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]

"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."