A/N: Technically, Chapter Six begins before this one does, and ends on the same night. But it's more fun to give Harvey's perspective on these events before Selina's, and I was eager to introduce you all to my concept for Harvey's origin and personality and to more of the characters of this story.
Comic readers will note that I've switched the role of Vernon Fields to be the D.A. at the start of Harvey's career rather than his assistant. That's just the way the story sprouted in my head.
Enjoy!
Harvey awoke sharply but silently with the instinctive realization that he had slept past the time when his alarm clock should have gone off. Then he reminded himself that it was Saturday, and his momentary panic vanished.
Rolling over, he reached for his companion, but her side of the bed was empty. Opening his eyes, he blinked away the light enough to find her sitting in front of her easel, paintbrush in hand, gaze darting back and forth between her imitation of the Gotham skyline and the real thing.
He waited for the blue-coated paintbrush to be a safe distance from the canvas before speaking. "Good morning."
Marie turned and smiled at him. "Good morning, Harvey." Putting down her brush, she stood and crossed the room until she was looming over him. His nerves immediately awakened as her hand caressed the side of his face, and then her lips lowered to his.
She had been the first of his peers that he met at law school, when the rather juvenile and decidedly unnecessary exercise of placing the orientees in alphabetical order had placed Harvey Dent and Marie Dorelli side-by-side, accelerating a meeting that Harvey became more convinced every day was fated to happen anyway. Their first date had occurred two nights later, and their first night together had, perhaps inadvisably, taken place just hours before they sat for their first class of law school.
Now, two and a half years later, he had already bought a ring, although he had promised both himself and Marie's mother that he wouldn't propose until after they graduated. And he was very confident that the ring was the only secret that he and Marie had between them.
As they continued to kiss, he gently attempted to coax her back into bed, but she resisted. Her mind had already shifted to her artistic hobbies, which consisted both of the visual artwork on the easel across the room and the theatrical arts that she would engage in later today, when the law school put on its annual self-deprecating parody show, Law Revue. She was a talented actress, having been a theater major in college, and had auditioned for a few roles on Broadway at the same time that she filed her law school applications. Fortunately for Harvey, the auditions had been less successful than the applications.
He was, by his own estimation, a far less interesting person. He was the star and captain of GU Law's softball team, a result of having played varsity baseball in high school and, less successfully, in college. Relatedly, he was more of a gymrat than the typical law student, getting out early enough most mornings to get to the gym and then clean up before classes. But outside of his physical pursuits, he spent less time away from his books than most of his peers did, which made him a good student but a far less able conversationalist.
"Are you going to the gym?" she asked.
He sighed, knowing that her question was the death knell for his efforts to get her into bed. "Yeah. Will you come with me?" She joined him sometimes, although she was never as dedicated to the workouts.
"No, I don't want to risk pulling anything before tonight." She gave him a knowing look. "But I'll join you in the shower afterwards."
That was enough to propel him out of bed, much to her amusement.
Law Revue was, for many law students, the ultimate chance to blow off steam, because it provided not only an escape from the brutal workloads and socratic interrogations but also the opportunity to clap back at the source of their stress.
Harvey was well aware that the vast majority of his classmates absolutely detested law school, and viewed it as a crucible of torment that they had to get through to get to the cushy, lucrative jobs where they could sit back and arbitrarily charge clients exorbitant rates for deliberately drawn out work. The private sector of the legal profession, the desired destination of almost everyone at GU Law, was an elite club of greed and laziness and secret deals in which attorneys who were supposed to be in opposition conspired to benefit themselves at the great expense of clients who were none the wiser.
He, however, had no interest in private law. He'd struggled enough with his noisy conscience during his 2L internship at Wayne Enterprises, where the lawyers had actually done some work in order to keep their wealthy benefactors from having to pay money that they should have owed to people who needed it a lot more than they did. No, Harvey was much more interested in what he had done during his 1L internship, which was a placement in the office of Gotham District Attorney Vernon Fields.
Vernon Fields was a former marine, and liked to make sure that everyone knew it. He had left the service to go to law school with the intention of joining JAG afterwards, but had instead felt a calling to enter public service and prosecute crime in Gotham.
At least, that was the story that he told everyone. Harvey had done some digging and found out that JAG rejected him, as he had been viewed as too reckless and undisciplined in the Marines. But he had an advantage that resonated in the political echelons of Gotham: he could be bought. And that made him the perfect appointee for Mayor Hamilton Hill, who was himself a beneficiary of association with the Gotham crime lords.
But Harvey didn't intend to return to the D.A.'s office out of admiration for the likes of Hill and Fields. No, he wanted to get rid of them, and everyone else who gave Carmine Falcone and his ilk carte blanche to run Gotham as they saw fit.
For Harvey, law school wasn't a crucible, it was a haven. He had been raised by a single father who was often drunk and sometimes violent, and he had always been cognizant of the darkness in the world. He saw that darkness every time he looked beyond the walls of the campus, and he wanted to drive it out of the city, but he was happy to stay focused on school and pretend that the darkness didn't exist until he could do something about it. So he went through the work and engaged in the socratic discussions with much more contentment than his classmates did, and so wasn't so interested in laughing at the expense of the law school experience at tonight's show.
But he was, of course, eager to see Marie perform.
Unfortunately, the ticket that she got for him happened to be right next to the tickets that she got for her roommate. Unofficially, she lived with him in his studio apartment, but for the sake of her Catholic mother, she had gotten an apartment for herself and taken on a female roommate. The roommate, who was an undergraduate, had been an afterthought, but Marie got along with her surprisingly well.
Julie Madison was a daughter of Gotham's elite, and the experience of living on the campus was much more novelty than necessity for her. She had followed in Marie's footsteps as a theater major, which set the foundation for the unlikely friendship that arose from their last-minute roommate arrangement. But to Harvey, she came across as arrogant and vain.
She was accompanied tonight by a boy with dark, curly hair and a nose that was a little too large for his face. His dark eyes glinted with some privately amusing thoughts as he surveyed the gathering audience.
"Boyfriend?" Harvey asked Julie, deliberately adopting the air of a teasing older brother.
"No, an old friend. Harvey Dent, Tommy Elliot."
"Nice to meet you." Harvey shook the boy's hand, entertained by his look of disappointment at Julie's designation for him. Harvey had some experience of being stuck in friendzones himself during high school and college, but it all felt pathetic in hindsight after he met Marie.
The curtain finally rose, with Marie and her fellow 3Ls leading the rest of the cast in a musical parody to greet their guests. The show then cycled through a series of song parodies and comedy sketches about law school and the legal profession, some of which were impressively funny for having been written by a bunch of future lawyers.
There was one sketch that featured comic book superheroes being put on trial, with the villains serving as the jury. Marie portrayed the prosecutor, and Harvey grinned to himself as he realized that she was parodying conversations that they had about his own ambitions as a future prosecutor, and he was probably the only person besides her who knew it. They were sharing an inside joke right there, in the midst of hundreds of oblivious spectators.
The afterparty took place in a large apartment where four different members of the cast were living. Those who didn't have family present in the audience went ahead to set up, and Harvey and the rest of the significant others and close friends who were invited followed after them. By the time he arrived, unfortunately still accompanied by the two undergrads, Marie had already taken a couple of shots and greeted him with a relaxed happiness.
"That was amazing!" Julie pulled Marie into a hug before Harvey could even say anything.
"Thank you. I'm so glad you came..." Harvey waited through the conversation that followed, directing Tommy towards the drinks with his eyes in hopes that the boy would try to pull Julie away with him. The kid took the hint, pulling away the ginger interloper and giving Harvey the chance to properly greet Marie.
He was a few drinks in himself when he noticed the shadow lurking amidst the partygoers. She was dressed to avoid notice, in a black, oversized GU hoodie that hid any hint of her figure. Harvey didn't know if she had accompanied anyone here, but she was on her own now, and drew his attention when he saw her inconspicuously relieve one of Marie's castmates of his wallet. At first, he thought the alcohol might just be playing a trick on his mind, but then she glanced towards him and paused, and the confidence in her green eyes waivered for a moment.
Then she was heading for the exit, and he followed. He caught up to her out in the hall. "I'm going to have to ask you to give that back."
She paused, but it was a moment before she turned around. "You seem more concerned about his wallet than you do about your own."
Harvey's eyes widened as he felt his own pockets and realized that his wallet was gone. He quickly sobered up.
Grinning slyly, the girl reached into her hoodie and pulled out an assortment of wallets, correctly identifying his. She opened it and looked at his ID. "Harvey Dent."
"That's my name. What's yours?"
"Samantha Kane," she replied in a tone that clearly indicated that her name was not, in fact, Samantha Kane.
"Pleased to meet you, Samantha. Can I have that back, please?"
She grinned and shrugged. "You don't carry much cash on you." Then she tossed the wallet to him, and his baseball skills just managed to overcome the alcohol and make the catch.
"Being in six figures of student loan debt doesn't exactly lend itself to being a spendthrift."
She scoffed. "I'm sure your cushy law job will wipe out that debt in a year, two at most."
"Actually, I plan to work for the city, so it'll take a lot longer than that."
"Well then your payoffs from Falcone will solve your problems."
"I'm not going to accept any payoffs."
She looked amused at that. "Oh, so you're one of them."
"Who's them?"
"The naïve idealists. The ones who think they can close their eyes and ears to reality and walk straight enough to not crash into a building."
"I don't plan to ignore reality, I plan to change it."
"Emphasis on the naïve."
"You're one to talk. You're what, twenty? And you're stealing wallets at an afterparty."
"Maybe I just came to mess with Freckles, and the wallets are an added bonus."
"Freckles?" He immediately thought of a certain redhead with very prominent freckles who was the same age that this girl looked to be. "You mean Julie?"
The thief smirked.
"What, did she steal your high school sweetheart?"
To his surprise, she froze at that, and the amusement vanished from her eyes so quickly that he almost felt bad, despite the fact that she had just stolen from him and his classmates.
"She wishes." Her tone was suddenly sharp and icy.
He quickly changed the subject. "Look, either you go back in there and give everyone back their wallets, or I go to the police and give them a very accurate description of you and the fact that you know Julie. Perhaps she can give the police more information about you."
"You're drunk."
"I'm not that drunk, and I'm over twenty-one, unlike you."
"Well, since you seem to be a bleeding heart, maybe you'll understand when I say that I only steal from those who won't miss the funds, like a bunch of future lawyers who will undoubtedly take advantage of the system, as much as you'd like to think otherwise."
He scoffed. "So you're some kind of Robin Hood? And I suppose you give any money you don't need to an orphanage?"
"A cat shelter, actually. But no, I'm terrible at archery.
He rolled his eyes, masking the fact that he found himself liking this girl a little bit, despite himself.
"But speaking of shooting things, what's the point, Harvey? It's basically a coinflip whether someone will be shot in the head in this city on any given day. Why put yourself in so much debt trying to save a city that can't be saved? Gotham will never change, no matter how much people like you sacrifice to try to force it."
"I refuse to accept that."
She sighed. "You remind me of someone. He..." She paused, getting upset again. "He threw away everything to try and save Gotham. You seem like a nice guy, so I'd hate to see you do the same thing."
He looked down. "I have to."
Her next question surprised him. "Freckles' roommate... She's your girlfriend, right?"
"Yes."
"Would you abandon her for your mission?"
"No. Never."
The thief looked down, a tear escaping from her eye. "She's lucky."
Harvey simply stared, flummoxed by the turn this already-strange conversation had taken.
The thief stepped back. "Good luck, Harvey Dent." Then she turned and was gone.
Harvey stared after her, and it was a moment before he realized that she had taken the rest of the wallets. He stared at his own. She'd been wearing gloves, so he didn't have her fingerprints, but he could certainly describe her well enough to the police.
Returning to the party, he found Marie looking around in confusion. "There you are," she said. "Where'd you go?"
"I just needed some air. Do you still have your wallet with you?"
She frowned but checked her bag. "Yes, it's here."
He gave a small smile at the secure, thrice-zippered, lockable bag that her paranoid mother had gotten her, knowing it had probably thwarted the little thief. "Good."
And he decided that he wouldn't go to the police.
The day of graduation was brutally hot, particularly beneath the thick robes and velvet tams. Harvey overheard a joke about the hell that was law school shooting its last flames at them. But to him, it was the opposite, the oppressive heat symbolizing the fact that he was leaving his haven and entering the real crucible.
Well, technically, he was entering the crucible via a three-month-long tunnel that consisted of preparing for and taking the Bar Exam and then taking Marie on a trip to Florida, with a certain ring waiting in its box in his pocket.
She undoubtedly suspected what was going to happen, as she insisted that her mother come along on the trip.
Celia Dorelli was a loving if exceptionally paranoid woman, her maternal concern amplified a hundredfold by the sudden death of her husband in a climbing accident when Marie was thirteen. Harvey's first meeting with her had been an interrogation that would make the F.B.I. proud, and by then, she had already gotten a friend of hers at the GCPD to run an impromptu background check on him. It wasn't until last Christmas that she allowed him to think that he had finally won her trust, at which point he made clear to her that he had every intention of spending the rest of his life with Marie.
She still shot him suspicious looks over the course of the trip, but he knew that it was partially to get his goat and partially just suspicion about when he planned to reveal the one secret that he had been keeping from her daughter.
He popped the question on the beach in Key West, just as the sunset lit up the waters of the Gulf of Mexico in magnificent shades of orange and purple. Marie's answer was emotional and emphatic, and just as he slipped the ring on her finger, a warm breeze blew off the gulf, feeling even to his agnostic sensibility like a divine blessing.
She started working at Wayne Enterprises, sharing his scruples to an extent but preferring to try to change the culture of Gotham's most distinguished bastion of greed from the inside. As a result, he became her plus-one to the company's Christmas Gala, a very uppity affair that gave him the opportunity to meet several figureheads of politics and law enforcement in the city.
His boss, Mr. Fields, was also there, and introduced him to Mayor Hill as well as Rupert Thorne, the most powerful member of the City Council, and Gillian Loeb, the Police Commissioner. The introductions didn't extend to Carmine Falcone, who kept his distance from his political puppets even as he kept an eye on them, and Harvey decided on his own to introduce himself to the dangerous ventriloquist whom he was determined to see behind bars one day.
"Mr. Falcone? I'm Harvey Dent, I work at the D.A.'s office."
The man took a moment to study him, perhaps surprised by the boldness of Harvey's approach. Then he shook his hand. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Dent. And that lovely woman that you came in with was your fiancé, Miss Dorelli?"
Harvey stilled, knowing immediately that the question was a rhetorical display of what Falcone already knew. The man behind the curtain was still a wizard, learning everything that he needed to know about anyone who could threaten his reign. This was a show of strength, and Harvey felt appropriately humbled. "Yes, she is."
"Well then you're either a very good man or a very lucky man, Mr. Dent, and likely both. There's no greater honor than the favor of a beautiful and intelligent woman. Be sure that you don't do anything to risk losing her."
Harvey didn't miss the threat embedded among the kind words. "Of course I won't, Sir. It's an honor to meet you."
Falcone gave a smile with more than a hint of smugness, then turned away. Harvey watched him go, feeling for the first time like he might be in over his head.
"It's basically a coinflip whether someone will be shot in the head in this city on any given day." The little thief's words echoed within his ears, not for the first time. He couldn't put a target on Marie's back.
"You alright, kid?" He turned to see a man peering at him, and recognized the mustached face from the news.
"You're the new kid in the D.A.'s office, aren't you?" he asked when Harvey didn't respond to his first question. Harvey nodded. "I'm James Gordon, GCPD."
"Harvey Dent." Harvey shook his hand.
Lieutenant Gordon glanced in the direction Falcone had gone. "If you don't mind me being blunt, not many kids have the balls to go right up to Carmine Falcone like that."
Harvey cracked a smile. He wanted to say that he wasn't afraid of Falcone, but he wasn't so sure of that at the moment.
"Come on, let me introduce you to a couple people you should know." Gordon beckoned, and Harvey followed him over to two more GCPD detectives.
Both of them were blonde, but the physical similarities ended there. The man was tall, broad-shouldered, and square-jawed, his dark eyes stern and cynical. The woman was short and didn't look much older than Harvey himself, although that was perhaps an illusion provoked by her pixie cut-hair and bubbly demeanor.
"Detectives, this is Harvey Dent. Harvey, Lieutenant Arnold Flass and Sergeant Sarah Essen."
Flass smirked. "You're the D.A.'s new kid?"
Harvey was getting a little sick of the designation. "I'm the new guy in the office, yes."
Flass glanced at Essen. "Why don't you give him the Gotham rundown, noob to noob?"
Essen shot him a dirty look, then extended her hand to Harvey. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Dent. I'm Sarah. I am, as Detective Flass so kindly put it, also somewhat new to Gotham."
Harvey didn't bother to point out that he wasn't actually new to the city. "Welcome. Where did you transfer from?"
"Chicago. Apparently, I followed in the big guy's footsteps." She gestured to Gordon.
Harvey briefly wondered why Gordon was considered the 'big guy' when he was smaller than Flass, at least physically. And from the expression on Flass's face, perhaps he was wondering the same thing.
As Harvey returned his attention to Essen, however, he caught another woman's gaze from across the room. Marie beckoned him over.
"Excuse me, Detectives, I'm being summoned by my better half." He gave his apologetic look to Gordon, who, judging from the wedding ring on his finger, would be more sympathetic. "It was great to meet you."
Gordon gave him the knowing look he expected, and nodded. "You too, Harvey. See you around."
Harvey hurried over to his summoner, noting the women that she was talking to as he approached. One was blonde, with a confident, mischievous gaze. The other... Harvey paused at the sight of the green eyes. No, this woman was older than the little thief, but they could be sisters.
And the term 'beautiful' didn't do her justice.
He braced himself as he arrived at his place beside Marie, not looking directly at the green eyes. He had met other beautiful women before, of course, women whose faces would pop up in his mind later before Marie drove them from his thoughts with her own attractiveness that was anything but skin-deep. But this was his first time meeting such a woman right in front of Marie.
"Sorry to pull you away," said Marie, the laughter in her voice severely belying her words.
"We were afraid that my husband would rub off on you," said the blonde woman.
Harvey blinked. What an odd thing to say about one's spouse.
"Harvey Dent, Barbara Gordon," said Marie, the laughter still in her voice.
"Barbara Kean-Gordon." The woman held out her hand, and Harvey shook it. "Marie tells us that you're yet another crime-fighter."
Harvey smiled and shrugged. "In a way, although I don't get around to fighting the criminals until after they've been caught."
"I hope you know what you're signing up for." There was condescension in her gaze, but also challenge.
"I do." He stood as tall as he could, meeting her challenge with defiance. "I'm well aware of the influence that the criminals have over this city. I'll do whatever I can to break through that control and get them behind bars."
"Those are very brave words when you don't even know who is listening," said the beauty that Harvey was avoiding looking at. There was a sing-song quality to her tone that felt vaguely threatening.
He took a breath before looking at her. "And who are you?"
The woman studied him for a moment before holding out her hand. "Helen Troy."
"Helen Troy? As in, Helen of Troy?" He was as certain that this woman was not 'Helen Troy' as he was that the little thief was not 'Samantha Kane.' Maybe they really were sisters.
Nevertheless, he shook her hand, and the nerves in his palm betrayed him with a little tingle from her touch.
She smiled at his comment. "You have good taste."
"Hm?"
She gestured at Marie's engagement ring. "That's quite a ring. Saul Goldman's work?"
Harvey raised his eyebrows. "You know your Gotham jewelers."
"My father has him do custom work sometimes, for my mother and me." She drew his attention to her earrings, ornate bands of silver with embedded emeralds that matched her eyes. "He's good."
"He is." Harvey glanced down at Marie's ring appreciatively, then slipped her hand into his. "And your father would be Zeus, of course?" He was calling 'Helen' out on her false name, but hopefully in a way that she would appreciate.
The green eyes danced with laughter that didn't reach her red lips. "But of course."
Marie squeezed his hand, and he met her gaze to find some heat there. She was seeing through him with an ease provided by years of experience.
'Helen' caught the moment, and looked away. "Well, I should be going. But it was nice meeting you, Harvey. Good luck with your... efforts."
"Thank you."
She walked away, and Harvey met Marie's gaze again with silent apology.
But this was a conversation for later. She turned back to Barbara. "So, Barbara, you were telling us about your art gallery..."
'Later' came moments after they arrived at home. "So, you seemed to like Helen Troy." The words were said matter-of-factly, with no heat or venom.
"I don't know. She didn't even give her real name."
Marie shook her head. "That didn't stop you from staring."
"I'm sorry." He caught her hips and turned her towards him. "But I know nothing about her, and everything about you. And I love everything that I know about you."
Marie frowned for a moment. But then she apparently decided that this wasn't worth turning into a real argument, and her expression turned coy. "You don't know everything about me."
"Oh yes I do."
She looked entertained by his confidence. "Who knows? Maybe 'Marie Dorelli' is as fake a name as 'Helen Troy' is."
He laughed. "That would be one heck of a deception, given all of your government papers."
"All of those papers can be faked."
He plopped down on their red couch and pulled her onto his lap. "Yes, you're clearly a secret criminal." He began kissing her neck.
She sighed and leaned into his kisses, but kept up the game. "Maybe you're not marrying the one Italian in Gotham who isn't connected to the mob after all."
He grinned against her skin. "Well then I'll have to imprison you."
"Do your worst."
A/N: Selina's chosen alias is another nod to Bob Kane, but also a fun little Easter egg. To what, you might wonder...