#character study? relationship study? disassociatice identities self healing narrative study???

[ziracona]

[ Been very interested by Harvey Dent recently, so I wanted to write some scenes that may turn into a full story that’s essentially an exploration of him and his relationships to Big Bad Harv/Two-Face, and to Judge, and himself, but is also a kind of typical action adventure. Anyway I have an outline building itself in my head but here’s a few scenes I wrote somewhere in the middle if you want to read some character exploration for them and a fight and some angst fluff hurt-comfort because that’s like half of what I write/enjoy writing let’s be real. Basic story/scenario setup is a new villain is attacking Gotham, has expansive mental superpowers. A number of people team up to fight back since it’s a universal threat to them. During a fight, big bad transports Batman, Catwoman, and Two-Face to a mind plane to have a home-turf advantage. But up there, Harvey is everyone in there in their own body, so he ends up with an unexpected numbers advantage that keeps him alive during the initial attack. Batman, Catwoman, and the Harvey group get separated from each other after the initial fight, and are trying to find the big bad and deal with it, get out, and stay alive (and probably finding each other again would be advantageous). So yeah, this is a little bit after the first fight and getting wildly lost in the mind plane.]

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This place was a little plateau, some trees and grass, a kind of mental jungle almost, minus the expected mugginess, with a chasm and some rushing water far, far below not far ahead of them now. Harvey could see more traversable flat land past the precipice ahead, if there was anywhere to cross.

He wasn’t sure where they were going, and he was sure Harv didn’t either, or Judge, but onward was…better than anything else.

I don’t see a way forward from here, though, he thought, glancing to the left and right as he followed Two-Face quickly toward the edge of the plateau. It wasn’t a wide chasm, at least. They might be able to knock down a tree and cross. Or something. I guess we could also circle back.

“Wait.”

Harvey stopped and turned, and a few paces ahead and much more irritated, so did Two-Face.

“This is a rare opportunity,” came the voice always so confusingly clear for the vocal chords he had in reality. Even here, where it made sense to hear, and he looked like his old self and had been given his own old vocal chords back again, he couldn’t even really get used to the sound of hearing himself out loud.

Clearly very exasperated by this detour, Two-Face turned around completely. “For what? If you hadn’t noticed, we’re not exactly walking around without a time limit.”

“For separation,” said Judge collectedly, drawing his sword so calmly, and leveling the massive thing at them.

No. Not at me, realized Harvey on a stunted delay. He was just standing between them. At Harv—a-at. …Two-Face.

Dazed almost, still somehow not quite getting what should have surely been obvious, he looked behind him at Two-Face, then back at Judge.

Two-Face took a step back. “Are you kidding me?” he asked with anger and disbelief, “We don’t event know what would happen! If one of the others dies here, they’re dead out there too! For all we know, any ONE of us three bites it, and we all drop dead!”

“A calculated risk I am willing to take,” replied Judge, unmoved.

“Yeah, big surprise, coming from you,” shot back Two-Face, clenching his fists, “Killing all three of us has never been a problem for you!”

“We appear here as unique individuals,” commented Judge, “I do not feel pain when you are injured. You did not become injured when Harvey was cut. To the best conclusion of reasonable logic, we are each only a representation of and container for ourself. Therefore, it stands to reason that if we are each a segment of Harvey Dent’s mind, separated completely for the first time, a segment being lost would reflect, in reality, only a loss of that segment, forever. Not a death of the whole.”

Livid, Two-Face extended his arms and started making sweeping gestures as he spoke. “And you have no idea what a huge fucking chunk of brain death might MEAN for the whole!”

“No,” agreed Judge, sword still leveled, “But it is a risk I am willing to take.”

“So, what, you’re going to kill me?” snapped Two-Face in disbelief, “We’re stuck in here fighting for our life already, and you’d risk all three of us to get rid of me permanently? What gives you the right-!”

Judge turned his attention to Harvey. “-With two of us, it would be quite efficient and easy a task.”

Two-Face stopped.

“This will likely be an opportunity you are never given again,” continued Judge calmly to Harvey.

“You can’t be serious,” said Two-Face, but his voice was different this time.

Harvey wasn’t looking at him. He was still staring at Judge.

Opportunity? It echoed in his head. He had wanted this for so, so long. All he had wanted for years was to be free of Harv again, forever. To be himself. Again. Free. To try. To…

He turned to look at Two-Face, time feeling stilted around him.

“No,” said Two-Face like he couldn’t process it either, taking another step back, “It could kill you.”

“We are fighting either way,” said Judge calmly, sword still perfectly leveled, as if the insanely oversized thing weighed nothing to him, “We are not both walking away from this space. If he is doomed to a risk either way, there are no questions left to be asked.”

“Hell there aren’t!” shouted Two-Face, something in him snapping, “I’m a much bigger part of him than you are, and I always have been!”

Judge was silent. Immovable. So massive. Why was he so big? Here, he and Big Bad Harv were identical except his lack of the acid scars. Judge was two or three times the size of either one of them, floating there in robes like a concept, not a person. Maybe that’s what he’s meant to be, thought Harvey with a sickened feeling in his stomach. Had he always been so big? Had they always been so much smaller?

I think I’m afraid of you, thought Harvey. A stupid thing to think. He was. He always had been. Why…was it crippling him now?

Maybe, for a moment back there when they’d all three been fighting side-by-side, it was because he’d felt…powerful, and safe. Untouchable, between the two of them. Strange. That wasn’t a way he could remember ever having felt at all with them before. Of course it wouldn’t last more than a second. Of course it…couldn’t…

Getting no response from Judge, Two-Face turned to Harvey. “You know this is insane. We’re not even out of here yet! Who can you count on?”

“You know what must be done. You have always known,” said Judge coolly, continuing to ignore Two-Face, “I exist because of your hatred of him.”

“You exist because of his hatred of US!” snapped Two-Face. Turning away from Judge, he took a few steps towards Harvey, trying to appeal. “Fighting each other here at all-”

“—This is simple.”

Judge moved with the words. Harvey hadn’t been looking at him, and by the time he was, the figure was so much closer, like it had apparated. How fast could he move? God, he was so big.

Two-Face hesitated and looked at Harvey again, then uneasily took a step back. Agitated, his hand went for the gun slung over his shoulder and rested there.

“You wanted a life without him,” said Judge, looming over them for all the world like a god of this little cosmos, “Desperately, more than anything. You wanted to be like me, and failed. You let him ruin you. He took your life and plunged it into crime and sin and evil so deeply you have been lost out there forever. For all your feeble struggling, you have let this thing BECOME you. It snuffed you out when you were weak, and has walked too long in your shoes, destroying every part of who you used to be. You have fought for years to take your life back from this monster. Aid in killing him now, and take it.”

“I’m not a monster; I do what has to be done!” shouted Two-Face, snatching his gun and gesturing wildly, fingers so tight around the grip even through the scar tissue Harvey could see them turning white, “For justice, for chance, for fucking making it from one breath to the next! I’m the one willing to do what you two can’t, so you don’t have to! I’m the ONLY one in here who has EVER looked out for another part of us! I protect him! You never have! Even when we were kids! You blamed us! I protected us! I took it, I fought back, I was everything wrong about us we were blamed for, so he didn’t have to be!” He whirled on Harvey. “You think you’ll be safe with him? He’ll kill you too! He’s been ready to cut you down for the crime of existing since you were six years old!”

No, thought Harvey, I’ve been failing my whole life, but I could be better. I could be free of you.

He turned towards Two-Face and took a step back, hand slowly going to rest against the little letter opener blade in his pocket.

Two-Face’s expression fell.

It surprised Harvey that it would be…unexpected.

Two-Face looked from Harvey, to Judge, and the momentary hurt burst into anger.

“You’re both idiots! You want to try?! Fine!”

The Tommygun flashed, and Harvey dove to the left before realizing the shot had been aimed very wide of him, at Judge. On his right, the massive black-clad, faceless figure swiped its sword up and the bullets clattered aside, off the blade in a flash. It was impossible. But everything here was.

And then Harv—Two-Face—was dashing at him, and he had to snap into the moment, ducking under a swing at his head with the body of the gun, and trying to go for a knife swipe of his own to Harv’s side.

Harv kicked him away, knocking him far enough back that the swipe only ate air, and almost took Judge’s sword between his shoulder blades, barely sensing it at the last moment, and throwing himself prone and rolling.

Harvey was back up first, about five feet from H—Two-Face, whose back was to him. He was scrambling back from Judge on his elbows, one hand digging into his jacket and producing a grenade.

It went flying at Judge before Harvey could reach him to try to stop it, and he slammed into a surprised Two-Face and they rolled, grappling on the grass at the edge of the area, as they heard the explosion from the bomb behind them. Worried, Harvey looked to see if Judge was still up, and saw him standing, unmoved, only the sword singed with soot, in a cloud of smoke. The imposing figure turned its head toward them.

A fist rammed into the side of his face, and Harvey went back down, struggling for a hold on Two-Face’s hand to keep the gun back as they landed side-by-side in the grass now, and the almost twin figure opposite him tried to rip the knife out of his own. He took a knee to the gut, hard, and answered with an elbow to the side of Two-Face’s head, and they struggled and slipped and rolled again, a mad tangle of knees and arms and cheap shots; a forehead slammed against his nose; his fist ripped at acid bleached white hair, and suddenly they were slipping for real—fast—too fast, too far.

In their struggle, they’d been getting dangerously close to the chasm and the tiny river far below, and the last grapple had landed them a little too dangerously close this time. They’d hit the edge of the slope to the fall.

They went from sliding to falling in an instant, and Harvey shot a hand out for the roots of a tree as he skidded past, and and it ripped free in his hand and came with him. Harv got a foot wedged between a slightly bigger tree trunk, and an arm around another almost as fast, a half second before Harvey’s momentum slammed him into Harv, stopping them both, breathing hard, about three feet from the edge.

Fight forgotten to the near death experience, they looked as one at the monumental fall. Even here, with the way injuries and healing seemed a concept instead of a medical reality, it would have to be a grim and certain death hitting ground below. Even the water must be like concrete.

“Aaahg!” The shout from Two-Face startled him, and he looked just in time to be grabbed by the collar and flung bodily back onto the plateau.

The impact knocked the breath out of him, and he had barely had time to understand where he was before Harv had scrambled up and thrown himself back on top of him, raising the gun butt to bring down on his head, and Harvey barely got his hands up in time to try to keep it back.

There was a sudden sound like wind whipping around a building, and Two-Face’s face paled and he hurled himself bodily backwards, narrowly avoiding Judge’s massive sword.

He rolled back and up to a knee, gun out, and fired. Bullets sprayed into the grass and up along Judge, somehow cutting through fabric and air along the edge of his form, like there was no one inside, and the sword swept upwards, deflecting bullets from Judge’s head and chest.

Snatching the opportunity, Harvey drew his own pistol on Two-Face. It should have been an easy shot; he was distracted by Judge, almost unmoving, close. But Harvey missed completely just the same, and the man whipped around furiously and returned fire.

Adrenaline pumping at jet fuel levels, Harvey dove to the side of the tommygun’s spray of bullets and made it to a knee in time to see Two-Face back up on his feet, ignoring him again in favor of running at Judge—ducking under a swipe from the massive sword, and getting two shots in past it at Judge’s torso, that connected this time. The sword came back fast, with an angry sound from Judge, and Two-Face leapt over it, falling back a step unsteadily as the sword came again, too fast, slicing him across the chest as he tried to move too late, and back at him again with a massive two hands swipe from above, and it was all he could do to get the tommygun up and between them to catch the sword and hold it back as he struggled against Judge’s strength.

Somehow, he wasn’t scared. Harvey could see it on his face. It was crazy, but he wasn’t afraid of Judge at all. He was angry. It seemed impossible to him, but he supposed for Big Bad Harv, it must not be.

Remembering to move then, Harvey made it up too, not much worse for the wear, and haltingly took another shot at Two-Face, grazing him in the arm this time as he saw the shot coming and tried to break the grapple and jerk out of the way, making it just an instant too slow. Judge immediately made another pass with the sword, trying to catch him off balance, and Two-Face ducked narrowly under it, returning fire as he did with his gun. Judge fell back to parry shots what looked like effortlessly, and Harvey made a mad dash for Two-Face while his focus was off him again, knife in his right hand, gun in his left, making a swipe for Two-Face as he got in close.

Two-Face saw him coming and stepped back out of the way of the swipe, and then another, trying to keep most of his attention on Judge. He dodged a third swipe from the letter opener, and got the tommygun leveled at the towering figure of Judge, but Harvey shot the barrel, knocking the aim off and sending a spray of bullets into the trees.

Furious, Two-Face swung the gun over and took a shot at him finally, and Harvey swung left just in time, feeling bullets pass by in the air.

Out of his peripheral, he saw Judge close in again with the sword, and Two-Face jumped back to avoid a swipe and twisted past another, returning fire, and Harvey dashed to the side, trying to get behind him.

Two-Face saw the move, and turned his head to look for just a second, and caught the sword in his arm for it, cursing and turning his back on Harvey to chuck a grenade at Judge, face lit with anger and disbelief as the huge figure knocked the grenade aside effortlessly, and it exploded off behind him, out of range. He opened fire with the tommygun again, trying to get back a little room, and Harvey made a mad dash for him from behind.

Two-Face saw it coming, and caught him in the chest with the butt of the gun, ducking under a swipe from Harvey’s knife, and to the side of a second swipe, then leaping off to the left to avoid one from Judge, firing back as he did, and Harvey caught an opening just as he pulled the trigger and slammed into him at the waist, sending them both down hard, Harvey on top, and he slammed the barrel of his pistol down against Two-Face’s forehead as they hit the ground.

The impact hurt. He saw Two-Face’s hands freeze halfway through a fumbling attempt to turn the tommygun on him, and his eyes met Harvey’s, wide with fear like a hunted animal, and with anger, and hurt, and Harvey knew he was supposed to pull the trigger, but he didn’t.

He felt sick and wrong suddenly.

None of this was supposed to—he—

Judge’s sword came carving through his back, and through him, down into Harv, and he heard Harv scream.

“No!” Faint, in a voice that wasn’t his.

He was just looking. Down, limply, at the massive thing through his body.

He went up then, lifted, Harv pinned on the tip of the sword above him, gripping the blade with both hands to try to keep from sliding deeper into it. Harv was looking at him. The way someone looked at an oncoming car hitting someone else.

Shouted…something. As Judge raised them both heavenward. And then there was an awful force applied, and they were flung off the blade, to the chasm.

He knew he was skidding, falling, but he couldn’t move, or think, or feel. React.

Everything was cold, and far away.

He vaguely registered Two-Face hitting the slope ahead of him, slamming against a tree just before the edge, dazed for a second on impact. Harvey’s limp body wasn’t so lucky. It hit the ground past him and rolled down the slope towards the drop.

Seeing him go, Two-Face let out a shout and scrambled after him, fingers catching a sleeve just as Harvey hit the edge and went over. Harv threw himself after, dragging the limp form to him in midair and wrapping himself around it as they took the free fall towards the water below.

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Pain. Aching, seeping, deep. It coursed along him in sheets. He was…c-cold too. Wet. Confused. What-?

Struggling, Harvey opened his eyes, blinking weakly in a failed attempt to focus. Everything was blurred and unsteady.

Where?

Th-there. Movement. Up…above him. S-something…

Trees. Rock. He could hear…rushing water. On his back?…s-somewhere…it all—

Trying to move sent ripples of pain along his gut, and he remembered the sword.

Sh-shit.

He couldn’t…see. Anything but blurry red, looking down at his chest. He couldn’t. Couldn’t move.

I-I’m dying…?

Moving. Something was…

There. Above h-him, on the left. Something was stand—Harv. H-He was. Was standing just a few feet to the side, with his back to Harvey, looking for something.

Hand trembling, Harvey dug in with all his might and tried to raise it towards him. Tried to say his name.

He didn’t think any sound had come out, but Big Bad Harv turned, eyebrow raised, and glanced down at him.

“H-Help,” he managed, voice a cracked whisper.

“Oh?” asked Big Bad Harv, rasping voice steeped in superiority and anger, “You think I’m going to help you? After you wanted to kill me?”

His strength gave out, and Harvey couldn’t keep the hand up anymore. He let it fall against his chest and slide back limply to the ground, body shuddering under the stress of trying, and enduring this much damage and pain. He couldn’t…keep his. e-eyes open… it was..

“All right, all right. Jesus. Just try not to die so fast,” said Big Bad Harv in the voice of someone who had been planning to kick someone around more, wildly diverting plans in the face of a sudden crisis. He moved quickly beside him and knelt down, and Harvey couldn’t get his eyes open anymore at all.

He heard movement, felt hands, heard fabric rip, and muttering words he couldn’t make out, maybe…maybe his name a few times? And then he was gone again.

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When he came to again, Harvey had forgotten where he was. Where he had been. It all came back slow, as his blurry eyes made out the same forms of trees and rock above him, felt the cold of wet clothes, and registered the sound of moving water. It, and the twenty-four hours before it.

It was hard to think. He felt feverish, and half awake, even as he remembered. It was so cold, and he felt sick, but too weak to vomit. I wonder if I’m still dying…

It seemed likely.

He struggled to blink and focus more. Find some change in the light to guess at how much time had passed at least, but he was too weak, and it was too much to do.

“Finally,” came a rasping voice he knew.

It took him a second to find Big Bad Harv, because he was kneeling almost behind him. “Almost thought you weren’t going to wake up this time.”

Weakly, body shuddering from the cold and the effort, Harvey turned his head, trying to get a look at him.

“Am I dying?” managed Harvey.

Big Bad Harv shrugged. “The bleeding stopped, but he got you pretty good. Which I told you he’d do.”

Harvey tried to look down at his torso. Flat on his back, that wasn’t easy, but he could faintly see stained cloth wrapped around what had been a massive smear of red last time his eyes were open. Recognizing the jacket, he turned his head back towards Big Bad Harv and registered his jacket was gone.

“…You saved me?” he asked weakly.

Harv rolled his eyes and looked off to the side.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” asked Harvey.

“Why didn’t you?” snapped Harv, glancing back.

I…?

He swallowed, and it hurt. It hurt to breathe, and he coughed weakly on impulse, and the feeling it shot along his torso was agonizing.

“Easy,” reprimanded Harv, putting a hand on his shoulder to try and stop the involuntary spasms the cough had set off, “You’ll die and leave me with Judge.”

It took a second for the convulsions to settle down, and it had zapped so much energy from Harvey by the time they had, it was all he could do to turn his head again and look up. “I’m sorry,” he managed, almost pleadingly. His voice was the ghost of a voice.

“Good. You should be,” snapped Harv, “Can’t believe you’d rather be stuck with that thing, than me.”

Harvey coughed again, a bad, wet sound deep in his lungs, so deep it sent shudders along his limbs, and he could feel the pain in his ribs from it. He couldn’t stop coughing for several seconds, and when it finally ended, he tried to gasp out a breath, and it was hard. He kept fighting to fill his lungs, and failing, like a fish on a bank. They felt like they weighed too much to move. It started to panic him, and he gasped faster, coughing again, then he felt hands on his shoulders, and Harv carefully dragged him up a little so his torso was propped against his lap.

“…You okay?” asked Harv after a second of looking down at him and listening to the gasps and coughing ease.

“…Thank you,” said Harvey.

Harv made an assent flavored grunt.

“For saving me,” he managed, throat feeling raw now and terrible, but determined nevertheless. Harv started to answer, but Harvey noticed too late and kept going, still struggling weakly to breathe evenly again. “I’m sorry. I. never. never said that…” He swallowed, closed his eyes against the pain in his gut that was overwhelming him. Opened them again, shaky, and looked out at the blurry outline of the river they must have fallen into nearby.

Harv said nothing.

“…You know you…you ruined my life,” continued Harvey quietly after a few seconds, “My…”

He wanted to cry, for so many reasons, but it felt like there was no point to any of them at all left.

“…I lost so much. To you. I… … …But. You saved my life, too. You did. P-Protect…me. You’re right. And I never—never thanked you for that. Any of it. I…” It hurt too much to keep going, and he shuddered and sucked in a breath, eyes squeezed shut, trying to deal with the pain of existing in the moment he was in.

“…It’s what I do. I told you,” said Harv after a moment, no easily discernible emotion tied to his voice, “Ever since we were kids.”

Wearily, Harvey turned his head to look up at him the little he could. “Really?” he asked weakly, “I don’t…remember…much.”

“Yeah, I kind of think that was the idea,” replied Harv with the hint of a grin.

“You must despise me,” said Harvey quietly, looking away at nothing.

Harv was quiet a second. “��That’s a strong word, ‘despise.’ You’ve always been annoying, and weak, and kind of fucking exhausting, but…no. I’ve never ‘despised’ you.”

Harvey made himself look back up. Harv was looking down, meeting his gaze, face hard to read.

“If you’ve been…” He tried to swallow. “Taking my beatings for me, since we were a child, I don’t see how that could be possible.”

It was why he’d never wanted to think of it this way. Never let himself try. Making someone else to suffer in your place? Was so unforgivable. If he was really even worse than Harv, what could that possibly make him? It was beyond him. It had always been too much to bear trying to consider.

“Why do you think I decided to exist and take them?” asked Harv, in a tone Harvey could not remember hearing from him before. Almost an attempt, from something that was never meant to be, at ‘soft’.

Harv glanced away then, at the steadily darkening jungle around them. “Get off your high horse, Harvey. You didn’t make me. We made me. I made me. You haven’t been able to force me to come out and do anything a day in your life. I’m not a part of you you control. Thought you at least grasped that much.”

Harvey didn’t know what to say to that.

He thought, instead, aching and cold and wounded, running things through one by one, with the little energy he had to do it.

“I’m sorry, Harv,” he offered finally, overwhelmed with sadness suddenly, only when he had already said it.

“I told you-” started Harv.

“—that I never valued it,” said Harvey. He shut his eyes.

Above him, Harv was quiet. He heard him shift a little, and for a long few seconds, nothing.

“You did once,” said Harv quietly, almost to himself, “it was just a long time ago.”

Harvey tried to remember, and wished he hadn’t.

“Don’t worry,” said Harv carelessly above him, “You’ll be fine. We’ll get moving in a little and find somewhere safer to hole up for a few hours, before your ‘better’ half catches up with us.”

“I don’t think I can walk,” said Harvey automatically, looking blearily up.

“Really? I hadn’t guessed,” replied Harv, voice absolutely dripping with sarcasm, “Do I look like I can’t lift you?”

Harvey smiled a little, and let himself shut his eyes again and try to pass out. It had been more than two decades since he remembered it feeling safe in the way he did in this moment, to let himself do that.

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[[Next]]

#Two-Face #Harvey Dent #Batman fic #Big Bad Harv #Harvey Dent fic #Judge #Two-Face fic #I have no idea what to tag this as #character study? relationship study? disassociatice identities self healing narrative study??? #it is what it is I guess? #hurt/comfort #whump #no idea what else uhhh #Batman #I guess??? #me writing #this if I go long form is going to be about all three but given the nature of their relationships Harvey needs to process and fix things #with Harv before he can fix things with Judge so that’s the order they go. Judge is a victim in this too he was created to uphold a standard #for a Just World that does not exist and expects of people what they cannot give so he is doomed even himself to be trying to be a kind of #perfect that cannot be made and that’s going to be very interesting but anyway here is some Harv connecting with Harvey and a fight scene 👍 #the sum of our parts (fic) #the sum of our parts