walking beside the guilty and the innocent

[indenture]

WHO: HARVEY DENT and YOU
WHERE: Around.
WHEN: 4/24 - 4/30 (specify!)
WHAT: Harvey Dent has put on his happy face and is ready to share it to the world.
WARNINGS: TBD, will edit as needed.


I. HARVEY ☆ INSIDE AND OUTSIDE HEROPA'S LIBRARY ☆ DAYTIME, ALL DAYS

It's with great determination and self-control unlike any he's had to embrace in years that Harvey is able to make it through a day without flipping his coin every other minute, although he hasn't kicked the habit entirely. It still comes out for the tougher decisions here and there, but for the most part Harvey's mind feels strangely at peace. He feels at peace and wonders distantly if he's deluding himself in feeling that way.

It's been years since he's tried this, longer still since he's really lived a life that could even abstractly be called normal, and even having gone through the surgery Harvey isn't sure he can make this work. Sooner or later, Two-Face always makes himself heard again. He always acts so that Harvey can't forget he's never completely alone. If it were only for Matt's sake this time Harvey would dismiss the idea, but it isn't -- somehow, he's found himself with people that have some amount of faith that he can do this, and it's a strange, uneasy feeling being believed in again. Inspiring, but...

... But right now, his mind is quiet; all he hears are his own thoughts, his own breathing, the soft sound of pages turning as he refreshes himself at the library -- sometimes sitting indoors, sometimes outside at a picnic table with his coat off to enjoy the sun -- brushing up on Heropa law so he can consider retaking the Bar Exam. He spends most of his time there, taking breaks occasionally to grab lunch or coffee somewhere before returning to his studies.

II. TWO-FACE ★ CENTRAL HEROPA ★ EVENING, THE 28TH

The plastic surgery is impeccable, far better than anything he could have gotten back home in Gotham. The technology in this world is far more advanced, and cosmetic reconstruction has certainly benefited from it; the jagged edges of glass from the broken car window in front of him cast unsteady shadows across his face, darkening his eyes in contrast to the thatch of light that hits his cheek from the streetlamp, engulfing his expression like teeth. Shards litter the sidewalk, sparkling like glitter, and he turns his eyes to the inactive spotlight atop the police car's roof before he moves on before whichever cop left it parked there sees fit to return.

About a block away is when he stops at a corner and begins to pluck splinters of glass from his bleeding hand, noting that the surgery has held well even then. The hand is bleeding, but the scars still don't show.

"It was a bad idea," he says to himself -- more than literally -- as he pries a particularly large piece from his palm, holding it up so he can admire it in the light. He touches it to his forehead, marking the center with a small splotch of blood.

Comments

[indenture]

"I'm not bragging," he says, shaking his head and rubbing his hand over his forehead, through his hair. He manages a smirk, however slightly forced. "I wouldn't tempt fate like that. Vanity was always my biggest downfall."

He sighs and sits back, though he's still smirking. It just is what it is, that expression says -- there is a lot riding on his failure, but not much on his success.

"Do you think people can change? Or are we always who we are?" He glances at her. "Deep down?"

[selfequipped]

"Everyone can change," she says confidently. There's not even a moment of consideration, of putting her mind to use on it. She's met despicable people, but one of them is now her friend, no matter how frustrating he is on most days. "Anyone can be capable of good, as long as they don't believe themselves to be only capable of evil. That's what I believe."

[indenture]

Her wording is interesting; Harvey raises his eyebrow curiously, mulling over it. Only capable of evil -- well, he never believed that. But did he believe himself more capable of good? He at least used to be. That had been change; could he still change back?

"That's a good way to look at it," he says finally, quietly. "And what about the people capable of both?"

[selfequipped]

Crossing into dimensions haunted her. It's something that keeps her up at night, and it's something that she doesn't share with others. While she's abandoned her journal due to busy behavior here in this new world, she still holds it close, knowing that the words about the "mayfly dimensions" might still strike a chord when she needs them to.

The last thing Kate wants is to be a bad person. She's utterly confident in her identity as a good person, but she's seen herself, the really evil her, and it unsettles her, twisting her up inside.

She never really had a chance to ask why those other versions of her had turned out that way.

Perhaps she should have.

"Anyone is capable of both," she says finally. "That's nature versus nurture for you. Everyone learns the difference between wrong or right. It just varies in what context you learn it in. What is right to one person is wrong to another. It becomes ... complicated."

[indenture]

As she speaks, Harvey realizes how ridiculous it is to ask her the questions he's asking, some veiled attempt at assurance, or validation. How pathetic, he thinks -- but typical, though thankfully the voice that always chimed in to call him a coward was silent today.

He's not evil, but he isn't only good, either. He'll settle sometimes for just not being bad, even knowing he is that. But when it's easier to hide, it's easier to try.

"It is complicated. But if it wasn't we wouldn't need lawyers," he says, deciding to keep it simple. "What over-complicates it even further is when the law can't cover 'right and wrong' the way people think it should."

[selfequipped]

"No, sometimes the law comes with too many technicalities." Despite her role as a hero, she doesn't mind ignoring a few rules here and there if it means getting done what has to be done. Anyone who puts on a costume and does what they think is right adheres to that idea.

"But that's why we have superheroes," she adds lightly. Moments before, she looked serious, considering what he had to say, but she smiles then. Kate can at least make light of that aspect of the conversation. "Or some of us do. I admit that it's still hard for me to imagine a world without them."

[indenture]

The law does come with too many technicalities; Harvey agrees with some, but he's been ruined by others. Even before he was a criminal himself, it's those little loopholes that shielded corruption that ripped his life apart.

"Hard for me, too," he says, eyebrows furrowing slightly. "I don't know if I remember a time when vigilantes weren't part of the landscape... but Gotham doesn't attract the 'super.' Gotham attracts madmen and people that get sacrificed to them."

Is it melodrama if it's true?

[selfequipped]

"I think I know something like that. Only it's called Los Angeles." Gotham is another name for New York, another name for Brooklyn specifically, so she isn't certain if he means that—or the Gotham in the Batman movies. Kate decides it's best not to ask for specifics.

"Are they all linked together there?" She pauses, considering her question at length. "These ... madmen?"

[indenture]

"Los Angeles is nothing like it," Harvey says with a smirk and a shake of his head, his lips drawing together in a tight yet unfamiliar way. It's foreign to be able to close his mouth like this again, not feel the numbing stress of his left side constantly gaping and exposed.

It's a strange question, and a hard one to answer. He almost shakes his head, but hesitates. "In some ways," he relents. "Yes and no. They come together under a similar flag. It's not a shared psychosis, more like a shared cause."

[selfequipped]

"How much of it is territorial? Or is that the root of it all? You can't do business without making a deal with the right people." Kate is still beginning to understand the full extent of Madame Masque's involvement in Los Angeles. She doesn't know everything, and she suspects that no matter how much thinking she does here, it won't benefit her back there.

[indenture]

"Most of it, after the earthquake. Before that, only the gangs and crime families cared about territory. Oswald Cobblepot," he says slowly, since Cobblepot is around and Harvey has no loyalty to the guy, especially after the earthquake.

"Criminals of Gotham tend to find their own niches and agendas beyond that. Everyone's got an origin story."

[selfequipped]

"Sometimes territory is more than just what cross streets you have," Kate says after a moment of thinking about his response. "But I admit that most of the trouble I've come across thinks a lot bigger than organized crime." Drug dealers were on the list, sure, but they also faced Kang the Conqueror and Skrulls. The Young Avengers never had a lot of experience with what might be called "small time" crime.

Then again, what he's saying makes it seem like this crime is the truly villainous stuff.

[indenture]

"It almost always is more. And that's the problem. Less of one here, so far--" He frowns mildly, eyebrows shelving themselves low above his eyes. He shakes his head, jaw tight.

"Territory in Gotham revolves around the people," Harvey adds finally. It's the best way to put it without having to name names or specifics, which he isn't in the mood to do. "And Arkham Asylum. It's the kind of city where no one wins and no one's honest."

[selfequipped]

"Do you mean to include yourself in that assessment?" Kate can't help but miss that admission. It's the type of admission she's heard a few times since arriving here, and she thinks back to their first conversation. The implication there had been that he wasn't a good person, but he hasn't seemed so bad here. That is, in comparison.

[indenture]

That question earns Kate a smirk and a raised eyebrow, though no immediate answer. Harvey folds one arm over the other, both over his book, and makes a soft noise under his breath -- halfway amused, halfway thoughtful.

"Wasn't excluding myself, so I guess that's close enough," he says, tilting his head mildly. "But honesty has always been one of my bigger points of pride."

Bigger, though hardly biggest.

[selfequipped]

"Well, you could always be a loser, but that's putting yourself down ahead of the count." She throws up a shoulder. Even if he considers himself honest, she does keep the fact that he's not excluding himself in the back of her mind; it means he'll lie if it suits him. Everyone is capable of that. Hell, even Kate herself tends to be evasive, but she tends to lean on honesty as a fault—she wants to be assured of her goodness, after all.

[indenture]

"I'm not a loser," he says, frowning mildly. "Not in that sense. I'm not a winner, either, but few people in life are ever just one or the other. At any given moment most people are both."

Harvey glances back down at his book, opening to the page he had open before again and looking down at the words without really reading them.

"Matter of perspective, really."

[selfequipped]

"Yeah, I'm sure it is. And that seems to be a pretty level-headed way of looking at things." That said, she steps back, turning back to her things. It's been an interesting conversation, but the truth is that they're both here to study. And what he's working on seems to be harder and more immediate.

"I'll let you get back to that. Have a good day, Harvey."