was off searching for some hikers lost on K2. Bruce had kept the receiver on even less than usual for the last couple of weeks while on patrol, but tonight, somehow, he missed hearing Clark's voice in his ear. The hairs on the back of his neck kept prickling and he felt uneasy.
The plate-glass windows of Gemini Gemstones lay shattered on the ground. Batman seemed to have gotten there before the police. He slipped into the store, which appeared to be empty. Showcases were violently smashed all around. The vault in the back was open. Batman stepped in cautiously.
The door swung shut behind him.
Of course it did.
There was a hissing sound around him and the walls swam dizzily. He tried to trigger the receiver to page Superman, but his hands were too heavy all of a sudden, they couldn't reach the cowl.
Stupid. Stupid Bat.
Darkness.
: : :
He came to gagged and blindfolded, tied to a bed of some sort. Vague memories of a car in motion. There was a panicked second until he realized the cowl was still in place.
"--and I say we don't. We don't even have to flip for this decision, don't you see? It's simple."
Harvey's voice. Bruce could hear someone pacing. The acoustics indicated a fairly small room. The air was musty, somewhat stale: an old building, somewhere. A small room in an old building. No sounds of a city outside, but it didn't sound like they were deep in the country either. A park, perhaps.
Harvey continued to explain. "If we unmask him, then there's just one of him. But if we leave the mask on, there'll always be two. The warrior and the civilian. The darkness and the light."
"Like us." It was the vigilante's voice, low and ominous.
"...like us. Yes." Harvey sounded tired. Tired, and--something else. Batman struggled to make sense of what was going on. He had thought Harvey and the vigilante were the same person--he had heard the vigilante speak with Harvey's voice--nothing seemed to make sense right now, with the effects of the knockout gas still dulling his thoughts. He couldn't signal Superman with his hands bound. He kept listening. One of his two kidnappers continued pacing, back and forth. Every four steps a floorboard creaked, like a metronome marking the rhythm of the conversation. It sounded familiar, somehow. Where had he heard that sound before?
"I still say we cut him in half," snarled the killer. "Seems appropriate. If it weren't for him, I'd finally be rid of you."
"You won't kill him."
A savage growl. "So if I can't unmask him, and you won't kill him, why did we bring him here?"
"You...really don't know, do you?" Harvey's voice sounded slightly amused. "It seems you don't know everything after all. That's...interesting." Batman suddenly realized what sounded different about Harvey: he didn't sound angry anymore. The thread of fury and self-loathing always running through his friend's voice was gone, leaving it simply sad.
Harvey was continuing. "We're here because this is the only safe place I know. No one can hurt me here. The last safe place in the world."
As his friend spoke, Batman heard a clock striking the half-hour someplace nearby. He remembered the sound; he had heard it every day during his years of college, echoing over the quad as he studied in his dorm room. The room with the creaking floorboard they never fixed.
They were in Bruce Wayne's old Princeton dorm room.
Harvey.
"I've never been in here before," said the vigilante's voice. "You never let me come in here. Thought you could keep some place safe from me, but I'm here now. You can't get rid of me now."
"I have no intention of getting rid of you."
"This place is condemned anyway," the killer grumbled. "They're going to tear it down next week. I hope you intend to have us out of here by then."
"We'll be gone by then. Don't worry."
"And then we'll go deal with that faithless bitch," the vigilante said with relish. "She betrayed us. I know she did."
A sigh. "I betrayed her first."
There was a pause while the footsteps continued to pace through the room. Batman couldn't make sense of the sound. There were two voices, moving side by side through the room. But there was only one set of footfalls.
The rough, angry voice spoke again after a silence, sounding almost pleading now. "I know you didn't love her, but I wanted you not to be--you know. I wanted you to be normal. A whole man."
Harvey laughed then, and the killer's voice joined in, the two bleak sounds echoing weirdly around the small room. "That's wonderful," Harvey said tiredly. "That's irony for you."
The other voice seemed to have regained its manic cheer. "Irony for us, boyo!" The steps stopped in front of Batman, who was still working on the ropes binding him. He was almost free. "But I think our flying rodent friend is awake. Let's let him see what he's made of us."
Hands on his face. The left one tugged roughly at the blindfold while the right one gripped his chin, holding his head steady.
As the blindfold was jerked free, the thumb of the hand holding Batman's chin grazed across his gagged lips almost gently. Then his kidnapper stepped back so Batman could see all of him at once.
Bruce bit down hard on the gag to keep from making a sound at the sight of the person before him, shock pounding through his body like a nightmarish surf. There was only one man in the room.
Harvey's face was neatly bisected, the left side scarred into a red, welted ruin, whorls of cicatriced flesh studded with one bloodshot, jaundiced eye, eternally glaring. The lips on the left side were melted away into a permanent, drooping sneer.
The right side was unmarred. From it, Harvey's familiar hazel eye looked at Bruce sadly. What a mess we're in now, my friend, it seemed to say.
Batman closed his eyes.
"Can't handle looking at reality, can you?" said the sneering laugh of the murderer.
"But really, who can?" added Harvey. Batman forced his eyes open again to meet his friend's half-gaze. Harvey laughed softly. "My...associate...here doesn't know why we've come to this place. But he's nervous about it. Can you tell? I can. And he's right, he should be nervous. Because only here, in the last safe place in the world, can I do this." The click of a gun hammer cocking, and Harvey's right hand came up with a gun.
He pointed it at his own temple.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing, you pansy?" The vigilante's voice erupted from the same mouth Harvey's had, and with a surge of adrenaline, Batman tore loose the last of his bonds and leapt to knock the gun away from Harvey. It went off, the bullet burying deep into the wall, and Batman's fist caught his friend on the chin, staggering him. They went down together, the cruel yellow eye already closed, the hazel one dazed and blinking.
"Why'd you stop me?" Harvey's voice was slurred and disbelieving. "It was my last chance. My last..." He sagged forward, unconscious.
: : :
The guard pocketed the crisp bills Bruce handed him. "--but in your case, Mr. Wayne, sir, we'll make an exception." He led Bruce down the narrow, dimly-lit halls.
Bruce listened to the howls of the damned in Arkham.
Eventually they came to a barred door. Inside the cell was a man shackled to a wall by his scarred left hand. They had left him unbound because he was well-known and well-liked...until he had tried to rip a guard's throat out. His right hand dangled free, and the right side of his face lit up when he saw Bruce outside his cell.
"Well, well, well. If it isn't the faggot friend," snarled the left side.
"Don't pay attention to him, Bruce," said Harvey cheerfully. "He's just angry."
Bruce swallowed hard, staring at the ruin of his friend. "Are they treating you well?" he asked, insanely mundane.
"Not particularly, no. But then, I'm not sure we particularly deserve good treatment, do we?"
"I came to say I'm sorry." Bruce wanted to say more, but his throat had closed up and nothing came out.
"My dear friend." Harvey's voice was terrifyingly gentle. "Don't be. This is...freeing, in some ways. I can be honest at last. I can relax. I can lose. Of course, I've had to make some compromises."
"I get to run the show from now on," chortled the left side darkly. "No more acting up from the poofter."
"Yes, yes," said Harvey, almost affectionately. "I told you. You win. You always win."
Bruce tried to say something, to interrupt the insane dialogue that was a monologue. He couldn't find his voice.
The being that had once been Harvey cocked his head at the man outside the barred window. "Of course, we'll be needing a new name. We haven't decided yet, but you'll be one of the first to know when we do." A pause while Harvey's eye gazed at Bruce, standing choked and mute.
"Bruce. I have to apologize to you too. I didn't trust you, didn't think you were helping me. I should have known...that you would never let me down." A small laugh. "It's amazing how much easier it is to say things now."
Harvey raised his unshackled right hand and touched it to his lips. "Love you, Bruce," he said softly, extending his hand to its fullest length, so the fingertips reached just beyond the bars.
Bruce stepped forward and let the fingertips touch his lips. Then he backed away and left Arkham Asylum, walked through his city alone.
His lips burned as though they'd been touched with a white-hot coal.
: : :
Bruce Wayne stood on the Princeton campus, outside his old dormitory. It was a beautiful early April day, robins hopping on the quad, daffodils starting to open.
In his ear, a whisper like the springtime. "Bruce. Are you all right? I'm worried about you."
Bruce pulled his trenchcoat closer around himself, watching the building. "I'll go home soon, Clark. I promise."
Bruce Wayne watched as they tore down the last safe place in the world.
Then he went home, went into the cave, and locked the door behind him.
Pairing: Clark/Bruce
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Series Notes: Syncopation is part of The Music of the Spheres, a combined Superman Returns/Batman Begins series. The whole series can be found here.
Rating: PG
Summary: Batman searches for the missing Harvey Dent and finds more than he expected. Some moments in this story will make more sense if you've read "Whole" and "Shattered," but it's not necessary to follow the story.
Word Count: 2900
Bruce woke up slowly in an empty bed from dreams of someone holding him and singing to him, very softly. Something about mockingbirds and diamond rings.
His head hurt.
Alfred was standing next to the bed, holding a tray with a glass of orange juice on it as though he had nothing at all better to do. "Mister Kent left just a little while ago," he said as Bruce blinked at him. "He made me promise not to leave your side until I got some orange juice into you. He seemed concerned that you would come down with a cold."
Bruce started to sit up and winced, touching the back of his head. "I think the concussion is more of a concern than a cold."
Alfred bounced very slightly on the balls of his feet. "A little orange juice won't hurt either way, sir." Bruce saw the sharp, wary concern under the solicitude in Alfred's eyes as he drank the juice, but chose not to address it.
"I'm going down to the cave," he announced as he pulled himself out of bed.
"Martha's made you pancakes. You're not going down until you get a good meal in you, at the very least." Alfred looked at Bruce's set face. "Don't do this to yourself, to all of us who care about you. For God's sake, Master Bruce," he whispered.
Bruce almost smiled. "You haven't called me that for...almost fifteen years."
Alfred looked chagrined. "I'm sorry, sir."
Bruce pulled on a t-shirt, stretching aching muscles. "It's all right, Alfred. I have to admit I've missed it."
"You have?" Alfred sounded rather surprised.
Bruce paused at the door, looking back. "Tell Martha I'm sorry I don't have time for the pancakes. Truly."
He went down.
: : :
The receiver in his ear beeped. He grimaced into the darkness of the cave, then opened the channel.
"You should have let me help." He had expected Clark to sound angry, but he didn't.
"You were busy."
"I meant after your fight, while you were trying to get home on your own with a concussion. I could have saved you a long walk in the cold."
"Batman can't rely on Superman, Clark." Bruce paused, then added, "I relied on you about Harvey's truthfulness, and it only led to disaster."
"There was more than that leading to disaster, Bruce."
Bruce was busy staring at a map of where Harvey had struck over the last three months of his rampage. "I'm not going to play should-haves right now, Clark. I have to find Harvey. For all I know, he's dead somewhere. Or dying." He swallowed.
Clark's voice was small. "Isn't there anything I can do to help?"
Bruce tried to put warmth into his voice. "You can come and eat your mother's pancakes before they get cold."
: : :
A few hours later, Alfred's voice behind him. "Sir, I think you'll want to come upstairs for a moment."
"Is this another attempt to trick me into eating a good hot meal, Alfred?"
Alfred grimaced. "I wouldn't dream of it, sir. No, it's Lieutenant Gordon here to see you."
Bruce's hands paused on the computer keyboard. "Did he say why he was here?"
"He said he had some questions about--about Mister Dent, sir. Mister Kent is talking to him right now."
Bruce looked up at Alfred, oddly irresolute. Then he sighed. "Tell him I'll see him soon."
"I gave him the impression you were recovering from something of a bender last night and might take a while to collect yourself."
Bruce made a sound close to a laugh. "That's an interesting way of putting it."
Jim Gordon stood up to shake Bruce's hand as he entered the sitting room. Bruce shifted a half-empty champagne bottle from one hand to the other for the handshake. "Hair of the dog," he said cheerfully. "Like some?"
"No thank you, Mister Wayne," said Gordon politely. "I was just talking to Mister Kent about Harvey Dent's behavior over the last few months."
Bruce dropped into a large leather chair, looking blankly at Gordon. "Why are you asking questions about ol' Harv?"
Gordon's lips thinned. "Perhaps you hadn't heard. Last night, someone that we have reason to believe was Harvey Dent kidnapped Luigi Maroni and myself and threatened to kill us."
Bruce's face registered polite shock. "Harvey? Good Lord, that's appalling news if it's true."
"Mister Kent was telling me about the incident at the casino charity last month. Did you have any suspicion at the time that he might be capable of criminal acts?"
Bruce rumpled his hair with a hand and tried to look bleary and clueless. It was surprisingly easy, he thought bitterly. "No."
"Even though he was clearly not stable?"
Bruce looked up sharply at Gordon. "Lots of people are unstable without becoming criminals." He looked away and got his face back to "hung over" before continuing. "Harvey obviously needed help. I guess...I guess he didn't get enough."
"We tried," Clark added softly, looking at Gordon. "We got him to see a doctor, at least."
"Too little, too late," Bruce said. "Far too late." He forced himself to smile up at Gordon. "I hope you don't think we're in cahoots with him or anything. How terribly ghastly."
Gordon asked a few more questions, then headed to leave. Clark and Bruce showed him out. At the door, he paused for a moment and looked back. "Mister Wayne?"
"Mmm?"
"I never thanked you for Junior's computer. She loves it." Gordon's voice was mild and diffident, conversational. "I just wanted you to know...that I appreciate all you've done for my family. For the city."
Bruce swallowed hard and nodded. "Least I could do. Really. Great kid. Great--" He coughed slightly. "--great city."
Gordon held out his hand and clasped Bruce's. "Keep up the good work." Then he turned and made his way down the walk, his trench coat blowing in the spring breeze.
Clark watched Bruce's face carefully. "I've got to head back to Metropolis. Will you be okay?"
Bruce nodded, still watching Jim Gordon's hunched, retreating figure. "I'll be okay."
: : :
Batman was investigating a potential robbery. The last two weeks had turned up no sign of Harvey Dent, and he was beginning to think that his old friend had indeed died from his wounds. He hoped he could find at least a body. Bruce Wayne had never been able to help Harvey's soul find rest; perhaps all that was left was for Batman to lay his body to rest.
Superman was off searching for some hikers lost on K2. Bruce had kept the receiver on even less than usual for the last couple of weeks while on patrol, but tonight, somehow, he missed hearing Clark's voice in his ear. The hairs on the back of his neck kept prickling and he felt uneasy.
The plate-glass windows of Gemini Gemstones lay shattered on the ground. Batman seemed to have gotten there before the police. He slipped into the store, which appeared to be empty. Showcases were violently smashed all around. The vault in the back was open. Batman stepped in cautiously.
The door swung shut behind him.
Of course it did.
There was a hissing sound around him and the walls swam dizzily. He tried to trigger the receiver to page Superman, but his hands were too heavy all of a sudden, they couldn't reach the cowl.
Stupid. Stupid Bat.
Darkness.
: : :
He came to gagged and blindfolded, tied to a bed of some sort. Vague memories of a car in motion. There was a panicked second until he realized the cowl was still in place.
"--and I say we don't. We don't even have to flip for this decision, don't you see? It's simple."
Harvey's voice. Bruce could hear someone pacing. The acoustics indicated a fairly small room. The air was musty, somewhat stale: an old building, somewhere. A small room in an old building. No sounds of a city outside, but it didn't sound like they were deep in the country either. A park, perhaps.
Harvey continued to explain. "If we unmask him, then there's just one of him. But if we leave the mask on, there'll always be two. The warrior and the civilian. The darkness and the light."
"Like us." It was the vigilante's voice, low and ominous.
"...like us. Yes." Harvey sounded tired. Tired, and--something else. Batman struggled to make sense of what was going on. He had thought Harvey and the vigilante were the same person--he had heard the vigilante speak with Harvey's voice--nothing seemed to make sense right now, with the effects of the knockout gas still dulling his thoughts. He couldn't signal Superman with his hands bound. He kept listening. One of his two kidnappers continued pacing, back and forth. Every four steps a floorboard creaked, like a metronome marking the rhythm of the conversation. It sounded familiar, somehow. Where had he heard that sound before?
"I still say we cut him in half," snarled the killer. "Seems appropriate. If it weren't for him, I'd finally be rid of you."
"You won't kill him."
A savage growl. "So if I can't unmask him, and you won't kill him, why did we bring him here?"
"You...really don't know, do you?" Harvey's voice sounded slightly amused. "It seems you don't know everything after all. That's...interesting." Batman suddenly realized what sounded different about Harvey: he didn't sound angry anymore. The thread of fury and self-loathing always running through his friend's voice was gone, leaving it simply sad.
Harvey was continuing. "We're here because this is the only safe place I know. No one can hurt me here. The last safe place in the world."
As his friend spoke, Batman heard a clock striking the half-hour someplace nearby. He remembered the sound; he had heard it every day during his years of college, echoing over the quad as he studied in his dorm room. The room with the creaking floorboard they never fixed.
They were in Bruce Wayne's old Princeton dorm room.
Harvey.
"I've never been in here before," said the vigilante's voice. "You never let me come in here. Thought you could keep some place safe from me, but I'm here now. You can't get rid of me now."
"I have no intention of getting rid of you."
"This place is condemned anyway," the killer grumbled. "They're going to tear it down next week. I hope you intend to have us out of here by then."
"We'll be gone by then. Don't worry."
"And then we'll go deal with that faithless bitch," the vigilante said with relish. "She betrayed us. I know she did."
A sigh. "I betrayed her first."
There was a pause while the footsteps continued to pace through the room. Batman couldn't make sense of the sound. There were two voices, moving side by side through the room. But there was only one set of footfalls.
The rough, angry voice spoke again after a silence, sounding almost pleading now. "I know you didn't love her, but I wanted you not to be--you know. I wanted you to be normal. A whole man."
Harvey laughed then, and the killer's voice joined in, the two bleak sounds echoing weirdly around the small room. "That's wonderful," Harvey said tiredly. "That's irony for you."
The other voice seemed to have regained its manic cheer. "Irony for us, boyo!" The steps stopped in front of Batman, who was still working on the ropes binding him. He was almost free. "But I think our flying rodent friend is awake. Let's let him see what he's made of us."
Hands on his face. The left one tugged roughly at the blindfold while the right one gripped his chin, holding his head steady.
As the blindfold was jerked free, the thumb of the hand holding Batman's chin grazed across his gagged lips almost gently. Then his kidnapper stepped back so Batman could see all of him at once.
Bruce bit down hard on the gag to keep from making a sound at the sight of the person before him, shock pounding through his body like a nightmarish surf. There was only one man in the room.
Harvey's face was neatly bisected, the left side scarred into a red, welted ruin, whorls of cicatriced flesh studded with one bloodshot, jaundiced eye, eternally glaring. The lips on the left side were melted away into a permanent, drooping sneer.
The right side was unmarred. From it, Harvey's familiar hazel eye looked at Bruce sadly. What a mess we're in now, my friend, it seemed to say.
Batman closed his eyes.
"Can't handle looking at reality, can you?" said the sneering laugh of the murderer.
"But really, who can?" added Harvey. Batman forced his eyes open again to meet his friend's half-gaze. Harvey laughed softly. "My...associate...here doesn't know why we've come to this place. But he's nervous about it. Can you tell? I can. And he's right, he should be nervous. Because only here, in the last safe place in the world, can I do this." The click of a gun hammer cocking, and Harvey's right hand came up with a gun.
He pointed it at his own temple.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing, you pansy?" The vigilante's voice erupted from the same mouth Harvey's had, and with a surge of adrenaline, Batman tore loose the last of his bonds and leapt to knock the gun away from Harvey. It went off, the bullet burying deep into the wall, and Batman's fist caught his friend on the chin, staggering him. They went down together, the cruel yellow eye already closed, the hazel one dazed and blinking.
"Why'd you stop me?" Harvey's voice was slurred and disbelieving. "It was my last chance. My last..." He sagged forward, unconscious.
: : :
The guard pocketed the crisp bills Bruce handed him. "--but in your case, Mr. Wayne, sir, we'll make an exception." He led Bruce down the narrow, dimly-lit halls.
Bruce listened to the howls of the damned in Arkham.
Eventually they came to a barred door. Inside the cell was a man shackled to a wall by his scarred left hand. They had left him unbound because he was well-known and well-liked...until he had tried to rip a guard's throat out. His right hand dangled free, and the right side of his face lit up when he saw Bruce outside his cell.
"Well, well, well. If it isn't the faggot friend," snarled the left side.
"Don't pay attention to him, Bruce," said Harvey cheerfully. "He's just angry."
Bruce swallowed hard, staring at the ruin of his friend. "Are they treating you well?" he asked, insanely mundane.
"Not particularly, no. But then, I'm not sure we particularly deserve good treatment, do we?"
"I came to say I'm sorry." Bruce wanted to say more, but his throat had closed up and nothing came out.
"My dear friend." Harvey's voice was terrifyingly gentle. "Don't be. This is...freeing, in some ways. I can be honest at last. I can relax. I can lose. Of course, I've had to make some compromises."
"I get to run the show from now on," chortled the left side darkly. "No more acting up from the poofter."
"Yes, yes," said Harvey, almost affectionately. "I told you. You win. You always win."
Bruce tried to say something, to interrupt the insane dialogue that was a monologue. He couldn't find his voice.
The being that had once been Harvey cocked his head at the man outside the barred window. "Of course, we'll be needing a new name. We haven't decided yet, but you'll be one of the first to know when we do." A pause while Harvey's eye gazed at Bruce, standing choked and mute.
"Bruce. I have to apologize to you too. I didn't trust you, didn't think you were helping me. I should have known...that you would never let me down." A small laugh. "It's amazing how much easier it is to say things now."
Harvey raised his unshackled right hand and touched it to his lips. "Love you, Bruce," he said softly, extending his hand to its fullest length, so the fingertips reached just beyond the bars.
Bruce stepped forward and let the fingertips touch his lips. Then he backed away and left Arkham Asylum, walked through his city alone.
His lips burned as though they'd been touched with a white-hot coal.
: : :
Bruce Wayne stood on the Princeton campus, outside his old dormitory. It was a beautiful early April day, robins hopping on the quad, daffodils starting to open.
In his ear, a whisper like the springtime. "Bruce. Are you all right? I'm worried about you."
Bruce pulled his trenchcoat closer around himself, watching the building. "I'll go home soon, Clark. I promise."
Bruce Wayne watched as they tore down the last safe place in the world.
Then he went home, went into the cave, and locked the door behind him.