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01 | 🕐 | audio

[ It's not something that really ever becomes routine, it doesn't matter how often he wakes up someplace strange and uncharted. The voice on the line sounds about as scattered as he feels. ]

My name is Will Graham, it's- [ He's pulling back his sleeve to look for a watch that's not there. ] I don't have the time. I don't- I don't have the time.

[ Hang on, don't get too lost. ]

It's not clear to me exactly where I am, but- [ a dry laugh ] you probably already knew that. This isn't even my phone. But you probably knew that too.

[ He's missing details. He's missing plenty. His voice trails off for a short while before he can get his bearings enough to speak again, and even then it's almost unconsciously. ] I don't know. I don't know.

[ It's as if the fact that he has no idea sparks him back into the present. His voice grows more composed, if somewhat cracked. ] So if you're hearing this, if anyone is hearing this - [ is anyone hearing this? ] - any singular indication will be key.

[ Another beat. ]

I feel as though I've strayed a long, long way from home.

[ The air goes dead, and then so does the line. ]

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[ 'Us', 'we'. There's a lot to consider in Harvey Dent, and it takes Will a full few seconds to gain his bearings. He doesn't want to talk about Freddie Lounds, which means he really doesn't want to talk about any and all potentially expected or nonviolent deaths. He focuses on the inevitable: ]

Abigail has?

Yes. Fondly.

But then, she still loves Hannibal.

[ His voice dips into another register. ]

It will be disappointing to find out that you do. We hope someone in your world has sense to see him for what he is.

[ Beneath them. ]

[ This should prove to be promising. ]

And how exactly would you describe Hannibal Lecter, Mr. Dent?

If it weren't for... certain requests, we would call him our bitch and remind him of just how pathetic a worm he is. He dresses his hungers in suits and dinner parties, thinks himself superior. He's an empty suit. Nothing but gnawing hunger under silk and pinstripe.

He stands for nothing. He is an animal who thinks he is a man. We hate him with the fullness of our will.

[ But Abigail loves him, and thus, through loved he is saved a world of pain. ]

[ Well. ]

Now tell me how you really feel.

[ It sends a thrill through him, like the visceral sort of feeling one might get upon sharing a poor movie opinion with someone who hasn't happened to psychotically enjoy the performance otherwise. Multiplied, in fact, but validating.

At the same time, it sinks in his stomach and twists in measured and ugly amounts, as though he's the only person who was ever allowed to eviscerate Hannibal Lecter so fully, even with mere words. ]

Whose request is it holding you back, then?

Abigail.

We respect her rights to choose. And she has chosen to claim him. She will kill him -- we are sure of this. But after everything he has done to her, she has the right to say 'no, this is mine'.

...this is not to say [ and the lawyer's speaking now, calm and smooth ] that there are not loopholes. If we are asked to assist another who has as valid a reason for their loathing, who asks....

That's different.

[ Harvey is sure Will understands. He can hear it quiver under each word. ]

[ There's a quiet in the space where Will processes accordingly, where, with an almost laugh and an off-camera removal of his glasses, he pinches at the bridge of his nose and weighs just what Harvey Dent is trying to sell him right now. ]

Do you see opportunity in me, Mr. Dent?

We aren't sure what you are, Mr. Graham. But we are so very tired of people loving Hannibal, we are hoping, at the very least, that you are not fool enough to fall for his tricks.

If you don't wish to engage him, that is your choice. We respect that above all things. [ It is important to them; especially regarding these people who have come from this world, who seems to have had their choices stolen by Hannibal -- who have seen their options vanish into his psychological shell game where the only choice is the one Hannibal has already made for you. ]

[ He reached out, to put a hand on the big, square head of a rottweiler, and reminded himself of why this was important. ]

Choice is a thing we rarely are allowed to have. Everything has been chosen for us, for a long time -- even between ourselves. We do not expect you to understand what we are or why we are this way, but it is nothing for you to fear. If you need to understand our -- actions, we'll explain as best we can. Abigail knows our rules, if you would rather hear them from her.

Merely understand that we won't harm you, and if you need help in dealing with certain barge... problems, for Abigail's sake, you have a friend in us.

Rather hear them from you.

[ Straight from the horse's mouth, as it were; best way to glean one's information. He's not interested in playing a game of interstellar Telephone, and it certainly doesn't help that there's something distinctly overprotective bristling its way out from the inside of him. It's probably the least of the problems on his mind.

Hannibal isn't just one factor in the equation but several, each impinging onto the next - crowded, complicated, but tidy enough to make sense of, so long as you know the algebra. Metaphorically speaking, Will hopes to find himself mathematically inclined. ]

You don't solve for 'X' by just throwing out the homework. [ He observes cryptically and doesn't quite explain - instead, his next question is just as laced in allegory. ] There's a black widow spider in your house. Do you squash it with your bare hand?

Is she minding her own business, catching flies in her web? If so, we leave her be.

[ He doesn't understand the phrase, but -- he's from Hannibal's world, and that place seems to be full of people who love language and metaphor to a fault. Harvey loves it in Abigail, loathes it in Hannibal. Will... is yet to be judged wanting. ]

Harvey Dent is who you're speaking to now. Vocal inflection often signals a change to my other -- alias, Two-Face. We are a atypical DID case. Long history of trauma, depression and bipolar disorder aggravated by childhood hardship. Formerly D.A for Gotham County, then supercriminal, now corpse at the bottom of Gotham Harbor.

We are an inmate. We do not kill indiscriminately if we avoid it. We prefer to exercise our rage in just says-- but when we dead lock on decisions, we choose in the only way that's fair and right.

[ He produced a coin from his pocket. ]

It was part of a game, long ago. We made it fair.

[ He holds it up, showing Liberty's unmarred face... and then flips it, to display her scars. ]

[ I have been halved, and so my world shall become halved with it. I have been given an opportunity in a near-death, in a half-death, and so I will cling to my life still available. Two faces, two mes and two choices.

Heads or tails?

This is my design, twofold and bifurcated.

The marring on the coin has the air of an old token, a part of himself that has made the same journey as he has. Double-sided, two heads, and now one as ruined as the side of Harvey's face. ]

If not a game now, what is it? You are still potentially leaving things up to chance. A game in and of itself.

It is a way to be true and fair. To be unbiased. To not allow one to rule the other. To not lie. To not be bad when there's no need to be, to be cruel when we could be kind. To be fair.

That is not a game.

That is just us.

[ Justice. ]

But is it fair? Is it something truly just? It's still left up to chance.

A 50/50 chance, but chance no less.

As fairness and justice are human created ideals and concepts-- yes. It's mine, and mine alone. Yours may be different. But this is mine.

[ And that's all there is to it. So much madness, from one little idea. ]

And the word 'righteous' will most decidedly depend on the eye of the beholder, I'm aware.

[ It doesn't make it less an interesting feat, one that Will has a particular interest in but none so much as figuring him out. (That, he wants to pick at, mostly.) He feels with only a few phrases, he has Harvey understood fairly well. ]

I don't leave my justice up to chance, Mr. Dent. I choose my own very carefully, in a flourish of grey area and understanding.

Then you build it with your own biases, just like everyone else.

[ Harvey understands bias, at least. ]

There's not any other particular way to do it. Our stories shape us, as will a sense of justice be shaped with it.

[ Harvey Dent's story, for instance, seems to have had a rather violent split; it starts with his face and ends with a coin flip. ]

Your story seems to have shaped you in an invariably complete manner, if you don't mind my saying.

Complete is something we haven't been in a long time.

[ He's not sure how to feel about that-- his coin is rolled over his fingers, as he thought on that. What it could mean. ]

Why do you say that?

You said yourself, 'complete' isn't exactly an identifier in your repertoire.

Your duality comes with reason, Mr. Dent. I imagine, in a forthright manner, [ though he's not apologizing, ] that yours was at least in large part born of whatever happened to your visage.

[ Duh. ]

That sort of thinking can certainly come out of the particularly traumatic, but I can't say there isn't generally some sort of - feeling of it before, a metaphorical seed to begin the growing process.

We have spent the last sixteen years in and out of institutionalized mental health care. We had a therapist from the time of our brother's death till my own... transformative experience.

We do not suggest you analyze us. It's a very sure way to evaporate any good will you might get from us. We are not your patient.

[ Boundary: Set. ]

If you want to ask questions, ask. We have little to hide.

[ It's a sentiment he can fully appreciate. He doesn't particularly like being psychoanalyzed either. Sometimes it just comes naturally. Observing is what he does - Hannibal's voice is in his head again, "I can’t shut mine off any more than you can shut yours off."

Which doesn't make it any less - well, rude.

Still, he has to ask: ]

How many people does it make it that you've killed now? That you've left up to your own form of justice?

I don't keep count. But it's definitely within double digits.

[ Harvey is not a spree killer or a violent psychopath. He is not indiscriminate. He has patterns, rules, and none of them involve killing without forethought. ]

You should keep count.

[ Maybe it's too late in the game for that now, but he feels it's important to at least implicate, to encourage. ]

It's a grim reminder, at the least, but losing track certainly loses one's sense of humanity in a case like that.

That implies we have much humanity left. Very generous of you.

[ It's not sarcastic. ]

You think of yourself as beyond the possibility of it? Beyond the possibility of a graduation?

01 | 🕐 | audio

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