Chapter Text
Harvey kept to the alleys.
It was easier in the dark, when Gotham blurred and nobody looked too closely. Easier to pretend he was just another shadow instead of the monster children whispered about.
Tonight, his feet carried him toward a place he had no business being.
The manor sat high above the city, its windows glowing faintly. He couldn’t go closer—he wasn’t that reckless—but he didn’t have to. Gotham had a way of showing him what he needed.
And tonight, he saw him.
The kid.
Robin was out of the cape and mask now, but Harvey would’ve known him anywhere. Dick Grayson, small frame bouncing as he darted across the garden in his pajamas, chasing after a soccer ball that had rolled into the grass. Alfred stood nearby with a mug in hand, indulgent smile hidden beneath disapproving eyebrows.
Harvey felt something twist in his chest.
“Pathetic,” Two-Face’s voice slithered. “Standing out here like some stray dog. You think you belong in that picture? That you deserve to?”
Harvey’s jaw clenched.
“He called you uncle.”
Two-Face’s laugh was sharp, cruel. “And what happens next time, when I take the wheel? You want him crying over your face again? Or your bullet in his chest?”
Harvey’s scarred hand twitched toward his pocket, toward the coin. He didn’t flip it. Not tonight.
Because Dick laughed.
The sound cut through the noise in his head—bright, unguarded, a nine-year-old’s laugh that didn’t belong in Gotham’s shadows at all.
For one fragile moment, Harvey let himself smile.
“…He’s happy,” Harvey whispered. “That’s enough.”
Two-Face growled in his mind. “For now.”
Harvey turned, forcing himself back into the night. His coat flared, boots crunching over gravel, each step pulling him further from the manor.
He didn’t look back again.
But part of him—what little of Harvey Dent that still clung to the man he now is—vowed he’d keep watching. From the dark. From a distance.
Because maybe, just maybe, he could still protect the boy from the monster inside him.