The chessboard between Nolan and Harvey Dent had seen better days. Half the pieces were mismatched replacements from different sets, the board itself scarred with nicks and cigarette burns, and the table wobbled slightly every time Harvey made a move. But that didn't stop the two of them from playing every chance they got.
"Knight to E5," Harvey said with a smirk, flicking the piece into place with the kind of dramatic flair usually reserved for duels at dawn.
Nolan squinted at the board. Then at Harvey. Then back at the board.
'Absolutely not,' Quentin hissed. 'If you move the bishop, he forks your queen and your rook.'
'I say sacrifice the rook and bait his queen out,' Vey growled. 'Then you move the knight and take the center.'
'That's reckless,' Nolan muttered internally.
'We are literally playing chess against a man with a coin-based moral compass,' Kieran added smoothly. 'The real mistake is engaging at all.'
'I think we should knock all the pieces off the table and scream,' Nolan mused
Nolan let out a slow breath, realizing his fingers were twitching above a pawn.
"You alright?" Harvey asked, cocking his head. "You're staring like the board just insulted your mother."
"I'm fine," Nolan said too quickly.
'Pawn to D3!' Quentin barked.
'Pawn to G3, you idiot,' Vey snapped.
'Stop touching the pawn!' Kieran warned.
'He's baiting you! Knight to D2!' Follow current novᴇls on ɴovᴇl(ꜰ)ir(e).nᴇt
Nolan blinked once. Then sighed. Then very calmly moved his knight to C6.
"Oh?" Harvey said, leaning forward, one side of his mouth twitching in approval, or amusement, it was hard to tell. "Bold move. Maybe even… suicidal."
'You just lost us the game,' Quentin groaned.
'He's bluffing,' Nolan shot back, mentally swatting the voices like flies.
Sitting nearby, Jonathan Crane sipped something from a Styrofoam cup and watched them like a man observing a wildlife documentary. His glasses glinted in the dim light of the common area, and for a moment he seemed to genuinely smile.
"You two are like a raccoon and a lawyer fighting over a dumpster behind a Denny's," Crane mused.
"I'm the lawyer in that scenario, right?" Harvey asked.
Crane shrugged. "You're the one flipping coins and snarling. I leave it to interpretation."
Nolan tried not to laugh. He really did.
Then Vey muttered, 'I'll murder him if we lose this game.'
'You can't kill someone in Arkham without paperwork, remember?' Kieran said flatly.
"You're taking an awfully long time for your next move," Harvey teased. "You stalling or calculating?"
"Both," Nolan replied, moving a pawn forward with the confidence of a man who had no idea what he was doing and a brain committee arguing about it.
From across the room, a guard banged on the reinforced plexiglass with his baton.
Crane raised his cup like a toast. "Yes, wouldn't want our brilliant minds to disrupt the peace."
Harvey chuckled and twirled his coin. "Don't worry. We're just killing time."
"Checkmate," Harvey said, dropping his rook with a decisive tap and a grin like he'd been waiting to say it for ten minutes.
Nolan stared at the board.
'If you had moved the knight instead of the pawn—'
'No, if you listened to me and sacrificed the bishop—'
'I maintain you should've flipped the whole board and walked away.'
'You don't get to talk, Vey. You voted to not move for three turns straight.'
Nolan rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Yeah. Well played."
Harvey leaned back smugly. "Keep practicing, Everleigh. You'll get there. Maybe."
The loudspeaker cracked to life. "Rec time over. All patients, return to cells."
Around them, inmates rose in groaning, muttering clumps. Scarecrow tipped an invisible hat toward them as he wandered off, still humming something tuneless. Nolan and Harvey followed behind the rest of the herd until their hallway diverged. A few guards trailed behind, barely interested.
Steel doors slammed shut behind them one by one.
Nolan stepped into his cell and caught the soft click as it locked. He didn't sit right away just stood, back to the bars, watching Harvey across the corridor.
The man was already seated on his cot, flipping his coin casually in one hand.
Nolan lowered his voice and leaned forward. "You ever… find a way to talk to people outside?"
Harvey glanced at him.
"In here? Sure. If you got the time, the patience, or the right kind of leverage."
"I'm just wondering," Nolan said, keeping his tone casual, "if someone had… say, a means of contact. Something small. Something that flips open."
Harvey's grin twitched.
Nolan went on. "Let's say someone like that existed. And someone else had a message that needed to get out. The kind of message that can't wait for the legal system to finish its dance."
Harvey leaned back, resting his head against the wall, flipping his coin now with slow, steady rhythm.
"You'd need to trust the person with the phone," he said. "Because if they did have one, it'd be… delicate. Dangerous. Not the kind of favor you ask lightly."
"I'm not asking. Yet," Nolan said.
Harvey tossed the coin. Caught it. Didn't look at the result.
"Well," he murmured, voice lower now, eyes half-lidded, "hypothetically, if I knew a guy, I'd tell him to watch who's listening. Arkham's got more ears than it has eyes."
A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the buzz of the lights and a distant scream from another block.
Nolan finally sat, resting his back against the cold wall. The voices murmured in his head again.
Across from him, Harvey leaned against his cell wall and gave a faint smirk.
"Sweet dreams, Everleigh."
Nolan, "Yeah you too Harvey."
The buzz of the overhead light droned steadily, a white noise that had faded into the background for most long-term residents. But in the clean, quiet evaluation room, every sound still felt too loud. The click of a pen. The scrape of a chair leg. The exhale before a sentence.
Dr. Erik Halvorsen adjusted his glasses and tapped the pen once against his clipboard before speaking.
"Good morning, Kieran."
Nolan—Kieran—looked up from the tabletop. His hands were neatly folded, posture stiff but not defensive. "Doctor."
"You've been here almost two weeks now." Halvorsen's voice was calm, steady. "How are you adjusting?"
Kieran gave a small shrug. "I've slept in worse places. At least here they remember to feed you."
Halvorsen smiled faintly. "That's good to hear. I wanted to talk today about your early life. Your background. There's very little information in your public records—especially before the age of twenty-five. Care to fill in the blanks?"
Kieran tilted his head, measured. "I lived. I moved around a lot. Nothing interesting."
"Moved around?" Halvorsen leaned slightly forward. "Foster system?"
"I was between homes. A lot." Kieran didn't offer more than that.
Halvorsen didn't push. He simply wrote something down.
"And what about formative experiences? Friends? Family members?"
Kieran's jaw twitched slightly. Inside his head, Quentin muttered,
'We should lie. Give him something digestible. Some tragic sob story. They eat that stuff up.'
'No,' Vey snapped, 'We stay vague. Controlled. He's digging, not fishing.'
'He's going to figure it out anyway,' Nolan added wearily. 'He's not stupid. He's just waiting for one of us to slip.'
Dr. Halvorsen waited patiently, watching Kieran's face for the subtle shifts. Nolan kept his expression neutral.
"I've had friends," Kieran said slowly. "They came and went. Like people do. I've had to learn not to rely too heavily on anyone."
The doctor nodded, jotting more notes. "Would you describe that as a survival mechanism?"
"I'd describe that as reality."
"Fair enough," Halvorsen said. "Let's pivot a little. Do you ever feel like you're watching yourself, rather than living in the moment?"
The question almost made Nolan smirk.
'He's getting close,' Quentin warned.
"I think everyone feels that way sometimes," Kieran said aloud, voice calm. "We all wear masks."
"Some more literally than others," Halvorsen replied without missing a beat. "Do you ever feel like you have… conflicting urges? Parts of yourself that disagree on decisions?"
Kieran looked at him for a long moment. Then "You mean like conscience versus impulse? Sure. That's human."
Halvorsen closed the file slowly. "That's not quite what I meant, but I appreciate the answer."
Kieran didn't reply. His knuckles lightly drummed once against the tabletop an absent motion.
"I'd like to schedule another session for two days from now," Halvorsen said as he stood. "In the meantime, I suggest thinking more carefully about your earlier years. Sometimes the root of what we're running from is buried deeper than we want to admit."
Kieran stood too, offering a polite smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I'll dig if you do, doctor."
Halvorsen paused. "I already am."
The guards arrived to escort him back to his cell.