Phobia.

I hadn't really had a normal childhood per-say.

My parents died when I was young, the large age gap between me and my brother leaving me primarily in his care.
I had watched from the sidelines as he grew taller, awkwardly skinny, his legs like a spiders. I had watched as he had graduated, top of his class, had started working at the Asylum, had risen to the top by the time I was 19 and he 30.

Then I watched as he tortured people, kept my mouth shut as he told me too.
Tried to avoid becoming one of the poor twitching souls myself.

I watched as he flooded the air with the poisonous gas, as the narrow streets around became labyrinths of horror, monsters lurking in each shadow, people loosing their minds. But he saved me, I shouldn't have been there, I should have stayed home, safe.

Whatever horrible things he did, he saved me.

And I couldn't stop loving him.

But when the Joker appeared, when he continued to sell his compound, when I would walk home through Old Town, see people in alleyways, crying, clawing at their eyes.
My brother had lost it, he needed to be stopped, for his own good, for everyone's good.

So I went to Gotham Police Station, I met Jim Gordon formally, this time not given a number, put in a cell for a couple of hours for stealing, fighting.

I told him, he told Batman. Batman put my brother in Arkham.



And Harvey Dent came into my life, applauded me for my efforts, cleared my file, made me nobody to keep me safe. He didn't trust Gordon's men, and I told him things you hear when you live in the underbelly of filth.

He kept in touch, looked after me for information.
I was the police with no badge.
I was a rat.

I was at the hospital when his melted skin stuck on the thin pillow, there when the Joker appeared, his face warper by that horrific makeup. His gun and theats silenced me and I watched mutely as he put horrible ideas in Harvey's mind, turned him from a true honest man to a lunatic.

Too much fun to kill.
Yet.

I'd followed Harvey from the hospital, begging until he held the coin to my face in the underpass. The explosion rocking the ground beneath us. All he had were questions, and the suspicion was harder to stand that the jutting muscles of his jaw, his eyes worse than his destroyed face.

Why hadn't the Joker hurt me? I had betrayed him, I worked for the Joker. I made Rachel die.

I denied it all, waiting for what felt like years as he flipped that burnt coin. I was unconscious seconds after it landed on his hand, silver side upwards. And I didn't wake up until it was too late, he was dead, Gordon's children scarred for life. Batman blamed.

So I had sunk into obscurity again, had gone back to the dark streets, stealing what I needed to survive, getting better as I met her, but still getting caught ever so often.
Always in Gordon's gaze but yet so alone without my brother.

I ended up doing the same for him I had done for Harvey, ratting people out, but never her.
All my life I betrayed people, lied to their faces and turned them in.

I couldn't do it anymore.

But then finally, today, Jim Gordon would tell the truth about Harvey Dent.

And Bruce Wayne would be free.