Title: Chelsea Grin – "Cannot Sleep Warm" (4/?)
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Dark Knight
Genre: General, crime drama
Characters: This chapter, Harvey Dent, the Joker, and Dr. Quinselle; various others.
Summary: "It's ironic. This is exactly what Harvey wanted – a lifeless mob, incapable of harming even one of Gotham's citizens. This is not what I want. I want Gotham to suffer." Harvey's POV.
Word count: 3,449
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to DC. I'm just messing around.
Author's Note: Charlotte Martin's cover of "I Am Stretched Out On Your Grave" is MAGNIFICENT and ever so Harvey. Also, this was a lot more fun than the last part. And there will be more! I changed my mind about ending this fic after four parts – I have a lot more ideas than I thought I did. :)

No one in Gotham pays attention to the homeless, or to the dead. When I was alive – when Harvey was alive, I planned to change that, eradicate Gotham's apathy; now, I exploit it. No one looks twice at me – no one even looks at me. It's useful. I never have to hide, because no one wants to see a dead man.

I'm more than underground – I'm in the underworld.

I don't know how Gordon got away with it. Burying me. Maybe because he televised my funeral in all its sordid glory, or maybe because his city was too busy trying to apprehend my murderer to notice that my casket was closed for a reason.

My murderer, ha. The Batman's no murderer. He's just a catalyst between what was then and what is now. I understand that now.

Then, I was Harvey Dent. I was Gotham's hero. My city was corrupt, but I was changing that. I had Rachel to help me, to keep me sane.

Now, Harvey is gone. Gotham has no hero anymore. It's more corrupt than ever, because Harvey picked at the scabs. I have no one, not even myself.

I visit her grave, and Harvey's, every night. I talk to them, quietly. I make plans, I flip my coin, I sit there and do nothing.

Both graves are empty, so I talk to no one.

Rachel is dead and Harvey is dead. Nothing can change that. Everything is dead now. Except… except my murderer.

Finding (the remains) the mob was easy. Pathetic and leaderless, they congregated where they always did: at the Italian restaurant on 6th and Henning, where they waited for a new Carmine, a new Sal, maybe even a Chechen or a Gambol. Like me, they sat around and did nothing – I know, because I watched them. All they had now was Carmine's youngest son, Alberto Falcone, and everybody in Gotham knew that he was a useless criminal. No brains and no brawn. No good to anybody.

One day, I follow Falcone down the piers, and I think – I think, while we were trying to cripple each other, we crippled the mob instead. Batman, the Joker, Harvey, me – we all dealt a fatal blow to organized crime, and because of us, Al can't even sell his drugs to the most desperate junkie south of the harbor.

It's ironic. This is exactly what Harvey wanted – a lifeless mob, incapable of harming even one of Gotham's citizens. This is not what I want. I want Gotham to suffer.

Why do I keep coming here? There's nothing here but dust. Her dust.

It's snowing when I walk down 6th and Henning. I'm wearing my old suit, the one Harvey died in, and the snowflakes drift and catch on the charred wool, almost like dandruff. They catch on my face too, and I can almost feel the sudden cold wetness through the scars. My teeth are cold; they freeze with every breath.

I walk right through the doors of Eliseo's. The thugs guarding the doorway are too shocked to stop me – they have seen a ghost, and he is too horrifying to even make them scream.

When the leftovers of the mob see me, they all jump out of their chairs and pull out their guns – all but Al Falcone. He just sits there, a slice of pizza halfway between his mouth and his plate, his mouth open so wide that I can see a piece of olive stuck between his molars. I focus on Al, ignoring the rest of them. The restaurant is totally silent, until I walk up to their so-called "leader" – then, there are the sounds of hurried bumps and scrapes, as his men back away and into the tables and chairs behind them. They're afraid of me.

I sit down across from Al, and I put my gun on the table and pull out my coin. "Call it," I say, holding the coin in my palm.

"What for?" is his slow, stupid reply. His mouth is still hanging open, and his brow is a testament to permanent confusion.

"Call it, and you'll find out."

He bobs his scrawny neck up and down, looking remarkably like a broken bobble-head. "Okay," he mumbles through the pizza. "Heads."

I flip the coin, and I hear every man hold his breath. I catch it, and one man coughs. I turn it over – it isn't the heads they're hoping for. Not two seconds later, Al Falcone's head looks exactly like his half-eaten pizza.

Ten seconds later, I have a job again.

I don't have any plans. I have ideas – the outcome of one idea decides what the next one will be. Everything boils down to a choice and a chance of fifty-fifty. Yes or no. Alive or dead. Help or hinder. Hero or villain.

I can only think in absolutes now.

"Taking over the mob is a start," I tell Rachel and Harvey, "but it won't get me what I want."

The cemetery looks different in the daylight. It's less death-like, but more morbid at the same time, because you can see every name on every grave, every epitaph. The light snowfall makes the air clearer, starker, brighter. For the first time in months, I feel out of place here.

I kneel down before Rachel's grave and finger my coin. "You know what I want, Rachel, I don't have to tell you. And I know that you don't approve. That doesn't matter. Harvey wouldn't either. You both wanted to protect Gotham, to save it – but how can you save a city with no soul, a city that sacrifices its best and only hope just so that tomorrow, everything will be back to normal? You can't. You can only destroy it and hope that something better takes its place.

"Rachel, don't you see? It wasn't a man that killed you and Harvey – it was Gotham. Gotham killed you. Gotham killed me." I stand up, wipe the snow from my knees, and sigh.

"But the mob… I can change it into what I need it to be, but it'll take at least a year, maybe two. I can't wait that long."

My thoughts drift and wander, and so do my feet. I pace around Harvey and Rachel's grave, thinking, thinking. I need – no, I crave immediate results. Quick punishment. Something that would weaken Gotham and prime it for chaos.

Ahh.

Then, my thoughts stop abruptly at the sound of a car on gravel, and only then do I realize that I have been thinking out loud this whole time. Rachel used to hate that.

I know there's a mausoleum not far from their graves – I sprint over to it and go inside. It's the perfect – well, the only hiding place in the cemetery. Nobody will see me in here, but I will see them. I peer through a small window (I think, Do the dead need windows?), and I see a man I have not seen since before Harvey died.

Bruce Wayne.

He and his butler are visiting Rachel's grave – and Harvey's, I'm surprised to see. Bruce stops at Harvey's grave first, wipes off the snow on the headstone, and places a small bouquet of lilies at its foot. I blink. After Harvey died, a new bouquet of lilies appeared on his grave every week. It's odd to think that they were from Bruce Wayne.

He turns to Alfred, who hands him another bouquet – roses, this time. Rachel's favorite. He kneels down and carefully, lovingly cleans her headstone, places the roses to the side so that her name can still be read. Even from inside the mausoleum, I can hear him whisper, "Happy birthday, Rachel."

My breath catches, and I see Alfred put a comforting hand on Bruce's shoulder, and they walk away together somberly.

December 18th. How – how could I forget?

On Christmas Eve, I see that I'm not the only one who doesn't spend the holidays with his family. Gotham has no time for families, and even less respect for them. I happen to share that sentiment. Gotham is no place to raise a family. Or to hope to.

Visiting Rachel and Harvey is not an option today. I have more important things to do.

I watch Major Crimes for a few hours in the morning, without my new associates. I don't want to be seen with them yet – that will come later. Gordon gets there early. He has a cup of coffee in one hand and a newspaper in the other, and I scoff. It's unbelievable how old-fashioned that man is – still is, after everything. Gordon the idealist, Gordon the incorruptible, Gordon the stalwart hero – Commissioner Jim Gordon, truly unchangeable. For a moment, I envy him, but the moment passes quickly as he vanishes behind the doors of MCU.

Over the next hour, the rest of the MCU trickles in, one detective after another. There are a few that I recognize – Stephens, Dimitri, Chen, Adams – but there are more that I don't. No Ramirez. Finally, Gordon cleaned house.

When I watch people or places, I don't bother with subtlety. What's the point? There's no point in trying to hide when both sides of my face cannot be disguised. So I just sit outside of a coffee shop and watch MCU. I don't have any coffee. I'm not wearing a hat or any kind of mask. I'm right out in the open for anyone to see, but somehow, I'm invisible.

I leave when I know for certain that I'm not going to hear any sirens. Today, Gotham knows better.

I wander for hours, not quite aimlessly, until I find what I'm looking for: the new and improved Arkham Asylum. I give it a quick once over – it looks just like City Hall, just like Harvey wanted it to – and I head to the employee parking lot in the back. Behind a heap of bulldozed snow, there's a sleek black Mercedes waiting for me – Alberto Falcone's favorite ride, according to my new number two. I open the driver's seat door, tell the driver to get out and go away. I'm doing this alone.

He leaves without a word. Unlike some of his former comrades, he knows not to argue with me.

I get in the car and hear the radio playing softly – Edith Piaf, of all things. One of Rachel's favorites, and her mother's. I turn it off immediately. I have no time for music, or for Rachel. Not today.

This isn't the first time I've watched Arkham. You can learn a lot about a place just by sitting in its parking lot for a few hours. In all of Arkham, the only place the doctors and nurses can speak privately on their cell phones, or get any reception at all, is here by their cars, where doctor-patient privilege doesn't exist. Doctors will say anything when they think no one is listening.

Sooner than I anticipate, the skyscrapers obscure the sun, and within moments, Gotham is a black hole. The occasional galaxy of drifting snow loops around the parking lot, but other than that, it's empty. Hours or seconds later, Arkham releases its employees for the night – one by one, they make their way through the void to their cars, and they evaporate. They don't matter to me. I don't care what happens to them once they leave my sight. I don't care that suddenly this parking lot has turned cosmic, until the doctor I've been waiting for eases through the cold to her petite Honda, gets in, and drives away.

She looks upset. Flustered, even. But, despite everything, determined. An interesting change from her usual cold smirk.

I follow her. I've followed her before, once or twice, but this time, she drives north instead of west – towards the harbor instead of her apartment. Strange. There's nothing by the piers that could possibly interest a psychiatrist like her. I know – the harbor, that's my territory now. Even though Gotham thinks the mob is comatose, people like her – doctors, lawyers, Harvey's old crowd – are smart enough to stay away from the piers. To them, it's a festering abyss of filth. Better to let it rot.

But it seems that this time, I'm wrong about the good doctor. She parks in front of one of the only stores open on Christmas Eve: not a pharmacy, as one would expect, but a sex shop. Even therapists have their kinks, I suppose.

She doesn't even bother to turn off her car before she scurries across the sidewalk and into the grungy shop. Her blonde hair turns pink under the red neon lights, and as soon as she disappears behind the foggy glass, I park my car behind hers and lock it. Al Falcone had good taste in cars, after all.

When she comes back out, I think she must be either stupid or incredibly absentminded, because she doesn't notice me sitting in the passenger's seat until after she buckles her seatbelt. Surprisingly, she doesn't shriek or scream or jump – instead, she smiles slowly, widely, incredulously. She whispers, "Wow. Harvey Dent. Isn't this a Christmas miracle." She laughs once and shakes her head.

"You should look up the definition of 'miracle' again, Harlean. I'm anything but miraculous," I say, and I pull my gun out of my jacket. She glances at it briefly, then looks at my face. She seems impressed, but not with me. That much is obvious.

"He was right," she breathes, still looking at me but talking to herself. "About you. About everything. How is that possible? One man – one man can't be right about everything, I mean, it's impossible, right?" A few hysterical giggles let loose from her pale lips. "He is insane, after all." She rolls her eyes.

I don't need to ask who she's talking about.

"What's in the bag?" I ask emotionlessly, pointing with my gun in a very mobster-like fashion to the crumpled plastic in her lap.

She looks down at it, half bewildered and half mad, touching it hesitantly with her right hand. "About a month ago," she begins quietly, "Pascal took all my patients away from me – all but him. Told me I needed to concentrate exclusively on Mr. J. Since I'm the only one he'll talk to, it had to be me, even though he… he stabbed me. With a pen. Pascal wanted me to – well, not cure him, but make him less… insane. More fit to stand trial. But, the thing is, I've been seeing him three times a day for almost eight months now, and nothing's changed. Not one thing."

She looks up at me, suddenly and fiercely. "I know Pascal's your friend – or he was, before you died, but he's wrong, he's completely wrong about Mr. J. He's not insane. He's super-sane. Everything he thinks and says and does makes perfect sense – it's just the way he thinks that horrifies everyone else, because his normal, everyday thoughts are the thoughts we don't allow ourselves to think."

"What," I repeat, "is in the bag?"

She turns her right hand over and looks into it, strokes her palm with her left thumb. There's a small, raised scar there, perfectly circular and white. "I said a stupid thing today. Pascal, he told me to bring up –" she laughs bitterly "– facial reconstruction. And I did, and it ruined everything." She closes her eyes and clenches her hand. "Stupid bastard."

I stay silent. She sighs and opens the bag. "He didn't even say anything. He just looked at me and stopped – stopped talking. To me. He's never done that to me before. So I got him this, to sort of make up for whatever I did to offend him. It's a Christmas present, see. Pascal can fuck himself, by the way," she added as a savage afterthought.

She shows it to me. Clown paint.

"I have a better idea," I say.

Behind me, Harlean is fidgeting nervously, constantly smoothing out the purple suit in her arms and smothering frantic giggles. I have a gun to Pascal's head, and his hands shake violently as he types the code into the keypad. "No mistakes, Tristy," I remind him. "I don't want Gordon to crash our little Christmas party."

"You know how I feel about guns, Harvey," Pascal hisses, more frightened than angry. He finishes, and the door – the third door, actually – unlocks with a loud clang.

I shake my head, disappointed. "I'm surprised Gotham hasn't changed that for you yet." I push the gun compellingly into his balding scalp; he practically jumps forward to open the door for the three of us. "How many more of these are there?"

"Two," Harlean answers, too cheerfully. "You can thank Bruce Wayne for that."

I grunt and shove Pascal a little more forcefully than necessary. The next time I see Bruce Wayne, I think, it will have to be the last.

Pascal rubs his recently bruised cheek and huffs, "I need Harlean for this next one." I nod at her; she skips around me and next to Pascal, who is standing in front of a small screen by the doorframe. "Same as always," he grumbles to her. Simultaneously, they each touch one of their thumbs to one half of the screen for three seconds exactly – this door slides open, and we slide through.

I don't know how Pascal opens the last door. He tells us to stand back, and he stands in front of it for an interminable amount of time, perfectly still. Harlean fidgets next to me, impatient and insanely giddy. Just when I'm about to say something, the door opens so quickly that it looks like it disappears into thin air, revealing a corridor of heavily barred doors, and Harlean makes an excited noise. "Dr. Quinselle, I wish you would control yourself," Pascal murmurs grumpily.

"And I wish you would – "

"Shut up, both of you," I growl, and I push Pascal into the corridor; Harlean follows us. "Now, which one is his?"

"The last one," Pascal indicates with a nod of his head.

"Does it need a key?"

"No. With the rest of the security upgrades, we felt that anything more than a deadbolt would be superfluous in this wing."

I take out my coin, flip it, and put it back in my pocket. "That's too bad, Tristan. Another fancy lock, and you could've gone to your mother's for Christmas dinner."

Confused, he half turns to face me, and I shoot him. He falls hard onto his face, and Harlean laughs. "Boy, have I been waiting to see that," she snickers.

I look at her for a moment. It's hard to believe that this is the same woman Rachel vouched for when Harvey straightened out Arkham. That woman was a professional; this one is worse than a hormonal schoolgirl. "Have you always been this crazy?" I ask, skeptical.

She looks up at the ceiling. "Well," she says thoughtfully, "I've always been a good liar. Does that answer your question?" She smiles sweetly, unnervingly.

I blink disinterestedly and say, "Go open his door."

"Sure thing!" she says, and as soon as her back is turned, I take my coin out again and flip it. Heads. Ah, well.

I shoot the back of her foot instead of the back of her head. She falls forward, howling, and the Joker's costume flies out of her arms. Casually, I step over Pascal's body and walk over to her. She's whimpering and writhing in pain. Looking down at her, I say blandly, "Feel free to tell Gordon it was all my idea when you wake up," and I club her with the gun. She stops moving, but not breathing. Good.

I turn the deadbolt, open the door, and there he is. He's just lying there on his cot, arms behind his head and legs crossed at the ankles. He raises his head slightly to look at me – sees me and grins. "Well, well, if it isn't Santy Claus himself," he drawls. He sits up agilely and gives me an earnest look. "You know, you don't look a thing like my mommy said."

Grinding my teeth, I say, "I'm not here to play games."

"Oh, really, now?" He peers at the wreckage behind me. "Coulda fooled me."

I throw Harlean's Christmas present to him. He catches it deftly, and his face contorts into a knowing smile. "Hurry up," I tell him. "We've got work to do."