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Gotham Courthouse Jail, 1991
The jail cells of Gotham City County Jail certainly hadn't gotten any bigger. So thought Harvey Dent as he paced the 6x8 space. For a man that was over 6 ft, that was barely sitting room.
Gilda his wife had gone home for the night, promising to be back in the morning after staying at the jail as long as she could. But the baby had to be fed and looked after at home. Still, it was too easy to feel forlorn and jittery without her since his surrender to the police.
Especially with the past hours being spent in interrogation yelling at that bitch district attorney. The cell block was quiet except for the occasional computer keyboard clicks. He was isolated from all the other criminals booked that day, slated to return to Arkham while he awaited any new charges.
Speaking of the District Attorney Janice Porter...
"Hello Harvey." Who should clack into the holding area for criminals of all kinds on her kitten heels but the woman herself?
Interested at the voice, Harvey Dent turned around in his jail cell to find prosecutor Porter on the free side of the bars. The guard stationed to watch the holding cells was conveniently missing from his desk. Paid to step out? Or trusted the DA would be safe with the lunatic behind bars? Who knew. It was Gotham.
Janice Porter leaned against, one hand curling a bar beam between her fingers and the other carrying some briefcase. "If you can believe me, it does not give me any joy to see you in here." She spoke up again, rather sober.
"Oh? That's not the kind of attitude you had in the interrogation room, Porter." The former district attorney of Gotham looked through cautious eyes.
Rather than answer that puzzle, Gotham's leading prosecutor looked him over from head to toe dressed in his penstripe, navy blue and black colored suit the county jail officials hadn't yet replaced with a prison jumpsuit and requested something of him that caught him by complete surprise. "Your other personality...Two-Face. I would like to speak to him. If I can."
This was bizarre. Harvey took a step forward, propped himself on the gates and bent his head. "Why?"
"Because I have questions for him. You. That side. They need to be answered while we have convenient time alone. Considerate it part of the deal you made with my office to keep your wife out of jail."
Your wife she was using as cheap leverage. Harvey Dent didn't give a damn about having an easy life in any kind of mental hospital or jail, he survived as one of the worst lunatics in a place like Arkham Asylum when he put away half the psychos there as DA. But he cared about his wife and Porter knew it.
Finally, the man known as Two-Face in the criminal underworld of Gotham drew from his pocket the dual sided coin and flipped it to the scarred side in his palm. There was an audible click of metal. "All right Porter. Shoot your shot." With that harsh spirited growl, the persona of Two-Face emerged.
Although the physical disfigurement of Harvey Dent was repaired by plastic surgery, the mental scars that created Two-Face ran far deeper. Perhaps too deep to cure.
Setting the briefcase down by her feet and grasping the bars with her other hand, the highest attorney in the city made for a entertaining picture from the jailed man's line of vision of an unhinged caged animal. Desperation scratched beneath her skin, threatening to bust out. Tears of pent up emotion were in her eyes. Years of clutching old pains close until they became necrotic had taken their toll on her mind and body. Porter was a wreck.
"Why?" Her question was soft in it's tone but the grief behind it was forceful. "You don't love me. I want to know why."
Instead of flipping his goddamn coin to irritate her into madness, Two-Face sunk one arm into his slacks pocket. Staring at her across the short distance between them as she babbled on.
"I would have given you it all. Everything. Love, sex, whatever pleasure you think Gilda gave you, I would have given it and more. Whatever you wanted. What is it about her that you had to have?"
For years those questions tortured her without end, burned her alive inside, since that night outside the Dent's kitchen window--or that Christmas day when she had him in her arms taking his clothes off...and Gilda was nowhere to be found but he always chose her. No matter what Porter did.
During the trial and cross-examination of his stupid priss of a wife a few years before, it was all Porter could do not to throw herself over the witness box and strangle her.
The cold focus of Two Face's gaze was hard for anyone to handle. A bit like Harvey's corrosive examinations as prosecutor. "Are you sure you want to know? The Truth, the whole truth and nothing but?"
"Any Truth would be nice after the sadistic lies you've given me." Porter hissed, shaking head to foot with upset and he smirked wide to see it.
"Simple, Porter. I'm the evil streak the other me likes to keep locked up. And the only woman that makes me feel...whole, the one that gets me, is Gilda. You could say we're two of a kind."
His expression turned hostile, eyes gleaming with contemptuous hatred for her. "And I have a problem with a bitch who says publicly she doesn't cross certain lines, pretends to uphold the law and then asks me to leave my wife. Makes you a hypocrite, corrupt, two-faced. And I had to punish that. Most fitting punishment for you was a doppelganger. Higby did his job. Hope you enjoyed him."
Unable to think now of the traumatic memory of the doppelganger of Two-Face, Porter shuddered and blocked it from her mind. But that hatred so clear in his eyes... his use of her own phrase "two of a kind", stabbed her to the heart.
"So." Hurt cracked in her voice. Teeth were biting together inside her clenched jaw. "All that time we spent together, the flowers, the cards, everything...meant nothing. You really didn't feel anything."
"Come on, you knew Harvey is a married man. You got the warning I sent." He glared through the jail bars. "You ignored it."
A long buried memory stirred, of the afternoon at her penthouse she had gotten a strange unsigned envelope. An envelope of a photo of Harvey and Gilda's wedding with that cold note.
Pinpricks of shock stuck into Porter, tingling across her skin and spine. She gasped sharply. "Wait. You sent..." And her throat burned. All these years, the spurned woman believed his witch wife mailed it to intimidate her.
"You sent the wedding photo?"
"Good side of Harvey--me--managed to steal control enough to try and warn you off. Hoped to spare you some pain. If my wedding photo wasn't reminder enough... Hell, I even wrote you a damn message. Too bad for you you didn't listen."
Now she squawked, face twisting up with rage, heartbreak. "Didn't listen? You agreed to the deal with me, spent time with me! Why? Why even save my life, warn me of somebody trying to kill me if you didn't care about me at all?"
His simple shrug betrayed rigid shoulders, now he looked away from her. Guilt. She wouldn't have believed it but guilt was lapping up on his conscience. "All part of the game the coin told me to play. And don't forget, you found me. Asked to make a deal with me in the first place to catch costumed freaks. Trade secrets. That was useful. Falling in love with you wasn't in the fine print."
"Oh but you were happy to go down on Gilda and then suck the lips off me? Send me cards saying I was your sweetheart and flowers?!" Porter shoved her crimson face close against the bars between them, snarling. "You sick bastard."
"She's my wife, Porter. I love my wife." Suddenly the personality Two Face and his harsh tongue appeared awkward, lips parted. Something struggled to form on his tongue. "It was the lucky coin that told me to have any dealings with you in the first place, not my choice. For the rest of it, I never had any intention of being with you. I'm sorry. For what it's worth."
Sorry. Janice Porter froze at the word, expression suspended with a mixture of real pain and disbelief and it increased the unwelcome weight of remorse settling within Harvey's stomach.
He'd hurt her. Used her twice. Before, the knowledge of hurting this lying bitch who hated his wife, who tried to tear up his family, his life didn't bother him. Now, for some reason the guilt seeped like a slow bleeding wound. He even would have murdered her that day in her apartment until pressured to flip the coin--a coin that landed on good.
"You're sorry..." She repeated, fingers vibrating the vertical iron bars, tone a frightening mutilation of a sob and a laugh. "You're SORRY?!" The incredulous outburst from her throat was loud and echoed throughout and she jabbed a menacing finger through the bars.
"Oh, you'll be sorry alright, you bastard, for ever meeting me when I convict you for terrorism and the murder of Mario Falcone! Guess what, Harvey? No insanity pleas this time, I'm going to use every bit of evidence you gave me against you to throw you away for life in Blackgate."
Abruptly, the furious woman turned her back to him, stopping on her heels a moment to grab up the briefcase sitting on the floor. "You may be able to convince your criminal wife this monster you are is a separate person, that you want to be better." She shot off. "Let's see what a jury of your peers thinks."
"You think I'm afraid of going up against you?" All traces of remorse quickly receded from Two Face's cold reply in wake of her threats. Grabbing onto the iron bars with one hand, Harvey took a broad shouldered stance, eyes deadly. An offensive posture, ready to fight.
"Hardly." Now the blood hot fury of Janice began to harden, turn sniping. "I would reconsider your high and mighty decision to not hire counsel and represent yourself, Harvey. Unless you want to make convicting you not much of a challenge."
"You couldn't convict my wife." It was such a relief guilt for this bitch drained away, to reach instead for hatred and vengeance. Harvey Dent's darker side was quick to snarl back. "Don't think I've forgotten about the little arrangement you made with Krol and Chambers to put her behind bars.
Or...how desperate you were for me to fuck you in your apartment when my wife disappeared just to try and break us up. I'm sure the people of Gotham would be very interested to hear the depth of your infatuation with the crazy man Two-Face." His glare was hard and calculating. "If you think you have leverage, Porter, think again."
Porter stalked away without a word to answer. Not even a backward glance.
For a long time, the wicked persona glared after her letting his anger stew. He could just beat his fist into the bars until his knuckles were bloody for the hell of it. Eventually though, even anger loses power and beyond that... other voices whispered inside his head how wrong he was.
Harvey resurfaced and slumped, shoulders bent by trouble against the gates of the cell locking him inside. "Guilty. Harvey Dent is guilty before the court." He rubbed a shaking hand over his face. Yes, he Harvey Dent had wanted no part of any kind of deal with the DA when she first assumed office. Didn't want to get involved with Porter again because he knew by some instinct how much she still loved him, knew it would be a big mistake.
And worse, because of it he'd brought even more suffering and trouble to his wife. Opened Gilda up to legal attack, if Bruce hadn't helped out his wife in paying bail and her lawyer fees--she would have had to drain her bank account, put the house up for mortgage...
All because of him. His fucking fault. All of it.
But what could he have done? He paced distractedly around the cell now. The coin had decided for the deal, no matter how Harvey felt about it. And the coin wouldn't allow for ending the deal sooner no matter how upset he was.
But...he ignored the chance to flip the coin for chosing between these two women--because both sides of him wanted Gilda. And he defied the coin when it landed scarred side, demanding he continue the deal after Porter begged him to leave his wife--even surrendered without it, killed Mario Falcone without it's blessing. What was truth and choice anymore?
Who was he kidding, hoping to change and become a better man?
With a heavy sigh, Harvey hung his head. A sudden weight of despair around his neck like a anvil.
He could still see Porter's face carved with hurt as if she was still here, see Gilda's expression drenched with tears and years of deep grief he caused her. And Bruce's desperately tense, pleading visage at that stand off in Wayne Manor, pleading for his best friend not to pull the trigger to murder him.
God, Bruce... Tears suddenly stung his eyes, overwhelmed just how goddamn kind Bruce... everybody has been to him after the shit he's done.
He was still guilty no matter his repaired face, a monster. A killer.
What he should do, the proper punishment was to let his wife go, cut any marriage bonds so she could find a man that hadn't drug her through the mud. But it would fucking tear him up beyond recovery to lose her, there wasn't much point in undergoing the struggle, the agonizing suffering to become a better man without her to reach for.
His heart twisted under his ribcage, aching. That beautiful, sweetest of women had never given up on him, never divorced him or threw him away even when he gave up on himself. Hell she saved his life more then once. Put her freedom on the line for him. Driven herself to kill half a dozen people to save him.
The warm pressure of Gilda's soft hands on both sides of his face when she told him goodbye for the night just a few hours ago he could still remember.
"There will be hard days ahead of you. When you feel like giving up, remember me. Remember your daughter. We are waiting for you. And it doesn't mean things have to be perfect. You're not alone, Harvey."
He snorted wetly. Hard to believe that right now. Especially with the storm Janice Porter was about to bring on his head. But he would try.
end