I Believe In...

Prompt: Lassitude.

So, the last weekend of May, Harvey's finally transferred back to Arkham, from Gotham General. It takes a little longer before he's able to go back out into the common areas of the asylum, again, just on account of his face still healing, but eventually... yeah, he gets rec room and library privileges back.

He's in the latter, today, browsing one of the legal tomes supplied for patients. His face still isn't entirely healed up, even to its 'normal' state, but... close enough.

It's always 'you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, blahblah.' You never hear 'you can't escape an asylum without breaking a glass eye (and a man's neck).' The latter would be more relevant to Harvey's dilemma, anyway. Since he escaped from Arkham, all he has is the beige implant-shield he usually puts in when he sleeps. And, well, it just doesn't look as good, you know?

Thank goodness he knows a good doctor.

A call, the night before he mails a letter.

It isn't fair, Harvey knows.

Just another human being, just another piece of meat, no more special than the others. And yet here he is, giving him preferential treatment, wasting time on him that could be better spent saving (burning) his city. Here he is, tirelessly researching possibilities for Judah's case, staying up and talking him through the rough parts of his detox, making him coffee and tea -- but not tea -- and dinner when he's too ill or out of it to do it himself. Making sure he eats and drinks, once it's prepared -- helps him, even with that, at the worst times.

He knows it isn't fair, knows he isn't treating him equally, and part of him rages against that, snarling and spitting curses and wanting to do every terrible thing to Judah, to the piece of meat that Harvey's willing to break his principles, willing to make himself a hypocrite for. The other part of him, heels dug in, repeats the bleeding-heart mantra of he's my friend, like it even matters. Like that makes him more.

One flip is all it would take to resolve the conflict, to collapse the waveform and give him a solid answer -- live or die? Partnership or solitude?

The idea teases at him when he's frustrated, and when they both fall silent for too long and little not-voices rise to fill in the quiet. The weight of the gun in his shoulder holster, the weight of the coin in his pocket, and all it would take...

It isn't fair. And the less he thinks about that, the better.

Well, he did say he'd call her once the drugs were out of his system. And Harvey Dent isn't one to break a promise. Hope you have time for a chat, Dr. Drake!

Harvey knows he shouldn't be this upset about Judah's plans, about your cousin says he'll see you in April, late March. This is how things work, into Arkham and out of Arkham and in again, one side of the door to the other -- like a coin-toss, long soaring arcs divided by noise and the sting of silver against skin, the whole goddamn point of the exercise.

But he still is.

( It's not... )

From here.

Reply: fixation. (Or respond to one from the other thread.)

From here.

Reply: beautiful. (Or respond to one from the other thread.)

From here.

Reply prompt: pills.

Continued here.

They started checking every morning, to be sure that he'd swallowed his pills. So he started making himself throw them up, once the orderlies had left. (So what if it irritated his face? The nerves were mostly dead on that side, anyway.) That lasted all of a day, until someone checked the cameras after breakfast. That evening, instead of a pill he got an injection. And nothing but the sedative, that night... and the next... Half of him hoped beyond hope that they'd given up. But when the effects of the medication didn't fade, he knew that wasn't the case.

The fuzziness persisted, got worse. Like his mind was a window fogging up from the outside, until he couldn't pick out the finer details. Words on the page, details of law, twists and turns of logic. He tried to gauge how badly it was affecting him by how well he could keep up with Eddie when they talked. He still could, but it was getting harder.

(He could feel the good ideas and the bad smothering under that fog, white and black blurring into murky grey. And maybe that, that was what the medication was supposed to do, but if so, he wanted no part in it. There had always been something in his head, ever since he was a boy -- no matter whether he heeded it or not -- and the quiet in its stead was the farthest thing from relaxing.)

A painful, itching restlessness settled deep inside his bones, like the marrow had been replaced with steel wool. He tried to relieve it by pacing, by exercising, by meditating, by biting at his scarred lips. It didn't work.

He couldn't sleep, even with the sedatives they gave him every night, and as he stared up at the ceiling for long hours he entertained, with increasing seriousness, the notion that they were poisoning him, that this was Warden's, Dr. Huang's, Dr. Drake's, the mob's, the GCPD's way of getting back at him for everything he'd done. The asylum had once locked him in the basement, after all, hidden him away and let the world think he was dead. What else couldn't he put beyond this place, what else wouldn't they be willing to do?

Some reasonable part of him, fron underneath a heavy blanket of chemicals, whispered that that was crazy. But then, he figured, so was he.

Judah does yoga in the mornings.

Harvey used to watch him once he was finished with his own morning routine, leaning in the doorframe and sipping his second cup of coffee. Why not? The city and its demands on them, this self-destructive lifestyle they were both caught up in, in together, could wait another half hour while Judah performed the Surya Namaskara.

One day that rarity of Gotham winter happened, and it was sunny. Soft light streaming in through the high warehouse windows, gilding everything it touched. It didn't change a thing for Judah.

But as he moved from Ashtanga Namaskara to Bhujangasana, pushing himself in a smooth, slow curve upward, it hit Harvey, watching him, like a punch to the gut -- a painful, nervous feeling (no) that he knew, that he remembered last from... over a year ago, now, when he'd made a joke to a girl he'd asked out, one of the other ADAs (no, no) and she'd laughed, and he'd realised just how beautiful she was...

The noise in his head had climbed, each side of him trying to shout the other down, and he'd fled, cheeks burning.

That was what they all laughed about. Joked about. It couldn't be real.

I don't want this, he'd told both his selves, staring at the coin in his hand. It ruins everything. He has a family. (And he had Rachel.)

Then don't tell him, clean silver advised. Coward, Lady Liberty's scarred side spat back.

The toss came up clean. But he still went to Judah, later that afternoon, and asked if he could teach him how to do those poses.

So in another world, it didn't happen like that. Fate, or luck, or chance went a different way, and Harvey Dent didn't find Judah Stark's flyer's, or the name didn't ring a bell.

It's not been nearly so kind a world for him. He remembers to eat, eventually. He remembers to sleep, to slow down. But there isn't a soft bed, a hot meal, ready for him when he does. He has to get it on his own. Has to pay his own way.

Muggings, it turns out, aren't hard. Grab. Point gun. Demand wallet.

So, you know what? Screw going to Merchant's Square for New Years Eve. Especially after what happened last time he went out for a holiday. Why not just stay in and watch the whole ting on TV with a bottle of champagne?

...that's what Harvey's coin says, anyway. And who is Harvey to argue with chance?

Of course, his coin may not be so kind for the rest of the night. He sits on the couch with the champagne at his side and his coin in his hand and the altoid tin he bought from Simon on his lap. Consider his options.

After taking care of that, Harvey goes back to bed for a few hours.

When he gets up again, around six AM, he fixes himself coffee and breakfast, listening to the settling of the old warehouse, and the hushed sounds of the city outside it. All his gifts are sent -- a collection of Gotham Times crosswords for Eddie, a good pair of dark sunglasses for Victor. A designer scarf-and-glove set for Dr. Meridian. A nice card for Dr. Drake. A $50 gift card to a good local bookstore left out in the kitchen for... whenever Judah gets back from wherever he is.

The only thing left...

After breakfast, he bundles himself up in winter clothes, every inch of him. He goes out, and walks through grey snow and black slush, to the graveyard where Rachel is buried.

And he spends Christmas day with the woman he loves.