I cannot sleep. My thoughts are a constant buzz. I am here, and only now, as I try to sleep, am I aware of how far I have come.
I have been through much to get here.
And I am scared. Terrified that somehow I will lose all that I’ve worked for, despite all my research on physiognomy, my studies into personality disorders, my evaluations of Western attitudes towards beauty and acceptance, and my critique of social dominance theory that I believe will change my academic field. It could all be easily dismissed as irrelevant. Because there could be something I’ve overlooked, something I’m not seeing. I think of when I hesitated, those times upon arriving here when my feet refused to move. These lines of thought disturb me. I turn to other things before my mind inevitably returns to my thesis, this embodiment not only of my academic career, but of everything that I have learned. The beauty of knowledge is that it can be passed on, as a guide, as an epiphany. As a warning. So others may learn.
Social Dominance Theory. The framework of my thesis. An existing idea of sociology which entails a hierarchical order to society. There are levels: Age, sex, economic status, and groups such as ethnicity, religion, and sexuality. All are types of hierarchies, according to this theory. But there is one group, one factor that remains unconsidered: Physiognomy. The study of personality as it relates to a person’s physical appearance, specifically, the face. A long-dead science, to some.
But reinterpreted as “the degree to which one conforms to the standards of what a society sees as beautiful,” its relevance is inescapable. It was once thought that criminals shared deviant physiognomies: in short, if you were ugly, you did ugly things. Obviously a flawed assumption. What’s truly deviant-—where “deformity” arises—-is not necessarily a physical attribute, but an anomaly in one's personality which sets them apart from the mainstream. Their appearance masks the true nature of their character. But society conditions itself to trust that which is beautiful. In magazines. Pictures. Movies. Every media imaginable. To the point where we meet someone beautiful and trust them implicitly, or meet someone ugly and are repulsed by them instantly. It becomes an unconscious behavior. A learned habit. Conditioned… Inescapable…
I jolt awake to a loud knocking. Daylight. Morning. The door. I swipe my glasses from the table and throw on my crumpled pants and shirt, a quick zip and a clumsy trip before I reach the door fully, if sloppily, clothed.
“Sorry I woke you,” Crowley says unapologetically. Her tidy black blazer and white blouse is a marked contrast to my wrinkled attire, as are her alert eyes to my bleary ones. Her shoulders look too sharp. I adjust my glasses. “The inmate’s being moved to the observation room; everything’s ready.”
“Ten minutes,” I tell her.
“We don’t have ten minutes.”
“Three, then.”
I’m outside in two, checking my pockets for everything I need. Tape recorder. Notepad. Lucky pencil. Loose change for the cafeteria. Day pass—
“My pass—-"
Crowley wordlessly flicks me a shiny clip-on tag with “CLEARANCE D” in bold letters across its top, the same horrible picture of me gracing its front. I wince involuntarily before fastening it to my shirt pocket. We walk in silence for some time.
“You’re awfully quiet,” I tell Crowley.
“Funny, I was going to say the same to you," she says curtly.
“Is something wrong?”
She opens her mouth to say something before she reconsiders.
“You’ll understand when you meet her.”
“‘Her’?” I ask perplexedly. No response.
We wind down two staircases and begin navigating through a tangled maze of hallways. The walls are lined with as many art pieces as there are doors. Using the works I'm familiar with and others that catch my eye, I try to memorize the way back to my room. Left at Dali's "The Temptation of St. Anthony," its stick-legged elephants and horses rearing back in repulsion from a emaciated Christ. Right at a black obelisk covered in hieroglyphs, a gold-winged scarab beetle at its base. Another right at a watercolor of four figures: in the center, an angel looking up at a god-figure; to the left, an angel with a serpent wrapped around his body, gazing enviously at the right side of the portrait, where a nude couple gazing lovingly at one another walk hand in hand towards a fertile forest. The title is "Satan Spying On Adam and Eve's Descent Into Paradise," by William Blake. The last left is at an interpretation of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Gawain recoiling in horror at his beheaded challenger, who stands with his own head cradled in his hands. His longsword gleams brightly in its sharpness.
We arrive at a wide hall with a thick steel door, ancient suits of medieval armor standing watch on either side. Black and yellow caution chevrons are painted around and across its frame, the words “TO CELL BLOCKS D-F” giving a vague indication of where we are going.
Pausing before the door, I uncertainly wait with Crowley, unsure of what to expect until I see the security camera above us. With a hydraulic hiss and a loud, continuous buzz, the door slides up and open, revealing a go-between room that acted as a security checkpoint separating the administrative and prison sections of the asylum. After Crowley punches in a lengthy code and slides her keycard, the first door slides closed and locks before the second door in front of us opens, revealing the T-intersection of a blank gray hall, all concrete and recessed lighting. The plainness of the cellblock compared with the austere mansion is almost a shock to my system. No doors seem to exist here. Nothing seems to exist here. Silence envelops us like a shroud, the ambient noise from the mansion gone. The suddenness of the quiet is uncanny. I feel trapped.
“Miss Crowley,” a woman’s voice whips through the air like a ruler against a chalkboard, the clicking of her heels against the floor filling the hall with their echoes. Startled, I turn to my left to see a tall, buxom woman in a prim white labcoat walking down the hall briskly, her steps measured and shrewd. She holds a clipboard, her full lips pursed sternly, thin eyebrows narrowed in an unsympathetic glower beneath glasses that make her seem older than she looks. Her platinum blonde hair is tied back in a bun that mats her hair a hint too tightly against her skull. Despite her severe appearance, even without any makeup, she is stunning. Long legs, soft facial features, a natural tan--she could pass for a model. I wonder why someone like herself would work here until I meet her gaze. Her seafoam eyes are a frozen Arctic ocean.
“I thought we agreed he wouldn’t be meetin’ the inmates in person.” I pick up a trace of a Queens accent in her tone.
“That would defy the whole purpose of the interview process, Doctor,” Crowley retorts.
I eye the two women, caught between their steely glares. An uncomfortable position, to say the least.
“Hieronymus Arkham, our chief psychiatrist, Dr. Harleen Quinzel.”
“A pleasure, Ronnie.” Quinzel says dismissively.
“It’s Harland,” I correct her.
“Director Arkham approved of this? I thought he was above nepotism,” she continues as if I'm not walking beside her.
“Why Director Arkham approves of it is none of our business. He has the last word. Always. And I trust his judgment,” says Crowley definitively.
“His judgment resulted in the hiring of my predecessor, who I may add is now an inmate of this asylum.”
“Crane fooled everyone. And I’m sure he would have fooled you.”
“Crane? As in Dr. Johnathan Crane?” I interrupt.
Crowley shakes her head. “That name means nothing to him. He’s ‘The Scarecrow’ now.”
"His involvement in the attacks on the Narrows—“
“I would appreciate it if you refer to the inmates by their birth names,” Quinzel cut in, “excluding any discussion of past or speculated crimes. That was my agreement with the DA’s office, and that goes for everyone you interview, Mr. Arkham. I’m here to make sure you don’t break that agreement, let alone jeopardize my work."
“Never.”
We had arrived at the observation room, a nondescript door like all the others. Quinzel opens it with a keycard and a code. “After you, Ms. Crowley.”
Crowley looks uncertainly at Quinzel before entering the darkened room. I start to follow her before I feel Quinzel’s hand on my shoulder.
“Mr. Arkham.”
The door shuts in front of me. Through the window, I can see Crowley turn at the noise, but she elects not to return outside.
Quinzel hesitates, licks her lips.
“These people… they can affect you,” she says quietly, firmly. “You start readin' into things that aren’t there, finding meanings that don’t exist. You trade in the world around you for a copy, one that conforms to everything you hate about humanity. I’ve seen it happen.”
I am caught off-guard by her sudden candor. Is she being condescending? I can’t tell.
“I won’t let it happen again.” She says the words like a vow.
“You mean that you’ll do everything in your power to try and stop it from happening again,” I offer. “Some things are beyond our control. Some things are meant to happen.”
She nods her head in the direction of the observation room. “You sound like him.”
I do? I look away. I try to enter the room again, but she interrupts. “Aren’t you afraid?”
I stop, my hand on the doorhandle. My silence is no heroism. I debate whether to answer.
“Yes,” I tell her. “But I’m doing this either way.”
Her blue eyes study me inquiringly.
“I have to. For my own sake.”
I open the door and we step inside. The room is dark, just three gray-green walls with only four steel chairs to fill its empty space. The north wall is glass--a two-way mirror, but the cell it views is empty. A single chair is bolted to the floor, illuminated from above with what appears to be natural light. Two guards stand solidly in the room myself, Crowley and Quinzel occupy.
“You’re familiar with Dent’s profile?” Quinzel asks, all business.
“As much as the next person.” Her comfort ebbs in her silence. “With a fair amount of research,” I finish.
What I know about Dent is based primarily on media headlines, perhaps the most accurate reflection of how society reacts and interprets deviance. There is no such thing as objectivity.
Harvey Dent, formerly Assistant District Attorney before his successful bid to the post of Gotham DA, was a rising star with nowhere to go but up. His selfless and precise intervention in a well-publicized hostage situation won him the election for District Attorney, while his crusade against the Gotham underworld sealed his place as Gotham City's "White Knight." Personable, noble, and attractive, he was the epitome of everything good in Gotham City. He was a hero.
Was.
At the time, a new criminal had arrived in town, one more dangerous and unpredictable than anyone Dent had ever put away. The papers theorized that this criminal’s alliance with the Maroni crime family explained an elaborate trap that resulted in the death of Dent's girlfriend, Assistant District Attorney Rachel Dawes, and Dent himself being burned alive. Thanks to the Batman, a vigilante who was rumored to be working with Dent and certain elements of the GPD, Dent survived. Records salvaged from a subsequent attack on Gotham General Hospital revealed that the trap’s explosion burned away the entire left side of Dent's face. But Dent himself went missing.
Then people started dying. Five bodies, all with ties to organized crime, found with two shots to the head, point-blank range. Cops, ex-cops, and even Maroni himself in a seemingly related car accident. But it was the survivors who told a more chilling story: a man with half a face confronting them at gunpoint, deciding their fate with a coin toss. By chance, a few had lived, and Harvey Dent went from "White Knight" to "most wanted" overnight. Despite a hasty "missing person" search by the GPD, perhaps facilitated by the Batman given its scope, Dent's clandestine imprisonment in the Asylum did not stay secret for long.
"Post-traumatic stress disorder" was the official explanation. Neither the police nor the newspapers were proof positive if Dent or the Batman had committed the murders. The trace evidence left at the crime scenes was inconclusive--the murder weapon, a .45 caliber revolver from eyewitness statements, was never found. But that didn't stop them from going to press. The media ate it all up, feeding into the city’s disillusionment by detailing the downfall of its would-be saviors. Despite Dent's incarceration, the Batman remains at large. The only time society is more enthralled with a hero who rises to prominence is when that hero falls from grace. A lurid fascination.
The opening door to the observation room closes my thoughts.
"Dr. Quinzel," Jeremiah Arkham nods before handing her a small stack of folders. "These are the files he needs. I've desensitized the documents and ran them through the DA's office."
Quinzel's face dropped. "Director Arkham, you can't be serious."
Jeremiah barely turned his head, his face stone. "If your interests are in line with this asylum's, you'll comply with what Hieronymus asks," he paused, his eagle eyes settling on me. "Which won't be much."
“Is there anything else you need, Harland?” Crowley asks me.
“I want to record my own observations independent of the Arkham psychiatric team," I tell the others with some vacillation. I am still intimidated by their credentials. “I need to form a personal analysis of each inmate’s psychology.”
Quinzel scoffs. “You’re placin' your own guesswork above the conclusions of professional psychopathology?”
“Your opinions will be included in my thesis. Allow me to reach my own. If I interfere with your work or his therapy—then by all means, stop me."
“I can’t risk that. Director Arkham, if you allow an outsider to corrupt everything I’ve been workin' for—everything I’ve done here—then consider today to be my two-weeks notice.”
Jeremiah is quiet for a moment, arms folded. It is not a pleasant tone, this man’s stillness.
“I was the first to turn down Hieronymus’ request to study the patients here,” he finally says. “When the peer review from the Sociology Department and the University Academic Board came back as a recommendation, I wrote a rejection letter. When I received a letter of consent from the Gotham University Honors Director, I denied his application. When he cleared background checks and an interview from the GCPD, I informed them that a student was not welcome in my asylum. When I started getting calls from the Mayor and the District Attorney’s office protesting his involvement in this project, I briefly reconsidered my earlier denials before I turned him down again and informed him my decision was final. Then Miss Crowley was inundated with phone calls and letters. Do you know how many letters she received, Dr. Quinzel?”
Quinzel was only slightly unfazed. “How many?”
“Twenty-two.”
I try hard to suppress a smile. All the writer’s cramp was worth it to hear this.
Quinzel doesn’t look at me.
“And while I find Hieronymus’ tenacity impetuous, ultimately, it was that relentlessness that persuaded me to allow him here. Let Hieronymus work on his own. He will learn as we have learned.”
His words seem kind… but that thin-lipped smile. He’s sure of himself. I can see it.
He thinks I’m in over my head.
I notice that smile vanish suddenly, his eyes directed elsewhere, behind me. I turn to notice the door to the opposite cell is open, and a man in an orange jumpsuit is being seated in its lone chair.
His head and neck are wrapped in bandages, his eyes mere shadows beneath his brow. The dressing is snug enough to highlight his left cheek, sunken into his firm jaw, and his missing left ear. A narrow slit under his nose is the only thing that designates his mouth. The two guards with him are vague ghosts who ensure his bonds are secure before leaving the observation cell. His back is pressed against the chair, head down, yet in a solid posture, as if reading case notes before a trial.
“Take a seat, Hieronymus,” Jeremiah says to me. There is no change in his formality, but his voice takes on a more distinct air of dispassion. This is his job, a part of his work. I hesitate to choose the seat directly in front of the window, the only one not taken, forgetting for a moment that the inmate, Dent, cannot see me. As I flip open my notebook to my list of questions, I notice my hands are shaking.
Jeremiah walks up to a small box near the mirror.
“As part of our agreement with the District Attorney’s office, I am going to record these sessions for therapeutic and security purposes,” he informs me. “Are you ready, Hieronymus? Beyond this, there is no turning back.”
I nod, swallowing uncomfortably. “I know. I’m ready.”
“So be it,” Jeremiah says, pressing an olive green button near a speaker. A small red light on the console begins to blink steadily. I activate my tape recorder.
“Interview with inmate Harvey Dent,” I begin. “Present are asylum director Jeremiah Arkham, chief psychiatrist Dr. Harleen Quinzel, and public relations director Justine Crowley to supervise this session conducted on behalf of myself, Hieronymus Arkham, honors student of Gotham University, for my master’s thesis project ‘Deformity and Deviance.’”
I clear my throat. Question one.
“Mr. Dent,” I start abruptly. The words tumble out of my mouth. “Have you ever felt… different from other people?”
He is quiet. After a moment, I think my question is too vague. “Before your imprisonment, I mean.”
Silence. Dent doesn’t acknowledge the question, as if he didn’t hear anything.
“Is the speaker on?” I ask.
Jeremiah presses the olive button again.
“Harvey?” he asks. “Harvey, can you hear me?”
Dent sits like a statue, unresponsive. His dark blue eyes stare straight ahead in a fixed glare.
“Maybe if he could see us, he’d be more willing to talk,” Crowley suggests.
“It’s a security risk,” Quinzel counters.
“It’s one I’m willing to take,” I insist. “With your permission, Jeremiah.”
Wordlessly, Jeremiah flips a lever next to the intercom box. The window’s tint becomes noticeably brighter within seconds. “He can see you now."
I rethink my first question. Perhaps something more provocative.
“Mr. Dent, do you consider yourself an outcast?”
Again Dent is silent.
“This isn’t workin',” Quinzel sighs.
I drop my pencil. It clatters noisily on the floor. Skip to question two.
“What do you believe in, then?”
I notice a crease in his bandages. Muscle tension, in the upper jaw.
He is grinning.
“Mr. Dent, what do you believe in?” I ask again.
“He’s not gonna talk to you,” Quinzel mutters.
“He can and he will,” I growl. “What do you believe in, Mr. Dent?” my voice starts to break. I’m failing.
Nothing.
“This interview is over,” Jeremiah cuts in, moving to the intercom box.
“No,” I spit out. “I’ve come too far to be shut out now.”
“Jeremiah—" Crowley interrupts.
“Perhaps you’d be more apt to get Mr. Dent to talk, Miss Crowley?” Jeremiah says wryly.
This isn’t happening.
“Answer my question!” I shout at Dent, imitating Jeremiah’s resolute tone. It hits the air as a pathetic sound.
“We’re leaving,” Jeremiah says with finality. “Now.”
Crashing. Burning.
“No!” I yell, standing up and knocking over my chair.
“Restrain him,” Quinzel says to the guards.
The guards remove their batons.
“Put those away!” Jeremiah demands. “This is my asylum!”
The guards wither back to the walls. I feel an iron hand grip my arm.
“Leave now or I will make you leave,” Jeremiah says icily in my ear.
I shove him aside.
“Talk to me!!” I scream. My voice snaps. “Talk to me!!” I am powerless.
The bandages on Dent’s face grow tighter. He’s enjoying this. This chaos he’s creating.
Jeremiah snatches my arm so hard a shock of pain rips up to my left shoulder. I catch a glimpse of Crowley’s face; her wrinkled brow and pitying frown say all they need to.
I am being dragged to the door. My notes slip from my fingers like falling feathers. I am losing.
I need this interview. I cannot allow Dent to stop me. I need to think like he does. I need—
One chance.
Moving quickly, I rip free of Jeremiah’s grasp, a harsh tingle arcing up my arm when he lets go. My hand moves to Quinzel’s lapel, snatching a felt-tip marker from her labcoat. I tear the cap from the marker, take the object I’ve removed from my pocket and press it against my hand, hastily marking a jagged ‘X' on one side.
I slam the marked quarter hard against the glass, the surface trembling beneath my palm. Dent looks up, his first sign of acknowledgment. His eyes are on the coin in my hand.
“Heads, you talk.” I snarl, flipping the coin around to the side I have marked. “Tails, I walk.”
Quinzel realizes what I’m doing first. She moves to stop me.
I flip the coin before she can bat it out of my hand. It hits my palm with a soft smack before she knocks me to the ground, my fist clenched around the coin. I worm my way out of her grasp and slam the glass with the flat of my hand.
Heads.
The guards react without any prompting from Jeremiah. I jam the quarter on the side it has landed in the narrow crack between the mirror and the wall so Dent can see the result of the toss. I am snatched by arms that will break my own like twigs. My feet slide against the floor.
He doesn’t speak.
I lost.
“I believed in myself.”
The voice is only mildly distorted by the intercom. A strong, steady voice with the ruggedness of a man who has experienced more than most could ever imagine. “I believed in Gotham City.”
It is the voice of a man defeated.
The room is still, the guards halted in their tracks. A rush fills me. Hope.
“But… it was easy, when I had someone who truly believed in me.”
Jeremiah motions for the guards to release me. I shake off the pain of their loosened grasp, the blood flow slowly returning to my arms.
“You were a hero, Harvey,” I tell him, uneasily taking a seat in my chair and unbuttoning my shirt collar. “Not just to one, but to many.”
“What makes a hero?” he asks.
“I’m sorry?”
“Is it something you do? A way you behave?”
I hesitate to answer, for fear of losing the interview again. It seems like a trick question, one I could incriminate myself by answering.
“Or is it a choice to leave behind everything you want so that someone else can be happy? Safe. Protected,” he goes on. “Enough so that it doesn’t matter how you look in the process.”
I am surprised that his selflessness remains intact. Even here.
“I'd like to believe a hero understands the value of giving up their own wants, to a degree. But more so, I believe that a person can be so invested in their work that it becomes something more than what they are. Especially when that work is for someone else's betterment, protection and happiness."
His eyes don't flinch from mine. He's listening. I continue with less trepidation.
"Gotham City had something brighter to look forward to when you were DA. The city needed someone real to believe in. But even heroes have needs.”
“Needs come second to duty.”
“Wasn’t there anything you wanted? Acceptance, maybe?”
“I wanted liberty and justice for all.” Dent’s confident, sturdy gaze bores into mine beneath the bandages and I can’t help but look down at my questions.
“The Pledge of Allegiance?” I murmur skeptically.
“Don’t patronize me," he snaps sharply. "I was a lawyer, not a lobbyist.” My scribbled writing is interrupted by Dent’s reprimand. “You know why it’s not in schools anymore? Not because of ‘under God’. No. It disappeared because they became words to be said, not an oath to be kept. We weren’t indivisible anymore. How many people see those ideas as more than just some words in a recitation?”
“Liberty and justice are sound bites that work great on paper and in speeches. They relate to any audience,” I counter, “But it's unrealistic to think one person’s liberty and one person’s justice won't inevitably tread upon another’s.”
“They are ‘sound bites’ because self-interest and greed always make fools of liberty and justice. Because no one wants to sacrifice. It's why a greater authority is needed. So laws are made; compromises are reached grudgingly, if at all. Egos refuse to back down, and it’s the peacemaker, not the warmonger, who gets the most bloodied. It always has to be someone else. ‘What will you do for me,’ as my constituents used to say. As hard as I tried to set that aside, all I did was never enough. Nothing was ever enough.”
"Sometimes heroism requires sacrifice."
"Heroism is sacrifice. But if you do it for so long, it becomes expected. Necessary. And when you decide to stop sacrificing… suddenly you aren’t a hero anymore."
"Where do you draw the line, Mr. Dent?"
He is silent as his eyes narrow beneath the bandages. A brief wave of panic flutters up to my throat.
I flip through Dent’s file and scan the papers inside, miraculously finding the page I need quickly.
“...but there are such things as unreasonable requests," I stumble over my words. "You seem more than capable of handling them. In your career as District Attorney, you successfully prosecuted over five hundred accused criminals with a ninety-four percent conviction rate. Before that, in Internal Affairs, you were responsible for three of the biggest sting operations in Gotham City’s history, including a civilian tip line, which acted as an informant network to bring down the GCPD’s most corrupt police officers. There are lawyers and lawmen who would kill to have those statistics attached to their name.”
“I did what was needed. You’re only seeing half of it.”
“Could you elaborate?”
“They got out. The mob gets brought to court, their boss springs bail for the big fish and leaves the less important ones to rot, folks that take the fall every time for fear of something worse happening to them. They get more thugs, and the whole thing starts over. The judiciary is bogged down by politics, fame, and futility.”
“Bureaucracy plagues every institution. Wouldn't you agree that more can be learned by overcoming a broken system? You worked around judicial flaws and sometimes even used them to your advantage as DA. You must have succeeded in some way.”
Dent shakes his head. “It isn't 'success' if progress is undone. People are too quick to claim false victories. They end up idolizing anyone who walks a different path."
He allows himself a modest half-smile. "I don't care if it's a different way; I care about results. You know that feeling you get when you do something right? I live for that feeling. Knowing that I make this world better."
He talks like he's a defendant. Not an inmate. Curious.
"I'd call that 'selflessness.'"
"Call it whatever you want, but you say that yourself and it's not selfless anymore, is it?" he says amicably. He tries to allow himself a grin but discards it as if it were undeserved.
"True," I nod. "But whatever you believe it is, is it responsible for where you are now?"
Dent looks as if I had brought up unpleasant family history. He looks down for the first time, and moves his hands from the chair's armrests to his knees.
"I'm here... because I must have broken the law,” he says hesitantly, like he's trying to make sense of it. "The doctors say there's something wrong with me. They showed me everything. The evidence, the crime scenes. I just don't remember any of it. I'm not... I can't be capable of some of those things they say I did. And if I did kill all those people, like they say..." His jaw tightens. "Then they must have deserved it."
I notice my hands are shaking. I grip my pencil and notepad more tightly and continue.
"But didn't you say that's why a greater authority is needed? To prevent actions like those?"
“I did," Dent says bluntly. "But there will be always be people who refuse that authority. Who refuse to change, or commit crimes too awful to go unpunished. And there's an answer for that, too."
"The death penalty?" I offer.
"Without consequences, there can be no obedience to the law," Dent affirms.
"Shouldn't society determine those consequences, not the individual?"
"What happens when society fails to enforce them? When they fail to live up to their responsibility?"
I try to think of an answer, but Dent seizes the opportunity.
"Then you have chaos and corruption. A system that works for the few instead of the many. And it becomes the responsibility of the individual to take action."
"You mean, for you to take action?"
"Whoever is capable of doing what's right."
"Through murder?"
"Through doing what's right," Dent says emphatically. "I know what you're getting at, Arkham. Don't try to out-argue a professional."
His tone goes from indignation to menace. I tell myself he's in chains, in a cell, behind a glass.
"You, um, were twenty-four when you started in Internal Affairs. Twenty-six when you ran for ADA. Twenty-eight when you were elected. And thirty when you won the post for District Attorney. You think you had enough experience?"
Dent's frown shifts to a bemused smile. He chuckles, shakes his head. "You really don't know me very well, do you?"
"You just seem young for all that, that's all."
"I wasn't," Dent says, matter-of-fact. "You can look at everything I've done and let yourself think that it was the people I knew, how hard I had worked, or where I got hired. I was just lucky. That's all."
"Forgive me, Mr. Dent, but that sounds more like a campaign promise than the truth to me."
He sits up in his chair. "Well, since you don't know me very well, Mr. Arkham, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. My word is my word. And Gotham is my home," Dent says curtly. "People have the right to live where they want without the fear of getting mugged, killed, or intimidated. I could have made Crime Alley just an alley. This city would have belonged to the people again."
"There's always going to be people who slip through the cracks, Harvey."
"I took the job for those people. It doesn't have to be that way."
"I'm sure you're aware that Gotham City is statistically the most violent place in the United States? How could you work in a city that wears crime like a policeman wears a badge?"
Dent smirks. "I like a challenge."
Quinzel leans over to my left ear. "Stop pandering to him," she whispers.
She's the Chief Psychiatrist, I reason. I suppose that grants her the right to suggestion.
"...but that challenge is no longer your responsibility. You tried, and you failed, Harvey."
"It's more of a challenge when everyone expects you to fail."
"You're talking like you haven't."
He leans forward in his chair, the chains of his handcuffs rattling over the intercom.
"Mr. Arkham. Everyone fails. The important thing to know is this: when you fall, who is there to catch you? Maybe they can't always be there. They might walk away or get taken away. But the ones who matter are still there, for you. Regardless of how hard you fall.”
“Human beings are social creatures. They require others to necessitate their own well-being. I can see that you take that to heart considering all you’ve done, with and without support. I remember there was a time when people thought you were the vigilante known as the Batman.”
Dent’s face twitches beneath the gauze. Quinzel stiffens.
“Why am I the first on your interview list, anyway?”
The question interrupts my focus.
“You weren’t,” I realize. I scan my notes. “… a Roman Sionis was first. You were actually second to be interviewed until I learned he was deceased.”
Dent laughs once, a short, harsh sound.
“Funny how fate works.”
“You believe in fate, then? That people are predestined to become who they are?”
"I didn’t choose to be here.”
“Being here is a consequence of your actions. Everything happens for a reason.”
“I can't even remember my actions!" Dent shouts. "What about undeserved consequences? Does justice not apply to the unreasonable? For some things, there is no reason. No justice. Nothing anyone would choose. Two people get on a bus. It crashes. One dies, one lives. What for? A drunk driver walks free on a plea bargain while the victim's family goes penniless. Wars are waged on religious bias and people who want no part of it get slaughtered in the streets. A husband goes home and kisses his wife, who has no idea of his infidelity two hours before. A woman gets mugged and raped in an alley--seventeen witnesses, and nobody calls the cops. A kid gets beaten at the schoolyard and no one stands up for him..." he trails off. "Two people are caught in a trap. One dies, one lives. But the other.... the other should have lived... and the one who lived should have died... would have died, gladly, for the other whose life was taken..."
Dent's voice shakes.
"He would have gone to hell and back for the one who died."
I straighten my notes, eyes down.
"I can't imagine losing someone the way you did--"
"Stop. Just stop," Dent dismisses me with a wave of his hands and the clinking of his hand cuffs. "I don't need your sympathy. You couldn't possibly understand."
"More than you think," I cut in indignantly. "You had love. You had respect. You had a life to be envied. What more did you want?"
"Justice. I wanted a life for me."
“You had that once. It's never too late to start again.”
Dent laughs bitterly.
“It's too late for me."
“People get disfigured worse than you every day, yet some manage to get back not only their lives but their emotional stability. What makes you any different?”
"That life left me. There is no substitute that you, or me, or anyone else can give to take its place. You think I'm here--that you're here--because of an ordered chain of events? Where was my liberty? Where was my justice when I needed it most? I’ll tell you. It failed me.”
“Your job involved considerable risk to yourself and those around you. Did you not think there would be repercussions for your actions against the mob?”
“I believed in the system!" Dent yells. "I believed I was making a difference with what I did! I did what everyone else was too afraid to do. Most people take a chance only when they have something to lose, not something to gain. Are you that kind of person, Mr. Arkham?"
“That's beside the point, Mr. Dent. Did you expect that your career would be easy? Or consider that a 'normal life' and your job as DA were irreconcilable? One piece of your life disappeared and it all fell apart because you made that one piece the foundation of everything you believed in."
"I earned a better life. And if you understood at all what I lost, you would have done the same thing I did under the circumstances."
"Murder?"
"I didn't murder those people!" Dent pulls against his chains.
"I'm not arguing that. But as far as I can tell, you’re pinning your losses all on one person.”
”No. Two.”
I can feel Quinzel’s glare upon me. I press on. I am familiar with Dent’s vendetta on not only the Batman but also the current Police Commissioner. Gordon, I think his name is.
“Two people who failed you become your objects of hatred. But this doesn’t satisfy you because removing them won’t restore what you once had. So you try, fail, and dissociate blame to something abstract. Like chance. Because chance can’t defend itself and can always be blamed or glorified when the situation suits you. The perfect defendant for the prosecutor.”
“No. You’re arrogant enough to think you can simplify what’s wrong with the world by pretending to understand what I believe.”
I hold up the marked quarter.
“Your coin, your crimes. The only person you can count on is yourself, right? What else should matter?”
“What matters,” he seethes, “is the knowledge that when you look back at your life and see the wreck it is now and the things you did to get here, to this point…. That you would have done nothing differently. Because if you believed in every choice, no matter if it was a mistake or not, and still wound up losing… what control is there? What's left to accomplish?”
"Finding the meaning behind those choices," I offer.
"Even if they lead to something unforgivable?" Dent questions. "In life, there are two people you never forget: the one that stays with you, and the one that got away. If you're really unlucky, you only meet one, and they're both."
His bandaged face scowls as he struggles to find the words.
“There was one person that changed that. Who gave me hope. It didn’t matter if I was a hero!” Dent bellows. “I didn’t know what I was missing until I found it! And when I did… I didn’t care if I won or lost. Because with her there, I could always start again.”
His words remind me of a time when I knew that feeling every day. The feeling where one person's well-being becomes inextricably tied to your own.
“I failed her,” he rages, his body trembling. “And I can never get her back. Nothing else matters now.”
"I know how it feels to lose someone like Rachel, Mr. Dent."
Dent suddenly twitches, almost a convulsion. His head slowly swivels to the right, his left side in full profile before he shakes in a second paroxysm. The intercom falls silent.
“Harvey?” I ask hesitantly.
His head slumps to his chest.
“Mr. Dent, are you all right?"
He is still.
"What would Rachel—"
”You talk to me like I'm Harvey Dent," The voice is low, deliberate and gravelly, the sound of a body being dragged on cement. I freeze involuntarily. The speaker crackles with distortion. Dent's face rises up from his chest, the bandages distorting his mouth into a leer. "I'm not Harvey Dent,” the voice admonishes.
“… who are you, then?” I ask carefully.
Dent suddenly raises his handcuffed arms to his face, his fingertips clawing off the bandages in quick handfuls. They fall to the ground in a cluttered mess, revealing exactly what they were meant to conceal.
The skin on the left half of Harvey Dent’s face had burned away long ago to a blackened-reddish pink, cracked and pockmarked with holes. The pupil of his bulging left eye was surrounded by a haze of red, the outline of his eye socket pronounced enough to somehow hold it in place. His cheek was gone, the teeth and gumline visible all the way to his molars, amidst stray, wet tendons that connected his mandible to his skull. His left ear was gone; in its place was a hole where the ear canal should have been. On his prominent chin, a patch of yellow-white bone stuck out. Nothing was left of that half’s lips and nostril, or even a hint of his thick sandy blonde hair on that side of his head. The juxtaposition of his undamaged right half was that much more shocking: the handsome Harvey Dent I knew from pictures and campaign ads.
“I am Harvey Two-Face.”
I had never seen pictures of Dent after his scarring. A thick chill ripples through me, my fingers gripping my notes so tightly they almost tear. My voice is trapped somewhere in my chest.
"Shit--" Quinzel grabs a walkie-talkie from a guard. "The alter's runnin' the show. Medical to Southwest D wing, move!!"
"What?! No! I'm not done here!" I manage to squeak out.
Quinzel stares me down. "You've got two minutes before they get 'em out of there."
"Mr. Den--I mean, Harvey--what do--"
"Dent was impressed, kid," he nods his head towards me, easing back in his chair like it was comfortable. "But I'm not. You’re afraid,” his guttural, unnatural voice tells me. “Too afraid.”
I can’t look at him.
Two minutes. I can’t lose.
I sum up the courage to look at his face. At his eyes.
“Afraid of what?!” I finally shout out. “All you do is kill people!”
“I do more than that. I do whatever Dent wants to do, but can't.”
"You think murder equates to justice?"
"Death is the ultimate justice. Regardless of when it meets you. This city is full of scum with blood on their hands. The difference between me and them is that the blood on mine isn't innocent."
"How is that fair?”
"Fair." Two-Face scoffs. "I had two of Maroni’s men play a game of Russian Roulette. When what was left of the first man’s skull hit the table, his friend thought he was safe. Until I took the gun from the table, aimed it at his mouth and pulled the trigger one more time. Fair is a game of Russian Roulette and a gun with two bullets. Only chance separated their lives from holes in their heads.”
“You gave them a loaded gun.”
“And I’d what? Get shot? Blown up? They had one chance to act first—to act differently--and they threw it away. They were afraid to take a risk.”
"Because you lied!” I shout. “They thought they could walk away based on a coin toss! Doesn't anyone deserve second chances?"
"You only get one chance at anything. One shot to make it right or wrong. Nothing can be taken back. Whether you're meant to win or lose, it's not how you play the game. It's how life plays you."
"You've lost more than most, but what gives you the right--"
“I LOST EVERYTHING!!!" Dent’s voice cuts in abruptly, an agonizing scream of unbridled rage so powerful he seems to deflate before his posture solidifies into an aggressive lean and his broken frown of grief becomes a derisive scowl. I tense, drops of sweat running down my sides. "Dent lost everything,” Two-Face’s voice rumbled. “Sometimes, you're meant to lose everything."
"...I believe that circumstances can change. People can change under those circumstances. Become different people."
Two-Face's voice is feral now. "People never change."
"You have."
"What have you lost?”
His words trigger a memory of a shop. Mystic stones and jewelry hang from the ceiling, a smell of scented candles and frankincense. A broken stone dragon lying on the floor, its head and tail split into two halves. The clerk's insistence that I had broken it. I paid for it; I needed to. It was something I had to keep. I felt like it belonged to me, regardless if it was broken. She said a broken dragon was bad luck...
My turn to be silent.
“I thought so. You haven’t seen what I have. You don’t know the worst the world has to offer.”
“We can still try to make things better.”
“There IS NO ‘better!’” Two-Face shouts, a mist of saliva flying from his open cheek. “There is only now or never. You think you can make a difference? Help people?” The loose tendons in his left jaw twitch in a twisted grimace.
"I do."
"What have you done about it? Gone to school? Ran home to daddy Arkham when things went bad? Or did you just hide in your room and read a book?”
The chains scrape loudly against the metal armrests of his seat when he jerks forward.
"You've never put a bullet into someone's skull. Hear their collarbone crack when it hits. Smell the cordite hanging in the air and see the last expression on their face as their piss and brain matter leaks all over themselves. You've never walked away from a corpse knowing that because of you, there's one less meatbag breaking the law."
I lean forward in my seat. “I haven’t had the experiences you’ve had. Nor do I want to.”
“Then you’ll never learn.”
“Learn what?”
“How you're lying to yourself. You say you want to help people when you’re too afraid to face the worst parts of them. And yourself. You talk, not act. The only person you’re trying to make a difference for is you.”
The unmarred half of his face curls into a sneer of contempt.
"I know the difference between the people who have seen hell and those who just pretend. I've met both. I've killed both. You're a coward."
My fists clench my notes. "I am not a coward."
"You are. And always will be.”
"You don't know me at all," I shook my head, a quick, mirthless laugh escaping my throat. "You assume too much."
"Do I? All the evidence is there,” he mocks. “The lack of structure to your questions. How you lost control of this interview. Your reaction to my silence. You can’t handle any change in your plans. You can't accept that there are things beyond your control. Things you can’t change. You could lose what’s most important to you in a heartbeat. And you'd be worse than powerless. You'd be a shell. Because you couldn't do anything about it."
"Like you?"
"Like DENT!" Two-Face yells. "He's weak. He's afraid to do whatever it takes. Like you. He needs me."
"This city needs Harvey Dent more than it'll ever need you."
"HA!" Two-Face scoffs. "You don't see the criminals I deal with in jail, you see them in the ground! I solve the problems Dent never could. I'm doing this city a service. And I will always be stronger than him."
"You talk about people changing under the circumstances. But you aren't strong enough to bring change to your circumstances. No one is. Except this."
His flicks his left wrist and something glimmers in his fingers.
His coin. He had it all along.
"You were lucky to get Dent the first time," he says, eyeing the unscarred half. "So it's only fair that you know about our bet."
"... what kind of bet?"
"That's the question, isn't it? Almost makes you want to laugh."
"The thing is, kid, when you fall..." he trails off, a bitter chuckle emanating from his throat. "...you just fall."
"For the next time we meet," Two-Face sneers. "Coward."
His thumb flips, his transfixed eyes watching the coin as it twirls in midair. It lands thickly in his palm, and he raises it to show me the result. On the black side, the scars only glimmer.
For the second time in this interview, I am shaking. Only now, it is with anger.
"We're done here," I murmur, clicking off the tape recorder. Quinzel, Crowley, and Jeremiah are silent, unmoving, all eyes on me. I stand from my chair to leave. When I reach the door, a sound, sharp and metallic, cuts into the hushed observation room. I turn to look at Two-Face, who is holding the coin in his right hand. The undamaged side faces me.
He had flipped it a second time.
"Who was that for?" I ask immediately.
Two-Face grins horridly, the rotten muscles moving in time with the perfect ones.
"WHO THE HELL WAS THAT TOSS FOR?!" I scream, storming back to the glass.
Two-Face looks up at me, his expression shifting to something I couldn't read.
"Your other half."
The guards enter his cell, seizing Two-Face by his arms. He doesn't struggle, the coin still in his hand. My fingers hold the bridge of my nose and I bow my head, leaving the room and the others behind.
I find my way back to the cell block door. From my back pocket I remove my wallet, my fingers moving past the plastic picture holders until I reach the last one.
We lay side by side, sly grins on our flushed faces as we look up from the pillows our messy-haired heads rest upon. My other half.
I pummel the urge to sob, furious at myself for allowing it to surface. There is someone beside me and within moments the wallet is closed and back in my pocket before they can see.
Crowley has followed. She puts a hand on my shoulder, and I, ashamed, cannot meet her gaze.
"Let's step outside."
Her knowledge of the mansion's layout means we are outdoors in far less time than it should have taken us. The day is cold and masked by clouds of misty gray. She unearths a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket and hands me one.
"You smoke?" she asks me, taking out a lighter.
"No." I tell her, lighting my cigarette from her flame and taking a deep drag. I don't cough.
"Niether do I," she says, lighting her own.
