Batman

It whistled through the air, cutting its very fabric like a knife, its rotation perfectly symmetrical and the reflective skin glistened in the dim light…this thing of beauty, this object of value, this tool of death. Its flight reached a crescendo and it hung in the sky but for a moment, though its features were still blurred to most naked, human eyes, before it took the plunge…an agonizingly long plunge at that, in the same glorious movement, carved a path of deception in its wake, one that made a deep pit form in most stomachs.

It hit the ground with the sound of a small rattle. The profile of Ike Eisenhower, burnt to a crisp, stared back at him, chilling his soul. A bloodshot eye, lacking an eyelid, glared viciously into his own while dismal, rotten teeth, unprotected by lips, hid one half of a smile. “You lose.”

A shot rang out in the dark.

His eyes opened and the same bloodshot, lidless orb stared back him, sketched to perfection in the holographic display before him. Harvey Dent had invaded his dreams since his escape from custody during the mass breakouts of both Arkham and Blackgate. Batman stared into the face before him and it stared back through him, coldly, emotionlessly.

“It would seem that Mr. Dent weighs heavily on your mind these days, sir,” Alfred Pennyworth noted, announcing his arrival. Batman didn’t turn from the projection, instead choosing to type a few short commands on a hard light keypad. Dent’s mug shot shrunk down slightly to make way for a new window, which quickly manufactured pages of text that displayed a detailed biography of the man. Batman’s eyes slowly treaded across the words in silence. “I took the liberty of preparing some tea,” Alfred continued, unabated. “I trust you’ll be staying around long enough to drink it.”

“Thank you, Alfred,” Batman responded, still not turning from his work. He was finding it harder to concentrate on the task at hand, as his eyes began to look through the text before him and stare into the blackness of the cavern that laid ahead.

The room was as black as it could get on that evening, with the shades pulled. He sat there in the darkness, staring into this blackness, patiently waiting. This could be a mistake, but it would be a risk he knew he would sooner or later have to take. A war on crime was, after all, to large of a battle to be fought only by one man. He was still new at this, after all.

Alfred, of course, had been a blessing, playing nursemaid and helping to maintain his equipment, but he needed more organization. He needed more insurance that the work he was doing counted for something.

Batman had found himself relying more on strength and intimidation than allowing himself room to work within the legal constraints of the law. It was an option that was cordoned off due to his operating methods, but something that had quickly become evident as a hindrance. Criminals were back walking the streets almost as quickly as he was delivering them into custody.

He needed someone who could navigate the legal system, to tell him what to do to put a stop to this recurring problem. Someone who would also want to see the worst of Gotham’s criminal element behind bars, unable to strike its defenseless public down in an effort to sate their own greed, yet someone who could cover his actions and keep their alliance to himself.

He needed Harvey Dent, Gotham’s new district attorney, on his side.

Batman had heard things about the man while running surveillance on several of Gotham’s more high profile figures. Police commissioner Loeb harbored a strong distaste for Dent, often commenting to lapdogs Flass and Branden about the imminent demise of chivalry being delayed by the mess it would cause in the papers. Skeevers would occasionally make rather inappropriate remarks about Dent’s spouse, Gilda, during gatherings with other less than noble members of the city’s criminal hierarchy. However, the most entertaining had to be the Roman, who often cursed Harvey Dent’s very name in his sleep. Batman himself had not made that honor as yet.

The door to the room creaked open and bathed the room in fluorescent from the hallway. Batman pulled himself to the wall next to the door, using a coat rack to help shroud himself in the shadows. A young man strode in, a brown overcoat hanging loosely from his arm, his hands balled into fists. He turned angrily toward the door as a thin shadow approached in the light. “I don’t care if Falcone has Johnny Cochran, Johnny Cash or Jesus Christ representing him, I want you in that courtroom tomorrow morning making sure he doesn’t walk on bail! Now do it, Fields!”

The man reached back and slammed the door in his companion’s face and then stepped to the front of his oak desk, pulling the chain on his desk lamp and illuminating the room in a dim light. He leaned over his desk in a hunch and exhaled deeply, betraying his own exhaustion. He let his overcoat drop haphazardly to his office floor and, reaching up with his right hand, Harvey Dent brushed back his messy brown hair.

“It’s not easy, is it?” Batman said, announcing his presence. Dent jerked around, startled, and spotted his visitor. He sighed once more and now relaxed into a seated position on the edge of his desk. “Oh, it’s just you.”

Batman raised an eyebrow beneath his cowl, taken aback by the district attorney’s easy acceptance of his presence. Dent continued, “I thought maybe Falcone had put another one of his thugs in my office. Three times in a month and you start to wish they’d do their job right.”

Dent crossed around his desk and pulled out his chair, removing his gray sports coat in the process and hanging it over his seat. He sat down and booted the computer on his desktop. Batman hesitated, but then spoke curiously, “You’re not going to call the police?”

“Why would I? It’s me, more than anyone, who appreciates what you’re doing out there.” Dent replied, clicking through folder after folder until, finally, a login screen and password prompt appeared on his screen. Dent looked up from the monitor and at his guest, who had not moved from his position at the coat rack. “But, lets face it, we’re not exactly having the best of luck keeping the criminals off the streets now, are we? I’m guessing that’s why you’re here, right?”

Batman stood silently for a moment before nodding. Dent cracked a smile and turned back to his screen, his fingers typing away furiously. “Good. Come over here, I have something I want you to see.” Dent looked back to the coat rack, but found his guest to be gone. A small scuff caused him to look over his shoulder and find that Batman had made his way behind his chair, his gauntleted hand squeezing the top of the leather seat. Dent quickly forced the surprise from his face and turned back to his computer.

A graph showing the hierarchy of Gotham City’s underworld was displayed on his monitor. “Everyone on this list, with the exception of the Roman, has been in our custody at least once in the last year. Every one of them walked, either do to witnesses disappearing, corrupt judges, or, in your case--”

“Lack of evidence,” Batman finished.

Dent went on. “Right, so here’s what I say we need to do: you can go places I can’t. I’ll look the other way if it can get me evidence so I can get an indictment. Those crooked judges, scare them straight. Those witness that go missing, keep them found. You do the nighttime work and I’ll keep the nine to five hours, because my wife is getting to be a pain with me pulling both shifts. Work for you?”

Batman nodded and Dent smiled and punched a command into his keyboard, causing his printer to spring to life. “Great, let me get you a copy.” The phone on the district attorney’s desk rang and he leaned over to view the caller ID. “The wife,” Dent sighed, before turning back to Batman. “You’ll have to excuse me, I have to--”

Dent cut himself off once he realized that Batman was no longer in the room, the blinds of his open office window flapping in the cool night breeze was the only sign of his departure. Dent looked at the printer to find his chart had disappeared as well. Harvey smiled to himself as he picked up the phone.

That night, he went home early.

“Sir?” Batman turned to stare at Alfred, who had placed his hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

He exhaled deeply and returned his attention to the projections before him. “I’m fine. Just thinking. What were you saying?”

“I asked how you intended to bring Harvey in this time,” Alfred said, picking up the tea tray from the limestone shelf on which he had placed it.

Batman curtly answered, “Don’t call him that.”

“Sir, if I may speak freely, I feel it is absolutely ridiculous, criminal or not, that you not refer to him by--” Alfred began, but found himself cut off as the caped man before him turned around, sharply.

Batman stared at the man who had raised him from childhood for a moment, sternly, before speaking. “Computer, access casefile TEC 001, subcategory MG.”

Behind the dark knight, the hard light text boxes and mug shot dissipated and was replaced by a light show as the platform on which the two men stood suddenly began to transform into a sketch of another place. Alfred’s eyes widen as he surveyed the imagery around him and let out a startled, “My god.”

They stood amidst the outline of a two room apartment where, seated in two chairs and holding hands, were two children, a bullet lodged in the forehead of each one. The left side of their faces had been burned away by sulfuric acid. Batman didn’t look at the crime scene around him, but maintained hard eye contact with the manservant. “He did this. He may not have pulled the trigger, but it was his actions that drove a man do to do this to those children.”

Batman lowered his head, frustrated, and was met by the cold, dead eyes of one of the victims. They stared back into his, vacantly. The future of what might have been torn away from them.

“How could someone even as callous as Maroni do something like this?” Gordon asked. He had removed his glasses and was massaging the bridge of his nose. Batman stood next to him in the darkened hospital room. He had no answer for his friend and could only glance away. Sadly, people had done much worse to their victims; it was only that this time it had been one of their own who had been a casualty.

Harvey Dent laid in the bed they stood at the foot of, unconscious, his head wrapped in bandages. The day had started as a promising one, with Dent set to prosecute Salvatore ‘The Boss’ Maroni, the first step in landing an indictment on the Roman. Amidst the chaos of a year-long killing spree by a killer known only as Holiday, this one bright ray of hope was shining through the overcast Gotham sky at a time when it was sorely needed. No forecast said anything about rain, but rain it did.

Acid rain.

Maroni, using a disguised antacid bottle, hurled the contents into Dent’s face during his testimony. Sulfuric acid hideously marred Dent’s appearance and the court had been called into indefinite recess. Dent was now heavily sedated, as the man screamed constantly when he was awake. Gordon once again looked at his masked friend. “Why did this have to happen to Harvey when we needed him most.”

Both men knew the answer, but Batman also knew that Gordon needed to hear it. His tone a little less gravelly than usual, he spoke. “Because he was the best of us.” And he was. Dent didn’t need to dress like a creature of the night to fight crime, he didn’t need an arsenal to combat corruption. He didn’t have to travel the world honing his body and all of his skills to the peak of human limitations to battle injustice. Harvey Dent was just a man. One brave man.

Gordon looked to the table, all metal and white plastic, sitting at the left hand side of Dent’s bed. “What’s that?” he asked, taking the two steps and snatching a piece of silver from the tabletop.

Batman maintained his eyes on the Dent’s prone figure. “An Eisenhower dollar. Harvey was flipping it constantly last time we met. A stress reliever, he said. Check the back, it has two heads.”

Gordon turned the coin around and grimaced. He turned to Batman and held out the piece of currency. “Not so much anymore,” he said, frowning. Batman looked up from his unconscious ally and stared at the coin, its flip side now charred and melted. “Cruelly ironic,” Gordon continued, as he lowered the Eisenhower dollar to try and brush away some of the corrosion with his coat.

“How long until he recovers?” Batman asked, once again looking back to Dent.

“Doctors are scheduling a surgery for early next week. They’ll have a better idea after that,” Gordon replied, once again placing the coin on the tabletop, being careful to have the unmarred side facing up. He glanced down at his watch. “It’s getting late. Barbara’s already worried sick.”

“Go home to your wife, Jim,” Batman said, still staring sadly at the bed. “I think I’m going to stay here a while.”

Gordon nodded, turned and left, flipping off the light switch as he exited. Batman looked at Dent’s bandaged visage and felt a slight unease, knowing nothing would ever be the same. Somehow he could feel that their alliance was over, that an era had ended and he wondered just what would have been had things worked out differently that day.

Batman broke his stare with the digitized victim and looked back to Alfred, eyes cold. Alfred returned his gaze, taken aback by the fact that the man he raised would take such a step to prove a point to him. Batman turned away from the butler. “Computer, terminate visualization. Open criminal record 066, Dent, Harvey. Holo keyboard activate.”

The sketch of the apartment fell from around the two men and the three dimensional rendering of Two Face once again materialize before the dark knight, along with the holographic keypad. Alfred turned with his tray and walked off into the cave, disgusted.

“What will you do this time?” Batman asked the projection before him, angrily. “How many lives have you destroyed, Two Face? Who was the first?”

It was a small turn out to the funeral of one of Gotham City’s most influential citizens. Carmine ‘The Roman’ Falcone was dead, gunned down in his penthouse by the metropolis’s former distract attorney, Harvey Dent, who now referred to himself as Two Face. Batman watched the procession from afar, carefully secluding himself amongst the various markers on the cemetery grounds.

Batman, Gordon and Dent himself had made sure that the Roman’s funeral would be a relatively meek affair, as did the Holiday killer. The majority of Falcone’s associates had been imprisoned or murdered, and now Dent had ended his reign with a flip of a coin, landing Harvey in Arkham Asylum and the Roman in hell.

Falcone’s own children were not in attendance. Sophia Gigante was hospitalized at Gotham General from the consequences of a showdown with Catwoman the evening of her father’s death. His eldest son, Mario, had been deported to Italy years ago and his youngest, Alberto, was also confined to Arkham Asylum, for his actions as Holiday. Dog eat dog, mused the dark knight.

This musing didn’t help to relieve the unease he felt watching as Gotham’s former kingpin was lowered into the earth. His friend had pulled the trigger that ended this man’s life and, though he was a victim of mental illness, Batman had watch Dent cross a line he had vowed never to approach. He lowered his head and stared at the autumn leaves at his feet. Praying was not something he did often, but at that moment he did. He prayed that Harvey Dent would get the help he needed, that this wouldn’t be the first of many deaths at the hands of his friend.

“Master Bruce.” Alfred’s voice called, once again snapping his attention back to reality. Batman turned, irritated, and heard something slice through the air. He instinctively reached out his hand and snatched the object from the air. He knew what it was, the instrument of fate, the tool of destruction, the great equalizer. Still, Batman opened his gloved palm and stared at it, hatefully. Dent’s Eisenhower dollar stared back at him.

“What are you trying to prove?” he asked, his patience already wearing thin.

Alfred stood at the edge of the platform, arms crossed. “Only that, in the grief you experienced investigating the actions of Mr. Roberts, that you’ve allowed your knowledge of Harvey Dent to fall to the wayside.”

“How so?” Batman questioned, aloofly.

Alfred maintained hard eye contact with the dark knight. “You, of all people know of his condition that, as Two Face, Harvey can never make a decision of such magnitude on his own. He relies on the coin for his moral judgments.”

Batman paused for a moment and stared at the sharply dressed middle aged man before him and neither one gave ground. Slowly, the masked man hunter lowered his gaze back to his palm and locked eyes with Eisenhower.

It was April Fool’s Day at Arkham and the inmates were running the Asylum thanks to the machinations of chief psychiatrist Cavendish. Harvey Dent sat in a pile of his own feces, tears streaming down both his handsome and scarred cheeks. At his feet laid a deck of tarot cards, the focus of Harvey’s nearly inaudible muttering, “…too many choices…”

The Joker stood to the dark knight’s right, maliciously grinning. “So, what’s it gonna be, darling?” the clown sneered. Batman looked up from his palm and stared the devil directly in the eye, then looked to Harvey. “Why not let Two Face decide?”

Dent looked up from his mess just in time to catch the Eisenhower dollar that Batman flipped his direction. Slowly, unsure of himself, he stood and looked nervously at the dollar piece. He inhaled sharply and locked eyes with the Joker, confidently. “Good heads, he leaves.”

Dent flipped the coin and it cut through air like a hot knife through butter, an instrument of hope, the dark knight’s possible salvation. Dent expertly caught it with his right hand and slapped it down on the top of his left. “He leaves.”

Batman looked up from the Eisenhower dollar and back to Alfred, who still stood staring at him sternly. For a moment, they stood in silence, the decision hanging in the air. Slowly, Batman reached up and pulled back his mask. “I need to catch him, Alfred.” Bruce Wayne sighed, his face awash with sadness. “Out of all them who escaped, Two…Harvey is the one who not only poses the biggest threat to others, but to himself.”

The costumed figured once again turned back to the display of his friend turned nemesis. “I need to lay a trap for him, to draw him out. Several traps, actually, to keep him from getting suspicious. I assume Batgirl is out with Nocturna again?”

“Yes, sir,” Alfred responded, his tense posture relaxing.

“Contact her. Never know who we may bring out with any other events we hold.” Alfred turned away from his employer and began to step from the platform, but stopped in his tracks when the Bruce spoke once again. “Oh, and Alfred? You were right.”

Alfred Pennyworth allowed a smile to cross his lips as he once again proceeded to wander deeper into the cave. For all of his master’s travels, all of his knowledge and all of his skill, Alfred was pleased he could still impart some fatherly wisdom to the man he had long grown to accept as his son.

To Be Continued...

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