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It was always like this.
It never changed.
Despite being the closest to the sky on a rooftop, the stars weren’t anywhere to be seen. Either smog or clouds kept their glow snuffed, but a dim light pushing through could be identified as the Moon.
On one end of the roof, stood the Batman. A chilling breeze licked the little skin he had showing, pushing the ends of his cape in an ominous pattern as he stared at the one on the opposite side of the small building’s roof.
It was difficult to see in Gotham’s night, but he could recognize the silhouette of Harvey Dent and Two Face anywhere. Their memories and shared moments were enough to fill a museum of tapestries. Even if those beautiful works of art would progressively get more and more burned and tattered until they reached the present moment: a single thread, singed at the end.
A light shining in his eye caused Batman to squint on instinct, and it didn’t take a genius to realize the object reflecting light. Two Face, or Harvey Dent, was fiddling with a coin in between his middle and pointer finger. Batman couldn’t help but long for the days he could recognize what that restlessness meant.
He hasn’t even realized he had closed distance on the man until they had glanced back, showing the unscarred face that now held wrinkles that told stories of stress and trauma. Venom was held in those eyes, and a scowl that powerful was enough to stop Batman in his steps.
The other man sighed, his brows creasing and the sharpness in his eye softening. Batman couldn’t almost detect somberness in the look before he stared back over the edge of the building.
Batman decided to take the initiative. Even if the words wanted so badly to stay in his throat. He didn’t even mean the usual gruffness and rasp of his voice. This time it was merely a product of him forcing himself to speak.
“Who am I talking to?”
A simple question, but a cowardly one. It dodged all the questions that needed to be asked and the statements that needed to be said. He regretted saying it the moment the words spat off his tongue, but he knew he couldn’t backtrack. Instead he watched as the man in front of him shifted ever so slightly but didn’t look back.
“The one who made the call.”
Batman couldn’t detect whatever emotion laced Harvey’s voice. Perhaps it wasn’t just one, perhaps it was a melting pot of too many to detect. Or maybe it was something Batman didn’t want Harvey to be feeling. Whichever it was, Batman couldn’t tell and he felt his hand tighten into a fist over that fact.
“Harvey,” Batman murmured, less to confirm or ask, but more because he always enjoyed the past DA’s name rolled off his tongue. Harvey didn’t bother denying nor confirming. He would much rather watch the streets tonight.
“You wanted to talk,” Batman stated, his feet carrying him closer to the edge, and more important Harvey. Before he knew it, he was right beside the shorter man. He hated how he loomed over him, even if Harvey never feared the Batman. “So talk.”
He watched silently as Harvey shifted to where his face was looking away from Batman, rendering it unreadable. His hands restlessly twitched with the coin in his fingers, caught in a quiet battle of deciding whether or not to flip the coin. His wrist eventually fell limp and the coin remained snugly between two fingers.
“What are we?”
The words Harvey uttered carried more of a chill than the breeze ever could. The bat’s head tilted down, eyes narrowing as he thought, lips being bit by his teeth.
“Lovers? Exes? Enemies? A hero and villain? It’s all so muddled now. It used to be all black and white, but…” he trailed off as he brought the coin to his face. He couldn’t help but stare at his reflection. “…it’s brown. Mixed with colors that should be gone.”
Batman couldn’t say anything for a moment. No matter how hard he bit his tongue or how much he grinded his teeth, he couldn’t tell. He didn’t have an answer.
“…I don’t know,” Batman was forced to admit. He sounded utterly defeated. It was a tone the symbol should never carry, and yet it did.
When Harvey didn’t speak, Batman outstretched a hand. It hovered above Harvey’s shoulder as hesitance took hold. Eventually it won, and Batman dropped it back under his cape.
“…Harvey,” he started, forcing more words through gritted teeth. He didn’t know how to do this. He was horrible with words in situations as hideously complex as this one. “I know I cannot fix things. I want to more than anything, but… I scarred you. That is something that cannot be fixed. I can finally grasp that now.”
Harvey shifted a little again, as if attempting to make a decision. It ended with him remaining idle. So he continued.
“I thought I could start as Batman, but I cannot. Batman is supposed to be a savior, someone to right the wrongs of my past, and yet I still hurt you.” When did his hands start shaking? He could feel the tremors as he struggled to keep them still. His breaths were light and hissed through his clenched jaw.
Slowly, he forced his shivering hands to the sides of the mask. His fingers curled around the edges, tightening as he forced himself to take it off.
He wasn’t sure how, but Harvey apparently sensed it or just had remarkable timing. He turned around as Bruce lowered the mask and held it as his chest, which was getting a beating from his heart. His face still made his heart both leap and ache at the same time.
“I’ve said this too many times as Batman, so allow me to say this as Bruce ,” he could barely feel his lips anymore as he spoke. He wouldn’t be surprised if the words started slurring together.
Harvey looked almost frantic. His eyes shook as he stared, face molded into an ever present disbelief. As if he thought this was a dream.
“I don’t want to fight you. Neither of you. I want to try again, and not by rebuilding off a foundation that failed. I want to build a new foundation with you with trust and time. Not as a partner, but as someone you can lean onto.”
Harvey looked away, once again obscuring his face and taking Bruce’s privilege of trying to read his emotions and thoughts. He watched as the man leaned again the railing on the edge, balling the hand that held the coin into a fist and letting it tremble with force. He wasn’t sure what was happening anymore. Bruce had lost the ability to read Harvey and his unspoken language the moment he stopped trusting him so many years ago. Bruce never stopped regretting that.
“I don’t want to keep doing this.”
The way Harvey said that startled Bruce. The man barely even let emotion slip in his face, and yet the tone of that sentence, the weight it carried, it forced Bruce’s eyes to widen and his jaw to loosen. It sounded as if Harvey spat it out. It was clunky as if reading from a script, and yet it felt so natural as if it was brewing in his chest and eating him from the inside out.
Bruce tightened his hands once more as he suppressed the urge to touch Harvey. To rest a hand on his shoulder and pull him close.
Bruce pursed his lips as he struggled to string together the right words to say, but Harvey didn’t give him time. He turned back around, facing Bruce with eyes slightly reddened and damp.
“I’m tired. I’ve been doing this for- *God,* I don’t know how long,” the last words stumbled into a quiet mumble as he pressed a hand against his forehead, pressing his thumb into scarred skin in both frustration and exhaustion. “We’ve been doing this for so long… and yet Gotham won’t listen . It calls our persistence insanity, rather than seeing it as important. I’m just- so tired.”
His head fell when he muttered those last words, and Bruce wished he could relate. He was tired of all this as well, but while Harvey was thrown again and again into an Asylum by Bruce’s own hands and deemed insane, crime fighting became instinct for Bruce. Crime Fighting went dull, and he found a spark in something new. Something better.
He sighed.
“I wish I could tell you I understand, but I don’t,” Bruce admitted, turning back to face the roads down below and leaning against the railing. He folded his arms at the top, pushing his thumbs against each other. “I can never truly understand your perspective. However…” Bruce trailed off, pausing as a slight smile pushed its way onto his face. He tried not to acknowledge the visible confusion from Harvey he noticed in his peripheral vision.
“Anything can get dull, but there’s some things that provide me with some energy. I used to feel that exhaustion but I found others. A family .”
Harvey sighed, one full of irritation. Though it carried familiarity, one that was almost playful. “The Robins…” Harvey commented. “Yes, I know about your bunch of brats.”
Bruce chuckled, shaking his head. “Yes, but they’re *my* bunch of brats. I didn’t even know how much I needed them until now,” Bruce mumbled that last part while absentmindedly picking at the globe’s seam on his hand. Harvey’s gaze lingered on Bruce, another difficult to decipher expression encrypted on his wrinkles.
Bruce took that as a sign to continue. “…I’ve felt a crushing loneliness for most of my life. Because of it, I’ve pushed people away and hurt many without the intention,” he explained, head tilting downward. His tone instantly carried a heaviness to it. “It wasn’t until I started listening to them and Alfred when I realized how wrong I was. I messed up many things, and our relationship is the one I regret the most.”
Bruce turned back to Harvey. He held bewilderment on his face, as well as conflict.
“I’m not asking you this because I want to make myself feel better, and I’m not asking you for a second chance at what we had. I just want what I said before: to be here for you. As a friend. Will you let me?”
The expression of conflict quickly took over Harvey’s expression. Bruce watched as his brows furrowed and he looked away, entire body tensing as the gears in his head turned.
Bruce waited. He was patient, and damn if adopting four children and becoming a mentor and father figure to around eight hadn’t given him limitless patience. That is, until he saw Harvey’s hand release from a fist and his thumb slip that coin onto his curled up fingers.
He hesitated, thumb resting on the top of the coin, and that was all Bruce needed. Reaching out, he quickly cupped Harvey’s hand and covered the coin in a swift motion, desperation leaking into his movements. “*Don’t,*” his voice sounded as if it was teetering into begging. “Don’t use the coin to make this choice. Make it yourself.”
Harvey looked at him. Bruce could hear his slightly uneven breathing and it made his chest tighten. He analyzed the creases and wrinkles in Harvey’s expression, and yet, still could not read it. He watched as Harvey’s fave fell, the man looking down as he slipped the coin back under his fingers. He let his hand drop to his side.
“I can’t,” he mumbled. “I can’t- not alone.”
“Then ask him,” Bruce suggested.
Harvey looked back up, brows creasing as he thought. Conflict came back up on his face, before he nodded a few times. “…alright.”
He didn’t speak again after that, and it took a moment for Bruce to register when Harvey went still. His body swayed every so slightly in the breeze, and yet he continued standing idly and staring into nothing. It took a moment for Bruce to remember what this was— *dissociating?* he wondered, though he might’ve been wrong. Alfred knew more about this stuff than he did, and Bruce was already beginning to make a mental list of notes for further research on the topic. He truly wanted to help Harvey, and not by erasing the part of him everyone falsely feared.
So Bruce waited.
And waited.
And kept waiting.
He had begun to space out as well, cape whipping in the breeze, as his patience was tested.
He could only guess it was about thirty minutes before Harvey began to move.
“Harvey,” he half called, half stated. The anticipation of what he would say had been eating him aliv-
“I don’t like you, Bats.”
Bruce’s mouth slammed shut at the tone colder than anything Mr Freeze could hope of creating. The nickname instantly clicked in his brain, telling him that he wasn’t talking to Harvey anymore.
“Two Face,” Bruce corrected.
Two Face glared at him, but it wasn’t like any of the ones he had seen in the past. This wasn’t filled with malice nor venom, but something he couldn’t quite place.
“You know what I want. I’ve told you countless times. I want what’s best for the body, for us. And yet…” Bruce expected that last part to end with a frustrated huff, not a disappointed sigh. “I find that you want to make things better. When you’ve been one of the worst things to us, the *source* of so much pain. You hurt us so much and yet…” he trailed off again. Bruce’s entire body was wrecked with light tremors, caused from a horrid mixture of regret and guilt.
He truly hated the mistakes he made with Harvey, and he hated the ones he continued to make until he finally listened to Alfred more.
“Every time you’d get badly injured when we were fighting, I had to force myself to ignore it. It hurt to see you in such pain, but our safety is my priority. Our well being is my priority. Are you speaking with the entire truth?”
Bruce was startled with the sudden barrage of questions, but managed to throw his surprise to the side. Blinking a few times, he quickly regained his composure. “Of course. If you feel like it’s harmful for you two, I’ll let you walk away with no chasing.”
Two Face narrowed his eyes. His lips pulled back ever so slightly in an irritated snarl as Bruce waited for him to finish what felt like hyper analyzing him for any signs of potential lying.
“…fine,” he finally said through a mutter.
“Fine?” Bruce asked, disbelief leaking into his voice despite his smile.
“Yes. It was what Harvey wanted,” Two Face muttered, and Bruce suddenly found his hands really uncomfortable.
Hesitantly, he opened an arm up as a silent offer. Two Face eyed it, another wave of suspicion crossing over his mind, before he sighed again and slowly pressed himself against Bruce’s side.
“…this is an alright start,” he mumbled, voice so quiet that Bruce could barely catch it under the wind. He chuckled, lightly.
“It’s cold up here,” Bruce stated. “We can head to the manor, it’ll be warmer and we can talk more about this. Both of you.”
He heard a light hum as Two Face thought. “Are the bat-brats there?”
Bruce shook his head. “No… they tend to be in and out. Damian is home, but he keeps to himself.”
“…alright then. Just to talk.”
Bruce nodded before lightly squeezing Two Face against his side. The man may have been newer to him, but that didn’t mean Bruce disliked him.
“Good,” Bruce hummed, a tone carrying warmth accompanying his voice. “Alfred will be happy to meet you.”