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]

[ Harvey nods his head, his eyebrows raising and eyes -- well, eye, since the left one is only a glass replica -- looking cautiously alight at the idea. ]

You got that right. I don't know what else I'd do -- I've been at this pretty much most of my life by now. It's a step down from District Attorney, but we all have to start at the bottom. Sometimes more than once.

[glassinine]

[Edgeworth...Well. He's not the sort of person who has a face that's even capable of lighting up; he's a grim sort of man by nature, after all, and his expression tends towards the morose even when he's just at rest. But there's definitely a lessening of moroseness that answers those words, a new energy that enters his face; he nods to the chair beside Dent and asks:]

May I sit?

[indenture]

Be my guest. We might as well sit together, as long as we're both here.

[ Harvey moves his own chair over slightly, since he was positioned closer to the middle of his table than to the edge, having been the only one there. ]

Hard at work yourself, huh?

[glassinine]

Yes.

[He pulls a chair to a decent distance away from Harvey - close enough to be friendly, far enough to not be too friendly - and offers a little nod of acknowledgment.]

My knowledge of the law is still not yet where it needs to be for me to be a truly effective prosecutor.

[indenture]

I know what you mean. It almost feels like starting all over again.

[ Which in several ways it kind of is, particularly for Harvey. How long has it been since he practiced law? A couple of years, if he counts the time spent in the City. But since becoming Two-Face... that accounted for almost a decade of his life, a decade-long hiatus.

The thought makes his lips tighten, but only briefly. ]

Law isn't quite like riding a bicycle, unfortunately. But at least the fundamentals stay with you.

[glassinine]

[Edgeworth, however unknowingly, echoes Harvey's thoughts.]

How long has it been for you?

[indenture]

[ Harvey sits back, tilting his head upward as if he has to calculate the math in his head and doesn't already have it nearly memorized. ]

About ten years or so. That accident broke something in me that I've been trying to fix ever since.