Harvey's fingertips could only just stroke her hair, a loving, familiar gesture. She moved a little closer to his hand.

"So…Batman… rescued you. That wss…good of him." So weak and hoarse was his voice that she could hear him better this way, her head against his chest, than when she was bending over him.

"Yes," she replied hesitantly. This was the weakest part of her story, and she knew it. "He got the information out of the Joker."

"And… you went… to Brucsss." Harvey rasped.

"Only because I couldn't go to you." she explained.

"You ssspent…night w'him." It was not a question. It was a statement, and even allowing for his current difficulty in speaking, it sounded accusatory.

"I spent it in his penthouse. In the guest suite." she informed him, puzzled.

"Where'd he…sssleep?" Harvey asked.

"I don't know. I only know he wasn't with me. You don't have to be jealous of Bruce, Harvey. He's like an older brother to me. That's all. And that's all he's ever been."

'He'szzz in luv… w'you."

"I can't do anything about that—and he isn't, not really. I'm just a connection to a time when he was happier. Someday he'll realize that."

She had noticed Harvey's insecurities before, and given what he had been through, it was only natural that they should surface now. However, he sounded more suspicious than insecure.

"An' he'szz ssso… rich. Han'some, too." Harvey went on as if he hadn't heard her.

"So? I fell in love with you because when I looked at you, I could imagine what a future with you would be like, and I liked what I saw. With Bruce—all I could see was waiting. Waiting for him to grow up."

"What kind a'future… do y'imagine w'me now?" The fingers which had been stroking her head so gently now twined and gripped her hair.

"Please don't do that, Harvey. It isn't comfortable." She tried to straighten up, but he was holding on too tightly.

"Ans'r…question!"

Now his hold was painful. He yanked, and her head jerked sideways, hitting the metal bedrail. "No, Harvey! Let go. You're hurting me!"

How might it have ended, had Bruce and Jim Gordon not been there to pry her out of his grasp? Rachel Dawes wet a paper towel and dabbed at her eyes, swollen and red with weeping. There was a thin pink welt on her forehead where the metal bedrail had marked her. It didn't hurt that bad—not physically, at any rate. It was her heart which hurt.

Harvey was ill, she reminded herself. Mentally impaired. Bacterial meningitis was a serious illness…but he had already killed three people before he caught that infection.

The worst of it was that he was still recognizably Harvey Dent—it was just as if the darker side of him, the insecurity, the jealousy, the fear of seeming less than other men—had grown to equal the good in him, the brightness which shone like the sun in her sky. There was nothing there she hadn't seen in him before, only now it was written larger and bolder, no longer subtext.

Her heart was breaking even as she looked in the mirror, and she could do nothing about it.

"Hmm. It seems that we're at what they, uh, call an impasse here…"

I looked at Grace, who had slumped down in the corner. Yeah, she wasn't doing so great. She was still fighting, but she was taking her first kill rough. I remembered…okay, I didn't remember specifics, but the emotions, those I recalled. There was a time that taking a life bothered me. It's something you get over, though, and, like sex, around about the third time, you really start to enjoy it.

'That's a comparison I could live quite happily without ever having heard.' observed my telepathic ghost. 'What's bothering me most is that I'm hardly feeling anything at all. My humanity is draining away and I don't know what to do about it.'

I didn't think I was qualified to reply to that. I liked Sassy!Grace much better than Emo!Grace, but I wasn't sure how to console her. So I said, "None of this is getting the broken mirrors cleaned up, and it's not smart to leave all of these shards around where I walk in my bare feet. Since you can't handle a broom, I guess that leaves me."

What could I do or say to get my ghost-gal out of her funk?

"Y'know, maybe it wasn't you." I said on my return, broom in hand. "Ten broken mirrors, that's seventy years of bad luck all in one go. That could be enough to kill anybody." I started sweeping the shiny fragments together.

'Not helping.' she groaned from her huddle in the corner. Just what I needed: a depressed ghost around the place.

But it was so much easier to hold a conversation when I could look at her directly—and there was something to see. Her nightgown was rucked up around her knees, and if I could just find the right angle, I could look right up it—.

She jerked the hem down to her ankles. 'Hentai,' she scolded, but I could tell her heart wasn't really in it.

"I'm a man. I have to look." I explained. "It comes with having balls. And men are, um, very visual when it comes to turn-ons. It doesn't take a lot. What does it for women?" I asked. I'd always been curious about that.

'That depends. Anyhow, right now I'm not troubled by any desires of the flesh because I don't have any flesh. And I want to stay out of wherever it is in your head that your libido is lurking.'

"That could explain why you're not more upset." I told her. "Could you, uh, move your legs so I could sweep under—never mind." The broom passed right through her. It was getting easier and easier to forget she wasn't a real flesh-and-blood girl.

'You're just trying to make me feel better.' She stated.

"Is it working?"

'Maybe. What do you mean it explains why I'm not more upset?'

"A lot of emotional response depends on physical reaction to stress, right? The heart speeds up, adrenaline flows, the palms get sweaty, you breathe hard—all that tells you you're upset. You don't have any of those responses because you don't have a body. All you have is your intellectual reaction, and that just, uh, doesn't have the same juice. Why should you be upset, intellectually? You didn't know him. You didn't mean to kill him. It was an accident."

'You could be right.' She seemed to be perking up. 'That would also explain why I'm not more horrified by you than I am. I should be hardly functional at all in response to your general…everything, but instead I kind of like you.'

"You like me?" I leaned on my broom for a moment. Funny, that gave me a warm feeling somewhere inside, like watching one of my fires burn while I listened to the crackling and roaring of the flame, not to mention the people screaming for help.

'Well, to use playground parlance, obviously I don't like you like you. Just in a sort of friendly way.'

"Which is doubly strange, considering that I almost certainly murdered you—but I can't remember when or how or why. You ought to be pissed off at me."

'Even if we find out you did kill me, I don't know how angry I'd be about it.' she said. 'I've been thinking about that. I'm not saying you did me any favor by killing me, if you did, but it's clear to me that my afterlife, if that is what this is, is a whole hell of a lot more interesting than my life could possibly have been.' Much perkier.

"Now that's my gal." I cheered her on.

'I am not now, and will never be, your "gal".' she spat at me with blistering contempt. Just how I liked her.

"Never say never!" I winked at her.