Author : Current Plastic Man[8-23-10]
Rating : Everyone
Characters : Two-Face/Batman
Credits : DC Comics for creation of characters.
Rattle of doors and slow, heavy footsteps across the ancient stone of the most horrendous prison in the world, the great and disgusting totem to the crusade and the criminal: Arkham Asylum, of Gotham City. Ancient stone that had seen so much blood. Every Joker breakout, every maniac break-in, every time they let Crane near the chemicals, always blood. Tonight, though, the order was temporary in the Asylum. Great gargoyles lined the walls around these cells: the maximum security penitentiary, the home of the men too dangerous for Blackwater and too far gone for treatment. Psychopaths of the lowest order and the worst mental conditions imaginable, howling behind glass doors at horrors generated by their own mind.
And yet unquestionably, on this night, the worst horror was the stalking, skulking figure in black himself. His height, his visage, his grim, miserable décor. All the ancient gargoyles and blood stained stone in the world were light by comparison to the silent crusader who cut a path down the halls. Flanked, as if he needed them, by two security guards, weak by comparison to the all-encompassing human perfection embodied by the Man in Black himself. His every muscle controlled by comparison to the twitching mall cops charged with his protection, his eyes unseeing and his ears unhearing of the twisted world around him, not even a bead of sweat on his forehead, just harsh determination in his stride. It is a world he immersed himself in. A hell of his own making, a cell of his own destiny. A quiet place of nightly screams and fever dreams away from the Asylum of Life.
The unbalance trio continue down their cells, past the ice-coated jail of Gotham's chilling mastermind and the straw-laden insanity of the fearsome psychiatrist. Finally they come to him, the man Batman comes, every Tuesday, to see. His door is marked, scratches down half of the inside of the tiny window in to his world. Prisoner number 222, an insistence of his in exchange for releasing several hostages. A sombre doctor, the only person as unnaturally calm as Batman among this insanity, awaits. "Batman, thank you for coming. I understand you are busy, but your sessions with him are really encouraging for his eventual recovery." The Man in Black does not reply.
The door is released for a second, and the morbid figure steps through the door. Scratches carefully lined along one wall and across half of two others, done with the crude implements of the maniac. Plastic knife, pebble, even fingernail. Exactly half of the room has had this bizarre cosmetic adjustment. The rest of the room was untouched: it's flawlessness making it look revered in it's virginity. Directly along the line where the marked met the unmarked, there sat a table. On one side, a white chair, on the other, black. Batman took his seat, looking at the figure kept half in shadow, staring out at the moonlit night, only scars visible on his face.
"It's perfect…It's beautiful. Half black, half white. Matching, but opposed." Two Face turned round and his unscarred face look startled to find the Batman sat, facing him, despite this being pre-arranged. He sat, and stared intently in to his fellow's eyes. He made his opening move. Batman countered flawlessly with the expected alternative opening move. Two Face's human side let out a smile. His scarred side frowned. The two side's of Two Face's personality were bizarre. Just like the chess board, he seemed to constantly be at odds with his own mind. Batman looked.
Harvey moved his knight, tossing the coin in his hand to determine his next move. Batman continued to look at the unknowable face of the most devious, most…strange of his foes. He did not want to talk to him. He came because he knew it could help with recovery, but Two Face opened his mouth first. "I did this for you. My gift. Proof that perfect…duality…can be achieved with even the simplest of tools. They say that it is not good, they say they'll take it away from me." Batman looked at Two Face's human side register joy, and again his other side registered sorrow. The next four moves passed rapidly, in silence, black took white, white took black. Black eluded and moved back.
"Why do the men of power always take away the equality I work so hard to create?" There was sadness in his voice, a heavy lull of speech. "I used to be a man of power, and I sought equality for all. Then…I saw balance was simultaneous. To be man and monster. To be good and evil. To be lover and fighter. I saw you had to be all at once to see life as it really is. And I tried to show them, who only want anarchy and madness, not balance, but they named me beast" Both sides of his face showed depression, a grief so corporeal that the man in black felt it even across the table, across the scar of the room. Two Face stared at the chiselled, brooding visage of his opponent, his eyes and face read nothing, but somehow, somehow he felt an instinctive alliance at that moment.
"You understand, don't you? You've been hounded for seeking your justice, and you've been two men, so different, for just as long as me. We could be the same. We should be the same…" He fell silent. Batman missed his next move, an obvious opening for check missed. His mind, even his impenetrable, meditative, thoughtful mind, had been punctured by Two Face's words. He looked, for the first time, at an enemy of his. He ignored the scars, the monster who had flaunted decency and law for decadence, perversion and crime, and saw only the man, the man who had been so hurt his entire life, whose psyche was so fractured and so beaten he relied on a coin to make decisions he was to scared to admit ownership of. Batman opened his mouth, and what came was not his dark, hateful growl, but the voice of the boy who had crouched tearfully in that sickening alleyway, the boy who had been both effete imbecile and dark, primal being of justice. Bruce Wayne was half mask, half man, never letting anyone see the truth, that he was a man seeking to be absolved and battling for justice, who fought so hard to avenge the one great tragedy. Batman was two men at the same time, one at peace with the other. Two Face was the eternal, raging torrent that Bruce could just as easily become.
"I understand"
Batman moved his rook across the board. He looked away, his impossibly advanced brain distracted by the weight of this session. He could barely raise his voice to speak.
"Checkmate"
Two Face, as profoundly affected by this as the sombre crusader, pushed over the white king of his side and relented to the black of Batman. The man in black stood once more. He began to stride away, his defences already rebuilt, that same harsh defiance of the world already refilled after Two Face so expertly deconstructed him. He heard a sob of anguish and turned to see the man he had just beaten, his scarred, diseased face damp with tears. "You have to stop, them, Batman! If you understand, you have to stop them taking this away from me! It's my gift!"
Batman did not look back. He left through the door, entering the stone of the halls and walking away without his guard, head held high. The lone protector of Gotham, wandering the halls of the Asylum alone after his most visceral confrontation in years.