Hey now, all you killers. "Put Your Lights On,"Carlos Santana
Leave your lights on.
You'd better leave your lights on.
The First Year
He didn't belong here, in the light, and he would have been uncomfortable without having to fight the natural urge to protect his eyes from the brightness by squinting. The forbidding glower fixed upon his face was as much a part of his costume as the Kevlar-laced midnight blue spandex. A squint would have marred the effect, though in his own mind, it was compromised already. His outfit was tailored for the night and he always felt slightly foolish appearing in it during the daytime. The light revealed too much: the ultimate silliness of a grown man wearing a stylized bat costume and the lines in what showed of his face under the mask. The dark cloaked those things, the foolishness and the imminent sense of approaching age and weakness. Unfortunately, Harvey had no awareness of his discomfort and in all probability would have been childishly pleased to have evoked even the most subtle version of these thoughts. This was why they were all here now, after all: because Harvey Dent wanted attention.
Batman was here more out of a sense of obligation than need; Harvey's psychosis had been under medically-induced control over the past decade enough that he hadn't actually caused harm to anyone. However, he was still classified by the Arkham docs as a "maximum risk" (and by the newspapers as a "supervillain"), which meant not to take him seriously was, at best, bad PR, and, at worst, an insult to Harvey that might lead to an escalation of his disruptive behavior.
Extracting Harvey from the campus clock tower where he was currently holed up would not be particularly difficult, but it would be depressing, as contact with Harvey was bound to be. Delaying the process served to extend Batman's sense of discomfort, but Harvey was no longer a young man and it seemed prudent, at this point, to wait for the ambulance that had been summoned moments earlier at his request.
"Batman."
A uniformed cop with black shaggy hair moved cautiously toward him. The cop looked about 30. His name tag read "Ieiri." He sported a faux casual expression that failed to mask his excitement at having the chance to talk to a man he clearly considered Gotham's greatest legend. Many cops looked at Batman like that; those who didn't tended to wear a less guarded visage, one expressing various degrees of contempt that a "fuckin' vigilante" should get so much respect after decades of desecrating the law. Batman was used to both looks; the former was considerably more common, but neither moved him.
"Arkham's got a shrink comin'. Told us to wait."
Great. "How long?"
"Don't know. Should be here. He's late."
He had very little use for Arkham Asylum's psychiatric staff. Clearly, none of them had done Harvey much good. Twenty years of institutionalization had done nothing to put a stop to these escapes. That this doctor couldn't muster the professionalism to show up in good time did nothing to motivate Batman to cooperate.
He said, "The ambulance gets here and I go." Officer Ieiri nodded solemnly and went to inform his supervisor. Batman was not alone in his contempt for Arkham's criminal psychiatrists and no one was going to side with one against the Dark Knight.
Batman's annoyance intensified as a red dented VW Beetle – the older version – peeled into the parking lot. Probably the shrink, which would delay and doubtlessly complicate what would have been a simple snatch-and-catch. The car had Metropolis plates. He frowned.
The driver's door flung open with an ugly squeak and a pair of blue-jeaned legs stretched out, extending, giving the driver balance while she reached into the passenger seat to pick something up that was too big to be a clipboard or a file folder. As she pulled herself out of the car, she was met by Officer Ieiri, whose expression was now one of alarm and a little anger.
"No one's ordered a pizza here; this is a crime scene."
The driver was a small, striking young woman with shoulder-length dark brown hair, which she now pushed out of her eyes. "Oh. Hang on." She reached into the car and pulled out a lab coat. Without bothering to put it on, she indicated the name embroidered in green cursive over the left breast pocket. "Dr. Martha Kent. New guy at Arkham, so of course, they send me here to look like a fool. Sorry I'm late."
Clearly, the "new guy" was nothing like the officer expected. He took a step back and asked, "You stopped to get a pizza?"
She shrugged. "Everyone's gotta eat. Got a phone line established? Or at least megaphone?
The cop hesitated, then nodded toward Batman. "I dunno. Crusader said he'd grab the guy as soon as the ambulance shows."
Dr. Kent's eyes wandered towards Batman's as if she'd just noticed his presence, which he knew damn well she had not. He could feel his molars grind together as discomfort at the scene in general became profound annoyance at her in particular. Her jaw was clenched, too, in a not-completely successful attempt to conceal an amused smile.
"Well, grabbing him doesn't seem very respectful," she said. "How about giving me a chance to talk to him? It's better if he decides to come down on his own."
Ieiri looked at Batman, who nodded darkly. He didn't like being taken by surprise, but this was his own fault. He'd blown off two phone messages from Clark Kent; they had clearly involved the presence of his daughter in Gotham City. He remembered vaguely Clark's mentioning, months before, that Martha had hoped for a fellowship at Arkham, but he hadn't really been paying attention; there was a point early on in Bruce Wayne's reluctant conversations with Clark that he just tuned the farm boy out.
She practically sauntered over to the megaphone – which sat on the hood of one of the police cars – pizza box under arm. Harvey was paranoid about electronic objects and was certainly not in possession of a cell phone. Martha Kent's exuberance, Batman thought, was inappropriate under these circumstances; it was irritating, but not out of character. It was just how you were when you were raised in a poster family for terminal wholesomeness.
"Mr. Dent," she shouted into the megaphone. "I'm Martha Kent from Arkham. I've got a pizza. You hungry?"
There was a moment of dead silence. There was some eye-rolling among the cops, a few of whom jumped a moment later when a gravelly voice shouted back, "Open the box!"
She set down the megaphone, opened the white pizza box and held it over her head. A moment later, Dent shouted again, "Put down the box and spin around."
Still smiling, she turned in a slow circle, then pushed one of the spaghetti straps from her thin black blouse a little farther up her shoulder and retrieved the pizza and the megaphone. Before she could speak into it, however, Dent shouted, "I'd rather have a blow-job."
Batman, who had observed Harvey's interactions with female staff over the years, was not surprised by the comment. Harvey liked to shock. Martha Kent's response, however, did surprise him.
She examined a piece of paper on the top of the pizza box and spoke into the megaphone. "Nope, sorry, this coupon's for a free pizza. Nothing here about a blow job. Pretty good pizza, though. Sartelli's. How about it?"
There was more silence, but now several of the cops were grinning at her in reluctant admiration. Finally, Harvey spoke, and it was another surprise: "Come up alone."
During the hour Martha Kent was up alone in the Gotham University clock tower with Harvey Dent, the sun started to fade. Several times, Ieiri, and, finally, his sergeant, asked Batman whether he might want to at least check on her safety, but he refused. Safety wasn't an issue here – not that he could tell them that – and now he just wanted to see the look on her face when she returned to the ground empty-handed. Except that she didn't. She and Harvey came down together, the empty pizza box between them, and Harvey climbed docilely into the ambulance that finally arrived. Martha Kent slid into the vehicle next to him; her attention focused solely on her patient. The cluster of cops and Batman himself had seemingly disappeared from her world, and when the ambulance took off and the squad cars peeled away, he actually wondered for a few moments how she'd get back to her car before deciding it wasn't his problem and that it would serve her right if she returned to find it stripped.
Next Chapter: Gidget Goes to Gotham.