Bruce trudges through the wreck of Arkham; the mask of Batman gathers dust in Lady Arkhams catacombs. Temporarily. Gotham will force Bruce to don the mask again and solve its troubles soon enough, but for now he is exposed.
Bruce and the Lady's fight shook the foundations of Arkham enough for them to slip through a hole in its back undetected, enough to trudge to a road where they call Lucius to pick them up; Bruce thinks to himself: What a pathetic escape. No bat-grappling into the ceiling and into thin air to Gordon's frustration, no gliding away with his cape, no zipping off in his batmobile. Just him and his delirious Butler hanging on his side.
Bruce thinks of the million ways the final fight could have gone better. He's injured in several places, the knees, the chest, innumerable internal injuries, and a warm trickling, throbbing and ringing to his right that reminds him of the mark the Lady left him before she died. He hopes most of his ear survives - no, he hopes his hearing in that ear survives, at least. Superficialities aside, if he's deaf in one ear it'll leave him with a blind spot that can't be compensated for with bat-tech.
Well, he thinks to himself. If the whole ear goes, it'll be easier to fit into my cowl.
The world has betrayed him - no, not because of recent events, but the world seems to be trying to shake him off of it. The world spins like a fairground cup, imagery which somehow strikes him as something John Doe would appreciate. Alfred's weight helps his vertigo, in a strange way. He sways right, Alfred's weight keeps him to the left. If he sways left, Alfred digs his feet into the ground almost instinctually. Injured as he is, Alfred is still trying to help him.
Bruce doesn't deserve it. That's what he thinks to himself. He's beginning to feel like he's fumbling in the dark. He'd started the whole Dark Knight crusade to help people that the law couldn't - that even Gordon couldn't. But it seemed like he was barely holding Gotham above water, like he was fixing things at the same rate they were broken, and every person he saved was just to even the numbers with the people he couldn't.
He'd made it to Alfred, but Alfred is an old man; the Lady's beatings would hurt him more than Bruce, a spry youth in comparison.
A spry youth. Bruce is thirty years old, but he feels older. His lifestyle means that physically, he probably is. The amount of damage he's taken - hell, even if his ear is fine, the gunshots he hears on a day-to-day basis'll be enough to give him hearing damage before he's sixty. How long will he be able to be batman? He's just a plaster to Gotham's wounds. He can save individual people, but the systematic problems of the city are out of his hands. Harvey could've changed that.
Harvey. He'd seen him out of the corner of his eye when he was sprinting through Arkham. He looked terrified in his tiny cell. When he'd sent him there, he'd thought he could change things in Arkham, so Harvey could get better. But that was a stupid move. No matter what could change, the fact is: Arkham was a wreck before the Lady and him fought, and now it's worse. The orderlies wouldn't change their ways just because Bruce funneled money into the Asylum; they hated the inmates, treated them like animals, let them loose to tear at eachother's throats and then said there was nothing they could do. Harvey wasn't safe in there.
But a random jail Bruce knew nothing about would be no help either. He wants Harvey to be somewhere where he doesn't feel helpless, or at least somewhere where he has people who can help him. Isn't that what caused his problems in the first place? Jail would care about a mentally ill man about as much as Arkham would. Arkham, jail, and Gotham - none would take Harvey in.
Bruce wonders if some part of him sent Harvey to Arkham as recompense for Harvey doing the same thing to him. But when he thinks of what Harvey did, he doesn't clench his teeth and fists and furrow his brow and say 'damn you, Harvey', because he can't blame him. There is no anger in his heart for Harvey Dent. There is no anger in his heart for Gotham, either. Both of them were - are - sick. He was trying to help them get better. So was Lady Arkham, in a way, by trying to make them realise there was a problem, to not 'look the other way'. But she was wrong in thinking that was what they were doing.
"Bruce?"
It wasn't that they wouldn't look out of ignorance, or that they enjoyed suffering - it was that there was nothing they could do. Hill had an iron grip on the city's surface, Falcone had an iron grip on the underworld, and his own father had control over everything without Gotham suspecting a thing. The people knew this. But Hill kept getting re-elected, Falcone kept the criminal economy under his thumb and Thomas threw whoever he wanted in Arkham because he knew that was where nobody ever comes back. The people of Gotham who suffered most were cast aside with Thomas' enemies to a place they could never come back from.
"Ah, Bruce?"
And that was where he'd sent Harvey Dent. The man who could have been the antidote. He had become a problem, and Bruce had sent him to the same no-man's land that his father sent all the problems.
"Bruce, are you…"
Arkham wouldn't help dent. Arkham wouldn't help anybody. Arkham was the closet Gotham shoved its mess into when it didn't want to clean it up.
"Bruce, Harvey's here."
And there he is. Gaping.
Bruce, neck-down Batman, the wind caressing his bare cowl-less cheekbone and cooling the blood on the right side of his head, stares back.
"You're… Batman," says Harvey.
Bruce stares. "I'm Batman," he replies. He can't tell what Harvey's feeling right now, so he doesn't know how to act.
Harvey bends slightly, covering his face. "No," he says. "No, this can't be right… you're not…"
"A privileged rich boy isn't someone you'd expect to dealing punches to villains, no," Bruce says, giving him a halfhearted smile, "Considering the people who made the villains in the first place."
"Made the villains?"
"The people at the top. People like me, building their fortunes on the backs of the poor. The fish rots from the head down, etcetera. It was what we - what you were going to change."
"No," says Harvey in a growling voice - no. Not Harvey. The other one. 'Dent' - "Harvey wouldn't have been able to change anything. He was weak. You. You stopped us from delivering REAL change. We were cleansing the FILTH of this city."
"You blew up innocent people, Dent. People who were suffering. Harvey could've cleaned up Hill's mess. Harvey could've made it so Batman wasn't needed anymore."
"Batman was weak, too. YOU were weak. YOU use your fortune to -"
"To help people," Harvey says, interrupting himself - no, Dent - "His fortune - he used it to be Batman, to help people - YOU hurt people, his Butler -"
Alfred's passed out on Bruce's shoulder. Bruce had stopped noticing the weight. Now, he feels heavy. The world is spinning again. He needs to get back to the batcave. Alfred needs to.
"Listen, Harvey, Dent - I need to leave," Bruce says, swallowing. "Alfred needs help. He's the only person I have left. He's my family. I can't… I can't…"
Exhausted, he can't hold his thoughts back any more. He thinks of his parents - more his mother, really - he thinks of Oswald and Harvey, all the people he's lost, or have lost themselves.
"I can't lose anybody else."
He wonders if Harvey understands. When he and Harvey were in hospital, he asked him how he felt about the news of his family's - more Thomas', really - actions being brought to light. He knew how Bruce felt about family. About those closest to him. He just wants the people in his life to be safe. That's all.
Lucius will be here soon in the batmobile and Batman doesn't have time for Harvey's grudges against him or Dent's raving. He doesn't want another fight.
"I've been alone with him for a long time, Bruce," says Harvey. "Back in the Asylum. I can get him to shut up, for a little while."
Bruce can see the Batmobile coming down the road.
"He'll want to hurt you. I'll try to stop him. Just… go."
The batmobile pulls up. Lucius looks concerned inside the tinted windows. The doors open.
Bruce sighs with relief and walks to the car, putting Alfred inside. His head lolls. Bruce collapses next to him and looks to Harvey.
Now that he's sitting down, he can barely keep his eyes open. Vague images of Arkham and a generic jail appear when he blinks.
"Harvey… get in the car," he says.