FIC: In Hiding, chapter 1
Title: In Hiding, chapter 1
Author: tkp
Rating: PG for now
Pairing: eventual Batman(Bruce Wayne)/Gordon
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: After the events of The Dark Knight, Gordon has to draw up new terms of his working relationship with Batman. And his relationships with everyone else besides.
WARNINGS:: -There’s an OC in this. Mostly to establish some parallels. There might be others.
-I made up a bunch of police stuff. It’s wildly inaccurate and unrealistic.
-This might be more about ideas and themes than anything else. It's slow.
-This is huge, but it seemed pointless to split into smaller pieces since its such a slow moving plot.
In Hiding, Chapter One
The call on dispatch was about illegal trespass. When you had seen as much as Commissioner Gordon had though, you knew anyone lurking about that part of the Cape this time of night was probably working for the Chechen, and it was probably much worse than you feared.
There were enough who’d seen what Gordon had. There were also enough who knew he wasn’t at the precinct, wasn’t in a squad car, and that all the other officers on duty were already accounted for. Enough to be suspicious when Gordon gave the call face value, and didn’t send a team. Instead Gordon went himself, without back up.
The truth was, Gordon was playing his own game. He was playing for a different team.
There were too many to take alone, five all told. Gordon hunched behind a cargo crate on the loading dock, and watched the deal go down. Some might consider it a dead end, no go. Probably said that in the handbook. But Gordon hadn’t seen the thing in ages, and he played by his own rules. Long enough living this life, you learned your own lessons.
One, there was picking them off as they dispersed, follow them home, wait till they were alone. You could get one or two, but usually without much evidence and a lot of trouble, and you lost the rest. Lesson two, pick them off while they were still together and their hands were still red. Fire a shot, three, at air and arms and legs. In the ensuing commotion, grab the ones with the use of their limbs, incapacitate them, then go for the ones who were bleeding and desperate.
Yeah, Gordon thought. Lesson three: lesson two would get your killed. He’d learned that one a time or two.
The best lesson, four, was create the necessary confusion and have your partner step in from the other direction. Then you got them with drugs and money in their possession, and your livelihood still in yours.
Four, then. It was crazy, maybe, seeing as how Gordon hadn’t brought a partner with him. Those who’d heard the dispatch and knew enough to know he’d need it would be sending back-up, but that should still be several minutes away.
But Gordon had worked off option four before when it had seemed far more crazy, and it had worked. Killer clowns, who knew, sometimes they made you do the wacky. This here was just the mob.
“Stop!” Gordon shouted. “You’re under arrest!”
Five heads turned his way.
Two broke off and came for him. It was all about the other three.
They might get the hell out of dodge, which meant dispersal-the one where you bagged a crook but not the rest and not the evidence, and they were back on the street before they’d spent the night being processed. Or after you handled the ones who’d come for you, the remaining three came for you too, which meant option three and no resurrection involving semis and kevlar vests, because the mob, unlike these jokesters, made sure you were really dead when you said you were.
Or, final choice, your partner came and handled two while you took your own pair, and then you met in the middle and got the last one together.
But who knew whether said partner was there, and even if he was, Batman had never been much for meeting anyone halfway on anything.
*
After Harvey Dent kidnapped his family and Batman saved them, Gordon had to work damage control.
First he had to smash the signal so they could not be saved again.
Then he had to give the press conference about Harvey Dent, and how he had been a hero.
Last he had to establish the departmental policy on the latest Gotham’s most wanted criminal, which was to arrest Batman on sight, and included a special task force whose primary objective was hunting down the Bat.
Luckily, departmental policy and special task forces took a while to organize, because there was some damage it was impossible to control. Gordon came home late the nights he came home at all, and it was to Barbara sobbing softly and Jimmy’s nightmares.
“You need to fix this,” Barbara told him.
“I’m trying,” Gordon said, and went back to work early, sometimes so early it was still that night. He continued tying the knots in the Joker case, worked with the witnesses and evidence against the mob for the new D.A., and there was that task force.
He was fixing it. He was trying.
The task force would not work by the departmental policy at all. Gordon didn’t like the deception, of course. He hadn’t liked the lie about Batman which had necessitated a special task force in the first place. But in some ways, the alternative was harder. It was harder to come clean, or come home at night. Harder to stay with his family, stick by his wife, keep himself safe so that they had a father and husband who could come home at night at all.
It was much easier to risk his life.
*
Gordon was pretty sure he had managed to knock one of the Chechen’s men unconscious, but the second was chasing after him. If Batman was going to show, Gordon was thinking, now would be nice.
Once again he realized it was a crazy thing to count on. After publicly denouncing the Bat to raise up Harvey Dent, Gordon hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the guy-not that he ever saw any of his hair, if he even had any, and very little of his hide.
But there had been sightings reported in the papers, on the news, the gossip on the streets. Even if such sources couldn’t be trusted, some members of the squad could, and some said they had seen the Batman. On top of that, guns fired by fear were the most trustworthy of all. Batman had been there at some crime scenes, and more than one young officer had opened fire on new public enemy number one.
Even still, without officers or fear or media, Gordon would have expected him to be there
It wasn’t exactly that he was expecting Batman to save him. Gordon was just expecting Batman to be exactly like himself: unable to quit.
Which must have been true, because not a moment later, Gordon heard a scream. It was too faint to be the guy following him; it had to be one of the three left behind. It was just enough to give his pursuer pause, and Gordon stopped to shove his fist into the other guy’s face.
The time had long since passed when one punch from Gordon could send a man stone cold, if there had been that time at all. It took a moment with knees planted on the other’s upper arms on the either side of the man’s chest to get him to stay down. By the time Gordon had him cuffed he could hear the blare of sirens.
But there was still the final one, the one both you and your partner went for after each taking care of two, and Gordon launched himself off the ground. You never took your partner for granted after the dust had settled on your end of the deal. Lesson five.
There was a thick rope, coiled on the ground near one of the cargo crates, the gleam of a grip hook atop it. Gordon scrambled for it and kept on running. And there was the Batman.
He had the second on his knees and was standing over him, but the third was advancing from behind. Gordon loosed the rope and swung it. The hook hit the third and he fell, just as Batman kicked the kneeling man the rest of the way down. Then Batman spun and sliced the falling man behind him with his forearm.
It was quick enough that Gordon needn’t have bothered. But you protected your partner, lesson five again, and anyway, rule of thumb: don’t count on said partner having pointy toys in his uniform. Gordon shook his head as Batman clicked them back into his arm. Those things would never fly on the departmental budget, and come to that, where did Batman get these gadgets, anyhow? Gordon pushed his glasses up a sweaty nose.
The siren blares got louder, and now there were voices.
Under them, Batman’s voice, distorted. “The warehouse,” he said, and disappeared into the shadows.
Gordon felt like shaking his head again, but at least he’d gotten a meeting this time. Last time Gordon had made a stupid answer to a dispatch, all he’d gotten for his trouble was a sprained wrist, massive bruises, and a fleeting glimpse of black cape before the squad cars arrived, then nothing. Gordon had waited that night on the porch, just in case, his back killing him and Barbara pretending to sleep in their bed, with Babs calling out for him in her sleep. But no Bat.
With the back-up here, it was a bit before Gordon could slip off. His and Batman’s first knock-outs were back up-expected, seeing as how your objective was just to get them out of the way while you dealt with your seconds. (Lesson six, or was that seven?) At any rate, it was good some of the Chechen’s men were up and running, since it didn’t look as though Gordon had taken all five by himself. Stephens looked suspicious, but then he always did.
And once the perps were taken down again, there was cuffing and processing and stuffing them into cars. Then there was waiting for the confusion as the one who’d cuffs Gordon had jimmied (lesson eight) broke away again, and the second set of unnecessary back-up rolled up and accused the first set of calling them in, when the first had no idea what they were talking about. It was enough for Gordon to get away, anyway.
“Extreme,” Batman rumbled in the warehouse, as he and Gordon listened to the cops chase down the one who’d wormed out of his cuffs.
“Not really.” Gordon lit a cigarette. “I called for the second unit. No way they’re losing those five.”
“Not what I meant.”
“You meant you want to give me your phone number?” Gordon said impatiently. “Your P.O. Box? Because my other way of contacting you was a mite conspicuous, and here I thought you were all for keeping it quiet that I know you’re not a cop killer.”
“This isn’t the way to contact me either.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
The dark figure hunched, turning further into the darkness so Gordon could no longer see the white gleam of Batman’s jaw. “What do you want, Commissioner?”
Gordon bit down on his cigarette and the tide of adrenaline resurging. Too often the Bat called the shots in this twisted partnership. Now Gordon needed it to change, had to dictate the terms, and Batman was giving him an in. Gordon hoped it meant they would not end this conversation on opposite sides of some irreconcilable border. “You can’t keep me on the outside,” he said.
“I have to be on the outside now more than ever.”
“No.” Gordon dropped his cigarette and ground it out. He noticed the change in pronouns, but it wasn’t what he meant. “It can’t be like it was before. Then you could come and do your own thing, and no one on our side was much inclined to stand in your way.
“You were.”
In some ways, he had been. Batman didn’t play by the rules, by the law, or even what was right. “But I didn’t.”
It had been worth it. Batman had been worth it. Neither of them pointed out that Gordon wouldn’t have been able to stop him had he tried.
“It’s different now,” Gordon went on. “As long as we need it, I can have you working our perimeter. But now you’re pretty much center stage, gumming up the works. My people are gunning for you harder than they are any of the dirt out there. We can’t be fighting two battles. Especially when one is pointless.”
“They won’t get a chance to fight me.” Batman’s voice sounded harsher than ever. “I won’t be there.”
“You will. Like you were here tonight.”
The shadows shifted. Gordon barked, “And before you disappear-even you make mistakes.”
“You mean the Maroni bust.”
“My officers were so distracted trying to take you down, they almost let Big Lou slip.”
“He wouldn’t have gotten away.”
The arrogant confidence in that voice, sometimes reassuring, teed Gordon off. “And how many others did? Because they were too focused on you to arrest anyone else, and because you couldn’t go back into police fire to take down anyone else either?”
“It won’t happen again.”
Rarely did Batman stick around long enough to argue or reiterate some point he’d made. Gordon knew he was pushing his luck, and he didn’t care. He stepped forward, and again, pushing into Batman’s space, where the Bat remained very still, hunched in the shadows. “I’m not talking case by case,” Gordon said. “I’m talking about our whole relationship, you and the police. It’s got to change, because it won’t go back to us turning our heads when you swoop by.”
The shadows stirred-his cape, perhaps, his shoulders. “What do you want?” Batman rasped again, but this time different.
It was colder, more forbidding, which meant defensive-which to Gordon meant he was close, almost under the armor, very close. He knew Batman well enough for that. The adrenaline surged again; Gordon’s chest was tight with anticipation. He was physically close as well, and a month or so ago Gordon would have laughed at the idea of intimidation tactics working on the Batman.
“I want you to work with us,” Gordon told him.
“Dent,” Batman started, but Gordon cut him off.
“No one will know.”
“By ‘us’, you mean you.”
“You’re calling me arrogant?” Gordon raised a sardonic brow, wishing Batman would have the grace to look chagrined. He didn’t.
“I meant a special force,” Gordon grunted. “Not more than half a dozen officers. I’ve been feeling them out. People who can be trusted,” he stressed. “The rest of the force still won’t know the truth, just like the rest of Gotham.” He paused. “Before I tell them what really happened with Dent, I’ll give you their names.”
Which was the closest he would come to giving Batman legal dispensation to look into their personal histories in ways which would undoubtedly be illegal.
“This is for cases dealing with anything special interest,” Gordon said. “I won’t ask you about your days off. But there’s some things that need doing, and we’ll be together on anything that comes up on dispatch about Falcone, Maroni, Chechen, Gambol, Thorne. Clean-up on Joker. Lau. Crane.”
“Dent,” Batman said again.
“Him too,” Gordon said, and it felt like when he’d driven that stupid tank of a car, or launched out of that truck to tackle the Joker: he was going to win this one. “And I want a phone number,” he added, and it was like questioning a suspect, not quite knowing you were going to press it further until you saw an opening and took it before you lost it (lesson nine). “Or a P.O. Box. Something.”
“Your way isn’t good enough?”
It was a taunt, the closest to personal perhaps Batman had ever gotten.
Gordon backed up, angled away. “You know it’s not myself I don’t want to risk.”
He lit another cigarette, unable to tell whether the silence was agreement or a question.
“It’s irresponsible,” Gordon explained, lest Batman mistake his meaning. “Coming on scene when I’m unprepared. Giving the bad guys a chance to get away.” He waved vaguely outside the warehouse walls.
“But you risked it.”
“Not really. I knew you’d come.”
There was a pause. “I’ll take a look at the names.”
“I’ll leave them at your P.O.,” Gordon started, but he was talking to air.
He wouldn’t be getting Batman those names, he realized. Batman would just get them himself, however he did these things-even though the only list of them that existed was in Gordon’s head.
Gordon also wouldn’t be getting a P.O. Box, and wasn’t that just a mood killer.
*
Bruce had hacked into the police network, was taking a look at Commissioner Gordon’s system files. Gordon had said he’d been looking into the task form he had mentioned, which meant the police records he’d called up most recently, and/or spent the most hours on, were his likely candidates. Out of the morass of a million files active on Gordon’s machine-Bruce had thought Wayne Enterprises was a hell of a lot of a paperwork-Bruce pulled about half a dozen names.
Lieutenant Alicia Loeb, the former Commissioner’s daughter. A Falcone brother, distantly related, who’d joined the force at nineteen and hadn’t looked back. Stephens, who’d been made Deputy Chief after recent events. A rookie detective, Gabriel Soto, Bruce hadn’t heard of before. Two more detectives, more experienced, Renee Montoya, Harvey Bullock. And then of course, there was always Jim Gordon.
Bruce didn’t want any of them.
He’d known the moment he made Batman that it wasn’t right. He’d known that first night, too, when he’d held up Gordon with a stapler. It was why he’d chosen Gordon, because someone like Gordon wouldn’t think it was right, either. Gordon would put up with his breach of the law only as long as it was needed, and then demand that Batman step back. Gordon cared about justice, and he’d bring it.
But he couldn’t bring Bruce back to the light, either. Even Gordon admitted it: Batman needed to be.
Bruce had been trying too hard to stop. Helping Harvey to be the hero, wanting Harvey to be what Gotham needed and Batman could not give. Waiting for that moment with Rachel, so the Batman could be put away, so Bruce could finally live. But it was partly that, needing her so much, pushing Harvey to that place, that caused them both to die. It was why he had hesitated, too, to give the Joker what he wanted, because Bruce wanted it too badly also, wanted so much to give it up.
If he had learned anything from the Joker, it was that the more he anticipated that moment, the farther away it’d get. The more people he roped into that need, that cause, the more he would lose. The less he accepted Batman, the more Batman would be necessary.
Rachel and Harvey, they had lived in light. Gordon, too, which was why in the end Bruce had pushed even him away, the force and all of Gotham. Before, Bruce had still clung to them, and because of Batman, Rachel and Harvey were dead. For the long stretch of one day, he had thought Gordon was too, and once the other two were dead, Bruce knew one more would be too much. The last ones left to fight the good fight would not die in Batman’s shadow.
Bruce had accepted this. His place in the world, the necessity of Batman, the sacrifice of everything for this cause. But he would not drag the rest down into the dark with him. He would be alone.
Bruce closed the files on the computer, and shut the system down.
*
“Back so soon,” Gordon said, not very sincerely. It had been a week and a half, and in the interim there had been enough Batman sightings, though admittedly no shootings due to those sightings being made by officers on the force.
“You can’t show down the mob again to get my attention.” Batman was perched among the cross-beams. Very dramatic, Gordon thought, still not letting up the sarcasm.
Two could play at that. “I could.” Gordon wasn’t facing him, didn’t need to see. He tapped the ash from his cigarette on the wooden railing. “But isn’t this so much more convenient?”
“We can’t.”
Gordon nodded and took a drag on his cigarette. “Do you remember what I said, about fighting two wars?” Tapped the ash again. “It wouldn’t just be my officers. It’d be me. I would fight you.”
At last he turned to face the shadows.
“We’ve come this far because I’ve let us,” Gordon went on. “I thought what you do was necessary. But because of what it is-I need to watch you. I need to see it. If you shut me out-bets are off.”
“You don’t trust me.”
There was no emotion in that voice. It was just as grating and stilted as it had ever been.
But the words, the words themselves-
“This family is falling apart,” Barbara said, every night Gordon was out, at work, on cases, waiting on the porch.
“I’m fixing it. I’m trying,” Gordon said.
“I know you are. You always are. Doing the best you can for us, making it safe for us, making it so we can eat. But when you shut me out-”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“This isn’t about how I feel about you, Jim. It’s about this family. . .”
. . . This family is falling apart . . .
-“I told you before. It’s not about me,” Gordon told the Batman stiffly, smushing out his cigarette. “It’s about the force. It has a job. A purpose. And I’m supposed to uphold that.”
“You wouldn’t be able to fight me.”
“I would try.” Trying was all he ever could do. “You don’t want that.”
“You wouldn’t even get in my way.”
“You don’t want it.” Gordon wasn’t talking now to Batman. He was talking to the man who had said, you don’t trust me, who hadn’t let it show in his voice, but had been hurt by that, hurt in ways Gordon was when he said it himself. Gordon was talking to the man who needed to cut himself off, thought he had to fight this fight without a single friend. The man who wore a mask-not just to protect this world, but to hide from it.
Gordon didn’t talk to that man very often. He knew too well the pact he had struck with Batman for that.
Now, speaking to that man, Gordon’s voice was gentler than it had ever been to the Bat. Gordon saw the line of that man’s jaw loosen, and look softer than it ever had before.
Gordon said quietly, “I don’t want to fight you, either.”
Batman was silent for a while. Then, “Who is Gabriel Soto?”
Gordon resisted lighting another cigarette, now that that was over. Eventually, he said, “Rookie detective. He was a good officer before that. When I was made sergeant, I made it a point to know everyone in my division. I guess you could say we got to be friends.”
“Friends can’t always be trusted.”
It was that deep, dark theatric voice that made Gordon bark out a laugh. “Maybe yours can’t.”
In the silence, Gordon knew Batman was thinking of Harvey Dent.
Gordon didn’t know if they had been friends, but he did know Batman’s disappointment, didn’t know why, but knew that it had destroyed the Batman in ways it would have destroyed Gotham City, had it known the truth. Gordon sighed. “More than half the cops on my squad are dirty. Dent knew it; Ms. Dawes knew it. I know it. A lot of them, I even know which ones. The rest I don’t know about. I’m sure of very few things. But Soto-if you knew him, you wouldn’t doubt him either.”
There was silence again, then, “Alicia Loeb.”
“How do you do that?” Gordon burst out, less in surprise and more in resignation. Gordon had suspected Batman would somehow find out who he had been considering for his special task force, but it was still damn annoying.
There was no answer. Gordon hadn’t expected one.
“I guess Alicia was obvious,” Gordon said finally. The Joker had killed her father, the former Commissioner. “What happened with her father . . . makes her a perfect choice.”
“No.”
The response was sudden and so raw, Gordon was surprised. He’d thought the man-to-man was over with, and they were back to commissioner-to-mask, all business.
“What happened to her father,” the Batman repeated, “is why she shouldn’t work with you. Not on this.”
“You mean, why she shouldn’t work with you,” Gordon pointed out. “What do you have against her? She’s clean. Loeb-her father was straight, and she’s the same, if not-”
“She won’t be able to keep her eye on what’s important.”
“What makes you-”
“We’ll try your Soto,” Batman said. “Keep her out of this.”
Gordon could hear the finality in his words. “He’s not my Soto. And I still need that phone number,” he tried to say, before Batman disappeared. It was, of course, too late.
*
The next month involved several responses to dispatch that weren’t the most responsible, even if they got the job done better. But now Gordon was bringing Soto with him, which was significantly better than going alone and hoping the Bat would show.
Batman inevitably did. Gordon still would have liked a phone number, or even that P.O. Box.
After the first time Batman helped them make the arrests, Soto came to Gordon afterward. “Batman helped us,” he said casually, as though remarking on a minor policy change.
Gordon hadn’t told Soto anything. He wanted to show Batman just how far Soto could be trusted-Soto would do the right thing whether he knew the truth or not.
“Is he,” Gordon grunted noncommittally. He was filling out paperwork on top of a squad car. The too late back-up had arrived and were taking care of clean up.
“You saw him,” Soto insisted. “You didn’t shoot.”
They were both silent for a moment as another officer came within hearing. Gordon absently took the styrofoam cup being handed to him as he continued with the paperwork.
“You didn’t try to arrest him,” Soto repeated, when the other officer had moved further away.
“Neither did you,” Gordon said, sipped his coffee, and scribbled more.
“Batman’s on our side now.” Soto did not quite sound decisive. He had a determination to figure things out for himself, not have them spelled out for him-no matter how clearly the letters were already written. But his arrogance was self-conscious enough to for him to live in horror of figuring everything wrong.
“What do you think?” Gordon’s voice was gruff, but the side of his mouth turned up, though he wasn’t looking at Soto.
“I think he’s been on our side,” said Soto, smug now that he had been reassured. “I think you’ve been working with him and not telling the rest of us. But why?” he went on to himself, as if knowing he could come to the answer. “Why go to such lengths?”
“Maybe so you’d shut up,” Gordon said absently, without a piece of malice. He shut the file folder and handed it off to another officer passing by.
“It must have been someone else to kill those other officers,” Soto went on, voice low to prevent from being heard by anyone but Gordon. His tone was still cocksure. “And Dent, too. Someone who needed protecting.”
“Almost there.” Gordon took a sip of whatever was in the cup-he hoped it was coffee-and started walking toward the car.
“I’m trying to remember how the case against Batman was put to the public.” Soto was walking with him. “He killed those cops because they were crooked-which made sense. He was a vigilante; even if he’s outside the law he was ostensibly for justice. The cops he killed were dirty.”
“Get in the car,” Gordon said, and walked around to the other side.
Soto was standing before the door with his hand on the handle. “But Dent wasn’t. That was why it was such a shock. Betrayal. Those cops-they had a hand in . . . helping the Joker. Rachel Dawes getting killed. But Dent didn’t . . .” Gordon was getting in the car while Soto talked to himself. Now Soto opened the door quickly, got inside, and slammed it shut. “Dent,” he said into the darkness of the car. “It was Dent.”
Soto was half Ecuadorian; you could see it in his golden, flawless skin, in the hair so black it seemed like it should be blue. It was curly and unruly on his head; his eyes were a bright and intense gray, and he was tall, taller than Gordon, as tall as the Batman or taller. What saved him from looking like a daytime telenovela model was a certain boyishness-the gap between his shining white teeth in his million dollar smile, the too narrow face and shoulders. Despite the elegance of the long limbs and legs and fingers, he was inclined toward lanky; he looked like he was made of sticks and tied together with rags.
Gordon looked at him now. Soto’s expression held the horror that would have been of seven million citizens, had Batman let the truth be known. Somehow framed on this face, the pretty face of this young man who thought he knew the world and could take it on, it looked worse than Gordon had guessed it would. For the first time since he’d made the promise to Batman to cover up Dent’s crimes, Gordon remembered why he’d made it.
“Obviously, you’re not going to tell anyone,” Gordon said, gentle now.
“It’s just-why?” Soto said. “He was D.A. He was going to turn this city around-he was working with you.”
“Dent lost someone he loves. Imagine if you lost Carol.” Not to mention your looks, Gordon didn’t add.
“But he was working with you.”
For a moment Gordon had forgotten how stubborn Soto could be, and how his wife, Carol, wasn’t all Soto was loved that way.
“I can’t keep everyone from the dark.”
“He was with us,” Soto insisted. “He was on our side.”
“Listen, kid,” Gordon said, because Soto was looking at him in that way he had that was entirely too bare. It reminded Gordon of children he held and tried to comfort when crime made them fatherless or orphans; it reminded him of that first orphan child he’d had to comfort, whose cheek he’d cupped when he been a beat cop and decided he was going to be the one to save this city. It reminded him of Jimmy and Babs, who looked just as lost; sometimes Gordon thought crime had made them fatherless, too.
“There aren’t sides,” Gordon went on. “Or if there are, there are seven million of them, because every single one of us in this city is on our own.”
Soto looked at him. “Seven million minus one.”
“Yeah.” Gordon turned his face away and started up the car. “Well, that’s why you’re in on this.”
“And Batman.”
“And Batman,” Gordon acknowledged, but the thought gave him no pleasure.
“Seven million minus two,” Soto said, and sounded as though his spirits had been slightly lifted.
But Gordon was still thinking about the Wayne child, and about how he’d come home to Barbara that night. He’d come home and told her he was going to save the world, and she said she’d be at his side. And then he’d felt like he could bring all the force with him, and together they could fight.
But now, somehow, he was down to three.
*
Bruce watched Gordon and Soto as they talked, Gordon filling out paperwork, Soto following him around like a lost puppy. Bruce saw why Gordon trusted him. It’d be difficult to fake a performance so transparent-with Soto so cocksure, that sharpest knife in the drawer, “don’t need anybody” attitude. And underneath that, the sharp hunger for approval.
Not from just anyone. From Gordon. Just that slight smile Gordon had given him-the corner of Jim’s mouth, and Soto had brightened like the dawn not yet here.
Bruce wondered if Gordon knew. The kid tried hard enough to hide it; in fact, was so confident, so convinced of said confidence, Bruce wondered whether Soto knew it himself.
Naturally Bruce had read up on Soto, watched him a couple times. Would have to, before he’d let Gordon tell their secret. Bruce knew Soto was married, had a baby boy. Knew Soto love his wife-Carol, that was her name, the Soto loved his son as though the nine month old had hung the moon.
Bruce knew Soto had probably been convinced he was happy his whole life, despite not ever being quite content, no matter how much he loved his wife. Soto probably didn’t even see it-in the elegant movements of his hands, the sound of his voice. Of course, within sight and hearing, that wasn’t where these things lived; they did not define what you desired or who you loved. But Soto probably didn’t see it either in the way he looked at Gordon.
Gordon had to see, Bruce realized. He was a cop, one of the best, and saw the things that others didn’t. Another reason Bruce had picked him. And it was the reason Gordon had picked Soto-Gordon knew the things Soto possibly didn’t even know about himself. Gordon knew them, and used them to hold Soto to him. Bruce wouldn’t have expected it of the officer he knew.
Then again, Bruce wouldn’t have expected it of Soto either. Such a young man, with a vivacious if not beautiful wife. A man with such a face, and confused, unrealized identity-one would have thought he’d gravitate towards other young, beautiful things.
Gordon was past middle age. He was gray around the temples, and despite the fact he’d been sinewy and skinny since Bruce had first met him, somewhere along the line the officer had developed a slight paunch at the gut. He smoked and there was that mustache, and if Bruce had ever thought about it, he’d’ve said only Gordon’s wife could find him attractive-unless you counted those times the dust had settled and Gordon had still been there, and Batman had known he was not alone.
Maybe Gordon was just Soto’s type, or maybe Soto had just gotten past the nerdy glasses and worn clothes and too thin neck to the man beneath. The man beneath who tried so hard, loved justice and his family, and would never, ever quit.
For a bare moment, Bruce was jealous, that someone would see Gordon for who he really was, and love him. Now that Rachel was gone, no one would ever do that for him.
Alfred knew who he was through and through, but Bruce had a sneaking suspicion Alfred would feel the same, be the same, even if Bruce had taken his twistedness and darkness and made the Joker instead of Batman. Alfred would always be there, and wasn’t that a heady knowledge, except that Alfred never needed to know him. Didn’t need him to be anything but the son of Wayne.
He didn’t need Bruce in the way Bruce needed that Wayne Alfred had loved so, needed someone who would be proud, who would love him, who would understand and tell him it could be alright. He didn’t need Bruce in the way Bruce had needed Rachel.
Didn’t need him in the way Soto so obviously needed Gordon.
Batman watched the officers get into the car and drive away.
He took it out, the next few days, as he always did, on the streets. It was against the deal Gordon had tried to tie him down to-in some cases he came as close to getting shot at by the police as by the criminals. These were not the scenes for what Gordon called his special task force. Batman was just blowing off steam.
A couple nights later, he wondered whether Gordon was too, seeing how it was the middle of the night and the graveyard shift had it taken care of, but Gordon was there on the scene. Afterwards, Bruce followed him home.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Gordon told him on the porch, instead of the admonishments to stay out of his jurisdiction Bruce had expected.
Bruce looked at the other man and saw why-Gordon was too exhausted, haggard about the eyes. He’d looked that way a long time. Since Dent. “You should sleep,” slipped out.
“You’re one to talk,” Gordon said. “You are a man under there, aren’t you?”
He wasn’t supposed to be. And Gordon wasn’t supposed to be either, Bruce realized. He hadn’t let himself see Gordon’s exhaustion and pain because he couldn’t deal with that, the position Bruce was in, he wasn’t allowed to deal with that. Batman needed Gordon to be an instrument, just as Batman was a symbol; Gordon had to be the cop, the phone line to the force. Gordon couldn’t be a man, not to Batman, because Gordon would respond in kind, say things like, “you’re one to talk,” forcing his humanity onto Batman. And Batman, more than anyone, could not be human.
Bruce could hear the coffee brewing in the kitchen through the screen door. He wouldn’t be able to drink it, not with Gordon. Not together, like two men, two friends. Not like Soto.
Batman had given in to fighting along-side these others. But he would always be alone.
*
Even though Gordon had established the policy on Batman-that the Bat was not to get in the way of other cases, that the only officers dealing with Batman exclusively were on the special task force-much of the force was still occupied with hunting down the vigilante. It made getting anything real done even harder than it had been before.
But with Soto on board, Gordon felt like he was better able to deal with some of the issues that needed to be dealt with. He was putting away criminals. He was collecting evidence against them. He was making the streets safer, and spending even more time away from home.
“When I thought you’d died,” Barbara said, “you know what I said to myself? ‘At least now I know why he’s not coming home.’ That much, I could understand.”
Gordon was getting out of bed. To his wife’s dismay, he kept a police radio in their bedroom. “I came home,” he said, not weary until she had spoken.
“Is this home, Jim?” she asked. She was lying on her side, brown eyes bright in the dark. “Is it really?”
“I’m not going to die.” He wanted to kiss her, because she looked so beautiful like that, sleep tousled and tired, but he didn’t. “I didn’t die, sweetheart.”
“You didn’t,” she affirmed.
He closed his eyes for what would come next.
“You just pretended to. You just lied.”
“I couldn’t risk you.” They’d been over this a million times before.
“I know you couldn’t.” She laid a hand on his, where it was gripping the covers to pull away. “But haven’t you ever thought-it goes both ways? I can’t risk you, either?”
“I was a cop when you married me,” Gordon said, and got out of bed.
“You were a cop,” she said. “You weren’t this.”
“I’m still me.”
“Are you? Are you sure I know you any more?” She closed her eyes. “Do you still know me?”
He looked at her, her chestnut hair spread over the pillow, relaxed as though to sleep, though her wide features were tight. She was no longer young. He could see the lines around her eyes; if he pulled the cover lower and her nightclothes up, he would see the traces of old stretch marks. He loved each line more than the last, because they traced the life she had lived with him, the love they had given each other. But as he looked at her now, her mouth held too firm for sleep, he knew that not all those lines were from love and living. She looked older now than she had a month ago, and it was from the time they’d spent apart.
He wore an old white tank top and boxers she had gotten for him some long Christmas ago, red and plaid and far too faded. It would take little effort to strip them and her and be skin to skin with her, to crawl inside their bed and inside of her and kiss her.
But it would take far too much to get close, to know her again, as he had once known her, more than casually, more than biblically, soul to soul.
When the radio hummed again with another call for a unit halfway across town, he knew that what it would take was more than he was willing to give.
He brushed her brow and kissed her while she pretended to be asleep, and then he got dressed and left.
Batman was at the scene, though it wasn’t the mob or the Joker or another crazy who felt the need to wear a mask, so Soto wasn’t there.
After it was done, Gordon came home and again thought about getting undressed, thought about being beside/inside his wife, but it was almost dawn. She was really sleeping now, instead of pretending, and she looked so peaceful. There seemed little point. Anyway, apologies weren’t really enough.
He started the coffee pot instead and went for a smoke out on the porch. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he told the half-dark.
Batman said, “You should sleep.”
“You’re one to talk.” Gordon puffed on his cigarette. “You are a man under there, aren’t you?”
Batman didn’t say anything.
Five minutes passed, and Gordon heard the coffee machine ding. He decided to exercise the theory of that manhood, and said, “You want some coffee?” but realized for the past five minutes, he’d actually been alone.
Batman didn’t want to be known. That was something Gordon had been aware of from the beginning.
Lately, though, he’d been thinking: it’d be nice to know someone. Anyone at all.
*
“It’s Batman, isn’t it?” Barbara said one night.
“It isn’t Batman,” Gordon said wearily. He didn’t know how he could be more tired spending the night at home (at last) than when out working. “Batman’s an alleged felon.”
“Jim,” she said, voice patient. “You know I’m not asking you if hunting him is what you’re working on.”
There was more than one reason Gordon had been more concerned when Dent had his son than when he threatened Barbara. She was so strong.
“You’re working with him,” she said.
“If I wasn’t, I’d be working twice as long. We would have to fight him, too.”
“Have you ever thought . . .” She closed her mouth and opened it again. “Have you ever thought what Joker said on TV was true? That it was Batman that made-all this happen?”
“The mob was around a long time before Batman.” He tried not to sound stung.
“You know I’m not talking about the mob, either.”
“He’s trying to do the right thing.”
“He’s trying to do the right thing in all the wrong ways, Jim! You’ve said it yourself a million times.”
“You’re worried about-tell me, what? That I’m going to lose my integrity?” He did not try to hide the sting now. It was what he prided himself on. It was why she’d married him.
Barbara looked just stung. “How could you think that?”
Suddenly Gordon didn’t know. To the rest of the world, Batman was a criminal. Only Gordon knew the truth, and in some ways it was as though the rest of the world saw his mask, but Gordon saw him laid bare. Gordon’s instinct in the face-that still concealed face-of that unconcealed vulnerability was to defend, to protect. To serve.
Even against his wife.
But Barbara knew the truth, had been there to see the truth played out. In complete non sequitur, that made Gordon feel more alone, because against her he needed to defend the lie. She knew Batman’s innocence, and she need not trouble to hide that knowledge. That fell to Gordon and to Batman, who must pretend that one was the enemy and the other was against him
Barbara still looked hurt. “I’m worried you’ll lose your life. That you’ve given yourself over to this so completely and so deeply that we’ll lose you.”
He hadn’t thought about that, of course. He thought about his family all the time; it was all for them, for other families like them. But he hadn’t thought about how his family was meant to be his life; he hadn’t thought about saving his own life along with everyone else’s.
What she didn’t say was he would lose them, was losing them, that he’d given himself so completely and so deeply there wasn’t room for the rest any more; the rest was drifting away. She was drifting away, the kids, and left in their places was shadow, was Dent threatening again to take them all away, but there was Joker too, and even Batman.
What she didn’t say was he was losing himself.
“Soto,” Gordon said, because Soto knew the truth, and because was Batman was part of what had her so upset. “I’m working with him, too. He knows.”
Barbara brightened, the way Soto had when he’d thought of Batman being with them, as if three could stand against the world entire.
Barbara liked Gabriel Soto, and liked his wife Carol. Out of all the young officer and officers’ families Gordon had brought home over the years, the Sotos were one of the families they were closest to. Though the Gordons were older by almost two decades, they found they had a lot in common.
Gordon and Soto were some of the few that talked to their wives about their work-Gordon used to talk anyway, before it became necessary to fake his death and whatnot, and Barbara used to listen. Carol was a teacher. She talked to Barbara often about the community center where Barbara volunteered, where the force had sent Gordon when he was a rookie because he’d told them he’d decided to be a cop because he had wanted to help kids on the street.
Carol had come to the Gordons when she’d found out she was pregnant, because Barbara was older and had been through it before, and Gabe was gone so often. Maybe, too, Carol had come because she wanted Gordon to say things would change, that cops like he and Soto changed, and Gordon had. Another lie.
Barbara clucked over the Sotos like an older sister. For Gordon’s part, he couldn’t help feeling paternal, which should have been weird considering the way Soto felt, but Gordon never did consider it. He thought that Soto probably didn’t consider it either, which was for the best. It was just there between them, and Gordon didn’t mind it as long as it wasn’t acted upon.
Gordon had no illusions. He knew if he did act-had he wanted to-Soto would act as well. If Gordon asked it of him, he thought Soto might throw it all away-wonderful wife, a family he loved, respectability on the force, even his job. For Gordon.
Of course, Gordon wouldn’t ask it. First of all he didn’t want it. Second, he would never ask Soto to betray Carol that way. Gordon wouldn’t betray Barbara that way.
Still feeling slightly better about everything, Barbara asked the Sotos for dinner that Sunday, and Gordon saw he had asked the unspeakable of Soto after all. One look at Carol’s face, her cheerful, vibrant face, and Gordon knew Soto hadn’t told her about working with Batman, about anything they were doing.
One look at Soto and Gordon knew why Soto wouldn’t tell her, not unless Gordon told him to, and there was really little point. What need to worry a young mother, with so much worry on her hands already? Gordon knew these were Soto’s thoughts. And Soto was right, only he had never thought such thoughts before until Gordon had pushed him as far as he had now.
There was weight as they ate Barbara’s warm and well loved chicken casserole-the weight of Carol’s clueless chatter, the things Barbara knew that Carol didn’t, the things Gordon and Soto shared neither of the wives would.
Later in the evening, Gordon slipped out for a cigarette. He tried not to smoke when he was around his family, or when they had guests, but that amount of time when he was doing either was becoming less and less.
Soto slipped out after him. “I’ll try one of those,” he said, in his certain, strident way, which was all about disguising uncertainty.
Gordon took out his worn pack of cigarettes. The box was never clean and straight again after being in his pocket. “It’ll kill you,” he said, handing the box over.
Soto shuffled one out clumsily, unused to what came to Gordon as easily as breathing. Recovering, Soto lit the cigarette with his more accustomed elegance, the flame in the night illuminating the grace of his hands.
Gordon looked away, not wanting to see the cigarette brought to his mouth, those gapped teeth. “It’ll kill you,” was what Soto used to say every time Gordon lit up, the concern ill-concealed behind the arrogant admonishment. Soto knew it, too, was doing it anyway, because Gordon was. “You never wanted it before,” Gordon said, trying not to sound like he was asking for anything.
The answer was clear between them. Soto had never needed an excuse to come out here and be away from his family before, either. He’d never lied to them before, never worked with a wanted man before, never went out almost every night to get killed and asked for more before.
Soto shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to know how it tasted.”
Gordon closed his eyes. God . . .
“God,” Barbara had said, pulling away from his mouth. “Never thought I’d learn to love how they tasted . . .”
She hadn’t, not really. She still thought cigarettes were filthy things, and she still hated that her husband smoked. She had asked him to quit when Jimmy was born. Gordon had, and started again six months later, and then they’d gone ‘round the merry-go-round again when Babs was born . . . Promises made and not kept.
He’d promised Barbara too, that he’d never be unfaithful. He’d promised himself he’d never ask Gabriel to be unfaithful either.
But Gordon looked at the way Soto had his lips wrapped around that cigarette and knew it was worse than if he’d asked his friend to cheat on his wife. It was worse, because they did what the Batman did. It was wrong-neglecting their families, not being the fathers they should be. Lying to the force about their jobs, working with a criminal, even if his crimes were not all that people said. It was still wrong-but like the Batman, it was necessary.
Soto started coughing, and Gordon opened his eyes.
“Guess I’m still new to this,” Soto said.
“You get used to it,” Gordon said. “It becomes a part of you.”
Soto looked at him strangely. “Well, it’s nicotine. It’s an addictive substance, remember?”
Was that it? Gordon thought. Was he addicted? He didn’t know. He just knew he couldn’t seem to quit.
*
“I see why you trust Soto.”
“With my life.” Gordon wasn’t looking at Batman. “It’s another responsibility, among a bunch I’d rather not take on, but I guess I don’t have that much of a choice. The kid would die for me.”
“He’d live for you as well.”
“You see that too.” It wasn’t a question.
“Hard not to.”
“Sometimes I thought it might . . . just be me. He’s so young, and I’m . . . not the type of man . . .”
“It’s not just you.” Batman’s voice was harsh.
Gordon puffed on his cigarette. “I could be his father.”
“Don’t be naïve.”
“You mean that’s why he feels-the way he does.”
Batman seemed a more a part of the shadows than ever. “It’s not particularly uncommon,” he said.
Gordon looked at his cigarette, the slender, elegant shape of it. He wanted another drag, twitched with need for the taste, the resulting calm. Somehow, though, he couldn’t bring it back to his mouth just then. “You’re right,” Gordon said, the smoke from the unsmoked cigarette curled lazily into the night.
“You use it,” Batman pressed. “Exploit it. You know he’ll follow you.”
“And what am I supposed to do?” Gordon demanded. “Deny him his redemption? Refuse what he came to me for, just because now he wants to come to me for more? I’m not like you. I can’t rush on into Hell and leave everyone else behind in Purgatory for their own good.”
Batman stiffened. “This isn’t about me.”
“Isn’t it?” Gordon’s voice was sharp.
“You aren’t Soto.”
“For one, I’m too old.” Gordon puffed at last on that burning down cigarette. “Wouldn’t it be so much simpler if I was?” he asked at last. “This would make so much more sense. Do you know-Barbara was talking to me the other night, about what I do. She made it sound like I was having an affair.”
“She knows better.”
Gordon nodded, sucking on that last sweetness of cigarette. “She does. But I think sometimes she wishes that was what I was doing after all. Like me. This would be much easier if I didn’t still love her so goddamn much.”
Batman was silent for a while. “I haven’t left you,” he said finally.
Gordon smashed his cigarette. “What?”
“You said I left everyone behind-”
“No, that’s right. I grabbed on. Wouldn’t let you go that way alone. I’d pull you up tooth and nail, if I had to.”
“You did. You are.” A pause. “I drag you down.”
Gordon shook his head. “There you go. Making it all about you again. It’s me. I can’t let go.” He looked at Batman. “Believe me, how I’ve tried.”
Another pause. “I’m sorry, Jim.”
“So am I.”
*
TBC, eventually
Author: tkp
Rating: PG for now
Pairing: eventual Batman(Bruce Wayne)/Gordon
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: After the events of The Dark Knight, Gordon has to draw up new terms of his working relationship with Batman. And his relationships with everyone else besides.
WARNINGS:: -There’s an OC in this. Mostly to establish some parallels. There might be others.
-I made up a bunch of police stuff. It’s wildly inaccurate and unrealistic.
-This might be more about ideas and themes than anything else. It's slow.
-This is huge, but it seemed pointless to split into smaller pieces since its such a slow moving plot.
In Hiding, Chapter One
The call on dispatch was about illegal trespass. When you had seen as much as Commissioner Gordon had though, you knew anyone lurking about that part of the Cape this time of night was probably working for the Chechen, and it was probably much worse than you feared.
There were enough who’d seen what Gordon had. There were also enough who knew he wasn’t at the precinct, wasn’t in a squad car, and that all the other officers on duty were already accounted for. Enough to be suspicious when Gordon gave the call face value, and didn’t send a team. Instead Gordon went himself, without back up.
The truth was, Gordon was playing his own game. He was playing for a different team.
There were too many to take alone, five all told. Gordon hunched behind a cargo crate on the loading dock, and watched the deal go down. Some might consider it a dead end, no go. Probably said that in the handbook. But Gordon hadn’t seen the thing in ages, and he played by his own rules. Long enough living this life, you learned your own lessons.
One, there was picking them off as they dispersed, follow them home, wait till they were alone. You could get one or two, but usually without much evidence and a lot of trouble, and you lost the rest. Lesson two, pick them off while they were still together and their hands were still red. Fire a shot, three, at air and arms and legs. In the ensuing commotion, grab the ones with the use of their limbs, incapacitate them, then go for the ones who were bleeding and desperate.
Yeah, Gordon thought. Lesson three: lesson two would get your killed. He’d learned that one a time or two.
The best lesson, four, was create the necessary confusion and have your partner step in from the other direction. Then you got them with drugs and money in their possession, and your livelihood still in yours.
Four, then. It was crazy, maybe, seeing as how Gordon hadn’t brought a partner with him. Those who’d heard the dispatch and knew enough to know he’d need it would be sending back-up, but that should still be several minutes away.
But Gordon had worked off option four before when it had seemed far more crazy, and it had worked. Killer clowns, who knew, sometimes they made you do the wacky. This here was just the mob.
“Stop!” Gordon shouted. “You’re under arrest!”
Five heads turned his way.
Two broke off and came for him. It was all about the other three.
They might get the hell out of dodge, which meant dispersal-the one where you bagged a crook but not the rest and not the evidence, and they were back on the street before they’d spent the night being processed. Or after you handled the ones who’d come for you, the remaining three came for you too, which meant option three and no resurrection involving semis and kevlar vests, because the mob, unlike these jokesters, made sure you were really dead when you said you were.
Or, final choice, your partner came and handled two while you took your own pair, and then you met in the middle and got the last one together.
But who knew whether said partner was there, and even if he was, Batman had never been much for meeting anyone halfway on anything.
*
After Harvey Dent kidnapped his family and Batman saved them, Gordon had to work damage control.
First he had to smash the signal so they could not be saved again.
Then he had to give the press conference about Harvey Dent, and how he had been a hero.
Last he had to establish the departmental policy on the latest Gotham’s most wanted criminal, which was to arrest Batman on sight, and included a special task force whose primary objective was hunting down the Bat.
Luckily, departmental policy and special task forces took a while to organize, because there was some damage it was impossible to control. Gordon came home late the nights he came home at all, and it was to Barbara sobbing softly and Jimmy’s nightmares.
“You need to fix this,” Barbara told him.
“I’m trying,” Gordon said, and went back to work early, sometimes so early it was still that night. He continued tying the knots in the Joker case, worked with the witnesses and evidence against the mob for the new D.A., and there was that task force.
He was fixing it. He was trying.
The task force would not work by the departmental policy at all. Gordon didn’t like the deception, of course. He hadn’t liked the lie about Batman which had necessitated a special task force in the first place. But in some ways, the alternative was harder. It was harder to come clean, or come home at night. Harder to stay with his family, stick by his wife, keep himself safe so that they had a father and husband who could come home at night at all.
It was much easier to risk his life.
*
Gordon was pretty sure he had managed to knock one of the Chechen’s men unconscious, but the second was chasing after him. If Batman was going to show, Gordon was thinking, now would be nice.
Once again he realized it was a crazy thing to count on. After publicly denouncing the Bat to raise up Harvey Dent, Gordon hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the guy-not that he ever saw any of his hair, if he even had any, and very little of his hide.
But there had been sightings reported in the papers, on the news, the gossip on the streets. Even if such sources couldn’t be trusted, some members of the squad could, and some said they had seen the Batman. On top of that, guns fired by fear were the most trustworthy of all. Batman had been there at some crime scenes, and more than one young officer had opened fire on new public enemy number one.
Even still, without officers or fear or media, Gordon would have expected him to be there
It wasn’t exactly that he was expecting Batman to save him. Gordon was just expecting Batman to be exactly like himself: unable to quit.
Which must have been true, because not a moment later, Gordon heard a scream. It was too faint to be the guy following him; it had to be one of the three left behind. It was just enough to give his pursuer pause, and Gordon stopped to shove his fist into the other guy’s face.
The time had long since passed when one punch from Gordon could send a man stone cold, if there had been that time at all. It took a moment with knees planted on the other’s upper arms on the either side of the man’s chest to get him to stay down. By the time Gordon had him cuffed he could hear the blare of sirens.
But there was still the final one, the one both you and your partner went for after each taking care of two, and Gordon launched himself off the ground. You never took your partner for granted after the dust had settled on your end of the deal. Lesson five.
There was a thick rope, coiled on the ground near one of the cargo crates, the gleam of a grip hook atop it. Gordon scrambled for it and kept on running. And there was the Batman.
He had the second on his knees and was standing over him, but the third was advancing from behind. Gordon loosed the rope and swung it. The hook hit the third and he fell, just as Batman kicked the kneeling man the rest of the way down. Then Batman spun and sliced the falling man behind him with his forearm.
It was quick enough that Gordon needn’t have bothered. But you protected your partner, lesson five again, and anyway, rule of thumb: don’t count on said partner having pointy toys in his uniform. Gordon shook his head as Batman clicked them back into his arm. Those things would never fly on the departmental budget, and come to that, where did Batman get these gadgets, anyhow? Gordon pushed his glasses up a sweaty nose.
The siren blares got louder, and now there were voices.
Under them, Batman’s voice, distorted. “The warehouse,” he said, and disappeared into the shadows.
Gordon felt like shaking his head again, but at least he’d gotten a meeting this time. Last time Gordon had made a stupid answer to a dispatch, all he’d gotten for his trouble was a sprained wrist, massive bruises, and a fleeting glimpse of black cape before the squad cars arrived, then nothing. Gordon had waited that night on the porch, just in case, his back killing him and Barbara pretending to sleep in their bed, with Babs calling out for him in her sleep. But no Bat.
With the back-up here, it was a bit before Gordon could slip off. His and Batman’s first knock-outs were back up-expected, seeing as how your objective was just to get them out of the way while you dealt with your seconds. (Lesson six, or was that seven?) At any rate, it was good some of the Chechen’s men were up and running, since it didn’t look as though Gordon had taken all five by himself. Stephens looked suspicious, but then he always did.
And once the perps were taken down again, there was cuffing and processing and stuffing them into cars. Then there was waiting for the confusion as the one who’d cuffs Gordon had jimmied (lesson eight) broke away again, and the second set of unnecessary back-up rolled up and accused the first set of calling them in, when the first had no idea what they were talking about. It was enough for Gordon to get away, anyway.
“Extreme,” Batman rumbled in the warehouse, as he and Gordon listened to the cops chase down the one who’d wormed out of his cuffs.
“Not really.” Gordon lit a cigarette. “I called for the second unit. No way they’re losing those five.”
“Not what I meant.”
“You meant you want to give me your phone number?” Gordon said impatiently. “Your P.O. Box? Because my other way of contacting you was a mite conspicuous, and here I thought you were all for keeping it quiet that I know you’re not a cop killer.”
“This isn’t the way to contact me either.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
The dark figure hunched, turning further into the darkness so Gordon could no longer see the white gleam of Batman’s jaw. “What do you want, Commissioner?”
Gordon bit down on his cigarette and the tide of adrenaline resurging. Too often the Bat called the shots in this twisted partnership. Now Gordon needed it to change, had to dictate the terms, and Batman was giving him an in. Gordon hoped it meant they would not end this conversation on opposite sides of some irreconcilable border. “You can’t keep me on the outside,” he said.
“I have to be on the outside now more than ever.”
“No.” Gordon dropped his cigarette and ground it out. He noticed the change in pronouns, but it wasn’t what he meant. “It can’t be like it was before. Then you could come and do your own thing, and no one on our side was much inclined to stand in your way.
“You were.”
In some ways, he had been. Batman didn’t play by the rules, by the law, or even what was right. “But I didn’t.”
It had been worth it. Batman had been worth it. Neither of them pointed out that Gordon wouldn’t have been able to stop him had he tried.
“It’s different now,” Gordon went on. “As long as we need it, I can have you working our perimeter. But now you’re pretty much center stage, gumming up the works. My people are gunning for you harder than they are any of the dirt out there. We can’t be fighting two battles. Especially when one is pointless.”
“They won’t get a chance to fight me.” Batman’s voice sounded harsher than ever. “I won’t be there.”
“You will. Like you were here tonight.”
The shadows shifted. Gordon barked, “And before you disappear-even you make mistakes.”
“You mean the Maroni bust.”
“My officers were so distracted trying to take you down, they almost let Big Lou slip.”
“He wouldn’t have gotten away.”
The arrogant confidence in that voice, sometimes reassuring, teed Gordon off. “And how many others did? Because they were too focused on you to arrest anyone else, and because you couldn’t go back into police fire to take down anyone else either?”
“It won’t happen again.”
Rarely did Batman stick around long enough to argue or reiterate some point he’d made. Gordon knew he was pushing his luck, and he didn’t care. He stepped forward, and again, pushing into Batman’s space, where the Bat remained very still, hunched in the shadows. “I’m not talking case by case,” Gordon said. “I’m talking about our whole relationship, you and the police. It’s got to change, because it won’t go back to us turning our heads when you swoop by.”
The shadows stirred-his cape, perhaps, his shoulders. “What do you want?” Batman rasped again, but this time different.
It was colder, more forbidding, which meant defensive-which to Gordon meant he was close, almost under the armor, very close. He knew Batman well enough for that. The adrenaline surged again; Gordon’s chest was tight with anticipation. He was physically close as well, and a month or so ago Gordon would have laughed at the idea of intimidation tactics working on the Batman.
“I want you to work with us,” Gordon told him.
“Dent,” Batman started, but Gordon cut him off.
“No one will know.”
“By ‘us’, you mean you.”
“You’re calling me arrogant?” Gordon raised a sardonic brow, wishing Batman would have the grace to look chagrined. He didn’t.
“I meant a special force,” Gordon grunted. “Not more than half a dozen officers. I’ve been feeling them out. People who can be trusted,” he stressed. “The rest of the force still won’t know the truth, just like the rest of Gotham.” He paused. “Before I tell them what really happened with Dent, I’ll give you their names.”
Which was the closest he would come to giving Batman legal dispensation to look into their personal histories in ways which would undoubtedly be illegal.
“This is for cases dealing with anything special interest,” Gordon said. “I won’t ask you about your days off. But there’s some things that need doing, and we’ll be together on anything that comes up on dispatch about Falcone, Maroni, Chechen, Gambol, Thorne. Clean-up on Joker. Lau. Crane.”
“Dent,” Batman said again.
“Him too,” Gordon said, and it felt like when he’d driven that stupid tank of a car, or launched out of that truck to tackle the Joker: he was going to win this one. “And I want a phone number,” he added, and it was like questioning a suspect, not quite knowing you were going to press it further until you saw an opening and took it before you lost it (lesson nine). “Or a P.O. Box. Something.”
“Your way isn’t good enough?”
It was a taunt, the closest to personal perhaps Batman had ever gotten.
Gordon backed up, angled away. “You know it’s not myself I don’t want to risk.”
He lit another cigarette, unable to tell whether the silence was agreement or a question.
“It’s irresponsible,” Gordon explained, lest Batman mistake his meaning. “Coming on scene when I’m unprepared. Giving the bad guys a chance to get away.” He waved vaguely outside the warehouse walls.
“But you risked it.”
“Not really. I knew you’d come.”
There was a pause. “I’ll take a look at the names.”
“I’ll leave them at your P.O.,” Gordon started, but he was talking to air.
He wouldn’t be getting Batman those names, he realized. Batman would just get them himself, however he did these things-even though the only list of them that existed was in Gordon’s head.
Gordon also wouldn’t be getting a P.O. Box, and wasn’t that just a mood killer.
*
Bruce had hacked into the police network, was taking a look at Commissioner Gordon’s system files. Gordon had said he’d been looking into the task form he had mentioned, which meant the police records he’d called up most recently, and/or spent the most hours on, were his likely candidates. Out of the morass of a million files active on Gordon’s machine-Bruce had thought Wayne Enterprises was a hell of a lot of a paperwork-Bruce pulled about half a dozen names.
Lieutenant Alicia Loeb, the former Commissioner’s daughter. A Falcone brother, distantly related, who’d joined the force at nineteen and hadn’t looked back. Stephens, who’d been made Deputy Chief after recent events. A rookie detective, Gabriel Soto, Bruce hadn’t heard of before. Two more detectives, more experienced, Renee Montoya, Harvey Bullock. And then of course, there was always Jim Gordon.
Bruce didn’t want any of them.
He’d known the moment he made Batman that it wasn’t right. He’d known that first night, too, when he’d held up Gordon with a stapler. It was why he’d chosen Gordon, because someone like Gordon wouldn’t think it was right, either. Gordon would put up with his breach of the law only as long as it was needed, and then demand that Batman step back. Gordon cared about justice, and he’d bring it.
But he couldn’t bring Bruce back to the light, either. Even Gordon admitted it: Batman needed to be.
Bruce had been trying too hard to stop. Helping Harvey to be the hero, wanting Harvey to be what Gotham needed and Batman could not give. Waiting for that moment with Rachel, so the Batman could be put away, so Bruce could finally live. But it was partly that, needing her so much, pushing Harvey to that place, that caused them both to die. It was why he had hesitated, too, to give the Joker what he wanted, because Bruce wanted it too badly also, wanted so much to give it up.
If he had learned anything from the Joker, it was that the more he anticipated that moment, the farther away it’d get. The more people he roped into that need, that cause, the more he would lose. The less he accepted Batman, the more Batman would be necessary.
Rachel and Harvey, they had lived in light. Gordon, too, which was why in the end Bruce had pushed even him away, the force and all of Gotham. Before, Bruce had still clung to them, and because of Batman, Rachel and Harvey were dead. For the long stretch of one day, he had thought Gordon was too, and once the other two were dead, Bruce knew one more would be too much. The last ones left to fight the good fight would not die in Batman’s shadow.
Bruce had accepted this. His place in the world, the necessity of Batman, the sacrifice of everything for this cause. But he would not drag the rest down into the dark with him. He would be alone.
Bruce closed the files on the computer, and shut the system down.
*
“Back so soon,” Gordon said, not very sincerely. It had been a week and a half, and in the interim there had been enough Batman sightings, though admittedly no shootings due to those sightings being made by officers on the force.
“You can’t show down the mob again to get my attention.” Batman was perched among the cross-beams. Very dramatic, Gordon thought, still not letting up the sarcasm.
Two could play at that. “I could.” Gordon wasn’t facing him, didn’t need to see. He tapped the ash from his cigarette on the wooden railing. “But isn’t this so much more convenient?”
“We can’t.”
Gordon nodded and took a drag on his cigarette. “Do you remember what I said, about fighting two wars?” Tapped the ash again. “It wouldn’t just be my officers. It’d be me. I would fight you.”
At last he turned to face the shadows.
“We’ve come this far because I’ve let us,” Gordon went on. “I thought what you do was necessary. But because of what it is-I need to watch you. I need to see it. If you shut me out-bets are off.”
“You don’t trust me.”
There was no emotion in that voice. It was just as grating and stilted as it had ever been.
But the words, the words themselves-
“This family is falling apart,” Barbara said, every night Gordon was out, at work, on cases, waiting on the porch.
“I’m fixing it. I’m trying,” Gordon said.
“I know you are. You always are. Doing the best you can for us, making it safe for us, making it so we can eat. But when you shut me out-”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“This isn’t about how I feel about you, Jim. It’s about this family. . .”
. . . This family is falling apart . . .
-“I told you before. It’s not about me,” Gordon told the Batman stiffly, smushing out his cigarette. “It’s about the force. It has a job. A purpose. And I’m supposed to uphold that.”
“You wouldn’t be able to fight me.”
“I would try.” Trying was all he ever could do. “You don’t want that.”
“You wouldn’t even get in my way.”
“You don’t want it.” Gordon wasn’t talking now to Batman. He was talking to the man who had said, you don’t trust me, who hadn’t let it show in his voice, but had been hurt by that, hurt in ways Gordon was when he said it himself. Gordon was talking to the man who needed to cut himself off, thought he had to fight this fight without a single friend. The man who wore a mask-not just to protect this world, but to hide from it.
Gordon didn’t talk to that man very often. He knew too well the pact he had struck with Batman for that.
Now, speaking to that man, Gordon’s voice was gentler than it had ever been to the Bat. Gordon saw the line of that man’s jaw loosen, and look softer than it ever had before.
Gordon said quietly, “I don’t want to fight you, either.”
Batman was silent for a while. Then, “Who is Gabriel Soto?”
Gordon resisted lighting another cigarette, now that that was over. Eventually, he said, “Rookie detective. He was a good officer before that. When I was made sergeant, I made it a point to know everyone in my division. I guess you could say we got to be friends.”
“Friends can’t always be trusted.”
It was that deep, dark theatric voice that made Gordon bark out a laugh. “Maybe yours can’t.”
In the silence, Gordon knew Batman was thinking of Harvey Dent.
Gordon didn’t know if they had been friends, but he did know Batman’s disappointment, didn’t know why, but knew that it had destroyed the Batman in ways it would have destroyed Gotham City, had it known the truth. Gordon sighed. “More than half the cops on my squad are dirty. Dent knew it; Ms. Dawes knew it. I know it. A lot of them, I even know which ones. The rest I don’t know about. I’m sure of very few things. But Soto-if you knew him, you wouldn’t doubt him either.”
There was silence again, then, “Alicia Loeb.”
“How do you do that?” Gordon burst out, less in surprise and more in resignation. Gordon had suspected Batman would somehow find out who he had been considering for his special task force, but it was still damn annoying.
There was no answer. Gordon hadn’t expected one.
“I guess Alicia was obvious,” Gordon said finally. The Joker had killed her father, the former Commissioner. “What happened with her father . . . makes her a perfect choice.”
“No.”
The response was sudden and so raw, Gordon was surprised. He’d thought the man-to-man was over with, and they were back to commissioner-to-mask, all business.
“What happened to her father,” the Batman repeated, “is why she shouldn’t work with you. Not on this.”
“You mean, why she shouldn’t work with you,” Gordon pointed out. “What do you have against her? She’s clean. Loeb-her father was straight, and she’s the same, if not-”
“She won’t be able to keep her eye on what’s important.”
“What makes you-”
“We’ll try your Soto,” Batman said. “Keep her out of this.”
Gordon could hear the finality in his words. “He’s not my Soto. And I still need that phone number,” he tried to say, before Batman disappeared. It was, of course, too late.
*
The next month involved several responses to dispatch that weren’t the most responsible, even if they got the job done better. But now Gordon was bringing Soto with him, which was significantly better than going alone and hoping the Bat would show.
Batman inevitably did. Gordon still would have liked a phone number, or even that P.O. Box.
After the first time Batman helped them make the arrests, Soto came to Gordon afterward. “Batman helped us,” he said casually, as though remarking on a minor policy change.
Gordon hadn’t told Soto anything. He wanted to show Batman just how far Soto could be trusted-Soto would do the right thing whether he knew the truth or not.
“Is he,” Gordon grunted noncommittally. He was filling out paperwork on top of a squad car. The too late back-up had arrived and were taking care of clean up.
“You saw him,” Soto insisted. “You didn’t shoot.”
They were both silent for a moment as another officer came within hearing. Gordon absently took the styrofoam cup being handed to him as he continued with the paperwork.
“You didn’t try to arrest him,” Soto repeated, when the other officer had moved further away.
“Neither did you,” Gordon said, sipped his coffee, and scribbled more.
“Batman’s on our side now.” Soto did not quite sound decisive. He had a determination to figure things out for himself, not have them spelled out for him-no matter how clearly the letters were already written. But his arrogance was self-conscious enough to for him to live in horror of figuring everything wrong.
“What do you think?” Gordon’s voice was gruff, but the side of his mouth turned up, though he wasn’t looking at Soto.
“I think he’s been on our side,” said Soto, smug now that he had been reassured. “I think you’ve been working with him and not telling the rest of us. But why?” he went on to himself, as if knowing he could come to the answer. “Why go to such lengths?”
“Maybe so you’d shut up,” Gordon said absently, without a piece of malice. He shut the file folder and handed it off to another officer passing by.
“It must have been someone else to kill those other officers,” Soto went on, voice low to prevent from being heard by anyone but Gordon. His tone was still cocksure. “And Dent, too. Someone who needed protecting.”
“Almost there.” Gordon took a sip of whatever was in the cup-he hoped it was coffee-and started walking toward the car.
“I’m trying to remember how the case against Batman was put to the public.” Soto was walking with him. “He killed those cops because they were crooked-which made sense. He was a vigilante; even if he’s outside the law he was ostensibly for justice. The cops he killed were dirty.”
“Get in the car,” Gordon said, and walked around to the other side.
Soto was standing before the door with his hand on the handle. “But Dent wasn’t. That was why it was such a shock. Betrayal. Those cops-they had a hand in . . . helping the Joker. Rachel Dawes getting killed. But Dent didn’t . . .” Gordon was getting in the car while Soto talked to himself. Now Soto opened the door quickly, got inside, and slammed it shut. “Dent,” he said into the darkness of the car. “It was Dent.”
Soto was half Ecuadorian; you could see it in his golden, flawless skin, in the hair so black it seemed like it should be blue. It was curly and unruly on his head; his eyes were a bright and intense gray, and he was tall, taller than Gordon, as tall as the Batman or taller. What saved him from looking like a daytime telenovela model was a certain boyishness-the gap between his shining white teeth in his million dollar smile, the too narrow face and shoulders. Despite the elegance of the long limbs and legs and fingers, he was inclined toward lanky; he looked like he was made of sticks and tied together with rags.
Gordon looked at him now. Soto’s expression held the horror that would have been of seven million citizens, had Batman let the truth be known. Somehow framed on this face, the pretty face of this young man who thought he knew the world and could take it on, it looked worse than Gordon had guessed it would. For the first time since he’d made the promise to Batman to cover up Dent’s crimes, Gordon remembered why he’d made it.
“Obviously, you’re not going to tell anyone,” Gordon said, gentle now.
“It’s just-why?” Soto said. “He was D.A. He was going to turn this city around-he was working with you.”
“Dent lost someone he loves. Imagine if you lost Carol.” Not to mention your looks, Gordon didn’t add.
“But he was working with you.”
For a moment Gordon had forgotten how stubborn Soto could be, and how his wife, Carol, wasn’t all Soto was loved that way.
“I can’t keep everyone from the dark.”
“He was with us,” Soto insisted. “He was on our side.”
“Listen, kid,” Gordon said, because Soto was looking at him in that way he had that was entirely too bare. It reminded Gordon of children he held and tried to comfort when crime made them fatherless or orphans; it reminded him of that first orphan child he’d had to comfort, whose cheek he’d cupped when he been a beat cop and decided he was going to be the one to save this city. It reminded him of Jimmy and Babs, who looked just as lost; sometimes Gordon thought crime had made them fatherless, too.
“There aren’t sides,” Gordon went on. “Or if there are, there are seven million of them, because every single one of us in this city is on our own.”
Soto looked at him. “Seven million minus one.”
“Yeah.” Gordon turned his face away and started up the car. “Well, that’s why you’re in on this.”
“And Batman.”
“And Batman,” Gordon acknowledged, but the thought gave him no pleasure.
“Seven million minus two,” Soto said, and sounded as though his spirits had been slightly lifted.
But Gordon was still thinking about the Wayne child, and about how he’d come home to Barbara that night. He’d come home and told her he was going to save the world, and she said she’d be at his side. And then he’d felt like he could bring all the force with him, and together they could fight.
But now, somehow, he was down to three.
*
Bruce watched Gordon and Soto as they talked, Gordon filling out paperwork, Soto following him around like a lost puppy. Bruce saw why Gordon trusted him. It’d be difficult to fake a performance so transparent-with Soto so cocksure, that sharpest knife in the drawer, “don’t need anybody” attitude. And underneath that, the sharp hunger for approval.
Not from just anyone. From Gordon. Just that slight smile Gordon had given him-the corner of Jim’s mouth, and Soto had brightened like the dawn not yet here.
Bruce wondered if Gordon knew. The kid tried hard enough to hide it; in fact, was so confident, so convinced of said confidence, Bruce wondered whether Soto knew it himself.
Naturally Bruce had read up on Soto, watched him a couple times. Would have to, before he’d let Gordon tell their secret. Bruce knew Soto was married, had a baby boy. Knew Soto love his wife-Carol, that was her name, the Soto loved his son as though the nine month old had hung the moon.
Bruce knew Soto had probably been convinced he was happy his whole life, despite not ever being quite content, no matter how much he loved his wife. Soto probably didn’t even see it-in the elegant movements of his hands, the sound of his voice. Of course, within sight and hearing, that wasn’t where these things lived; they did not define what you desired or who you loved. But Soto probably didn’t see it either in the way he looked at Gordon.
Gordon had to see, Bruce realized. He was a cop, one of the best, and saw the things that others didn’t. Another reason Bruce had picked him. And it was the reason Gordon had picked Soto-Gordon knew the things Soto possibly didn’t even know about himself. Gordon knew them, and used them to hold Soto to him. Bruce wouldn’t have expected it of the officer he knew.
Then again, Bruce wouldn’t have expected it of Soto either. Such a young man, with a vivacious if not beautiful wife. A man with such a face, and confused, unrealized identity-one would have thought he’d gravitate towards other young, beautiful things.
Gordon was past middle age. He was gray around the temples, and despite the fact he’d been sinewy and skinny since Bruce had first met him, somewhere along the line the officer had developed a slight paunch at the gut. He smoked and there was that mustache, and if Bruce had ever thought about it, he’d’ve said only Gordon’s wife could find him attractive-unless you counted those times the dust had settled and Gordon had still been there, and Batman had known he was not alone.
Maybe Gordon was just Soto’s type, or maybe Soto had just gotten past the nerdy glasses and worn clothes and too thin neck to the man beneath. The man beneath who tried so hard, loved justice and his family, and would never, ever quit.
For a bare moment, Bruce was jealous, that someone would see Gordon for who he really was, and love him. Now that Rachel was gone, no one would ever do that for him.
Alfred knew who he was through and through, but Bruce had a sneaking suspicion Alfred would feel the same, be the same, even if Bruce had taken his twistedness and darkness and made the Joker instead of Batman. Alfred would always be there, and wasn’t that a heady knowledge, except that Alfred never needed to know him. Didn’t need him to be anything but the son of Wayne.
He didn’t need Bruce in the way Bruce needed that Wayne Alfred had loved so, needed someone who would be proud, who would love him, who would understand and tell him it could be alright. He didn’t need Bruce in the way Bruce had needed Rachel.
Didn’t need him in the way Soto so obviously needed Gordon.
Batman watched the officers get into the car and drive away.
He took it out, the next few days, as he always did, on the streets. It was against the deal Gordon had tried to tie him down to-in some cases he came as close to getting shot at by the police as by the criminals. These were not the scenes for what Gordon called his special task force. Batman was just blowing off steam.
A couple nights later, he wondered whether Gordon was too, seeing how it was the middle of the night and the graveyard shift had it taken care of, but Gordon was there on the scene. Afterwards, Bruce followed him home.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Gordon told him on the porch, instead of the admonishments to stay out of his jurisdiction Bruce had expected.
Bruce looked at the other man and saw why-Gordon was too exhausted, haggard about the eyes. He’d looked that way a long time. Since Dent. “You should sleep,” slipped out.
“You’re one to talk,” Gordon said. “You are a man under there, aren’t you?”
He wasn’t supposed to be. And Gordon wasn’t supposed to be either, Bruce realized. He hadn’t let himself see Gordon’s exhaustion and pain because he couldn’t deal with that, the position Bruce was in, he wasn’t allowed to deal with that. Batman needed Gordon to be an instrument, just as Batman was a symbol; Gordon had to be the cop, the phone line to the force. Gordon couldn’t be a man, not to Batman, because Gordon would respond in kind, say things like, “you’re one to talk,” forcing his humanity onto Batman. And Batman, more than anyone, could not be human.
Bruce could hear the coffee brewing in the kitchen through the screen door. He wouldn’t be able to drink it, not with Gordon. Not together, like two men, two friends. Not like Soto.
Batman had given in to fighting along-side these others. But he would always be alone.
*
Even though Gordon had established the policy on Batman-that the Bat was not to get in the way of other cases, that the only officers dealing with Batman exclusively were on the special task force-much of the force was still occupied with hunting down the vigilante. It made getting anything real done even harder than it had been before.
But with Soto on board, Gordon felt like he was better able to deal with some of the issues that needed to be dealt with. He was putting away criminals. He was collecting evidence against them. He was making the streets safer, and spending even more time away from home.
“When I thought you’d died,” Barbara said, “you know what I said to myself? ‘At least now I know why he’s not coming home.’ That much, I could understand.”
Gordon was getting out of bed. To his wife’s dismay, he kept a police radio in their bedroom. “I came home,” he said, not weary until she had spoken.
“Is this home, Jim?” she asked. She was lying on her side, brown eyes bright in the dark. “Is it really?”
“I’m not going to die.” He wanted to kiss her, because she looked so beautiful like that, sleep tousled and tired, but he didn’t. “I didn’t die, sweetheart.”
“You didn’t,” she affirmed.
He closed his eyes for what would come next.
“You just pretended to. You just lied.”
“I couldn’t risk you.” They’d been over this a million times before.
“I know you couldn’t.” She laid a hand on his, where it was gripping the covers to pull away. “But haven’t you ever thought-it goes both ways? I can’t risk you, either?”
“I was a cop when you married me,” Gordon said, and got out of bed.
“You were a cop,” she said. “You weren’t this.”
“I’m still me.”
“Are you? Are you sure I know you any more?” She closed her eyes. “Do you still know me?”
He looked at her, her chestnut hair spread over the pillow, relaxed as though to sleep, though her wide features were tight. She was no longer young. He could see the lines around her eyes; if he pulled the cover lower and her nightclothes up, he would see the traces of old stretch marks. He loved each line more than the last, because they traced the life she had lived with him, the love they had given each other. But as he looked at her now, her mouth held too firm for sleep, he knew that not all those lines were from love and living. She looked older now than she had a month ago, and it was from the time they’d spent apart.
He wore an old white tank top and boxers she had gotten for him some long Christmas ago, red and plaid and far too faded. It would take little effort to strip them and her and be skin to skin with her, to crawl inside their bed and inside of her and kiss her.
But it would take far too much to get close, to know her again, as he had once known her, more than casually, more than biblically, soul to soul.
When the radio hummed again with another call for a unit halfway across town, he knew that what it would take was more than he was willing to give.
He brushed her brow and kissed her while she pretended to be asleep, and then he got dressed and left.
Batman was at the scene, though it wasn’t the mob or the Joker or another crazy who felt the need to wear a mask, so Soto wasn’t there.
After it was done, Gordon came home and again thought about getting undressed, thought about being beside/inside his wife, but it was almost dawn. She was really sleeping now, instead of pretending, and she looked so peaceful. There seemed little point. Anyway, apologies weren’t really enough.
He started the coffee pot instead and went for a smoke out on the porch. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he told the half-dark.
Batman said, “You should sleep.”
“You’re one to talk.” Gordon puffed on his cigarette. “You are a man under there, aren’t you?”
Batman didn’t say anything.
Five minutes passed, and Gordon heard the coffee machine ding. He decided to exercise the theory of that manhood, and said, “You want some coffee?” but realized for the past five minutes, he’d actually been alone.
Batman didn’t want to be known. That was something Gordon had been aware of from the beginning.
Lately, though, he’d been thinking: it’d be nice to know someone. Anyone at all.
*
“It’s Batman, isn’t it?” Barbara said one night.
“It isn’t Batman,” Gordon said wearily. He didn’t know how he could be more tired spending the night at home (at last) than when out working. “Batman’s an alleged felon.”
“Jim,” she said, voice patient. “You know I’m not asking you if hunting him is what you’re working on.”
There was more than one reason Gordon had been more concerned when Dent had his son than when he threatened Barbara. She was so strong.
“You’re working with him,” she said.
“If I wasn’t, I’d be working twice as long. We would have to fight him, too.”
“Have you ever thought . . .” She closed her mouth and opened it again. “Have you ever thought what Joker said on TV was true? That it was Batman that made-all this happen?”
“The mob was around a long time before Batman.” He tried not to sound stung.
“You know I’m not talking about the mob, either.”
“He’s trying to do the right thing.”
“He’s trying to do the right thing in all the wrong ways, Jim! You’ve said it yourself a million times.”
“You’re worried about-tell me, what? That I’m going to lose my integrity?” He did not try to hide the sting now. It was what he prided himself on. It was why she’d married him.
Barbara looked just stung. “How could you think that?”
Suddenly Gordon didn’t know. To the rest of the world, Batman was a criminal. Only Gordon knew the truth, and in some ways it was as though the rest of the world saw his mask, but Gordon saw him laid bare. Gordon’s instinct in the face-that still concealed face-of that unconcealed vulnerability was to defend, to protect. To serve.
Even against his wife.
But Barbara knew the truth, had been there to see the truth played out. In complete non sequitur, that made Gordon feel more alone, because against her he needed to defend the lie. She knew Batman’s innocence, and she need not trouble to hide that knowledge. That fell to Gordon and to Batman, who must pretend that one was the enemy and the other was against him
Barbara still looked hurt. “I’m worried you’ll lose your life. That you’ve given yourself over to this so completely and so deeply that we’ll lose you.”
He hadn’t thought about that, of course. He thought about his family all the time; it was all for them, for other families like them. But he hadn’t thought about how his family was meant to be his life; he hadn’t thought about saving his own life along with everyone else’s.
What she didn’t say was he would lose them, was losing them, that he’d given himself so completely and so deeply there wasn’t room for the rest any more; the rest was drifting away. She was drifting away, the kids, and left in their places was shadow, was Dent threatening again to take them all away, but there was Joker too, and even Batman.
What she didn’t say was he was losing himself.
“Soto,” Gordon said, because Soto knew the truth, and because was Batman was part of what had her so upset. “I’m working with him, too. He knows.”
Barbara brightened, the way Soto had when he’d thought of Batman being with them, as if three could stand against the world entire.
Barbara liked Gabriel Soto, and liked his wife Carol. Out of all the young officer and officers’ families Gordon had brought home over the years, the Sotos were one of the families they were closest to. Though the Gordons were older by almost two decades, they found they had a lot in common.
Gordon and Soto were some of the few that talked to their wives about their work-Gordon used to talk anyway, before it became necessary to fake his death and whatnot, and Barbara used to listen. Carol was a teacher. She talked to Barbara often about the community center where Barbara volunteered, where the force had sent Gordon when he was a rookie because he’d told them he’d decided to be a cop because he had wanted to help kids on the street.
Carol had come to the Gordons when she’d found out she was pregnant, because Barbara was older and had been through it before, and Gabe was gone so often. Maybe, too, Carol had come because she wanted Gordon to say things would change, that cops like he and Soto changed, and Gordon had. Another lie.
Barbara clucked over the Sotos like an older sister. For Gordon’s part, he couldn’t help feeling paternal, which should have been weird considering the way Soto felt, but Gordon never did consider it. He thought that Soto probably didn’t consider it either, which was for the best. It was just there between them, and Gordon didn’t mind it as long as it wasn’t acted upon.
Gordon had no illusions. He knew if he did act-had he wanted to-Soto would act as well. If Gordon asked it of him, he thought Soto might throw it all away-wonderful wife, a family he loved, respectability on the force, even his job. For Gordon.
Of course, Gordon wouldn’t ask it. First of all he didn’t want it. Second, he would never ask Soto to betray Carol that way. Gordon wouldn’t betray Barbara that way.
Still feeling slightly better about everything, Barbara asked the Sotos for dinner that Sunday, and Gordon saw he had asked the unspeakable of Soto after all. One look at Carol’s face, her cheerful, vibrant face, and Gordon knew Soto hadn’t told her about working with Batman, about anything they were doing.
One look at Soto and Gordon knew why Soto wouldn’t tell her, not unless Gordon told him to, and there was really little point. What need to worry a young mother, with so much worry on her hands already? Gordon knew these were Soto’s thoughts. And Soto was right, only he had never thought such thoughts before until Gordon had pushed him as far as he had now.
There was weight as they ate Barbara’s warm and well loved chicken casserole-the weight of Carol’s clueless chatter, the things Barbara knew that Carol didn’t, the things Gordon and Soto shared neither of the wives would.
Later in the evening, Gordon slipped out for a cigarette. He tried not to smoke when he was around his family, or when they had guests, but that amount of time when he was doing either was becoming less and less.
Soto slipped out after him. “I’ll try one of those,” he said, in his certain, strident way, which was all about disguising uncertainty.
Gordon took out his worn pack of cigarettes. The box was never clean and straight again after being in his pocket. “It’ll kill you,” he said, handing the box over.
Soto shuffled one out clumsily, unused to what came to Gordon as easily as breathing. Recovering, Soto lit the cigarette with his more accustomed elegance, the flame in the night illuminating the grace of his hands.
Gordon looked away, not wanting to see the cigarette brought to his mouth, those gapped teeth. “It’ll kill you,” was what Soto used to say every time Gordon lit up, the concern ill-concealed behind the arrogant admonishment. Soto knew it, too, was doing it anyway, because Gordon was. “You never wanted it before,” Gordon said, trying not to sound like he was asking for anything.
The answer was clear between them. Soto had never needed an excuse to come out here and be away from his family before, either. He’d never lied to them before, never worked with a wanted man before, never went out almost every night to get killed and asked for more before.
Soto shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to know how it tasted.”
Gordon closed his eyes. God . . .
“God,” Barbara had said, pulling away from his mouth. “Never thought I’d learn to love how they tasted . . .”
She hadn’t, not really. She still thought cigarettes were filthy things, and she still hated that her husband smoked. She had asked him to quit when Jimmy was born. Gordon had, and started again six months later, and then they’d gone ‘round the merry-go-round again when Babs was born . . . Promises made and not kept.
He’d promised Barbara too, that he’d never be unfaithful. He’d promised himself he’d never ask Gabriel to be unfaithful either.
But Gordon looked at the way Soto had his lips wrapped around that cigarette and knew it was worse than if he’d asked his friend to cheat on his wife. It was worse, because they did what the Batman did. It was wrong-neglecting their families, not being the fathers they should be. Lying to the force about their jobs, working with a criminal, even if his crimes were not all that people said. It was still wrong-but like the Batman, it was necessary.
Soto started coughing, and Gordon opened his eyes.
“Guess I’m still new to this,” Soto said.
“You get used to it,” Gordon said. “It becomes a part of you.”
Soto looked at him strangely. “Well, it’s nicotine. It’s an addictive substance, remember?”
Was that it? Gordon thought. Was he addicted? He didn’t know. He just knew he couldn’t seem to quit.
*
“I see why you trust Soto.”
“With my life.” Gordon wasn’t looking at Batman. “It’s another responsibility, among a bunch I’d rather not take on, but I guess I don’t have that much of a choice. The kid would die for me.”
“He’d live for you as well.”
“You see that too.” It wasn’t a question.
“Hard not to.”
“Sometimes I thought it might . . . just be me. He’s so young, and I’m . . . not the type of man . . .”
“It’s not just you.” Batman’s voice was harsh.
Gordon puffed on his cigarette. “I could be his father.”
“Don’t be naïve.”
“You mean that’s why he feels-the way he does.”
Batman seemed a more a part of the shadows than ever. “It’s not particularly uncommon,” he said.
Gordon looked at his cigarette, the slender, elegant shape of it. He wanted another drag, twitched with need for the taste, the resulting calm. Somehow, though, he couldn’t bring it back to his mouth just then. “You’re right,” Gordon said, the smoke from the unsmoked cigarette curled lazily into the night.
“You use it,” Batman pressed. “Exploit it. You know he’ll follow you.”
“And what am I supposed to do?” Gordon demanded. “Deny him his redemption? Refuse what he came to me for, just because now he wants to come to me for more? I’m not like you. I can’t rush on into Hell and leave everyone else behind in Purgatory for their own good.”
Batman stiffened. “This isn’t about me.”
“Isn’t it?” Gordon’s voice was sharp.
“You aren’t Soto.”
“For one, I’m too old.” Gordon puffed at last on that burning down cigarette. “Wouldn’t it be so much simpler if I was?” he asked at last. “This would make so much more sense. Do you know-Barbara was talking to me the other night, about what I do. She made it sound like I was having an affair.”
“She knows better.”
Gordon nodded, sucking on that last sweetness of cigarette. “She does. But I think sometimes she wishes that was what I was doing after all. Like me. This would be much easier if I didn’t still love her so goddamn much.”
Batman was silent for a while. “I haven’t left you,” he said finally.
Gordon smashed his cigarette. “What?”
“You said I left everyone behind-”
“No, that’s right. I grabbed on. Wouldn’t let you go that way alone. I’d pull you up tooth and nail, if I had to.”
“You did. You are.” A pause. “I drag you down.”
Gordon shook his head. “There you go. Making it all about you again. It’s me. I can’t let go.” He looked at Batman. “Believe me, how I’ve tried.”
Another pause. “I’m sorry, Jim.”
“So am I.”
*
TBC, eventually