Title: Life Is Good
Author: DC Luder
Summary: The second addition in the Series of Three storyline. Set three months after his full recovery, the Dark Knight is back with a vengeance.
Rating: T
Infringements: All recognizable characters belong to DC Comics, not DC Luder.
Author's Note: This chapter has been modified from its original version.
^V^
Harvey's first night of freedom had resulted in two hospital admittances.
The second night had started with two bodies going to the morgue, a violent upping of the ante, something I should have anticipated.
I had essentially ruined whatever efforts he had started the night before, thus leading to the escalation. He had never been one to be deterred by the interfering of either myself or law enforcers. If anything, it was more likely to urge him onward at a faster pace. As long as he had his funding, assistants and goals in place, he was apt to fast forward through his original plan. Making matters worse, he truly had an understanding of how his opponents thought, how they operated and most importantly, how to unnerve them.
Once upon a time, he hadn't been ruled by his disassociated identity disorder, he hadn't been capable of pulling a trigger following a coin flip and he never would have taken a child hostage, let alone nearly beat one to death as he had Dick. Where the rest of the city seemed to only think about his life as Two-Face, I was unable to forget the man that was on the right, the man that had once stood for justice and the innocent.
In my encounters with him after that horrid day in the courtroom, I had always resorted to reasoning with my former ally rather than start with sheer force. Before his transformation, he and I had worked side by side with Jim Gordon, bringing down the worst of Gotham by bending the law while our opponents broke it.
We had been Gotham's protectors, its last stand against the corruption that was eroding it from the inside out. At the beginning of my career, I had initially never expected to need anyone's help, of which had been a result of my own arrogance. I had relied only on Jim at first, but he had still been investigating my true identity and at any time he could have arrested me. Broadening my small network to include Harvey had been too easy, his charismatic ways only outdone by his thirst for justice.
It had been before Dick had come into my life, before Barbara had donned her own guise, before I had revealed myself to Selina.
Save for Alfred, essentially there had only been Harvey.
Even after suffering my own tragic injury, I was still able to recall each and every one of those chilly eves in his darkened office, Harvey's suit wrinkled and tie loosened, his coffee cup containing a swallow of scotch instead of caffeine.
How he always called me Bats.
Exactly ten minutes after studying the corpses of the DA and his wife, I was back on the main drag of Evanstown with my pulse racing but my mind unnaturally clear. Unlike the previous night, there were no subconscious doubts in my return, no lurking concerns about Selina and Mattie. There was nothing but the dead, cold faces of the DA and his wife along with the probability of finding their children and the county judge alive.
With two sets of hostages at two distant locations, it naturally posed a dilemma for everyone involved. Given his deep-seated, psychological hatred for me, he had wanted me to determine what location he would be at in order to confront me. The innocent children, whose ages divided to equal two, were a worthy distraction. He could have easily held each at gun point with his matching pair of .22 Glocks, asking me to risk their lives with every step I took. If he had learned anything from me over the years, seeing children in peril while I stood by helpless was a formidable way to catch me off guard.
Even thinking about innocent young faces, I found myself speeding towards Manchester after telling Oracle to direct the others to Irving Grove.
She hadn't seemed surprised to hear of the task at hand, nor had she asked how I had determined that Judge Harding was the target meant for me. Even if she had, I doubted that I would have wasted the time to explain it, even as the thoughts fluttered in my brain. Memories of Harding and Dent smiling while walking down the courthouse steps, running into their legalese conversations at luncheons, banquets and social events and even hearing that Harvey had been Ray's best man at the county judge's second wedding…
Combined with the fact that the address for Judge Harding was a former Maroni operation, there was no second guessing where Harvey wanted me to go.
With Batgirl having nothing to show for her efforts observing the house on Alula Street, Oracle first remark when she came over the comm. link was that she join me seeing how Nightwing and Robin were headed into Irving Grove. Just as I entered the borough of Manchester, I barked, "No, have her remain within eyesight of the stakeout point. If it goes bad, Harvey is smart enough not to go back there, but the others they are likely to retreat to an alternate base."
As I turned right sharply, cutting off traffic already moving north on Hollinger Drive, I heard Barbara respond, "I'll tell her… Looks like available units will converge on the address in the Grove in about six minutes, Robin and Nightwing should be arriving at their mark in seven."
Glancing at the dashboard console, I grimaced to see it was ten of twelve, silently cursing Harvey for not making the deadline at two. I heard myself growling, "How close are Gordon's men to the warehouse?"
"At the rate you're going, you'll beat them by three minutes."
I made the final turn, the street barren and sparsely lit with neglected street lamps. Slicing through the quiet, the 'Mobile's engine was angry as the odometer and tachometer gauges jumped. Dark, grimy buildings passed by in a blur as I added one final thought to her, "Keep tabs on them… If I'm wrong… this will all go to Hell."
Before signing off, she replied, "Good thing you're never wrong."
Once the 'Mobile was secured, I made my way in quickly on foot, still managing to keep the sound of my boot soles on the concrete to a minimum. Using the lenses of the cowl, I scanned the building with basic, infrared and magnified views. Dim lighting showed through most of the windows and the thermal imaging revealed six figures, three of which were in the same second floor room.
Whatever thugs Harvey had with him could easily have been armed with more of the previous night's weaponry, but I knew Harvey would only carry two things.
A black finished Glock 22 and a double-headed silver dollar.
Closing in on the east side of the building, I sprinted across the bare street. Reaching the exterior, I pressed my form tightly against the wall, sliding quickly and quietly down towards a nearest entrance. I touched the doorknob gently and found it to be unlocked, an obvious trap or blatant disregard. A quick scan showed the inside corridor to be vacant and I decided to take the welcome opening while I had it.
Silently closing the double steel and glass doors behind me, I then retrieved a three-foot piece of near invisible trip wire from my belt. Still keeping an attentive eye and ear out for any unwanted parties, I pasted it to the walls on both sides of the door, attaching a small explosive. In the event that the wire was tripped, it would provide more of a stun factor than a damaging one.
Enough to send a runaway thug to the pavement for a few minutes.
Checking the scanners, I listened the hall once more before moving towards the rear stairwell, approximately twenty feet from the door. As I took my seventh step up, I heard it. A soft male voice humming and pair of footsteps echoing in the hall. I quickly returned to the ground floor and hid myself behind the stairwell's one wall. With the seconds ticking away towards the deadline, I waited.
He was big, more weight lifter than henchman. Armed with a walkie-talkie, two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and a sub-machine gun, he passed by me as if I truly had been a part of the shadows. Once he was parallel to me, I reached out with a quick jab to the side of his neck. Just as he reacted to the blow, I ensnared his throat with my left arm, cutting of his oxygen supply.
Gasping for breath, his meaty arms dropped the gun and struggled with the air, reaching out for some form of invisible help. Voiceless, his cries were hoarse and were no louder than static on his walkie-talkie. Putting my lips to his ear, I whispered lowly, "Where is Dent?"
I reduced the pressure just enough for him to release a rasp, "Upstairs. I- I don't wanna die-."
I increased the pressure as I replied, ""You won't. But if you lied to me..." As I felt him grow limp in my hold, I checked his pulse before throwing his dead weight over my shoulder. I didn't have the time to take him outside of the building but I had no choice. If Harvey had any tricks up his sleeves and things went bad, he needn't be a casualty.
When I returned, I met another goon on the ground floor, walking around as if he were window-shopping as opposed to keeping watch. As I subdued him with little effort, I mused that Harvey sure had a rough looking crew, not nearly as talented as those in former years. The last thug I encountered as I ascended the stairs to the second floor had a fraction of a second to aim his weapon at me before a tranquilizer tainted batarangs hit him in just beneath the collar bone. He barely had a chance to put a finger on the trigger before he collapsed face first and tumbled down the stairs.
After I dumped him with his fellow unconscious allies, I flew up the stairs, taking three at a time. Not wasting any more time, I proceeded towards the end of the north corridor, towards the room that I had spotted the three figures in. Whether all three were still alive…
With a deep breath, I touched the doorknob and prepared to crack it open. For a flash of a moment, the strategies the Batman lived by were overrun by the memories of Harvey once more.
Before I could even make peace with myself, a sound toned from within.
The soft chirping of a cell phone.
Expect the unexpected.
^V^
We looked at our watch to see it was 11:58. A growl escaped us as we resumed pacing the room. How could we have been expected to wait for him any longer?
He should have been there by now…
Maybe he was, we thought suddenly.
Maybe he was just outside waiting to charge in and save the day like he always had. And the police were outside; guns aimed at us and handcuffs ready to take us away, to take us back to Arkham.
Where you can get help, Harvey whispered.
Two-Face ignored him and continued to pace.
Some rent-a-thug stood by the window, looking out for ay sign of him. Some of our best had been taken into custody the night before, knocked out cold by kids in masks. A few of the luckier ones had tried to make a run for it, ended up in intensive care after dancing with the Bat. This one was a lucky loser, fate smiling on him long enough to have be late to the warehouse rendezvous. A lucky loser with a good left hook.
So much had gone wrong so quickly… but we still had our hopes up.
After all, it had cost us far too much to escape to let it go to waste. Financially, it had set us back nearly six figures in getting certain associates of mine hired for service work at Arkham, paying for leases under the table on a few buildings throughout the city and of course outfitting our new assistants with appropriate weaponry and vehicles. Ideally, it would have been a worthy investment with a quick return, following a pair of armored truck heists that were scheduled for later in the week.
But he had to stick his pointy ears in the middle of it…
No, right at the beginning of it.
We would always be able to get more money, more thugs, more guns.
We could make new plans, even escape from Arkham again if necessary.
We still had to make our efforts worthwhile, though…
Kidnapping the judge and the DA's kiddies was supposed to have been later in the week. Fast forwarding through the plan and losing men we had already paid for a week's worth of work had put us in a foul mood. We weren't being hasty, we were being rational. He had started, we were going to finish it.
It was during our moment of thought that the phone rang from our left hand pocket.
On the second ring, we answered, "What?"
"Hey, boss. It's Marty, we have a bit of a problem, I think."
Marty, our resident geek and look out for both of the locations. He was in some old delivery van, watching his surveillance footage on tiny screens, listening to the police scanner, trying to make order of the chaos. His nasal voice irritated us already and we had only known him for two days.
"What do you mean a problem?" we asked, our voices giving way to a growl. We stepped over to the outside wall of the room, hoping for better reception on the damned phone.
"Cops are all over the place here. They found the kids and-."
We growled at him, "Cops! What do you mean cops?"
His breathing quickened, "GCPD, SWAT team… And the Bat's brats too…"
So he was on the prowl tonight. If he sent the kids to save the kiddies, than that meant he was on his way for us.
Without another word, we hung up and pocketed the phone while he had asked nervously what he should do. Glancing up, we smirked at the blindfolded judge that had been bound for hours to a wooden chair. The fear-tainted sweat was pungent in the small room, but it was barely detectable over our underling's awful cologne.
"What is it, boss?" he inquired, his hands resting on the butts of the semi-automatic handguns at his hips. He had dressed and armed himself for war, black attire under bullet proof armor. We didn't have the heart to tell him that the vest was useless, the Bat didn't use a gun.
He didn't need to.
"No one," we growled in response. Withdrawing our own Glock from its holster, we added, "Unmask Harding, he'll want to take this into evidence."
"Evidence?"
We glared at him and he quickly decided to do as asked, without further question,
Harding jerked when the thug ripped the blindfold off of him, his eyes darted around the room before locking on me. It was a look of half-fear and half-shock on his wrinkled face, but somehow his voice was steady, "Harvey, what the hell are you doing."
After pausing to stand in front of him, we tapped the tip of our Glock on his nose, "Do we have to hold you in contempt, Ray?"
"Harvey... Please…" he began to plead, bushy gray eyebrows rising with worry.
Walking towards the only door in narrow room, we called back, "Don't worry, your counsel should be arriving any second now…"
Ripping back the steel door, we aimed the Glock out into the dim corridor, ready to pull the trigger at the first sign of glowing white eyes.
Nothing.
"We know you're out there Bats! If you don't want to come out, we'll make you!" Leaving the door wide open, we returned to Harding and pressed the Glock flush to his left temple. In a half-smile and half-sneer, we announced out loud, "Ten."
Harding struggled against the ropes pinning him to the chair. When the thug moved to approach, we nodded for him to go towards the window. With him in position to nobly defend us, we continued, our eyes locked on the door "Eight." Pausing two seconds, we then growled, "Six."
Harding's body stopped fighting as it gave way to trembling, his eyes also finding the empty doorway, waiting for his savior.
He was always one for a dramatic entrance, saving the day, but not before the last second.
But with the last second fast approaching…
"Four."
Not such much as a shadow moving in the hallway…
"Two," we sneered, putting more pressure on the trigger.
"This ends now, Harvey," his voice cut through the tense air like a double-edged knife.
We had known him for more than a decade. Once upon a time he had been our ally, our friend. But where he had been able to save so many faceless innocents, he had failed us when we had needed him most. True allies, true friends… they weren't supposed to let you down.
The sight of our Glock was aimed between his two white, deceitful eyes.
"Very good of you to join us," we growled back, "Give him a proper welcome."
We hadn't even finished uttering the words before the thug took action, driving heavy jabs and crosses at the Bat. He blocked nearly all of them, and those that landed were absorbed, the energy being returned to sender tenfold. It took mere seconds for the Bat to trade defense for offense, knocking the thug to the floor effortlessly.
As our fallen comrade crashed heavily into the wall and then the floor, we shook our head while subconsciously tapping the gun's mouth against the judge's shoulder.
He slowly stood upright, regaining his composure. That had always been his trick, acting like he was the Devil himself, always retaining his precious dignity. He would never admit that he was just like us and all the others. A monster, inside and out.
"And then there were three," we smirked before pressing the gun to Harding's temple.
His eyes never left our face as he countered, "You can change that, Harvey. Let him go."
"We can change that, all right. Let him go straight to Hell."
He stepped forwards, pausing when I pressed metal into flesh hard enough to make the judge moan. We felt his gaze intensify as he replied, "You could do that. Or you could let him go free."
We pondered briefly, "Seems we've been here before, Bats. Except there's not kid here to meddle with things…" Gun still in place, we prepared the Coin for a flip, "Heads, the judge walks. Tails… court is adjourned for good."
He nodded, "Fair enough."
In most of our confrontations, he would do anything to barter with us, to somehow twist the odds in his favor. Most often, when our eyes were on the Coin as it spun in the air, he would tackle me. The Glock and the judge were in far too close of proximity for him to rely on that as means of diffusing the situation. Perhaps he had something else up his gauntlets…
"Nothing is fair, Bats," our eyes narrowed at his unnatural calmness, "Nothing."
"The coin is fair, Harvey. You've been telling me that for years. Live or die, right or wrong, guilty or innocent."
"He's not innocent," we snapped, "And neither are you!"
"It's not up for you to decide, Harvey," he dared another step closer, "Flip it."
We swung the gun at him, roaring out, "Don't tell us what to do!"
"Flip it," he commanded, taking another step but still not making an attempt to disarm us.
Don't do it, Harvey whispered, You know him, he doesn't want to hurt you.
Two-Face growled, You know him all right. Like to know him with his brains all over the wall.
He was right, we had to do it. Heads, we let him walk, tails we blew his pointy ears off.
We flipped the coin, holding our breath while we looked down at our palm.
Two-Face grinned, Life is good.
^V^
Having just arrived on location in Irving Grove, I had to park my cycle a block away. Although there weren't any police or SWAT on scene at the time, they're sirens were already wailing in the distance.
With Batgirl and Robin getting a jump o the patrols that had been neglected that evening, I had decided that my efforts were better spent saving Bruce from his ally turned nemesis. Speeding the fifteen minutes from Manchester, I had kept the comm. Link open in hopes to hear from my mentor. Regrettably, all I had been met with were useless updates from both Oracle and the police radio communications. Having left the secondary site with two bawling but otherwise healthy kids in the safety of police officers, I had my doubts that it was going to go as smoothly at the primary location.
Bruce and Harvey and a hostage… a combination that always left a coppery taste in my mouth.
Racing on foot towards the darkened warehouse, my first inclination that things may have already been taken care off were a pile of unconscious and bound henchmen ten yards from the side door.
Looking up at the only visibly lit window, I spoke over the comm. link, "Batman, I'm on site. Do you read me?"
Nothing.
Before I could take another step closer, three things happened.
A dozen black and whites, unmarked cars and SWAT vans screeched to a halt behind me. The second, my lens display showed the time to be exactly midnight. Lastly, a hand gun sounded off from above, roughly originating from the window I had been staring at.
Although I heard shouts from behind me to put down any weapons I had and to put my hands on my head, I ignored them. Instead, I called out over the link again, "Batman, do you read me?"
Gordon's voice echoed in my ears, barking orders for his men to stand down and for me to turn around. I instinctively jumped towards the door, ready to pummel Dent unrecognizable as old memories began to surface from a fifteen months earlier.
With every footfall, a new thought surfaced. He had only been training for three months, he had only been back a few nights, he wasn't ready for Dent. He wasn't ready for anything. I pushed him too fast, not taking the time to test him thoroughly. A year away, most of it spent recovering mentally just as much as he had physically… he had taken seven years to reach perfection and I had tried to cram into ninety days…
Barely missing the trip wire, I raced inside, silently begging for forgiveness.
Not knowing the layout, I blindly raced upstairs in the dark, hoping to find an already subdued Harvey Dent with a tired, yet bullet-free Judge Harding being untied by an equally bullet-free Batman. As Robin, it was a common sight for me, save for my first dealing with Two-Face.
Where I had been tricked into the beating of a lifetime, Bruce had been nearly strangled by a hangman's noose and the judge had sank to the bottom of the Gotham River.
Not again, please…
As I reached the steel stairwell, I heard footsteps in the deafening silence. Instinctively, I prepared myself for the worst. More thugs or even Harvey himself. What I hadn't been prepared for was to see Batman appear at the top step, with an unconscious Harvey Dent over his left shoulder, along with Judge Harding tentatively walking beside him.
Batman stared at me briefly before descending the stairs, asking me, "How were the children?"
Dumbfounded, I stared at him in silence. He was alive and well and had accomplished his adjective. As he paused to stand before me, I finally managed, "Fine. They took them to Mercy for observation."
He nodded curtly and then added, "I'll meet you out back," and then strode away, Harding still at his heels.
I watched him for a moment before shaking my head, wondering why I had ever doubted him to begin with. Making my way to the rear of the building, I contacted both Robin and Batgirl to tell them all was well on our end. It wasn't until I passed through a rusty steel exit that I opened a line directly to Oracle, "O?"
"Police reports are saying Two-Face is in custody," she greeted.
"That he is."
"And that Judge Harding is relatively unharmed."
"I didn't see a scratch on him… at least not on the outside," I replied as I prepared a d-cel line. Once I had fired and anchored the grapple, I shook my head, "Want to hear something crazy?"
"Always."
I waited to continue until after I had ascended to the rooftop of an adjacent five story housing building. No doubt the units within were the size of sardine cans and went for a monthly four digit fee. Looking down at the flashing glow of red and blue lights on the other side of the warehouse, I said, "He was fine. Waltzed right out with the hostage in tow and Harvey over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes."
"And why is that crazy?" she asked, the clatter of keys in the background.
Sighing, I admitted, "That's not what's crazy. What's crazy is that I walked in thinking he was down… that… something bad had happened. I never even thought that he could have walked out on his own."
She hesitated before responding, "That is crazy."
"I would have never doubted him before Pasqualle, not even for a second."
Barbara sighed herself, "That's the thing about, Bruce. Everyone expects the worst… and he refuses to live based on someone else's expectations."
A soft footfall sounded from behind, intentionally loud enough for me to hear. "Gotta go, Babs."
"Give him a pat on the back for me."
Closing the connection, I turned to face Batman, my smirk quickly fading into a look of concern. He had been carrying Harvey on left shoulder, distracting me from looking at his right one. With the flashing lights below being joined by flood lights, it wasn't difficult to see the slick wetness dripping down his arm.
"What happened?" I nodded to his arm while approaching.
"Flesh wound."
The night before had been a flesh wound. From the amount of blood that was already pooling at his feet, it was anything but. Not wanting to be the one to call him out on his own diagnosis, I continued, "He fired the shot, then."
"He was going to shoot Harding or me. I preferred it was me," he explained while looking down at the chaos below. "The children are safe, Harding is safe… and Harvey is heading back to Arkham where he will be safe. I'll take a few more stitches for all of that."
The look in his eyes, even behind the cowl, suggested that he had never uttered truer words. Perhaps save for the oath he had taken as an eight year-old orphan.
"Selina's going to be pissed," I chided.
He showed no sign of noticing the intended humor as his reply was monotonous, "I'll cross that bridge when I get to it."
"In that case, you can crash on the couch at the Clocktower. You know, after you stop bleeding."
Again, his gaze was distant, his mind far away. I would have blamed it on the shock from blood loss but I knew better. He had the same look on his face any other time he had to bring his former ally to justice. It was one I had seen him wear after both successes and failures, most often when he thought no one was looking. It was one of self-doubt blended with wonderment of the what-if's sprinkled with a dash of regret.
Having not believed in Bruce's abilities, I decided it was only appropriate to wear the same look on my face.
^V^
Despite the fact that Mattie hadn't made a peep since I had changed her a littler after ten, I was awoken twice in the middle of the night. First, with a phone call at midnight and second just after four in the morning by a pre-dawn visitor.
Barbara had called just after midnight, mere minutes after I had finally given up on staying up and waiting for word on the hostage situation. My reasoning had been that Bruce and his masked pupils would be able to save the day as they had the previous night relatively unharmed. At any rate, Bruce would come home exhausted, mentally and physically, and someone needed to rest up so they could be with Mattie bright and early in the morning.
With Isis purring beside me and my back to the seemingly slow moving bedside clock, I had been quick to jump up the second the phone rang. Grabbing the receiver, I had answered with a rushed, "Yes?"
"Hey, it's-," Barbara had started to greet me.
"What is it?" I had asked, cutting her off. Seconds earlier I had convinced myself that everything was going to be fine but suddenly my gut had been filled with cold dread.
She had sighed before replying, "Relax, Cat-lady, he's fine. Everyone's fine… the judge, the kids… the big kids."
I had let air that had been trapped in my lungs out in a quiet rush. Heart still fluttering, I had responded, "Of course they are…"
Barbara went on to rehash the events in as few details as possible, emphasizing how smoothly everything had gone despite how last minute the night's events had been. When I had asked if she could patch me on a line to Bruce, she had hesitated, then answered. "He's still pretty busy… he was just at GCPD to speak with my father and his tracer says he's en route to Arkham to check in on Harvey."
Reaching over to stroke the purring black figure beside me, I had said, "Of course."
A silent moment had fallen between us before she had closed with, "Get some sleep. He'll be home soon."
When Bruce had first started going into the city with Dick, Barbara had once again become my late night correspondent and form of entertainment. Before the shooting last May, I had often checked in with her to get a head start on hunting down my favorite vigilante. He had always been surprised when I had been able to locate him so effortlessly, not once inquiring as to if I had taken up an accomplice. We had a rocky start while she had still worn her mask, but it was far more enjoyable to have her as a friend rather than a foe.
Not four hours later, the bedroom door opened and closed almost silently. The footsteps that followed were unusually slow, which raised a flag in my half-asleep mind. Either Bruce was rag tired or he had inflicted more damage upon himself. Knowing him, my slumbering brain concluded, it was both.
Just as I was about to force myself to become fully awake, the steps faded and the door opened and closed again. I thought I had called out to him but realized that I was still laying limply in bed. Finally sitting up, I let my eyes adjust while scanning the expanse of the bedroom. Bruce was gone but the faint aroma of betadine had remained behind.
I rose, pushing of the blankets languidly and neglected my robe and the lights, stepping right out of the room and into the hall. Even in the dim corridor, I knew where he had disappeared to. Walking up to the next door on the right, I paused at Mattie's nursery to see the door slightly ajar. I heard his soft baritone whispering to her before actually seeing him in the room. Although the words were undecipherable, I could recognize the affection in his voice.
Clad in his housecoat, Bruce stood beside her crib, his arms resting on the side of it. His words were still too quiet to understand, but they made me smile nonetheless. After a moment, he reached down and adjusted the foot of her pajama with the same care he would have used diffusing a bomb. Bruce then leaned over and kissed her softly, "Good night, kitten."
Sated that she was comfortable, Bruce turned and faced me, offering a nod while forcing himself to walk as normally as possible. As he reached the door, I backed away and let him pass through, following him stride for stride back to the bedroom. He didn't say a word until we were entering the room, "Had to change the batteries on the monitor."
"Ah," I took a seat on the bed after turning the night stand lamp on, hesitating before adjusting the covers back over me.
He very well could have been telling the truth, but it was more likely that he just wanted to look at Mattie's face after a long night. Bruce proceeded to the bathroom, barely increasing the volume of his voice despite the distance he had put between us, "And tomorrow I want to put that other night light in, the one that looks like the fish are swimming in the aquarium… it'll be getting darker sooner at night, I want her to start relying on that light instead of the one next to the changing table."
"Mm-hmm." Another plausible excuse, one better explained that he wanted to focus on keeping the boogey man at bay in his daughter's room as opposed to what he had faced hours earlier.
Bruce stepped out of the bathroom, clad in a pair of boxer briefs and an array of bandages. The bruises from the night before had just started to mottle, yielding a spectrum of colors ranging from dark ash to a velvety purple. The minor scrapes and cuts were left bare to air out but as I looked more closely, the fresh gauze only covered the original flesh wound as well as a new one just below the collar bone.
"Honey, you really do need to start playing with other children," I chided as he approached the bed.
He only offered a soft grunt as he sat on his side, facing away from me. Lowering his head slightly, Bruce said, "I'll get up with her in the morning… so you can sleep in."
"I'm pretty sure I should be telling you that."
After a brief pause, he turned and carefully reclined beside me, tentatively pulling the covers up to his navel. Once he appeared to be as comfortable as he was going to be, I situated myself on my side so that I faced him, resting my chin on his unscathed left shoulder.
I kissed his cheek, "Sleep, I'll take kitten duty."
When he didn't reply for two minutes, I moved back to study his face. As dark as it was in the room, I just made out reflections on his eyes as he stared straight up at the ceiling. Just as I was about to ask what had happened, he said, "He's still alive."
"Of course, you saved Harding…"
Bruce shook his head, then carefully turned to lay facing me, "Not Harding… Harvey."
"Well… you saved him, too."
Bruce sighed, his warm breath caressing my cheek, "I never save him, Selina. I always let him down. I stop him and I send him back to the asylum… and the he escapes and I do the same thing all over again. That's not saving him."
I pressed my hand to his chest, unable to form a verbal response.
For once, Bruce was the one with something to say, "Tonight, Harvey saved me."
"I don't understand…"
"When I got there, Harvey was ready to take Harding out… But I convinced him to flip the coin for me instead. He did and the bad side came up… Two-Face aimed right at my head but then twisted his wrist and shot my shoulder. He wanted to kill me so badly, but Harvey wouldn't let him."
Bruce continued before I could pry, "There was this look in his good eye. Like he was apologizing. But the bad half- It kept sneering at me as if it was the greatest moment of his life. Two-Face was holding the gun, but Harvey wouldn't let him pull the trigger."
After another quiet moment, I kissed him softly, "Then you owe him one, Bruce."
He nodded, then remarked, "I went to see him... Once he had been processed and put back in maximum security. He said that it was about time that I came back to see him… told me it was my move, that he had been waiting for over a year."
Their seemingly never-ending chess game. I hadn't even thought once about it during Bruce's recovery. Each night, he had checked in at Arkham to make sure the worst of the worst were in their rightful cells. The only inmate he ever interacted with was Harvey, voicing his move to the confined man who then carried it out on a paper board with rubber pieces. While Bruce had been without his memories, Harvey had been diligently waiting for his old friend to play his move…
"And?" I asked.
"Rook to 2B… stale mate."
A few seconds later, I felt his arms move and tighten around me, his lips kissing my brow line. Before I could speak, he voiced his thoughts unprovoked once more, "It seems that my enemies have become rather friendly towards me of late."
I laughed into his neck, "Some more than others."
He withdrew his lips and faced me, "Oh?"
Nodding, I then kissed him, nibbling at his lips. After pulling away, I reminded him, "After all, I don't think it would be quite as amusing to have Harvey calling you a pin-headed ape, now would it?"
^V^