"No … no. And no. That's not it all."
Yawning, Edward lifted up one of his bishops and knocked over my last remaining knight. I pressed my lips together and stared at the board, desperately trying to remember some of the strategies I had read at the library the previous night. Edward watched my furrowed brow, smiling in a self-satisfied kind of way.
"You look terrible," he said candidly, "rough night, perhaps?"
"It was a little frustrating, I suppose," I replied. I was about to make my move, when a shadow suddenly fell across the chessboard.
I looked up, and saw someone standing silently at our table. It was a rather tall man, with sharp, angular features that most people would have considered handsome. Except for the fact that half his face was burned to a crisp.
"Hello Harvey," Edward said.
"You're late," Harvey said curtly, his uneven gaze passing briefly over me before settling malignantly on my opponent. Edward theatrically raised his wrist and surveyed it, while deliberately widening his eyes.
"Oh, golly, you are right about that, my friend."
Edward lowered his arm and indicated the chessboard with a sweeping gesture.
"But as you can clearly see, I am occupied. But don't you fret, I'll be along shortly."
He shot me a sardonic look, while I made my next move. Harvey's good eye narrowed, and he crossed his arms.
"Do no try my patience, Nygma," he said, slowly and callously.
"Oh, lighten up," Edward replied, immediately and unhesitatingly pushing one of his pieces forward, "just … find some way to pass the time. Perhaps you could make small talk with Chatterbox here. I gather that he was a patient at your very own Sunshine Medical Center."
Harvey turned his horribly scarred face towards me.
Oh. That Harvey. You might think me stupid, mate, for not putting it together earlier. But I had other things on my mind, I suppose. Anyway, I remembered that when Harvey Dent ran for mayor, one of his selling points was the opening of a new facility for the mentally ill. Even back then, everyone knew Arkham was a hellhole. They were going to call it the Dent Medical Center … but then it happened, and after that it just would have been in bad taste. They did build it eventually, changing the name to Sunshine, as a testament to "Gotham's Bright Future", or something asinine like that.
Harvey was still giving me a strange look. I supposed, perhaps, that he still felt some measure of emotional connection to that place, despite the fact that it was doing its best to distance itself from him.
"It was very nice," I told him, untruthfully.
Something very odd happened to Harvey's face when I said this. The unscarred side of his face formed into a kind of sad, but also strangely proud, expression. But the other part, the terrible side, contorted into a vengeful, rage-filled look. The two faces mixed unpleasantly with each other, and Harvey looked weird indeed. I glanced at Edward, but he did not seem at all surprised at this. Perhaps this sort of thing was par for the course for Harvey.
And then a wicked little idea popped into my head.
Under normal circumstances, I might have reconsidered. But it had been a rather stressful couple of days. And I really wanted needle someone.
"Actually," I began, loudly and clearly, "Sunshine Medical Center was a dump heap. One of the worst establishments I have ever seen. A monument to filth and corruption."
And, like magic, the expressions on Harvey's face reversed themselves. The unscarred portion twisted in anger and resentment, while the terrible half split itself into a savage grin of pleasure. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Edward look up sharply at me.
"No, wait," I continued, "it's coming back to me. SMC was alright. Actually, better than alright. A veritable heaven on earth, as a matter of fact."
Once again, Harvey's faces transformed themselves into their opposites. I let out a soft chuckle, I couldn't help it. I could see that Edward was glaring at me warningly now, but I ignored it.
"On the other hand," I said, but then stopped. Harvey's faces were suddenly no longer divided against each other. He was staring directing at me with a single, hateful expression. And then he raised his fist over the table and opened it. Out fell a silver coin that tumbled downwards through the air and landed, spinning, on the table.
Oops.
"Um," I said, raising a my right index finger in a clarifying manner, "what I meant to say was –"
The coin landed flat on the table, displaying a scratched and mutilated face upwards. An instant later, Harvey' hand shot forward, seized my upraised finger, and viciously bent it backwards. Snap went the bone, and a gasp of shock and pain was torn from my lips.
But I didn't have much time to dwell on it, because immediately afterward Harvey's knuckles crashed into the side of my head. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor with my ears ringing. The dark shadow of Harvey Dent towered above me, both hands curled into fists.
He drove his foot into my stomach. Then Harvey dropped down to my level, drew back his fist, and proceeded to pummel my face again and again. I just lay there, curled up protectively, unable to do anything but absorb the barrage of blows and hope it would stop soon.
And, miraculously, it did. Through a haze of pain, I saw two of the asylum guards appear behind Harvey and seize him. I thought he might start going after them, but he didn't. He didn't struggle at all, in fact, just let himself be pulled away from me. But he stared murderously down at me all the while.
And then there were orderlies in white bending over me, helping me up and towards the door. The last thing I saw was Edward, bending forward and casually tipping over my king.
"Amateurish," he said, disdainfully.
The next time I opened my eyes, all I saw was a blinding, white light. I was also immediately aware that my face hurt an awful lot. I could feel dried blood on it, and it seemed like there was a lot of swelling. My broken finger also felt like it was encased in some kind of splint.
"Welcome, mortal," said a deep and booming voice.
My vision seemed to be slowly adjusting to the light, but everything still remained white. This was because, I realized a moment later, everything around me was white. Pretty much.
I was lying in a bed covered in a white cover, in a long white room that was filled with other white beds. There were tall, arching windows on the wall with flowing white drapes hanging about them. And there was a bearded man standing at the foot of my bed, with a white sheet draped over him like a toga.
"Hi," I said vaguely. And then, after a pause, "I'm not dead, am I?"
"No," the bearded man said in his deep voice, "you are not dead. Zeus has saved you from the dark abyss."
"Zeus?"
"Zeus," he replied, indicating himself. "Son of Cronos. King of Olympus. Lord of gods and mortals. From on high I watched you fall, and I stretched forth my hand, and delivered you from destruction."
"Oh," I said.
Before the bearded man could speak again, I heard the sound of footsteps approaching.
"That's enough, Maxie," said a voice. Turning my head, I saw the speaker was an old and grey-haired woman in a white doctor's coat. "Please lie back down, you really need your rest."
Maxie Zeus slowly turned his head slowly, and fixed the doctor with an authoritative look.
"See to it," he said, commandingly, "that our guest is refreshed with all the pleasures our dear Olympus has to offer."
"Worry not," the doctor replied, "it shall be so."
Maxie Zeus nodded in a satisfied kind of way, and then swept down the long room to a bed at the far end.
"He's constantly being sent here," the doctor confided in me when Maxie had passed out of earshot, "some of the other patients get a real kick out of beating him up. And, I must admit, sometimes it does seem like he's asking for it, with all his high and mighty talk."
"Why doesn't he just blast 'em all to hell?" I asked snidely. The doctor smiled wanly at me. But then she proceeded to talk about my injuries, and what she'd done, and recovery, and things like that. I tuned most of it out.
"Now, listen," the doctor said, when she finally got to the end of it, "I could technically release you now. But … I know what it's like down there. If you like, I can allow you to spend the night here."
I thought about it, and then said that I'd like that.
But as it turned out, mate, that was a mistake.
