Chapter Text
The silver disc spins high under tasteful low lighting, and a tan, well-manicured hand snatches it out of the air and slaps it onto the back of the opposite wrist. Bright white teeth glitter in a handsome face, and the District Attorney for Gotham City lounges back in his plush booth.
"Heads you pick up the tab, tails I do."
"That wasn't funny the first time," says the billionaire on the other side of the table, very dryly. Harvey's wise to him, though. He's considered notable for his humorlessness, but it's really just a matter of learning to recognize his jokes. They're usually at your expense, and never involve smiling. Harvey laughs, and spins the lucky piece over his knuckles, not bothering to pretend to check, when they both know it can only have come up heads.
"You know I never bet except on a sure thing, Bruce."
"Yes, well, neither do I," says his patron with a significant quirk of an eyebrow, and Harvey accepts the subtle compliment without demur. He likes to think he's proven a good gamble.
They get back into Bruce's car, after the bill of course never comes up, because the restaurant knows to put it on Bruce's account and not bother him personally with things like paying for lunch. This was a working lunch, but it was also an indulgence, and Harvey needs to get back to the office in time to finish the afternoon's work. A housing regulation Bruce put through City Hall a few months ago is under judicial review, and they discuss what sort of pressure the judge in question is likely to respond to most of the way across midtown.
As they draw up in front of the gargoyle-speckled Courthouse, though, Bruce leans forward just before the limousine door opens. "Harvey."
Harvey gives him his full attention.
"The Jackson case. You might want to…let it go."
"Let it go?" Harvey shakes his head in incredulity. "Bruce, I have this man dead to rights for weapons smuggling, and you want me to let it go?"
He knows what this is, of course; he worked out years ago that Bruce has some kind of deal with the Owl. Mutual support, or something. He's not completely sure what Bruce is getting out of it that's worth his time, but he doesn't act like a man being blackmailed, so there's that. Richard 'Brick' Jackson works for the Owlman, and if he offers information in a plea bargain, Harvey will finally have something with which to go after the city's most abruptly powerful crimelord. If not an identity, some solid testimony about his existence and criminal activity from someone who's actually met the man.
Not, he admits to himself, that that's likely; Witness Protection is a sieve, everyone knows it, and the Owl's men are ready to die for him or they never get past entry-level positions. Jackson will go to prison without giving up a word, but apparently he's useful enough that the Owl has asked Bruce to lean on Harvey.
Bruce shrugs. "Pursuing it might end badly," he says, with the smooth bland tone Harvey envied from the time they first met, the way it hints at layered meanings under the obvious words.
Or, Harvey allows, it might not be about Jackson himself. It might simply be the Owl showing the world the kind of protection he can offer his loyal followers; able to call off the hounds of the law with a word, in the face of the most compelling evidence.
People already say enough about corruption in Gotham; Harvey's not ruining his own credibility for all time by jumping at a kingpin's word, even word passed via a major campaign contributor.
"Just a piece of advice," says Bruce. "From a friend." He smiles, and Harvey smiles back.
"Thanks for thinking of me, Bruce," he says.
"I try." Bruce shakes his hand, and they exchange the usual farewells, before Harvey actually gets out of the car.
"Oh, and Harvey…" Bruce's voice stops him on the sidewalk, and he turns back, squinting a little to see into the dimness of a cave of tinted glass, from where he stands in full sun. "Congratulations on your anniversary."
Harvey produces his best grin. "Thanks. Don't call for me at the office tonight; I'm taking Gilda out. Come Hell or Major Crimes Unit."
Bruce smirks and nods him a farewell before the chauffeur swings the door shut, leaving the District Attorney to step around a panhandler, mount the steps into the courthouse, and take the elevator up to his office, where he lets his smile vanish, and frowns out the window at the limousine just pulling away through the heavy midafternoon traffic.
Harvey owes the man a lot; mostly in the form of campaign funds but also in favors and strings pulled. He'd probably never have entered politics at all without Bruce's help and influence. If it was a personal favor, that would be one thing; if one of Bruce's executives had crossed a major line and he wanted to deal with it privately to protect Wayne Industries' reputation, Harvey would be entirely understanding, and let the matter slide.
But Bruce Wayne doesn't own him. Harvey can't afford to have him as an enemy, not if he wants to keep his career moving, but even Bruce Wayne won't throw over someone he's invested this much in, for breaking ranks over something this small. He'll probably respect Harvey more for it, actually. He has enough bootlickers around; someone who actually thinks can only be a relief. Heaven knows he would appreciate having more than one assistant DA with a brain in their head.
Besides, whatever his links to the Owl are, Bruce can't really want a weapons smuggler to go free. He's been a supporter of stricter gun control since…well, probably since he was eight. Everyone knows what happened to the Waynes. How could a man who doesn't believe the public can be trusted with firearms possibly want Brick Jackson to be let off?
Harvey returns to his desk and absently considers the perpetual paperwork. He's not going after the Owl with everything he has. The game has to be played, and as long as the bulk of organized crime in Gotham is passing through the man's claws and he has the bulwark of Bruce Wayne to hide behind, he's pretty much untouchable—and trying to touch him directly will put Harvey on Bruce's bad side. He gets that. No gangbusting for him. Someday there'll be a breakdown of relations between Bruce and his pet criminal mastermind, and when that day comes Harvey will be sitting on a heap of evidence, but he can wait.
In the meantime, though…big weapons smuggling conviction will look good for the public, even if it doesn't do anything to stem the actual arms traffic, since Jackson's barely more than a pawn. That just means the Owl can afford to lose him. Let him consider it a message to his other subordinates not to get caught.
Harvey reviews major upcoming cases and grinds his way through paperwork for the next four hours, and then instead of continuing for a few hours more, as is usual, he packs certain documents into his briefcase and leaves the building with a nod to his secretary. The reservation isn't until six, but it won't do to risk being late.
Gilda meets him at the door in her slip, paints and brushes all cleaned up and put away in the studio along with her smock. Her hair is set into the kind of artful heaps of golden curls he's never been able to determine whether she somehow manages to do herself, or alternately manages to obtain from a salon without his ever detecting her going out to do so. He holds the massive bouquet he had ordered weeks ago out of the way as she stretches up to kiss him, and knows his smile is less than dignified when she breaks away.
"You're on time," she teases, running her hand down the side of his neck. "Are there any reports of flying pigs?"
"Not that I heard, but I was in a hurry and I've told the office not to call me for anything, so I might have missed it," he answers, which must pass muster because she rewards him with another kiss.
"Now honey," he says, when this one ends, "I know our neighbors have better things to do than spy, but Gotham's DA really can't be seen being ravished on the doorstep by a lady in her negligée."
Gilda blushes and lets him the rest of the way in. "For you," he announces grandly once the door is closed, presenting the bouquet, "my golden rose."
His suit is laid out on the bed when he goes upstairs, after Gilda goes to find a sufficiently large vase for the abundance of roses. He showers, quickly, and shaves off the hint of stubble that's grown since the morning before he changes into it, a cut above the sort of pinstriped thing he wears to the office, and stops to dig a little blue-velvet box out of his bedside drawer and tuck it into the jacket pocket before Gilda comes up. He struggles as always with his cumberbund but doesn't ask for help because if he were concentrating as intently on anything as she seems to be on her mascara, leaning close to the mirror at the back of her vanity table, he wouldn't welcome the interruption.
She does tie his tie for him, which isn't necessary but is sort of a ritual, like his zipping her into her dress—tie and dress complimentary but not identical shades of blue (too matchy is gauche, apparently, in addition to being artistically void) and it's then that he reaches into his pocket and presents the little box. He might have saved it for the restaurant, but he doesn't need to show off for an audience, and since she picked the blue dress for this evening…
Already smiling before she lifts the lid, Gilda lights up at the two perfect teardrop-cut gems lying on their little cushion.
Harvey grins, too. "Happy Anniversary, Gilda."
"Oh, Harvey! They're lovely. And sapphires are so much more tasteful than diamonds at this size."
Diamonds this size would also have been an expense well outside his budget, as she very well knows; he's no Bruce Wayne, but he thinks that's a sincere opinion, not a dig. Besides, Gilda loves sapphires.
She smiles as she takes one out and turns it in the light. "And this would be why I got a blue silk dress for my birthday, wouldn't it?"
He shrugs. "I like you in blue. Matches your eyes." She raises her eyebrows, and he adds, "and brings out your hair and skin and all those lovely things."
Gilda rolls her eyes and laughs. "You did good, Dent," she says, and kisses him again.
She lets him hang her anniversary present in her ears before they leave the house, and they sail into Le Fleur with her on his arm and opera tickets in his pocket for later. The food is perfect, the wine is excellent. They are young and beautiful and successful, and tonight is theirs to be happy.
Harvey Dent is on top of the world.
The next day, of course, he's back at the office, half an hour later than usual but still not technically late. He meets with Jackson and his suspiciously-expensive defense attorney one last time in hopes of striking a bargain for full disclosure on the smuggler's associates; is refused. The private attorney, one Ms. Madrigal, who began the meeting smirking only a little more subtly than Jackson, looks pinched and forbidding by the end. "Mr. Dent," she says, frosty, as Harvey packs up his briefcase. "I advise you to be very certain this is the course you want to take."
Harvey snaps both clasps shut. "I believe that's my line," he says. Stands. "Good day."
"You won't get away with this, you son of a bitch," Jackson growls, fulminating in his handcuffs.
"Good day," Harvey repeats. "I'll see you in court."
Within the week, he does. Theoretically, considering the strength of the evidence, they could wrap this up in a few hours. But the defense attorney is determined to drag it out like a woman trying to wring blood from a stone, and Harvey is more than content to let it spin out a little into a show trial, since one of the reasons he's doing this is to show himself being tough on crime. There is, as always, a pretty serious gun homicide rate in Gotham this year. The kind of pieces Jackson brought in are part of why. It makes a good story; he's got several reporters lined up near the front of the viewing gallery, including that Vale woman who asked him much less confrontational questions in this press conference than usual.
So they sprawl on into the second day, and then the pace seems to have changed, Madrigal's arguments briefer and less vociferous, increasingly as though she's only going through the motions, until she calls Richard Jackson in his own defense, and the stocky, muscled mobster lies fairly transparently on the stand. Harvey goes forward to cross-examine him, rearranging his plan of attack in his mind to deal with the man's sudden decision to claim to be a construction worker, among other things. "You are Richard Jackson, also known as 'Brick?'" he asks, since for some reason Madrigal hadn't.
"That's right," says the defendant. "My ma called me Ricky."
Harvey raises his eyebrows at that but doesn't allow himself to comment. "And," he begins, stepping toward the witness stand with one hand upraised for dramatic purposes.
He sees something in the man's eyes, then, something fiercer than the surly hate he'd gotten used to, and he's been doing this long enough to transform his brief unease into action when the defendant's arm flies up. He spins away, ducking, more of a flinch than a real dodge. It would have saved him from a knife and bought precious seconds against a gun, but the thrown liquid splashes across a wide arc. Much of it misses him, to sizzle faintly on the floor.
More than enough finds its target.
It is hard to say whether he falls to his knees, clutches his face, or screams in agony first, though it is generally agreed that the scream in fact comes last, and it is what jolts the crowd into panic.
"Message from the Owl," Jackson hisses, almost inaudible under Harvey's voice and the others rising to join it. The cops that were standing by for security pile onto Jackson, too late, dragging him away as the courtroom erupts into hysteria. Two officers spare themselves from the perpetrator to drag the DA's hand away from his face; one promptly lets go to vomit at the base of the witness stand, when he catches sight of glistening flesh still being eaten away.
Reporter Vicki Vale vaults over the railing at the front of the stands, to throw the contents of both her iced coffee and her water bottle over the man's face in quick succession, then turns to shout into the yammering (and in some cases fleeing, presumably in case of more acid) audience for people to toss down any water they have.
Compliance is mixed and results in both airborne liquid without any container and some fairly threatening projectiles in the form of Nalgene and other tough reusable bottles, but the woman gathers up enough in the way of full containers to rush back to Harvey's side and continue rinsing the skin of his face (and, belatedly, the hand that received a contact transfer) clean of the acid, with a particular focus on the area around his right eye.
By this time his screams have dwindled to a sort of half-conscious whimpering.
When the EMTs arrive a few minutes later to find her still at it, one of them tells her she may have saved Mr. Dent's life. She hopes that may means he could have survived without her, and not that his survival is still in question. She might not like the slick, dishonest DA, but that doesn't mean she ever seriously wanted him to die a horrible death. Especially not for doing something right.
It's a relief when they drug him unconscious before rolling him away.
They keep him sedated for some time—through the emergency treatment and then the first, most essential surgeries, saving everything that can be saved to keep the damaged tissues serving as a face, which are definitely not something anyone wants to attempt on anyone conscious. After he wakes up, he's on a boatload of pain medications and none too coherent.
"Hey, honey," Gilda says, tucking the bouquet she brought under her chin so it's in his line of sight. "How are you feeling?"
He tries to smile at her, but his whole face is shot so full of muscle relaxants, to prevent him from destroying the surgeons' work, that it doesn't respond, and his breath picks up sharply.
When he realizes he's strapped to the bed, it takes so long to calm him down that the nurses just pump in enough morphine to knock him out again.
They manage, with the aid of quite a lot of drugs, to keep him quiet for a week before he starts demanding, with increasing stridency, to know the details of his condition. It's a few days after that before his doctor promises to let him see things for himself, and in the end it's been two weeks since the attack by the time he's allowed to sit up on the edge of his bed with all the bandages unwrapped and the muscle relaxants having been allowed to wear off.
The room is crowded with an orderly and a nurse along with the doctor, and all the flowers and cards and balloons he's received from his friends and supporters and employees and everyone who considers it politically expedient to make sure they send the injured DA some kind of get-well token. All the chocolates and fruit baskets not hand-delivered by people he trusts were summarily thrown out. He's recovering from an incredibly blatant assassination attempt, honestly. Most of the ones that were kept have been eaten by Gilda, while she sorted through the cards and things and made a list of the names, for future reference. She likes sweets more than he does, and she eats when she's tense, and she's spent a lot more time in this room awake than he has.
Vicki Vale sent half a pound of shade-grown fair-trade coffee beans. He sent her a thank-you note that had very little to do with the coffee. Well. That coffee.
People keep trying to call what happened 'his accident.' He's let all of them know in no uncertain terms that that is unacceptable. This was no accident; this was a carefully-planned chain of events. And there will be a reckoning for that.
"Now, remember," Dr. Astego cautions, calling him back to the stomach-lurching present. Gilda isn't here because he can't deal with her reaction at the same time as his. She's never been in the room while the nurses changed the dressings. He needed to know before she did. "You still have healing to do."
"Okay," Harvey says impatiently.
"And…please realize that you're very lucky to have very little loss of function. We now know you've suffered no impairment to your vision, and none of your major muscle groups are paralyzed."
"Give me a mirror," Harvey growls. He might be hospitalized, and traumatized, and very much not at his best, but he's had enough time to get his feet under him again. It is his right to know his own condition. If they attempt to stall any longer, he will not be held accountable for his actions.
Reluctantly, the doctor motions to the nurse, who lifts a small plastic hand mirror. Harvey leans forward and snatches it. He's had enough loss of agency recently, thank you.
He stares into his own face. Reaches up, slowly, with the unbandaged hand, to run his fingers over the damage, and flinches from the pain of it. "Mr. Dent, please don't touch—" begins the doctor, before the mirror clatters to the floor.
And then there's screaming again, not the agony from before, not even panic, quite. Rage. Horror. Loss.
Rage.
Harvey fights off the doctor, the nurse, and two orderlies who rush in to stop him from tearing at the darkened, puckered, shiny scar tissue that has taken the place of half of his handsome face. As though he thinks his old self is hiding underneath, waiting to be dug up, though he doesn't, there's not enough coherency in him to think any such thing. He bloodies two noses, blackens three eyes, dislocates four fingers, and cracks a cheekbone before they get a needle of sedative into him.
Later, days later, when he's finally being released to outpatient care (including counseling and psychological evaluations), he finally faces a mirror again. His eye really is fine, he closed it in time, but the flesh around it has drawn back like it does on a half-rotted corpse, fixing it wide, white showing all around the iris, as though he is constantly panicked, or something worse. He tries a squint, hoping for a look of studied concentration, and only achieves homicidal rage.
At least it still closes. So does his mouth, though he has to stretch the right side of his lips out of their new resting snarl for it. The doctor was right. It could be worse. He could be faced with food dribbling out of his mouth with every bite and needing constant application of eyedrops to see, and a piratical patch to go to sleep. He could be half-blind, and hopelessly slurring his speech. He has lost almost no function.
He's hideous.
Completely, unspeakably hideous, with the slick, red-and-white marbled texture of his regrowing skin and scars, with the eye and the lips and…more than anything it looks like half his face is a week or so dead. Like Hel, he thinks suddenly, the Norse ruler of the dead—half her body was a corpse, though there's always been some disagreement about whether she was divided left from right or bottom from top.
Well, there's another thing to be grateful for, then: he isn't paraplegic. He could have been shot in the back and be in a wheelchair; instead of half his face looking dead, half his body actually could be.
A lot of strides have been made with equal rights and accommodations for the handicapped, but that very-real helplessness would still have been worse than this. It would.
Harvey knows it would.
The saying is that the mind is a plaything of the body. It is catchy and less than accurate; the body would have to have intention and desire and, in essence, a mind of its own, to toy with anything. But this certainly is true: mind and body are not two. Harvey has always been drawn to Cartesian dualism, to the self as something existing outside the material shell, but if the break were so clean, brain injuries and psychotropic drugs couldn't cause such profound changes in personality. Harvey took a Neuroethics elective seminar in undergrad, to his continuing irritation ever since when dealing with mentally ill criminals and the question of their responsibility for their actions. The definition of a person is tied inextricably to their flesh.
And this undeniably is what he is now: horrifically disfigured. It will be the first thing people notice about him, forever. He will have to learn to live with ugliness, with unconscious revulsion in people's eyes.
Gilda still smiles at him, but ever since the bandages came off, sometimes he thinks—well. It's not like he can blame her, if she's taking a while to adjust. He's not the man she married anymore.
His friends are keeping a certain distance, even now that he can have visitors, but it'll all settle out once he's back in the game. Karen Undermoue, the only Assistant DA with a brain in her head, has been by six times with updates and requests for advice as she fills in for him. Her eyes tend to jump uneasily between the good and bad sides of his face, but she's joked gamely that when he gets back to looming around the courtroom, his famous cross-examinations are going to be that much more devastating now.
He takes comfort from that point: he can use this. It's mostly loss, and it isn't as though he was an unimposing figure before, but still. That's something. He has menace. He survived another assassination attempt, this one far from unscathed, but he's on his feet again. Justice will not be kept down. He'd rather be appealing, but at least now he's unforgettable. If he can still win elections like this, he will probably become an institution in his own right before long.
He should probably give up hopes of moving higher than DA for Gotham, though. There were hopes of being Attorney General for the state within five to ten years. Now…no. Never, probably.
It's alright. He will be alright. He will, because he must.
Less than a week later sees him mixing pain pills and whiskey. He knows it's stupid. Knows, and doesn't care.
Jackson was already easy enough to nail to the wall on the gunrunning charges, but he assaulted Harvey in open court, in full view of an assistant DA, a city judge, a dozen police officers, and considerable representation by the public, including the redoubtable newspaper reporter who possibly saved Harvey's life. There was no question that Karen would be able to put him away for decades.
Except he disappeared from custody between two and three o'clock this morning.
Harvey flips his double-headed silver half-dollar into the air, fumbles the catch, and closes his eyes against the world as his fists clench and the coin jingles across the smooth hardwood of the desk in his study.
The Owl never even needed Harvey to get his man free. Yes, it would have been more useful to have him let off and not on the run from the law, but it had really been just for the sake of a power display. 'I can get my people off any charge, just because they're mine.' And when Harvey hadn't fallen into line, he'd used him to show off anyway. One of the Owl's minions burned off half a District Attorney's face, and is going without punishment. That's making a statement.
He expects the police aren't making anywhere near the appropriate effort. Not when there is profit in letting the Owl go his own way and a burned-off face in hindering him. No one's talking to him much anymore; even Karen's been getting less and less communicative since his psych report as 'presently unfit to return to public service' came through. Just because he lost his temper with the counselor! And now this.
And Bruce…Bruce knew. He went along with it. He must have. And now he isn't answering his phone.
"Dammit!" Harvey snarls, and a second later his glass smashes against the far wall. It's followed by a frosted-glass paperweight and the small brass plaque he was awarded as valedictorian. Its corner leaves a dent in the paneling. "Damn him! That miserable, two-faced son of a—" Two-faced his mind interrupts him, sarcastic at his own expense, and he bites down hard on the inside of his cheek and throws the pill bottle as well.
Since he doesn't want to break any more of his things, or pull Gilda out of her studio with another round of screaming, he contents himself with more profanity, in Latin this time. He studied it for practical reasons in the legal profession and for the cachet, but he doesn't know any language with better curses—he is given to understand that Russian is even better to swear in, once you get the knack, but he doesn't know enough of the language to pull any of the really satisfying grammatical pile-ups of obscenity and rage.
Latin cursing is very anatomically precise, and somewhere in his detailed itemization of who in Bruce Wayne's genealogy was fucked in what orifice by what animal, he starts to calm down a little, both with the catharsis and the organized nature of the activity, and the soothing routine of making sure he conjugates the genitive case correctly.
The phone rings. Harvey stares at it, until it rings again, and then, jerkily, he answers.
"Hello."
"Harvey." Cool, not unfriendly. Just as if this was any other day. "I heard you were trying to get in touch with me."
Bruce. His hand shakes on the receiver. "You knew."
"You left messages."
Today is not a day on which he can appreciate Bruce's sense of humor. Probably no day ever will again. Harvey's jaw has clenched too tightly to pry apart. "You knew what the Owl was planning."
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean." That perfect bland voice, the one Harvey was always imitating, all subtle inflections and nothing you could pin anything on.
"It was a test, wasn't it? To see how obedient I was. You bastard-born toerag, I thought you'd appreciate not being totally surrounded by sycophants and criminals, and you…you do this…" His scarred right hand is plastered over his face again, the way it keeps doing even though he's not supposed to touch it except to apply the ointments and moisturizers.
"Mister Dent," the billionaire bites out coldly through the telephone. "You may wish to restrain your wild speculation before you find yourself being sued for slander."
Harvey sucks breath through his teeth and could not speak if he tried, because he's been on the other end of this, smacking people down with the weight of knowing they can't afford a lawsuit, can't afford to defy him or his clients. Crushing them. It felt so right when he was the one doing it.
"But Harvey…" Bruce's voice says through the line, deep and bland and almost, witheringly, kind. "I did warn you."
Click.