Die a hero

Chapter 2 – Deus

The room had rarely witnessed such a deep sleep. Harvey Dent stirred, blinked and murmured but did not wake. It was approaching eight am and the curtains hardly covered the streaming light invading the room. With a brief stir, his eyes opened. A minute passed whilst they readjusted. He sat bolt upright for a moment, checking his head was still in the place he left it as the first fragments of memory from the previous evening came back to him.

Another moment passed whilst Harvey recalled everything. He got out of bed, he was still wearing the same suit he had left the bar in. Checking his pockets, he made sure the coin was still with him. He had no memory of getting there. The moment came back to him, he saw again the cloth and the cleaner being dragged away. As this realisation dawned, he ran out of his door, stumbling slightly as he regained his balance. A wild slalom down the stairs brought him to the reception.

He reported the missing man to the front desk. The concern of the receptionist was writ large by her actions thus far, she had managed at least to contact the GCPD after a mere three hours. A manager was walking across the hallway muttering about unreliable staff, evidently was more concerned about the disruption to her rotas than the disappearance of her workers. The same manager admonished one of the cleaners for missing a section of the floor, her bunched up hair shaking as she did so. Harvey shook his head in bewilderment, there was a large part of him that wanted to be rid of this place.

The reception had a Spanish feel in the early morning, sunlight shone unbearably off the faux-marble floor. This was far from ideal for a man suffering from both a hangover and concussion. Harvey strode purposefully, the three hours rest he had managed keeping him upright. The streets around the hotel seemed very different in the morning, no longer echoing with menace as they did under streetlight. Young and old strolled with impunity. At least, Harvey thought, there were some times when the city seemed relatively normal.

Unlike the previous evening, Harvey had no trouble finding his way to the station. It was clearly marked out in the morning by the lack of activity within. The drunks had been sent home to nurse their hangovers, the thieves were quietly contemplating another spell in the joint. Gordon greeted him at reception with a shake of the hand. Harvey took this as a definite positive.

Gordon considered him for a moment and said 'Mr. Dent, we have of course found your fingerprints but then again, it is your own home. All charges against you have been dropped. I very much hope you can sort out your apartment.' Harvey sighed with relief and smiled at the Lieutenant 'Could you take me there please?' he asked.

Gordon responded 'I was going to anyway.' There was a much lighter atmosphere to the return journey than there had been the previous evening. The arrest had pushed him to the limits of his endurance and Harvey was grateful that his ordeal was over. He told Gordon of the missing man, Gordon confirmed that they knew about this and they were looking into it but this was of course as much as he could tell him. Harvey respected this man, he was not the most outgoing individual but there was a toughness there, a distinct mental toughness.

They pulled around to the main door of the flat. A scene awaited them that was both depressing and entirely expected. Harvey's roommates were huddled together in their coats, exchanging a quiet conversation whilst Flass wondered around, pawing the ground like an impatient dog. The block itself was in shadow, a flat west facing block did not often get much sunlight in the mornings. Harvey stepped out of the car, facing for the first time his dispossessed housemates.

As it turned out, they were not angry at him in the slightest. Ed came up and embraced him and Carl followed on by doing the same. Ed was a long haired heavy metal fan with a particular love of herbal cigarettes, he spoke first 'Ah Harv, what's happened to your suit? No one's gonna trust you in court looking like that.' Harvey repressed a snort, Ed was the least likely law student he had ever met. He looked as though he had been the victim of a heavy night, but in an infinitely different sense.

Unlike Ed, Carl shifted his weight from foot to foot as he spoke 'Harv, I don't believe this. I mean, there I was throwing my shapes and we find out our house has been destroyed. That's a weird night.' He laughed nervously, adjusting his rimless glasses. Carl was not cool in any sense of the word and he revelled in that knowledge. Harvey found the thought of him 'throwing shapes' was enough to put a smile on his face for the next five minutes.

The police were finishing their work, forensics teams were leaving the property with an air of defeat. Gordon approached the three of them, standing as they were in clothes that were now a night old. He explained the situation, that there were no DNA or fingerprint matches throughout the property other than their own and because there was no sign of forced entry, they may not be able to get an insurance payout. Harvey knew this was the case and the other two were equally unsurprised. One of the only positives to come out of this was the fact that they had not got away with anything valuable. After all, student houses were not exactly overflowing with bounty.

The three of them clubbed together and hired a professional cleaner for the afternoon. In the meantime, Ed had organised a gathering at a local coffee house for a few of their fellow graduates. Harvey felt that this was an ideal time to do something like this, a relaxing cappuccino would go a long way towards lessening the taut feeling tugging at his sinuses. At least it seemed as though he had some kind of future again. He no longer felt lost in the headiness of the present.

No word was exchanged between the three of them as they began the twenty minute walk to the city centre. After such an evening, it seemed that the point at which their lives would diverge was closer than ever. Harvey did not like to consider this a necessity of moving on, he wished with all his heart for another week at university to consider his options but his mind accepted that it was too late.

Walking through the cityscape of Gotham was unusually fulfilling that morning. The towers that featured on every street often had an awesome impact on visitors and tourists but to locals it was part and parcel of living there. Harvey knew this city as well as anyone, he had after all grown up in the place. Sometimes he regretted not going elsewhere for his education but he was painfully aware that he could not afford to.

A brief discussion sparked along these lines as the three walked along. It was a sad conversation, filled with jokes about which one of them would get to be DA. Harvey was quite relieved when their destination was in sight. What they saw was a large, long coffeehouse with a pale blue sign above it Deus: Divine Coffee. They crossed the street and entered the familiar surrounds.

The front few tables were bathed in light from the street. Couples and young businessmen sat around talking. One of them looked particularly detached, hunched over his large black coffee whilst talking rapidly into his phone. Beyond the massive counter was a darker area where Harvey's friends sat three tables down on the right, already talking and gesturing forcefully. As with all lawyers, they enjoyed a good argument.

Harvey sat without much preamble, attempting to avoid the difficult questions that were flooding his way. It was not the sympathy that got to him but the fact that he had become the centre of attention. He insisted several times that he was fine, that the cops had been good to him and eventually they got talking about other subjects. A great sense of relief flooded him at managing to avoid questioning over his own arrest.

Lisa, a strong jawed blonde from New York soon brought the subject round to the current state of things in Gotham. As he listened to his friend bemoaning police corruption, Harvey felt as though there was something of a lack of hope in some of these people. He put it to them that whilst the police in this city did not have a fantastic record, it was only a matter of time before those who were on the take were rooted out. As far as he could see, there was a lack of first hand experience in the group. They greeted his words with muted disagreement. It had always been difficult to challenge his friends but he felt they were acting complacently, being swept away on the tide of media conspiracies.

Lisa reprimanded him, telling him that Gotham had become corrupt to its very core and that someone who had inhabited the city for so long should recognise this. Harvey balked at this implication, he said 'I can see that people are disillusioned with Gotham because they are struggling with their everyday lives. Everywhere they go there is danger but in a city of forty million people there are naturally some difficulties in policing it.' He got a few nods and a few attempts at interruption but he continued on out of certainty.

'There are plenty of people in Gotham who believe in justice, plenty who are interested in keeping the city clean but at the moment they do not believe in themselves. All people need is a figurehead, a leader to show them that the powerful are willing to work with them rather than against them.' Harvey knew this would not be the end of the argument, nor did he want it to be, the large certainty that hovered around his life had been replaced by the constant bickering of a few friends. What hope was there for Gotham, he felt, when the young had given up on each other?

Another member of the group argued strongly in the other direction, that the whole system needed an overhaul. Stan was well known around campus as something of a closet Marxist and people respected him as a man but often his politics collided with the more liberal members of the group. Harvey laughed openly as he proposed stripping the system from the top down. He felt the impossible naivety this man must have possessed, coming as he did from a richly protected middle-class background.

For a moment it seemed as though there would be a delay in the ceaseless argument. Ed had tried to calm everyone down by suggesting it was time to get what they came for and Harvey obliged immediately. He and Ed wondered over to the counter and started talking about their different experiences of last night. Harvey moved along, feeling negative about how deluded some of his friends seemed. Quite unexpectedly, he noticed a young woman sitting on one of the bar stools. Ed had said something which he had missed in this split second. The woman in question was Rachael Dawes.

There is nothing that frustrated him more than being in the vicinity of her. Nothing could have damaged him more greatly than the idea that she was there with someone else. He turned with Ed, finishing a hurried exchange of notes and coins. Ed raised his eyebrow as Harvey sat. Unreliable as he was on many occasions, Ed could be quite shrewd when he needed to be. The conversation had continued in their absence, with both sides attempting to sway the neutrals through militant discourse.

Harvey did not enjoy the change in atmosphere. There was something approaching malice in the air as Lisa continued her theatrical preaching against the police. Harvey despaired of this argument, it was a microcosm of the conflict that had torn the city apart. He could not bring himself to intervene. So he sat and drank his coffee in silence, sharing the occasional look of bemusement with Ed.

Eventually the argument burnt itself out. Neither side could quite accept that it had lost. Harvey felt that this was the whole point, whilst people sat around figuring out who was to blame, the city was collapsing on itself. The subject changed subtly as a question was asked by Carl 'here's one: if you could resurrect any historical figure to deal with the current problems, who would it be? And why?'

Laughter echoed around the table, Carl had a wonderful sense of timing. He looked awkwardly at his shoes, not realising that he had in fact saved the morning. Ed started off, patting Carl on the back as he did 'Well my friend, if I were to resurrect anyone for Gotham's sake it would have to be Jimi Hendrix. I mean, what we need right now is not some damn political speech or leader but some good old acid rock. Nothing would cheer us up like a man playing the national anthem with his teeth. Now there is a man I admire.' This assertion was greeted with a mix of laughter and derision depending on how seriously people were taking the task.

Lisa went next, there were groans as she nominated Abraham Lincoln saying 'He saved us from ourselves, in fact if there was ever an example of a man who healed divisions within a country then he surely was it. After Gettysburg he could easily have let such a large and disparate country drift into factionalism but he continued to press home the need for a truly United States.' Although it had been altogether predictable that Lincoln would be nominated, Harvey had hoped to hear a few other names mentioned first.

Next, an impeccably dressed man started to speak, his name was Oliver and he was from rural Cambridgeshire. He had travelled at great expense across the Atlantic for his education and yet he remained the most steadfastly stereotypical Englishman Harvey could ever imagine meeting. He wore a black waistcoat for no apparent reason and his chest moved in and out of it rapidly as he spoke in a high voice 'I would nominate my namesake and local hero, Oliver Cromwell for this particular task. I will be the first to admit he was not perfect but in his early life he challenged tyranny to great effect. He knew the evils of absolute power and fought them with a drive that has rarely been seen since against dictators.

'Our civil war was not dissimilar to yours. There were two factions who had very different views on how the nation should be run. However, unlike yourselves the republic it created did not last. Cromwell was a fool in power and eventually his religious dogma drove him against everything he originally believed in. A man who fought against the arrogance and excess of an absolute monarch ended up becoming one himself in all but name. By the end he had indeed become the monster he had slain. Nonetheless, we tend to choose to remember him for his earlier triumphs. I also have no doubt that a good dose of Puritanism would do this city a lot of good!' He ended, to massed laughter. Harvey was moved by this tale, it was filled with very human strengths and weaknesses.

'What about you Harvey? Who would you nominate?' Lisa asked, resting her chin on a clenched fist as she leaned forward.

Harvey took a moment to consider it and then began his reply 'I would nominate Socrates. Here was a man who was largely ignored by the Athenian elite whilst they continued to purge their democracy, a wise man not because of his knowledge but his ability to accept his lack of knowledge. I wish I had more of that in myself. He ended up dying for questioning the established order. I mean, imagine being forced to take your own life when the ignorance you had fought against was emerging victorious. He died for his cause, I admire that.' Most of the table nodded in agreement and the discussion continued in earnest.

A few joking references were made to various dictators. Carl raised a few laughs when he suggested that above all they needed Warren Harding back because 'he was a man who could do corruption with style.' An hour passed. It had turned into one of the most revealing conversations Harvey had been a part of. It was interesting how things had changed so suddenly. He did not feel himself to be part of something new, rather something changed, as if the people around him were seeing each other altogether differently.

After another half hour, the six friends left their shop. Mikhail offered Harvey a ride on his bike but unfortunately even the eccentric Finn was unwilling to take all three housemates on his Harley. He bid them a good day and roared off towards another adventure. The three of them walked the streets, thinking that the time had come for a change of scene. From a large block on their left, there was an unexpected movement from behind a half-closed fire exit. A thrashing sound emerged from within. Harvey took a few paces towards the door but it shut before he could get near it.

His friends talked over this strange incident among themselves, they did not for a moment see it in the same way Harvey did. He had not yet told them of the missing cleaner, such was the rapid progress of the morning thus far. Carl left them at upper 12th to buy some CD's whilst Ed accompanied Harvey to the hotel to pay his bills. Harvey had always considered Ed's walk to be one of his stranger idiosyncrasies, he lifted each foot high before placing it on the pavement, measuring out each long stride. He always allowed himself to snigger slightly when he witnessed it, but not today, today he did not need to mock his friend.

After a few blocks, they reached the hotel. Ed had kindly told Harvey that he would pay the bills since he was short of a wallet. They went to the front desk, where the receptionist looked changed as she talked animatedly to a uniformed policeman. The atmosphere in the hotel had changed completely, the same manager who earlier had been rebuking everybody in sight was now crying melodramatically against the wall. Only the baggage handler from earlier seemed to be unaffected by it, he once again led Harvey up to his room.

There was almost nothing left in there, he had not brought very much in with him in the first place. He checked the vicinity of the bed to make sure that there was no evidence of what happened last night whilst Ed wondered around, looking curious. He asked 'What happened here Harv?'

Harvey took a moment to respond 'Stuff happened outside. Things I didn't tell you about earlier. You know that weird thing we saw on the walk down here? That sound we heard? I think I know who he was, I saw him earlier. There was no question that those men were mobsters. Its just a matter of whether they are after me as well.' He continued to scrabble around the bed in the meantime, searching frantically for a recording device with no success.

An air of resignation took him. Harvey had almost hoped that he was being tracked. Whilst last night had been extremely stressful, it had also been the most interesting and exciting of his life. Ed continued to look perplexed, Harvey knelt down next to the bed for a moment and started explaining the last thing he remembered from the evening. Ed reacted with a sad shake of the head, expressing sympathy with his friend at the 'ridiculous' evening he had lived through.

Harvey threw his head back and laughed 'You know what Ed, I only wish you had been there with me. It was terrible, but brilliant at the same time. There's a great thrill you only really get when you're in a fight. I loved, but hated it. I mean, what kind of world do we live in where we let men like that dictate the way we live?'

Ed faced him and said 'Time for a crusade you mean? Where's your horse and steed dude?' Harvey smiled at his friend. He truly did not comprehend it. 'I mean, if you are gonna be like this white knight you'll need a squire. Me or Carl could do that, hey, it'll be like A Knight's Tale. I can be the funny Paul Bettany type and Carl can be the geeky silent forgery guy.'

Harvey did not appreciate the comparison. 'The noble Sir Harvey of Dent riding in on his magnificent beast to slay the vile carrion of the Gotham criminal underworld' continued Ed, swishing his imaginary sword. With a look of impatience, Harvey silenced his friend. It was not that he took himself so seriously, but this was not a moment to act the fool. Ed sheathed his imaginary sword and muttered an apology.

'Well, at least it doesn't look like you're being followed Harv. No axe murderers out to get you just yet. Except Carl of course.' Ed replied, fidgeting slightly.

Harvey went along with the old joke 'except Carl.' He stood up and said 'Its time to go, lets get shot of this damn room.' They exited, believing for a moment that the rest of the day might well approach normality at some point. Upon arriving at the reception, Harvey checked in his key, accepting the $35 charge for the night stay. A moment of tension passed between the receptionist and Harvey as he left. Having been in the vicinity of the disappearance, many of the hotel staff naturally suspected him. Harvey always found it amazing how quickly people seized a half-truth.

It was a long walk back to the flat, around forty five minutes at a steady pace. They decided to take this option as the sun was bright and the temperature high. Harvey was starting to feel the effects of being unable to change his suit for the past thirty six hours. Relief washed over him when he thought that he could go home and have the rare luxury of a shower. Carl joined them on the way, clutching a bulging bag of CD's so large it looked as if he had spent half his remaining loan on them.

The three friends walked slowly, making a mockery of the rush that all of them felt to get back to their home. Tonight, Harvey knew, would not be free of alcohol. Ed and Carl were in the mood to celebrate being back. Not long remained on the housing contract, his housemates would head back to where they came from. Carl would be off back to Boston, Ed would be going to Detroit and both would be starting their careers immediately. Harvey was the only one remaining in Gotham, he had no idea where he was going to live yet. Unlike his housemates, he did not really have a definite direction to his life.

It was something to consider as he walked along Main Street. The shops bustled on either side with customers desperate to cash in at one spot or another. As they swarmed rapidly around, like so many bees on a honeycomb, Dent noticed that a large numbers of them did not seem to be swayed by anything but their own rush. This was a city that did not sleep for a moment but it was acting as if time was somehow short. At the point of four crossings was Wayne Tower, the great monument to its own name, its owner in absentia. Somehow, Harvey felt this summed up Gotham quite neatly, a city where its greatest business empire had been left to its fate.

Upon returning to the flat, Harvey indulged in a moment of peace. The chaos of last night seemed to have been suitably taken care of. Once again the place looked reasonably appointed. Even if they were a few possessions light, it was cleaner than it had been for many years. A letter awaited him behind the front door. He took it and sat down in his bedroom.

In the background, he could hear Carl and Ed clicking open the first cans of beer and laughing in the kitchen. Harvey read the letter rapidly, then went through it twice more. He walked through to the kitchen where his housemates were playing catch with a mouldy tennis ball. Carl noticed the letter and asked Harvey what it was about. Harvey said 'Its DTW, they want me to do some work experience for them in corporate. Its signed by Robert Weathers.'

At these words, Ed missed the ball completely as it clanged behind him on one of the frying pans. Carl turned to face him, asking 'Are you gonna do it then?'

Harvey did not need to answer that. He removed the coin from his pocket 'Heads I go through with it?'