Harley was lying on her back on the couch, pigtails falling off the side as her lips pursed to blow a large pink gum bubble. The little sphere grew bigger and thinner, and Harley caught it skillfully between her lips just before it popped.
Ivy looked over from watering her plants long enough to see Harley attempt two bubbles at once. “You are way too easily amused.”
“Huh?” Harley narrowly avoided another large mess. “I’m just chewin’ gum.”
“Exactly. Don’t you ever want to do anything a little more productive?”
“Aw, why should I?” Harley rolled over onto her stomach. “Besides, a bubble’s like…like a metaphor, y’know?”
Ivy put down the watering can and sat down. “Well this oughtta be good.”
“Yeah, like for life and stuff.” Harley’s legs kicked in the air above her back. “Cause, you’re tryin’ to get as big as you can, but you gotta be careful not to go too big, or else it’s all just gonna fall over and make a mess!”
“Regular Dickenson, you are.”
“Thanks!” Harley said brightly, and returned to her chewing.
If Ivy was on edge, she had reason to be. News of the murders had spread all through the city and beyond by now, and though there had been no official suspects announced, the murmurs all pointed to Ivy. That was the trouble with this town; when all the villains were one-trick ponies, it was too easy for the public to ignore all other evidence. Not that there seemed to be any real evidence at all for this case. Not that the lack was stopping any conversation. Though in some ways, Ivy didn’t mind the gossip. At least it meant that Gotham hadn’t forgotten about her in her uneventful days.
There was a loud slam from the kitchen, and Harley’s bubble popped. Ivy stood quickly from her chair, as if she expected it, muttering, “They never read the damn signs!”
Both women ran toward the source of the noise, Harley trying to pull gum out of her hair and make a fist at the same time.
The boy had a gun. His brow was streaked with sweat, his hands shook and his breathing was labored. He couldn’t have been long out of school, if he were even that old. Ivy could tell immediately that he had been on the property for too long; even as she held up her hands she could tell that there was no real danger from him. Still, the wild look in his eyes and the violent shaking of his trigger finger made her unwilling to tempt fate.
“Easy now,” she said, praying silently that Harley would have the sense to stay quiet. “Put it down.”
The boy panted and coughed, as if he had been for a long run, seemingly unaware of the poison filtering through his lungs. “You…you killed my father!”
Harley’s hands were up in the air as well, her eyes locked on the gun as Ivy spoke, keeping her voice low and even. “Put it down. You should leave. Now.”
“You killed my father!” the boy repeated, his hand lurching and his cough getting worse.
“Listen to me,” Ivy told him. “From the sound of things, you’re going to pass out in about three minutes. You should get out of here while you can still walk.”
“I’ve got enough time!” he choked out, stepped forward and tried to steady his hands.
He didn’t have a chance. Harley sprang forward with all the speed she had and kicked the weapon out of his hands before it could fire. Ivy gave her an approving look and shot her hand for the boy’s collar. His eyes widened in fear and he shrunk into himself, before he fell limp, and finally dropped to the ground.
“Wow, Ivy, you were great!” Harley beamed and hugged her, before bending to help her pick the boy up. “But that wasn’t three minutes.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I lied,” Ivy shrugged, and studied his face. “Fantastic. I knew Livingston had a kid. At least he’s the only one.”
“What do we do with him?” Harley asked, focusing now on tugging at the pink in her hair with her free hand.
“Just get him outside,” Ivy sighed. “The toxin will wear off soon. Hopefully he’ll have the sense not to come back.
“Y’know,” Harley started, as the two of them laid the boy on the sidewalk across the street, “for a guy with a gun showin’ up at your house, that wasn’t all that exciting.”
*****
“This is stupid,” the dark voice muttered “We’ve got better things to do.”
“Shut up,” Harvey hissed under his breath glancing around the diner and hoping he wasn’t still famous enough in Gotham to be stared at.
“You’re gonna get us caught. You want that?” Harvey bit his tongue and tried to ignore the voice that only he could hear. “You want to go to Arkham, that it? Wouldn’t just be me in a cell, Harv. An’ all the explaining in the world ain’t gonna stop them beating on you for putting them in there. You want that, fine, meet the cop. Won’t see me crying.”
“Shut up,” Harvey whispered again. He took a long breath and pushed his other side farther back in his mind, just as he saw Renee coming through the door.
“Sorry I’m late,” she offered as she sat down across from him, smoothing her hair away from her face. “Overslept. Long night.”
“I believe it,” Harvey said, pulling the brim of his soft old hat further over his face to hide the scars. Renee’s eyes were haloed with dark circles, and she yawned even as he spoke. He kept his voice level, allowing himself the luxury of an old friendship. He and Renee had once been quite close, and if he had any power to, Harvey wouldn’t let his other half deny him this reunion. “What have you been doing with yourself? Jim told me you were working at Waynetech now?”
Renee nodded and gratefully accepted a cup of coffee from a passing waitress. “Yeah, it’s working out great. I’ve got a night job. Security.”
“Sounds like a step down for you,” Harvey said. “Is this the girl who told me she’d never stop crime-fighting?”
Renee gave a little chuckle. “Well…priorities and all. I’m still doing plenty of good, don’t worry, DA.”
She gave him a smile, but it faded when it wasn’t returned. Harvey noticed her expression and brightened his own. “God, it’s been so long. What else is new?” He gave her a larger, if still forced smile. “Any pretty girls on the horizon?”
Renee took a long sip of her drink. “I wish. Been too busy.” She looked up at him again, as relaxed as she always used to be around him. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”
He was quiet for a long moment, his teeth worrying the corner of his bottom lip. The voice kept trying to break through his thoughts, reminding him of all that had indeed changed, and nearly cracking Harvey’s defenses. Despite her dark eyes carefully studying him, Harvey had to draw the coin out of his pocket. He tossed it as low as he could and let out his breath in relief at the result. “Coin called it,” he muttered almost silently. “Now stop.”
“Everything okay, Harvey?” He looked up quickly. There was worry in her eyes, and perhaps a little fear…pity…suspicion?
“Of course. Nothing to worry about.”
Renee looked uncertain, but didn’t dwell on the subject. “You must be happy then.”
“Why’s that?”
“The whole council case—well, God, no one’s ever
happy about that kind of thing, of course not. But it’s looking like they want to put Ivy away for it.”
For half a second, Harvey froze. His smile returned quickly, but plagued with a lingering fear, and hope, and determination to keep his worse self away. “It would be about time. We can only hope it goes well.”
She was watching him too closely. Two-Face was shouting at the back of his head, “You know you’re giving us away! Told you, gonna get caught! Don’t you go thinkin’ I’ll be the one getting clobbered in there!”
“Shut up, shut up!” Harvey whispered frantically, lowering his head into his hands.
“Harvey, are you sure you’re okay?” Renee didn’t try to hide her concern.
He gave her a long look and sighed. “A lot…a lot of things happened to me while I was gone,” he started, but got no further than that before his voice cut out.
“No you don’t!” his other voice shouted, and Harvey could only stare back at a confused and worried Renee. “Flip it again.”
Harvey gritted his teeth and looked away from her. The cool metal hit his hand and chilled his blood. Bad heads. Before anything else could go wrong, Harvey jumped up out of his seat and toward the door.
“Harvey!” she called after him, standing up herself, but he was already too far gone.
Renee stared after him, bit her lip, and had to admit that something had gone horribly wrong.
*****
Ivy had been on edge with even better reason all night. She tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair and glanced from time to time out the window. Harley, for her part, had washed out the gum and set to sweeping, humming to keep herself entertained.
“Something isn’t right here,” Ivy muttered. “Can’t say what, but something.”
“You worry too much,” Harley called over to her, twirling playfully with her broom.
“You never worry enough!” Ivy shot back, taking another look out the window. “Or did we forget which one of us—“
“Hey, c’mon, Ivy, that’s low, bringing him up.”
“I was going to say, which one of us near burned the house down forgetting she had something in the oven when she ran off to play with a stray dog.”
Harley ‘hmph’ed and went back to work.
“Still, you know that feeling you get sometimes, when something’s about to happen?” Ivy asked, looking out again, hoping that she was imagining the voices getting nearer.
“Something like what?”
A rock smashed through Ivy’s living-room window. “Something like that,” she said darkly, jumping back to her feet. The voices were real, and loud, and close—and angry.
Livingston’s son led the crowd, his face pale and sweating again. The people behind him were old and young, wealthy and less, all the colors in Gotham, but all shared the same furious, dangerous expression.
“Great.” Harley leaned the broom against the wall. “A mob.”
Ivy swore much less calmly and stormed toward the door to meet the crowd head-on.
“There she is!” the boy’s voice rang out, and the mob moved ever closer to the house, oblivious to the toxic air. “She’s lived right here all along and we all just let her!
“The witch and her easy little girlfriend!” Another voice called.
“Hey!” Harley’s head poked out from the doorway. “I’m not just gonna let you go around—“ she was cut off when another, bigger rock cracked the paint on the doorframe, and she quickly darted back inside.
Ivy stood staring the crowd right in all of its angry eyes. “Leave. All of you. Now. Or I swear to God you will be sorry.”
“Threats ain’t gonna help you now!” one man yelled, then broke into a coughing fit. More people seemed to be noticing the air, their own sudden exhaustion, but plenty were still too furious to care.
“She killed the father and poisoned the son! I say we’ve let the freak live among us too long!”
“Get the house!”
The last shout triggered a stampede. Ivy just had just enough time to grab Harley’s wrist and pull her out the back door before glass began to break, furniture cracked, fabric tore, sounds of destruction and chaos following through the night. In the darkness, the two women slipped away, losing themselves before the mob grew tired of destroying their possessions.
“Damn, the one time I really didn’t do it,” Ivy muttered. She lunk down against a tree in the park and rubbed her temples.
“What do we do now? Everything was in there!”
“We’ll manage, Harl. We can live without the stuff. As hard as that may be for you to imagine.” Ivy sighed and gently coaxed the tree to grow out its leaves into a thicker canopy to shield them for the night. “We’ll go back in the morning and I’ll put up stronger defenses. Have to admit I should have seen that coming, sooner or later.”
“Ivy, I don’t wanna get caught,” Harley started, blue eyes swimming as she sat down beside her friend. “I don’t wanna go back to Arkham.”
“Relax, I won’t let you,” Ivy chuckled, and put a comforting arm around Harley’s shoulders. “Get some sleep now. Gonna be a long night.”
*****
He had just left for what she hoped would be the evening, and Batgirl carefully picked the lock on her old friend’s window to sneak inside. Part of her, a large part, still hated having to act outside the law. But the way Harvey had behaved that morning, and the way the limited evidence was coming together, Renee had to find out what was going on.
The bedroom was a mess. A dresser had been overturned, clothes spilling out all over a floor that looked like it had never been cleaned. Renee couldn’t tell if it looked like an argument, or a struggle, or mere frustration, but she did know that the only person Harvey could possibly have fought with was himself. She knew him—he would have mentioned if he were living with anyone. The knowledge made her even more uneasy.
“What the hell happened to you, Harvey?” she asked out loud as she started to look around for an answer.
There were no clues in his drawers, under the mattress, in the back of the closet, where people would normally hide their secrets. Finally, she turned to the tall bookshelf, beginning to worry that she would find nothing before he returned. This time she was lucky; on the top shelf, lying unceremoniously on its side, was a thin book with a weathered red cover. She reached up for it and the book opened, worn out from having been used often. Inside, a man's hand had filled in the once-blank pages. Renee had take enough notes from the old DA to recognize Harvey’s handwriting. She began to read.
September 15—
They told me to start writing down everything I can to understand what happened. I keep trying to tell them I haven’t changed. Nothing’s different. I’m not crazy. But I’ll write anyway. I’ll explain.
When I was young, I thought everyone was like me. I thought everyone had a little voice from time to time—and don’t think the lines and stories we feed children of conscience crickets and shoulder-devils did anything to help that notion of mine. I never really heard the voice until I was in my teens, and by then I had figured out I wasn’t normal. But what did it matter? I was fine, and I never listened. It was just this thought that fell into my mind when I had a hard choice to make. Someone else’s thought. I could ignore it. I can’t now.
The voice got a face after the trial. I can’t explain how it happened, but with all the scars, he started…getting out. He would—it would
It wants now— it wants the coin it, he, taking my pen
We don’t need to explain anything to you
[/font]
September 16—
Maybe I do need to be here, more than I thought. I’m not crazy, I know I’m not. Still…maybe. I couldn’t put him away until this morning. It terrifies me that he could take control when I’m asleep. I bound him to following the coin flip, but by his very nature I’m always afraid he won’t obey.
No, no one needs to tell me I sound like Jekyll.
It used to just be a joke, but the coin was something I already had on hand, something easy and available. I’d used it in the office for years to make arbitrary decisions. When he first started taking control, I got him to agree to a coin flip, to decide whether or not he took over. The two-headed quarter was his idea.
He called us ‘we’ yesterday. He won’t believe we aren’t the same person. I won’t believe we are. In my darkest moments, I don’t know which of us is right.
The coin. When we need to decide who is in control, I flip the coin. Heads, I stay. Tails—in this case, the head he destroyed with a razor blade—and he comes out. I make him flip when I need to return to control. It is frightening how often I seem to lose that flip.
He wants me to flip now…can’t resist it but hope I can make him write today—
We are superior, we are not damaged, not insane. More sane than any other. We are good and evil. We have died and each been born. We are better than men. We have no use for rules. We have no use for men. We understand what men do not
We will not be separate. We will never be cured. We are not diseased. We are Two-Face. We are Harvey Dent.
[/font]
He’s wrong. I’m Harvey. He isn’t me. Don’t let him fool you. Can’t let him fool me…[/center]
Renee was snapped out of the journal by a loud, unmistakable sound. She shoved the book into a pocket in her cape, scrambling for the window. She wasn’t fast enough. As she ran for her lockpick and tried to force the glass back open, he came through the doorway. He was shocked, standing still, looking angrier by the second…
And the coin in his hand was scarred face up.
