chapter 54: The death of Two-Face

Once again, Doom Slayer's actions had shaken the world, this time by helping the infamous Mr. Freeze to create a cure for a deadly disease, Huntington's Chorea, a disease which incidentally, and seemingly, was the sole reason he turned to villainy all those years prior: his wife had contracted it; his freezing motif and technology were a bioproduct of his attempts to presserve her in stasis until he could find a cure. Slayer himself said Victor did most of the heavy work, but most people believed he still had an involvement. Others, either less forgiving or more suspicious, refused to believe he could have done it at all.

Didn't change the fact he also swore to atone for his crimes by becoming what no one until then thought he could be, Victor himself included: a hero. Thanks to his suit and cryocannon, he'd more than able to be one. In fact, he had announced he no longer would go by Mr. Freeze, but by a name he himself had made: Glacier. A fitting name, many supposed.

Still, despite having just saved thousands of life, many people didn't believe that the former criminal should be walking among decent folk. In the end, a compromise was reached: doctor Fries would spend a month in a secret installation to help the development of certain technologies, after which he would truly become a free man with his wife, to spend the rest of his life with her. Foster was practically singing praises to Doom Slayer for doing what those who didn't wish to kill Fries outright still wanted him to stop: help him cure his wife.

But unknown to many of them (some had an idea, others believed it to happen), Doom Slayer had just started to do something that no one had ever bothered to do, either on that universe or any other.

Redeem people that the public saw as little more than monsters that should have remained shackled in the depths of Arkham. And he had did it with one out of four.

It was time to turn the two into one again.

Harvey Dent, as he had done the last two weeks, stared at the opaque glass door to his cell, all while holding the coin. The Other (it was shorter than Big Bad Harv) had been silent all this time, and so he didn't have the need to flick it. Still, just the fact the Other didn't speak for fifteen days worried him.

Harvey knew he was doomed. This guy, the Doom Slayer they called him, was no simple vigilante. Oh, no, he ws a real killer of men, men like Harvey, one that didn't give a damn about the public's reaction. He exterminated an entire army of metahumans, one simple man like him and the Other wouldn't matter. He had heard the footsteps of that man-shaped monster walk in front of his cell, seen his shape, but the man seemed content in making him squirm in dread instead of just finishing him off.

"Bastard..." He growled under his breath, before sighing and looking at the coin. "He's not the only one."

If only the Other would actually speak to him again. Those last years he had been the only one he could talk to, the only one he could trust (even though he admittedly had no other option, what with sharing the same body. And then, he disappeared the moment they ended up in that cell. The worst part was that he could still feel him inside, 'alive' yet unresponding. He had called, even cursed him a few times, but he didn't respond. For the first time, he was by himself.

It scared him.

And then, a blue vortex opened right below Harvey, giving him no time to even scream as it swallowed him. For what seemed to be an eternity, the former gang leader fell through some kind of blue... vein, for lack of a better term to describe the experience. Eventually, however, the makeshit ride ended, dropping Harvey in a dry, hot cave, illuminated by a strange orange glow coming from a large opening on the ground at the back of the cave. Harvey, still partly blind, stood up and looked around, approached the crater...

"Oh, god..."

... and recoiled back in pure terror, because he found himself staring into Hell itself. It had to be: the fire, the heat, the fumes, the shaking... Even the lake of fire, so bright and hot that both his eyes seemed to melt before he stepped away from the ledge. His time to pay for his sins had come.

Or at least that what he thought, before the deep voice of a man spoke from behind him.

"This is not Hell. If it were, you'd been tortured the moment your foot touched the soil." Harvey turned around to find out who it was: Doom Slayer himself, standing right behind him like some demented parody of an angel.

"Then where the hell are we?" Harvey demanded, fear of the volcano overriding his fear of the man. It also made him not realize that the ground was starting to shake, slowly and lightly so, but surely.

"Just a volcano about to explode." Slayer replied in the same tone someone would use when discussing the weather. Of course he would speak like that! He could take an entire mountain worth of molten rock and live, Harvey couldn't!

Harvey looked at the man, terrified now of him, as the ground began to quake. Was this how Slayer planned to execute him, kick him into an active volcano about to erupt as some demented hawaiian sacrifice?!

He turned around once more. Despite everything, he still wanted to know more before being executed and having his body burned to hide the evidence.

"What the hell is going on?! Why did you bring me here?!"

"To make sure that Two-Face pays for his crimes."

This guy had to be retarted or something, or maybe one of those deluded nutjobs who liked to reveal their insanity to their victims before offing them. Why else hadn't he killed him already? "Then kill me and be done with it!"

Slayer shook his helmet. "I think you've misunderstood me. I said Two-Face, not Harvey Dent."

"What?" Suddenly, another portal opened right behind the man.

"Big Bad Harv has to die. Either he dies and you come out a free man, or both of you do, but Two-Face cannot get out. Oh, and don't try. It can detect Harv's brainwaves inside your skull."

With that Doom Slayer turned around and left through the portal, leaving Harvey behind.

The portal was still open, Harvey could escape (or at least try to, if what Slayer said was true)... but something was stopping him. And it wasnt' fear. Someone had appeared in front of him, someone who seemed to have come out of a tank of acid. Someone with his face.

It was Harv. As in, the mutilated half with his own body. And then there were his eyes, full of resignation.

"Harvey."

"Harv?"

"Toss the coin."

Harvey, not caring that Harv was somehow out of his body, gave him a crazed look. "Do you really think it's the time to flick the damn thing?!"

But the other, to his shock, shook his head. "No, I mean toss it inside. Drop it in the lava, get rid of it."

"Drop it?!"

"I'm not coming out of this alive, that brute will make sure of it, and frankly, being alone in that cell has given me lots of thing to think about, to regret, ... but you? You still can."

Again, Harvey was bewildered. "Look at us! No, look at you! Hated, loathed, feared for obeying a figment of your imagination that you allowed to consume you!Why the sudden change in attitude, Harv?!"

Harv sighed as the Volcano began to shake harder and harder, the rising temperature a sign that the lava was rising. "I told you already, haven't I? I don't you want you to die, to pay for what I did."

"I was the one doing it!"

"And who do you think, what do you think, compelled you to do it till the bitter end?"

"For heaven's sake... Harvey, this is the only chance you have to have a normal life."

Harv then disappeared. Then, to his horror, Harvey began to walk to the edge, to the shearing heat, the coing held by his left hand, the one Big Bad Harv used. His clothes began to burn, but he didn't stop until he reached the rim over the pit of rising molten rock.

Harvey couldn't stop himself from gasping in horror when the realization hit him. "But... but what will I do without you?"

"I don't know. You'll have to find out yourself. Goodbye, Harvey. Oh, and send my regards to Bruce"

For the first time in years since the accident that created Two-Face, Bid Bad Harv chose for himself without consulting Harvey.

It would also be the last.

Dozens of miles away from the eruption, safe from the cloud from Hell itself, a small but growing crowd of onlookers watched behind the protective pillar that was Doom Slayer as the volcano unleashed its rage on the area. In truth distance was the true protector, but they already knew that. They simply liked having someone like him being around just in case it went out of control.

It was Two-Face... or, more accurately, what was left of him. Parts of his body had been melted, leaving behind a mess of flesh, hair and clothing combined, including the infamous facial wound that gave him his name.

And yet, despite the terrible damage on his body, the man didn't seem to care, or even acknowledge his state, preferring instead to give a forlorn, distressed, even terrified look at the volcano.

Doom Slayer moved forwards until he stood next to Harvey, both looking at the eruption. "Did you kill him?"

But the man shook his head, still distressed. "I didn't. He jumped in."

One of the members of the crow chimed in. "What do you mean with 'he jumped in'?

Harvey, instead of replying directly, turned to look at the now fully awake volcano, distressed by whatever had happened inside. "He casted himself into the fires of Hell. To give me a chance to live a normal life... again."

Doom Slayer clasped his left shoulder. "And you should take it. He gave you the chance, don't disappoint him."

Harvey looked at him, giving him the look more fitting of a scared dog than anything. "But how? And even if I could, what's next? What am I supposed to do? I'm a criminal, a felon, a murderer!"

Doom Slayer merely looked at him. "Anything can happen. If a man who led an army of space monsters could be forgiven of his crime, so can an attorney with mental problems."

Despite everything, despite the doubt, despite the people's future reaction to this, one thing was certain: Two-Face was no more.

In a house located within a magical pseudo-macroverse, an englishman was spitting gin like a hose as he watched the event unfold from a window.

"Well, fuck me sideways, it actually worked!"

Two-Face is no more. Hope that I didn't make it too corny. And yes, I basically reenacted Isildur's fall to the Dark Side and combined it with Gollum/Sméagol. Tolkien did live in this universe, but since only Slayer and John have seen it happen, and not nat many have read The Lord of The Rings, not many will make the connection. As for why, symbolism: Two-Face metaphorically condemns himself to eternal damnation so that Harvey can finally be free.