Ahem. This is my first Batman fic - hopefully not my last - so constructive criticism is appreciated, as I'm not used to playing with the characters. Anyway, this fic consists of ten drabbles exploring the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent, both before and after the latter's descent into insanity. I've always loved the idea of the two of them being good friends - Two-Face has always been a deeply personal villain for Batman, for a number of reasons, and there's plenty of canon to suggest they were friends as Bruce 'n' Harv sometime before Batman or Two-Face arrived on the scene. As far as canon source material goes, it's an mash of Year One, Eye of the Beholder, and Batman: The Animated Series.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, the DC universe, or the English language.

i. meet yourself coming back

"Well, aren't you the successful one."

Harvey glances up from his crowded desk. "Bruce!" he exclaims, nearly knocking the chair over as he leaps up. Bruce can't stop a smile spreading across his face, nor does he want to. Within a second, he's gripped tight in a hug. Harvey is genuinely delighted to see him, he can tell.

(and i'll have to lie to him forever after)

"You," Harvey says after releasing him, "have a lot to answer for. Twelve years to answer for, in fact."

Bruce gives his old friend an apologetic smile. "I've been travelling."

Harvey looks sceptical. It's going to be hard to deceive him - the man's sharp enough to cut himself. Bruce half-wonders if he should burn his bridges with Harvey to keep his secret more easily. He rejects the idea as soon as he thinks of it.

ii. atlas without a zeus

Harvey's eyes, dull and heavy-lidded, flick upwards towards his friend. "I can't."

"What do you mean, you can't? You've been building a case for months."

"The evidence is good enough, but Moroni has so many false alibis a lot of it is disproved before I even take it into court. The witnesses I've found – most of them have been scared or paid off by his thugs… it'll never hold." There is a sort of desperation in those dark blue orbs, the panicked half-realisation that the whole case could come to nothing. Getting one of Gotham's mob leaders in jail is like trying to catch smoke in a sieve.

Harvey's head comes to rest in his hands, and Bruce is reminded of that old Greek myth where one man has to hold up the entire world with his bare hands.

iii. swim, don't sink

The first time Bruce visits Harvey as Batman, there are three coffee cups on the desk and the desk lamp occasionally splutters and fizzes into darkness. The ADA has clearly been here a long time.

He doesn't even need to explain, really. Harvey is nothing if not smart and he's lived in Gotham long enough to see with a steadily sinking heart the helplessness and incompetence of the rule-abiding side of the law. He can see through Batman's eyes and understand that this is a necessity. It's not pleasant or even ethical, but it can be the stepping-stone to something that is.

"The GPD are on a manhunt for me," he points out to Harvey when the other man starts musing out loud how he can facilitate this.

The wicked glint in Harvey's eyes is present when he speaks next; between that and the wide grin Bruce feels that he might have just got his old friend back.

But Harvey is not Batman's friend.

iv. a toast to this hope

Harvey clutches his champagne flute like it's a buoy in the ocean of Gotham society. Gilda has disappeared somewhere and he's alone in the sea of glittering faces. Utterly lost and growing more uncomfortable by the minute, he wishes there was a convenient trapdoor under his feet so he could just disappear. (Knowing Wayne Manor, there probably is.)

Just as he's considering faking a faint to get away from all the bright lights, Bruce comes up to him, slings an arm around his shoulders and gives him that genuine grin that no camera has ever captured; the one where he doesn't look like another fake shallow billionaire, but just Harvey's friend.

"Well done," he smiles, and it must be the thirtieth time Harvey has heard that phrase tonight, but only the second time it's meant something.

He shrugs. "Fluke."

Bruce gives him that look. "Oh, come on. We've already established you're a genius." He throws the champagne down his throat and chokes, a rattling gurgle escaping his throat.

Their laughter seems like the only sound in the room.

v. the fine art of cheating

"I won't do it."

Harvey narrows his eyes, the dark blue colour fixed on Batman's mask. He feels those eyes boring into him; the mask is no protection. "Why not? You already operate outside the law; you think this is any different to pursuing thugs across Gotham and beating them senseless before the police pick them up?"

"I won't plant false evidence. It's not what I do, and it shouldn't be what you do either. You're supposed to enforce the law, not break it."

Harvey barks a short, merciless laugh. "Enforce the law. That's a good one." He jabs thumb towards a straining folder on his desk. "That's all the stuff I've gathered on Moroni. He hasn't been convicted yet. Too many alibis, too many payoffs, too many corrupt law enforcers. The only way I can get convictions is by making the evidence irrefutable. So maybe he didn't do this, but there's plenty of stuff he did do and got away with. I thought you wanted to clean up Gotham. This is our chance to actually convict one of the biggest mobsters on the city."

Bruce is getting a sinking feeling deep in his stomach.

vi. lightning strikes the same place

Bruce doesn't realise it will happen until it does. Fascinated by the striking figure Harvey cuts in the courtroom, his senses are deadened and he is comparatively unaware - far too late to realise Moroni's plan until he sees it in action, far too late to do anything except look on in horror, far too late to save his closest friend.

The simultaneous cacophony of Harvey's throat-tearing scream and the vicious hiss of the acid burning the DA's face is possibly the worst sound Bruce has ever heard. In years to come, he will look back on it and recognise it as the sound not only of his friend in agony, but the sound of the grisly death of Gotham's baby steps towards hope and light. The sound that laughs at Batman, "you've lost."

(harvey oh my god help him someone i'm sorry i'm sorry it'll be ok it has to be ok)

Just one event that takes a few seconds from Moroni rising in his seat to Harvey contorted in pain and shock, and nothing will ever be the same.

vii. keeping heads above water

The blinding, all-consuming pain that Harvey distantly remembers through a dark tunnel has eased. It still hurts, hurts so much, but it's just about bearable and his mind isn't frantically trying to run from the fizzing colours that had consumed his vision that... how long has it been? He doesn't quite know, all the nurses and doctors who seem to come to his bed in a constant stream just cough up the same phrases about facial trauma and risk of infection and you'll need a lot of pain medication, Mr Dent.

Gilda has just left after a nurse had to frogmarch her out of his hospital room.

Alfred came to visit, just briefly, and gave him a note from Bruce, who is apparently "busy" and will see him "soon". The note is short, hastily written, and is the typical to-a-friend-in-the-hospital drivel - he will come see Harvey as soon as he can, he hopes Harvey is all right

(i'm fine, bruce. i had a little accident involving sulphuric acid but i'll be up in no time)

and if there's anything he needs, he shouldn't hesitate to ask.

Harvey wishes he had something to read.

viii. beauty is in the eye

His friend's eyes are glassy and unfocused - from the pain meds, he guesses. The conversation is stilted and disconnected, but Bruce doesn't really hold it against Harvey - the left side of his face speaks for itself. Who wouldn't need to be doped up to the eyeballs after experiencing that? He tries not to stare, but this ghastly horror show draws his eyes like a magnetic impulse. The wide, bulging eyeball perpetually stuck in cartoonish surprise, the exposed teeth and malformed lips creating an ugly snarl.

It's a pinkish-red colour, a sore open wound.

(like gotham's state of mind?)

He asks for the third time if Harvey's in any pain, hoping this time for an answer. Harvey stares dumbly at him for a minute and then mumbles, "I've been worse."

ix. symptoms of the sickness

Harvey doesn't want to shoot Bruce. Well, he doesn't think he wants to. Maybe he does. The dark part does. The one that has been slowly but surely infecting his brain, taking advantage of his weakened, medicated state to tear free.

(but not all the way. never all the way)

"Harvey," Bruce says, calmly, as one might speak to a spooked horse. "Just... put it down, please? This isn't you-"

(oh, but it is. we're all infinite facets of ourselves, bruce)

"You deserve the same chance as anyone, Bruce," he (it?) says.

Good heads. Maybe next time it will be bad heads and the monster, the deep dark part of Harvey Dent, will shoot the billionaire right between the eyes. Or maybe Bruce will be lucky and get another favourable flip. Either way, everyone wins and everyone loses.

Harvey smiles then - genuine happiness giving way to a sickening grimace across his face. He holds up his hands and drops the gun. It clatters harshly as it hits the floor.

"I surrender."

x. staring into the abyss

Bruce can never give up on him.

Every time Bruce wonders if Harvey's past saving, every time he looks into those bloodshot eyes and see no trace of sanity or kindness, Harvey gets a good flip, and there's calmness in his eyes, a familiar smile on his face, and he allows himself to be arrested by the GCPD without a fight. In these moments, it seems as if Harvey is alive again, whole and sane and well. As long as there's flashes of lucidity, Bruce can never consign his friend to death, can never properly erect a gravestone and say, "this is when and where Harvey Dent died."

They were golden, once. They could have made a difference, a real one, to this sad sorry city of Gotham. But now Harvey is rotting in an insane asylum and Bruce is flitting above the rooftops saving the city that can't be saved.