Fic: Dark Side of the Sun (Leon/TDK)
Title: The Dark Side of the Sun (5/?)
Rating: R
Pairings: Undecided
Warnings: Violence, character death, language...and people may have cause to take issue with my portrayal of our good Commissioner...
Disclaimer: 'The Dark Knight' and 'Leon' belong to various people who aren't me. And apologies to the almighty Pterry for nicking the title of one of his books.
Summary: Everybody lies. Everybody has secrets they never want revealed. And Jim Gordon's secrets are about to catch up with him in spectacular and devastating fashion.
Notes: Sorry for the delay. I'm at uni now, and boy is there a metric shitload of work.
~*~
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five - Halo
By the time he arrived back at the station, the officers on duty had Dr. Quinzel's flatmate tucked away in one of the interrogation rooms. She sat very still, hands clasped in her lap, casting nervous glances at the massive steel door and one-way mirrors. A few of the officers were hanging around, watching her in a manner which suggested that absolutely nothing else of interest was happening. Gordon watched the girl thoughtfully through the glass. She was older than Quinzel, with a mass of thick red hair and a Greenpeace t-shirt - unsurprising that she seemed ill at ease in the station.
"What have we got?" Gordon asked.
"Pamela Lillian Isley," Detective Stevenson replied; "Twenty-four years old, botany student at Gotham U. No previous. Not even a parking ticket."
"Eco-freak," one of the other officers muttered; "Probably not got a car."
"Has anyone talked to her yet?"
"Goldman did when we first brought her in. There's a transcript on the table over there." Stevenson flicked through the sheets of paper; "Nothing useful. Looks like Quinzel didn't talk about much except work."
Helpful, Gordon thought sardonically, and spared a moment to worry for his mental health as he realised he was being a sarcastic bastard inside his own head. Aloud he said; "Fine then. Get her to give an official statement and then send her home."
As he made his way down to the lobby to check that the security procedures were being followed - one thing the incident with the Joker had taught him was that there was no such thing as too much caution, and rarely any such thing as enough - he turned what little he knew about Quinzel's disappearance over in his mind. Perhaps it was nothing, but it would be stupid to ignore the possibility that it might be connected to the threat against Fielding's life. Maybe Quinzel had been bribed or blackmailed by whoever was behind the killings...it would certainly explain how the killer got in and out of the asylum so easily.
Twenty minutes later, reassured that visitors were in fact being searched properly and weren't, say, smuggling in arms disguised as deliveries of Italian food, Gordon headed back up the stairs to his office. In the corridor he encountered Stevenson escorting their witness downstairs. Stevenson nodded amiably at him, and Isley cleared her throat politely.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be more help," she said.
"The smallest thing could be important," Gordon told her; "You've already helped us."
"Harley only really talked about work." Isley gave a watery smile. "I've never known anyone else who could get so excited about counseling people. When she got assigned a new patient last month it was like Christmas had come early." Her smile faltered a little, tears threatening to spill over.
"We're doing all we can," Stevenson reassured her.
"Thank you." She said quietly and walked on down the corridor.
Stevenson paused a moment and added, pitched for his ears only; "Oh, and Jim? Go home. Get some sleep. You look like death warmed over - you can't do everything yourself."
"That sounds like a bet to me," Gordon said with a tired grin, then grimaced. "Believe me, I'd love to. Unfortunately I have a date with a stack of files taller than I am."
"Have fun with that."
Perhaps it was a slight exaggeration, but frankly not by much. Lynch had sent a terrified-looking intern over with copies of the files on all the patients and staff Arkham had taken on in the past three months, and though theoretically anyone could have checked through them, Gordon preferred to do it himself.
He looked at his watch. Sixteen hours ago, Harleen Quinzel had failed to come home from work. Two hours ago her morning shift had started. An hour ago he'd been sitting in a shabby office in Arkham Asylum, listening to one of her colleagues calmly explain that she was missing, possibly dead. It was still nine hours before she could even be officially listed as a missing person.
He read over the staff files first, marking anyone who seemed suspicious. Quinzel's file he kept separate for easy access, but anyone watching might have noticed that there was a 'definitely suspicious' pile and a 'might be suspicious' pile, and yet no 'not suspicious' pile. In cases like this finding a genuine innocent bystander was pretty damned unlikely. Of course the patient files were uniformly suspect. Arkham was, after all, supposed to house the criminally insane. It was also a much larger pile than the two staff ones combined - there had been a massive influx of mentally unstable prisoners with the arrest of the Joker and his minions early the previous month.
Perhaps Quinzel had suffered some sort of breakdown? After all, Lynch had told him that she dealt with the maximum security cases on a daily basis...but then again, by all accounts she loved her work. Isley had said how excited she'd been...
A sudden burst of shouting from downstairs derailed his train of thought. In a matter of seconds he was in the corridor, pressed low against the wall with his gun steady in his hands. When no immediate threat appeared he straightened and moved carefully towards the stairwell.
On the way down the stairs he almost collided with Staff Sergeant Cooper coming the opposite way. "Jim!" he said urgently; "We've lost contact with Harris and Goldman. The killer must have gone after Fielding."
He swore and took the last flight of steps at a run.
The entire station was in uproar. On seeing him arrive, Stevenson nodded at Gordon and then bellowed for quiet in a voice which was probably heard in London. Startled heads swung round and followed Stevenson's gaze. Gordon gave a mirthless grin.
"If you're finished," he said in a calm, precise tone that carried to every corner of the room. "Panic is a waste of time. We've planned for this. Everyone has a job to do - go and do it."
"They're spooked," Stevenson said as the officers headed purposefully off.
"Like cattle. It only takes one to panic and the whole herd stampedes."
"Gotham." Stevenson gave an expressive shrug; "Crazy is contagious."
"That's one way-" Gordon froze, his mind unexpectedly putting the facts together in a new way and presenting him with a conclusion he didn't like one bit. Shit.
"Jim? Are you alright?"
"I...need to go check something." Fuck I hope I'm wrong. "Go on - head out. Give me a call when you know what's going on."
Without any further pleasantries he turned sharply and strode down the corridor, thoughts and heartbeat both racing. 'Last month' Isley had said. Quinzel loved her work, and last month she'd been like a kid at Christmas because of the new patient she'd been assigned. And what had happened at the start of the previous month? Please. Please god, let me be wrong.
With any other young psychiatrist, they'd be dealing with the minor henchmen at worst. But Quinzel was good at her job: she had a knack with the 'really crazy ones'. It all made too damn much sense.
He rummaged through his pockets and turned up Lynch's card. With a growing sense of dread he dialed the number and lifted his cell to his ear: it rang once, twice, clicked on the third ring and a tired voice said, "Arkham Asylum, can I help you?"
"Lynch?"
"Speaking." A pause; "Commissioner? Is that you?"
"Yes."
"Did you get those files I sent over? I'm sorry if they didn't reach you, I've being busy trying to shanghai my colleagues into covering Quinzel's hours. No-one wants to go near the maximum security wing."
"Someone's going to have to. I'm afraid I'll need every cell in there checked. Not by camera either - in person, by someone you can trust."
There was a current of suppressed panic in Lynch's voice; "Is there something I should know?"
"I don't know. I hope not. But just in case Quinzel was less trustworthy than she seemed, we need to make sure she hasn't left any surprises behind. There are people in there we don't want getting out."
There was a moment of silence. Then Lynch said, crisp and businesslike; "It'll take a little time. Can you stay on the line?"
"Of course."
"I'll let you know if we find anything."
"Thank you."
There was silence from the phone, which Gordon hoped meant Lynch was attending to business. He hurried down through the last set of doors to his office. The stacks of files were all over his desk: he set his cell to speakerphone and left it atop the 'suspicious staff' pile. The office phone was ringing.
"Well?" he demanded without preamble as he snatched it up.
"Harris and Goldman are out cold," Stevenson said; "Some sort of gas, the EMTs say. They're in bad shape but still alive. Haven't found Fielding yet." Traffic noises and a wailing siren in the background - he must still be in his car.
"Call me as soon as you know any more."
"Will do." A click as he hung up.
The silence was deafening. Gordon paced back and forth like a caged tiger in his suddenly oppressive office, itching for a resolution to the horrible, sick suspicion that he was right. Let me be wrong. Please. Please. Let me be wrong. He would give anything for this insidious, creeping fear to have no basis in fact.
"Gordon!" Lynch's voice crackled unexpectedly from the cell phone's speaker, sounding both terrified and furious; "Are you there?"
"I'm here. Bad news I'm taking it?" Dull, leaden dread had settled in the pit of his stomach.
"The camera footage was on a loop." Fury was definitely winning out over fear. If Lynch caught up with her first, Quinzel probably wouldn't make it to trial in one piece. "He's gone. We lost him. We've lost the fucking Joker!"
"Shit." Gordon watched his fist as though it belonged to someone else as it hit the solid wood of the desk. "Shit!"
Dimly he could hear Lynch snapping orders at his staff. "We'll search this building from top to bottom - we must have missed something. Good luck, Gordon. We'll be in touch."
Gordon closed his eyes: surely this couldn't be happening. He didn't want to believe it could be happening. But unfortunately the fact of the matter was that it was happening, and it was his job to deal with it. If he was going to have a nervous breakdown, he could do it later. He stuck his head out of the door long enough to tell Laura that all leave was canceled until further notice, and that every officer was to return to the station as soon as possible.
Well that was Quinzel's case closed anyway. Pretty certain what had happened to her, though her motives were anyone's guess.
But what about their mysterious murderer - was that connected? It didn't seem like the Joker's style. Or rather the killing of public figures did, but doing it discreetly and anonymously certainly didn't. No, there was...something else at work here. He wasn't sure what, but goddamnit he was going to find out.
The office phone rang again. Gordon lifted the receiver: "Yes?"
"Fielding's dead."
"Naturally." He lifted his hand and looked at it with a mix of surprise and irritation - it was already swelling and the knuckles were bleeding freely. The ring finger felt broken. "Tell me there wasn't another photo."
"Afraid there was."
"Who?"
"Bruce Wayne."
[...to be continued...]
Rating: R
Pairings: Undecided
Warnings: Violence, character death, language...and people may have cause to take issue with my portrayal of our good Commissioner...
Disclaimer: 'The Dark Knight' and 'Leon' belong to various people who aren't me. And apologies to the almighty Pterry for nicking the title of one of his books.
Summary: Everybody lies. Everybody has secrets they never want revealed. And Jim Gordon's secrets are about to catch up with him in spectacular and devastating fashion.
Notes: Sorry for the delay. I'm at uni now, and boy is there a metric shitload of work.
~*~
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five - Halo
By the time he arrived back at the station, the officers on duty had Dr. Quinzel's flatmate tucked away in one of the interrogation rooms. She sat very still, hands clasped in her lap, casting nervous glances at the massive steel door and one-way mirrors. A few of the officers were hanging around, watching her in a manner which suggested that absolutely nothing else of interest was happening. Gordon watched the girl thoughtfully through the glass. She was older than Quinzel, with a mass of thick red hair and a Greenpeace t-shirt - unsurprising that she seemed ill at ease in the station.
"What have we got?" Gordon asked.
"Pamela Lillian Isley," Detective Stevenson replied; "Twenty-four years old, botany student at Gotham U. No previous. Not even a parking ticket."
"Eco-freak," one of the other officers muttered; "Probably not got a car."
"Has anyone talked to her yet?"
"Goldman did when we first brought her in. There's a transcript on the table over there." Stevenson flicked through the sheets of paper; "Nothing useful. Looks like Quinzel didn't talk about much except work."
Helpful, Gordon thought sardonically, and spared a moment to worry for his mental health as he realised he was being a sarcastic bastard inside his own head. Aloud he said; "Fine then. Get her to give an official statement and then send her home."
As he made his way down to the lobby to check that the security procedures were being followed - one thing the incident with the Joker had taught him was that there was no such thing as too much caution, and rarely any such thing as enough - he turned what little he knew about Quinzel's disappearance over in his mind. Perhaps it was nothing, but it would be stupid to ignore the possibility that it might be connected to the threat against Fielding's life. Maybe Quinzel had been bribed or blackmailed by whoever was behind the killings...it would certainly explain how the killer got in and out of the asylum so easily.
Twenty minutes later, reassured that visitors were in fact being searched properly and weren't, say, smuggling in arms disguised as deliveries of Italian food, Gordon headed back up the stairs to his office. In the corridor he encountered Stevenson escorting their witness downstairs. Stevenson nodded amiably at him, and Isley cleared her throat politely.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be more help," she said.
"The smallest thing could be important," Gordon told her; "You've already helped us."
"Harley only really talked about work." Isley gave a watery smile. "I've never known anyone else who could get so excited about counseling people. When she got assigned a new patient last month it was like Christmas had come early." Her smile faltered a little, tears threatening to spill over.
"We're doing all we can," Stevenson reassured her.
"Thank you." She said quietly and walked on down the corridor.
Stevenson paused a moment and added, pitched for his ears only; "Oh, and Jim? Go home. Get some sleep. You look like death warmed over - you can't do everything yourself."
"That sounds like a bet to me," Gordon said with a tired grin, then grimaced. "Believe me, I'd love to. Unfortunately I have a date with a stack of files taller than I am."
"Have fun with that."
Perhaps it was a slight exaggeration, but frankly not by much. Lynch had sent a terrified-looking intern over with copies of the files on all the patients and staff Arkham had taken on in the past three months, and though theoretically anyone could have checked through them, Gordon preferred to do it himself.
He looked at his watch. Sixteen hours ago, Harleen Quinzel had failed to come home from work. Two hours ago her morning shift had started. An hour ago he'd been sitting in a shabby office in Arkham Asylum, listening to one of her colleagues calmly explain that she was missing, possibly dead. It was still nine hours before she could even be officially listed as a missing person.
He read over the staff files first, marking anyone who seemed suspicious. Quinzel's file he kept separate for easy access, but anyone watching might have noticed that there was a 'definitely suspicious' pile and a 'might be suspicious' pile, and yet no 'not suspicious' pile. In cases like this finding a genuine innocent bystander was pretty damned unlikely. Of course the patient files were uniformly suspect. Arkham was, after all, supposed to house the criminally insane. It was also a much larger pile than the two staff ones combined - there had been a massive influx of mentally unstable prisoners with the arrest of the Joker and his minions early the previous month.
Perhaps Quinzel had suffered some sort of breakdown? After all, Lynch had told him that she dealt with the maximum security cases on a daily basis...but then again, by all accounts she loved her work. Isley had said how excited she'd been...
A sudden burst of shouting from downstairs derailed his train of thought. In a matter of seconds he was in the corridor, pressed low against the wall with his gun steady in his hands. When no immediate threat appeared he straightened and moved carefully towards the stairwell.
On the way down the stairs he almost collided with Staff Sergeant Cooper coming the opposite way. "Jim!" he said urgently; "We've lost contact with Harris and Goldman. The killer must have gone after Fielding."
He swore and took the last flight of steps at a run.
The entire station was in uproar. On seeing him arrive, Stevenson nodded at Gordon and then bellowed for quiet in a voice which was probably heard in London. Startled heads swung round and followed Stevenson's gaze. Gordon gave a mirthless grin.
"If you're finished," he said in a calm, precise tone that carried to every corner of the room. "Panic is a waste of time. We've planned for this. Everyone has a job to do - go and do it."
"They're spooked," Stevenson said as the officers headed purposefully off.
"Like cattle. It only takes one to panic and the whole herd stampedes."
"Gotham." Stevenson gave an expressive shrug; "Crazy is contagious."
"That's one way-" Gordon froze, his mind unexpectedly putting the facts together in a new way and presenting him with a conclusion he didn't like one bit. Shit.
"Jim? Are you alright?"
"I...need to go check something." Fuck I hope I'm wrong. "Go on - head out. Give me a call when you know what's going on."
Without any further pleasantries he turned sharply and strode down the corridor, thoughts and heartbeat both racing. 'Last month' Isley had said. Quinzel loved her work, and last month she'd been like a kid at Christmas because of the new patient she'd been assigned. And what had happened at the start of the previous month? Please. Please god, let me be wrong.
With any other young psychiatrist, they'd be dealing with the minor henchmen at worst. But Quinzel was good at her job: she had a knack with the 'really crazy ones'. It all made too damn much sense.
He rummaged through his pockets and turned up Lynch's card. With a growing sense of dread he dialed the number and lifted his cell to his ear: it rang once, twice, clicked on the third ring and a tired voice said, "Arkham Asylum, can I help you?"
"Lynch?"
"Speaking." A pause; "Commissioner? Is that you?"
"Yes."
"Did you get those files I sent over? I'm sorry if they didn't reach you, I've being busy trying to shanghai my colleagues into covering Quinzel's hours. No-one wants to go near the maximum security wing."
"Someone's going to have to. I'm afraid I'll need every cell in there checked. Not by camera either - in person, by someone you can trust."
There was a current of suppressed panic in Lynch's voice; "Is there something I should know?"
"I don't know. I hope not. But just in case Quinzel was less trustworthy than she seemed, we need to make sure she hasn't left any surprises behind. There are people in there we don't want getting out."
There was a moment of silence. Then Lynch said, crisp and businesslike; "It'll take a little time. Can you stay on the line?"
"Of course."
"I'll let you know if we find anything."
"Thank you."
There was silence from the phone, which Gordon hoped meant Lynch was attending to business. He hurried down through the last set of doors to his office. The stacks of files were all over his desk: he set his cell to speakerphone and left it atop the 'suspicious staff' pile. The office phone was ringing.
"Well?" he demanded without preamble as he snatched it up.
"Harris and Goldman are out cold," Stevenson said; "Some sort of gas, the EMTs say. They're in bad shape but still alive. Haven't found Fielding yet." Traffic noises and a wailing siren in the background - he must still be in his car.
"Call me as soon as you know any more."
"Will do." A click as he hung up.
The silence was deafening. Gordon paced back and forth like a caged tiger in his suddenly oppressive office, itching for a resolution to the horrible, sick suspicion that he was right. Let me be wrong. Please. Please. Let me be wrong. He would give anything for this insidious, creeping fear to have no basis in fact.
"Gordon!" Lynch's voice crackled unexpectedly from the cell phone's speaker, sounding both terrified and furious; "Are you there?"
"I'm here. Bad news I'm taking it?" Dull, leaden dread had settled in the pit of his stomach.
"The camera footage was on a loop." Fury was definitely winning out over fear. If Lynch caught up with her first, Quinzel probably wouldn't make it to trial in one piece. "He's gone. We lost him. We've lost the fucking Joker!"
"Shit." Gordon watched his fist as though it belonged to someone else as it hit the solid wood of the desk. "Shit!"
Dimly he could hear Lynch snapping orders at his staff. "We'll search this building from top to bottom - we must have missed something. Good luck, Gordon. We'll be in touch."
Gordon closed his eyes: surely this couldn't be happening. He didn't want to believe it could be happening. But unfortunately the fact of the matter was that it was happening, and it was his job to deal with it. If he was going to have a nervous breakdown, he could do it later. He stuck his head out of the door long enough to tell Laura that all leave was canceled until further notice, and that every officer was to return to the station as soon as possible.
Well that was Quinzel's case closed anyway. Pretty certain what had happened to her, though her motives were anyone's guess.
But what about their mysterious murderer - was that connected? It didn't seem like the Joker's style. Or rather the killing of public figures did, but doing it discreetly and anonymously certainly didn't. No, there was...something else at work here. He wasn't sure what, but goddamnit he was going to find out.
The office phone rang again. Gordon lifted the receiver: "Yes?"
"Fielding's dead."
"Naturally." He lifted his hand and looked at it with a mix of surprise and irritation - it was already swelling and the knuckles were bleeding freely. The ring finger felt broken. "Tell me there wasn't another photo."
"Afraid there was."
"Who?"
"Bruce Wayne."
[...to be continued...]