Alarm Clock
Harvey Dent was wrong.
Chance is far from fair, unbiased, or blind. If anything, it was decidedly unfair, delivering bad news, death and turmoil to those who suffered the most and did not deserve it. Then there were those that chance seemed to favor, blessing them with money, love, good looks – usually all three. They were people like Bruce Wayne who hadn't suffered a single setback and never worked for any of the pleasures he enjoyed. You call those sorts of people Lucky. Why does Chance do this? Why is not a question you ask Chance.
Harvey Dent did not consider himself lucky. He knew that Rachel was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's how the Joker kidnapped her. And Gordon and Batman had the exact same time to rescue both of them. Harvey had the same odds of survival as Rachel, and Chance chose to give him the Luck.
But as he lay with his back in the gravel and his lidless eye watching the Batman dangle from the burnt ruins of Rachel's final resting place, he was struck with a thought. Chance and Luck didn't care what was fair or not. Harvey did. That's why he went on his rampage.
Chance does not consider the past or the future the way humans, God and Karma do. That's what makes it truly fair, but also why humans can't see it that way. In the end, it had been chance that ruined his life. The same higher power he had sworn to serve.
It all began with a dead alarm clock a few months before he was elected to District Attorney. He was an early riser anyway, so he was set back about fifteen minutes. It could have been worse, but he was the kind of person whose day fell apart if he was late. The coffee was burnt, so was the toast, and there was no time to iron out some minor wrinkles from his suit. No one except him seemed to be in a hurry, and if they were, they weren't fast enough. They seemed to have formed an alliance; they all moved at the same speed and right next to each other to create the perfect road block.
Taking the train is green, he told himself. Voters like green. He was tempted to swear off public transportation and just buy a hybrid. Still, trains make a great excuse for being late.
Fifteen minutes makes quite a difference. The earlier train he normally took was never this crowded. He was lucky to have a bar to hold on to. The passengers were crammed in like a Japanese light-rail car. Harvey was next to a homeless man with lice, and an oblivious teenage guy with music blaring from his headphones, and he could feel about eighteen different bodies in dangerously close proximity.
Harvey very nearly missed his stop, but managed to squeeze out at the last second. He must have been a sight – a politician racing to the D.A.'s office, his briefcase nearly flying open and his tie fluttering all over the place. As he burst in the doors, ready for the whole building to burst into flames and his campaign to come crashing down, he was greeted by a white paper cup and a simple, "Coffee?"
The woman offering it was Rachel Dawes, an assistant D.A. he had met a couple weeks ago. She was exactly the opposite of his frazzled demeanor, and had a knowing smile in her eyes. "Isn't that yours?" he said, completely out of breath.
"You need it more than I do."
And that was it. No phone numbers exchanged, no hints dropped. His day did go noticeably better after that. Before that morning, they were just colleagues. After that, they were friends, and a week later, he asked her out with a fixed coin flip.
It was the alarm clock he had to blame for his final breaths. If he hadn't had that off day, Rachel wouldn't have had to show a bit of unexpected kindness, which led to their first date, several more dates, his proposal, the Joker targeting her, and her explosive demise. The last regret of Harvey Dent was not of relying on Chance to play fair. It was of not getting rid of that clock that gave him everything that was torn away.