Chapter Text
They say there are prices no man will pay.
But Harvey Dent had never been just a man.
He’d been a district attorney once (he’d been clean-cut, sharp-tongued, righteous, once). He’d been the golden boy, the last best hope of Gotham’s broken heart.
Then he’d been something else entirely.
A nightmare in a suit.
A legend whispered through clenched teeth.
A monster whose story could only be told through the flip of a coin.
But when they buried her, when they lowered his little girl into the ground, none of that mattered.
Not the man.
Not the monster.
Only the father remained.
And what would he have given to rewrite that ending?
Everything.
He would have surrendered the coin first, of course. That damn symbol of chance and cowardice. He would’ve tossed it into the gutter, ground it beneath his heel, watched it sink into the mud. No more 50/50. No more deflection. Just certainty. Just grief.
He would’ve given his scars, not just the ones on his face, though he would’ve torn those away too, raw and bleeding, but the ones etched across his soul. The sins. The betrayals. The men he’d hurt, the lines he’d crossed, the pieces of himself he’d shattered. He would’ve given it all to undo her final breath.
He would’ve offered up his name. Let the city spit it out like poison. Let them call him coward, killer, freak. Let the underworld reject him, let the heroes forget him. Let the myth of Harvey Dent and the one of Two Face both crumble into dust. As long as she could live, he’d welcome their contempt.
He would’ve traded his mind, the last sliver of sanity he clung to in the dark. If madness was the toll, he’d pay it gladly. He’d let Two-Face take the wheel, let the chaos consume him whole, if it meant Dixie Wayne would wake up in her own bed again.
He would’ve given his freedom. The cold concrete of a cell. The silence of the forgotten. Let them lock him away in the blackest pit of Arkham. Let them throw away the key. He didn’t need sky, or sun, or peace. Just her. Alive. Free.
He would’ve given his soul. If there was a devil who dealt in that kind of currency, Harvey would have knelt without hesitation. No haggling. No conditions. Just one plea: “Bring her back. She was young. She was afraid (she was mine).”
Let him hold her hand one more time. Let him whisper the words he never said enough “I’m sorry. I should’ve protected you.”
Because that was the truth that kept him up at night.
It wasn’t Bruce. It wasn’t God-Damned Carlos Flores and not even Talia, the woman who left her. It wasn’t the war between his own masks.
It was Harvey.
He should’ve protected her.
She wasn’t his by blood, no. But she was his. In the way that mattered. In the quiet things. In the small glances. In the battles fought not with fists, but with belief.
She was his daughter.
And he loved her.
So what would he have given?
Everything.
Every victory. Every failure. Every name he’d ever carried, every mask he’d ever worn. Every piece of Harvey Dent, and every piece of the thing that came after.
For Dixie?
He would’ve given the world, and let it burn behind him.
There are days he doesn’t speak. Just stands in the dark with his back to the reinforced glass, hearing the voices of his inmates shiver through the corridors of the asylum. Arkham moans like a dying thing, but Harvey doesn’t flinch. He’s grown used to the sound. It’s the silence that kills him now, the silence she left behind.
There was a time he believed in justice. In process. In second chances.
But when he lost her, that belief rotted clean through.
Dixie had been more than a light. She’d been the fragile string tying him back to the version of himself that used to dream, used to believe the city could be better, that he could be better. And now she is gone. Torn away like something owed to the dark.
He tries to imagine what it felt like, her last breath. Was she cold? Was she afraid? Did she cry out? Did she fight?
He hopes not. He hopes it was quick.
He doesn’t believe it was.
The clown doesn’t like to do things quickly.
Sometimes he sits in the sterile cubicle of his cell, staring into the plastic frame that holds her photograph. She is smiling in it. Her hair wild, wind-struck, her eyes impossibly blue. Like she didn’t know what the world was capable of. Like she truly believed the world could be more.
But he did.
He should’ve stopped it. Her. Should’ve seen the threads fraying.
He should’ve made her leave when he still had the power to scare her off. Should’ve been crueler. Should’ve lied better.
Should’ve loved her less.
Because he knows now…love is a weakness. Not hers. His.
She was strong. She died strong. He’s the one rotting from the inside out.
Some nights he dreams he’s bargaining in the dark. Not with a god. There are no gods in Gotham. Only monsters and men. But still, he offers.
A child’s laughter, gone.
The sun on his face, gone.
The final sliver of peace inside him, gone.
He offers his hands, bloodied from years of violence. His voice, ruined by screaming at walls that never spoke back. His face, what’s left of it. The ruined side and the human one both. All of it. Scraped away. Taken.
And if that’s not enough?
He offers memory.
Let him forget her if it means she lives.
Let him rot in madness, a man who doesn’t know he once loved a girl with eyes like the spring sky and a temper like fire. Let the pain be stripped. Let the name Dixie mean nothing.
Just let her breathe again.
But the silence never answers.
Not the grave. Not the wind. Not the godless thing he’s always been.
He lives because dying would be too easy. He lives because pain is the only thing left that's real. He lives because she believed in him, and now, he has to carry that belief like a curse.
There are no more prayers. Just a man carved in regret.
And if there’s a reckoning coming, he’ll meet it gladly.
But he won’t flip the coin.
Not for this.
This he bears in full.
He doesn’t eat much anymore. Doesn’t sleep either. If he does, it’s in bursts, ugly things, half-dreams full of red and water and her voice calling for someone else. She never called for him. Not in the end. He was too far away. And now he’s closer to her in death than he ever was when she lived.
He sees her everywhere.
In the flicker of a cigarette lighter of a guard. In the click of a psychiatrists’ heels on the pavement. In the echo of laughter not meant for him. She haunts. Not like a ghost. Ghosts are kind. She is truth. She is judgment (she is his daughter, but even more, she is District Attorney Dent’s daughter and it MEANS something).
She is every version of her he failed.
She was nine when she asked in broken English if the city ever got quiet. He told her no. Told her the noise was a lullaby, and that one day she’d miss it if it went away. He was lying. The truth was he couldn’t imagine quiet. The truth was, he didn’t want her to grow up learning the sound of screaming as background music. He wanted to keep that part of Gotham from her for as long as he could.
She was fifteen when she told him she was tired. Just that. “I’m tired, uncle Harvey.”
He asked if it was school. She said no.
He asked if it was Bruce. She said no.
He asked if it was him. She didn’t answer.
And he never asked again. He should’ve.
That silence, that choice not to pry, that was the worst mistake of his life.
Because she was tired of being alive.
And he didn’t see it. Or maybe he did. Maybe he just couldn’t bear to hear it out loud.
What would he give?
He would give time. Every hour he has left, pulled from his chest and burned on the altar of her name.
He would give his reputation, already shredded, let it die entirely. Let them call him monster, freak, killer. Let them erase the man. Let them pretend he never mattered, so long as she still does.
He would give his loyalty. To this city. To Bruce. To the sick dream of justice that once carried him through fire. He’d become the villain they always feared, if it meant one more second with her.
He would give joy. Forever. He would forget how to smile. He would never laugh again. He would dig his own heart out with his bare hands and crush it underfoot if it would bring her back with that crooked grin and that too-fast mouth and that impossible, insufferable light.
He would give his name.
He would give his soul.
He would give the world, if the world would take it.
But the world doesn’t deal in trades like that.
It only takes.
And it took her.
When he escapes Arkham, he doesn’t have any grand plan prepared, just the outline Dixie imprinted on his very soul the day he met her left to guide him.
And maybe that's why his feet lead him to the Manor.
Wayne Manor had never seemed so small. Not to Harvey.
Not when he stormed through the foyer, coat drenched in Gotham rain, face half shadow, half flame.
Alfred tried to stop him, soft voice, trembling hands, eyes red rimmed and tired, but Harvey didn't even hear him. Not really. The fire in his ears was too loud. The fury in his veins too thick. He didn’t knock. He didn’t wait.
He found Bruce in the study.
Of course he did.
Dark wood, darker guilt.
The scent of old paper, old scotch, and older grief.
Bruce turned, already knowing.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
And Harvey laughed, sharp, jagged. “You don’t get to tell me where I should be, Bruce.”
The words hung heavy. And Harvey stepped forward, trailing wet footprints and madness.
“She’s dead.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know a damn thing,” Harvey snarled, the coin clenched in his palm so tight it cut him. “You think grief looks like a gravestone? You think it ends with a funeral?”
Bruce stood, jaw locked, fists curling.
“I held her hand when she was nine,” Harvey said, voice trembling now. “When she asked me if she was bad because her real mom left her. I told her no. I told her she was light. I told her…” He stopped. “I told her she’d never be alone.”
The silence cracked like ribs under pressure.
“And what did you do, Bruce?” he hissed. “Gave her a credit card and threw her into the world? Let her fight monsters while you played god in the shadows, moving all the wires, never stepping out of your Brucie facade?”
“She wanted to fight for a better world. She wanted to be just like you”
“She was a child!”
The words echoed like a slap, but not because he shouted them. Because it was the truth, slamming into both of them with full force.
Bruce didn’t deny it.
“She was extraordinary.”
“She’s dead.” A beat. And then Harvey whispered “And you still get to be alive.”
Something shifted in Bruce’s eyes. Not weakness. Just... weariness. “If you’re here to kill me,” he said, “do it.”
Harvey laughed again. Broken. Hollow. “Oh no. Not yet. You don’t get the easy way out.”
He stepped closer, now nose to nose with the man who was once his best friend.
“You’re going to live with it. The way I do. You’re going to wake up every day and remember what you took. What you couldn’t save.”
“I remember.”
“Not enough.” Then softer. Like a man speaking to the ghost beside him. “She was everything, Bruce. She was the last good part of me.” A pause. “And you burned her away. Day after day, year after year. You were the one hurting her. You were the one who rejected her time and time again. Hell, she wouldn't have had any use for me at all if you just had been a better father, but no, you couldn't, too trapped in your own world, in your own grief to realize that a child needs more than a trust found.”
Bruce didn’t look away.
Neither did Harvey.
But when he left, the silence that remained was louder than any scream.
It wasn’t planned. Not really. It wasn’t one of those intricate Harvey Dent things, with balance sheets and blueprints, with motive and law and deliberation. No. This was older. This was the coin without the toss. This was a verdict whispered from the deepest gut of a man too hollowed out for forgiveness.
He didn't do it for justice. He didn't do it for Gotham. He did it for her.
And Harley? Harley brought the mallet (Harley once looked far too often at his daughter and he didn’t like it at all but now…now Harley wants to help him, so it’s okay).
She was the one who found him sitting outside the courthouse (waiting for his old life or for his daughter to come back, he doesn’t know and she, luckyly, didn’t ask) steps in the rain, suit soaked, fedora low on his face, gun untouched at his side. She didn’t ask what he was doing. She just sat. Pulled out a flask. Didn't offer it. Drank. Waited.
Then finally, “You ready to kill the bastard?”
And he was.
Joker had danced past every system. Every trial. Every cage. He was a ghost in the machine, a virus in the bloodstream. He didn’t die because no one wanted to take the step into becoming what they feared. But Harvey wasn’t afraid anymore. Harvey had nothing left to fear.
And Harley…Harley wanted it too. Not because she still loved the Joker. Not because she didn’t. But because Dixie (wonderful, wonderful Dixie) had touched her too, in that strange, strange way she did with everyone she met.
So they found him.
Not in Arkham. Not behind bars. But laughing in the basement of an abandoned comedy club, trying on someone else’s skin. He didn’t even flinch when they came in. He looked up and said, “Well, if it isn’t the good, the bad, and the bat-shit blonde.”
Harvey didn’t say a word. He just put his arm around the clown's shoulder and manhandled him inside a car and then, later, outside of it and into the warehouse (always a warehouse, because they are in Gotham, and Gotham likes her crimes to stay hidden in those non-places).
Harvey looked at Harley then.
She nodded.
The mallet cracked through cartilage.
Then bone.
Then memory.
Joker screamed like a child.
Harley broke his jaw. Harvey crushed his hands.
He didn’t bleed like he thought he would.
He bled less. Like maybe he wasn’t real. Like maybe there was no man left in there at all.
Harvey held him down.
He didn’t blink.
He didn’t yell.
He didn’t smile.
He just whispered “You took her from me. From all of us. And now I’m taking you from yourself.”
When it was over, Harley dropped the mallet. Harvey stood over the wreckage. No trial. No jury. No coin. Just the end.
There was no pride in it. No relief.
But there was silence.
It was a beautiful crime.
Harley sobbed then.
Harvey didn’t cry. He couldn’t.
The tears had burned away long ago.
Because Dixie was gone.
And no one paid the price. Not until now.
He’d trade anything to have her back.
His body. His face. His name.
Every not-guilty verdict, every day he spent pretending the law could fix the rot.
He’d trade the DA’s office, his clean conscience, his sanity…Hell, he already had.
And if God had come down and offered her back in exchange for the other children, or even her brothers? He would have whispered yes without blinking.
Even if it would make her hate him.
Even if she would never forgive him, not for that.
Because they weren’t her.
They hadn’t lit up the courtroom with that smile, hadn’t snuck his flask when she thought he wasn’t looking, hadn’t made him believe, for a moment, that maybe he could be good again.
Dixie had been his.
Not like an object. Not a possession.
But the only thing in the world that had made him feel clean. Like fire making something pure.
And Bruce...
Bruce should’ve protected her.
Harvey had been the man with half a face and half a heart, but Bruce had everything, money, power, influence, the legitimacy of being her father. And still, he let her die.
But, in the quiet of his mind, he prayed.
Not to God.
To Dixie.
He asked her to forgive him for what he’d become.
And then, just as quietly, he asked her to haunt him forever.
After there was no cleanup. No grand escape. They left the body where it fell. A joke with no punchline. A ghost with no story left to haunt.
Just before walking away, Harley asked him if he’d ever love anyone again.
He just shook his head and whispered,
“I don’t think there’s anything left in me but her.”
Harley didn’t push. She understood.
Some love outlives its vessel. Some vengeance doesn’t end the story, it is the story. It’s the only thing left to say when the world stops listening.
When the cops came he didn't try to fight them off. There was no point in it, not anymore.
Bruce came days later. Stood behind the reinforced glass like he still owned the moral high ground. Like his bloodless hands made him holy.
“You had no right,” he said.
Harvey laughed. It was a sound from the gut, feral, cracked, raw. “You think justice makes a difference to a corpse?”
“She wouldn’t have wanted this.”
“You didn’t know her,” Harvey snapped. “Not like I did. She looked at you like a god, but she trusted me. She told me things you couldn’t even bear to hear.”
Bruce flinched. Barely. But it was enough. Because it was proof he was bleeding too.
“I held her hand,” Harvey said, standing now, trembling, voice low and unrelenting. “I sat beside her when she was nine and afraid of the dark. I taught her how to bluff at poker and how to make a speech. She came to me after everything that broke her. Not you. Not Alfred. Me.”
Bruce didn’t speak.
“She was my daughter in everything but blood. And you…” Harvey took a step forward, eyes burning. “You let her rot in her home, alone, when she was grieving. you let her take root in her office, because you were too scared to see that it wasn't healing, but her slow descent into nothingness. You left her there with him. You want to talk about rights?”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Finally, Bruce whispered, “You’re not the only one who lost her.”
But Harvey was already gone. Not physically. Not yet. But gone all the same.
Outside, the sky cracked open. Rain fell. Cleansing some. Feeding rot in others.
And Harvey…he prayed.
Not to God.
To her.
Always to her.