Divergence - Chapter One
Title: Divergence
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Dark, disturbing themes.
Place: Nolan-verse. Based off events from Batman Begins.
Disclaimer: Not mine, more's the pity.
Summary: AU. The consequences of one action have radical repercussions; events in Nolan-verse take a different turn here than they should have.
This is by no means perfect; there's a lot about it I want to tweak, but after staring at it for 30 minutes without the first clue of how to go about doing that, here's what I've got. Hope you find it interesting!
Chapter One
Summary: Nothing is as it seems.
Jim Gordon had never been particularly fond of silence. Too many childhood associations, he supposed. The bogeyman lurking in a quiet corner, the dark spaces underneath his bed, the calm before the storm, the silence of a tomb; the euphemisms were too many to express. He rather thought that his quiet, controlled upbringing had given him an unhealthy love of chaos. And Gotham was nothing if not chaos.
So after years of patrolling her streets and accustoming himself to the frequency of violence on them, he had to admit, if only to himself, that he was beginning to find their current unnatural stillness disturbing. He’d gotten so used to the status quo that he could hardly fathom the new and ‘improved’ Gotham. Where once before the alleyways and underground tunnels of Gotham would have teemed with vagrants, criminals, and the height of human filth, now nary a soul could be seen wandering about at this hour. The echoing emptiness was astonishing; even the high traffic areas lay empty. As he wove between the residential streets heading to the waterfront, Jim cast a critical eye over his beloved city.
Most people would celebrate the system working as it should; the anarchy brought to heel, the quiet. But not Jim. I feel, he reflected, like an old man trying to fill a young man’s shoes, and I’m not even forty. Too much of what they did these days was politics. Jim liked the grunt work; it made him feel connected, part of Gotham’s solution. If he’d wanted to be part of a public relations forum, he’d have applied to ride a desk at city hall.
These days, it was almost difficult to justify the gas needed to patrol the streets, considering there was no one out to protect, or to catch in the act. As happened quite often now, he found himself thinking about life in other districts, other cities, other areas of chaos. At least once a week he seemed to talk himself out of it. Gotham was in his blood, and he knew in his bones that leaving wasn’t an option, but sometimes he couldn’t help but wonder. It would make Barbara happy, he knew. Or happier, he reflected, since it seemed a long time since the sum total of the word could be applied to her. To either of them, really. But that was Gotham for you; you were really only in danger when you were most content, because then it had something to snatch away.
Depressing thoughts for an oppressive night, he thought, grimacing. A storm was coming in; the air was heavy with unshed rain, the night swollen with the threat of a sharp breeze. Jim flicked his turn signal as he eased into the more industrial areas of Gotham. Before the Reform, the warehouses here had overflowed with homeless people and still did to some extent, but each day more and more of them disappeared - into specialized housing, into oblivion, institutions, or into the river for all Jim knew. Technically, he mused as he spotted squatters trying to warm their hands by a barrel fire, he was obligated to report this nomadic activity. But in spite of what his superiors wanted, he just couldn’t see the reasoning behind pulling in dozens of desperate people and confining them to holding cells until they could figure out what to do with them. Jim had never been good with authority; he supposed that accounted for most of the reason he was out here wasting gas. His demotion from sergeant to detective had been a harsh blow. With the reins tightening at the GPD, Jim knew he hadn’t been the only one chafing at the newly required levels of discipline; he’d just been the first to break. While disappointing, it had come as no surprise to anyone. His penchant for questioning orders was well documented.
Barbara hadn’t spoken to him for two weeks when he’d brought home the news. Not that that was anything new, he thought sadly. For himself at least, the demotion had one unexpected benefit; it got him out of the station. Pounding the streets of Gotham beat pounding papers at a desk these days; being at a desk usually meant being in the vicinity of other cops, which to be frank was something to be avoided if at all possible. He couldn’t help it. Jim didn’t consider himself a confrontational man by nature, but he’d found his patience and faith in humanity seriously tested in these last hard years.
He glanced at the clock. It was late, going on midnight. He’d been out here for hours; if he had any sense, he’d call it a night, turn in, head home. But that, much like the GPD, was the last place he wanted to be. These streets were familiar; their names were so much a part of him they were practically family. Visiting them held far more appeal than heading home to his mediocre, uninspiring life, sad as that seemed.
At least he was riding solo these days; as a senior detective, he had his pick of partners, which was something anyway. And Jim had never shirked at getting his hands dirty, though there was little enough to dirty them with these days. The streets were almost meticulously clean; in the beginning, construction had torn Gotham apart, but things had recently begun to settle and expand. The number of service buildings had tripled; shelters and low-rent housing were vastly available now, and availed of. Security was mostly high, the better to keep people both out and in. It wasn’t yet illegal to be out doors after a certain hour, but Jim imagined a curfew was well on its way. By the same token, vagrancy wasn’t yet illegal, but it was so strictly policed it might as well have been.
The Reform had scrapped Gotham from the ground up; all that remained was to rebuild her.
Sometimes Jim almost preferred the old, damaged, but infinitely more understandable Gotham.
He happened upon it so suddenly that at first Jim didn’t realize he was witnessing an actual crime until he was practically part of it. When he finally noticed the beat-up, nondescript black minivan parked at the sidewalk, his mind began automatically cataloging events. Broken display window, getaway vehicle (trunk open), four young adults ranging anywhere from seventeen to twenty-five years, in various stages of relieving a grocery store of its merchandise. One young man - Caucasian, brunette, 5’7, thin, plain sweats - was in the drivers seat, idling the car, the other three - female, two males, two blond, one brunette, approximately 5’6-5’11 - scurried from car to store and back again. It had been so long since Jim had witnessed an actual (major) violation of the law that he spent a long second hesitating, reconfirming what his eyes had already been telling him.
He took so long, in fact, that the man in the drivers seat had enough time to see him, panic, and press down once sharply against the horn. At the blare of noise, all three teens jumped nearly a foot in the air, dropped whatever they had in their arms, and froze.
Jim’s first reaction was all cop. He reached out automatically to turn on his siren and flashing lights. And stopped.
Each of these kids - and kids they were - bore signs of severe malnutrition and exhaustion. Their faces were skeletal, bloodless and chapped. They all looked like a strong breeze might knock them over, or perhaps expire them on the spot. His fingers nudged the signal but didn’t press down. As with most decisions in regards to the law these days, Jim hesitated.
He could bring them in. If they were really slow (and chances were they would be), too startled to react, or otherwise too stupid to run in the right direction, he should be able to tag them all, easily. But seeing their poor, wretched faces tugged at Jim’s heartstrings. The dirt caking these four was probably enough to fertilize his garden for a year; they were obviously without homes. Turning them in might be good for them, he reminded himself. They might be stealing food instead of electronics or cars, but that didn’t make them pitiable, just more selective criminals. If I pick them up, he thought, they’ll get shelter, central heating, and probably steady meals. Surely it couldn’t be worse in the system than it was out here, even behind bars.
But it could, of course. In this town, one criminal offense was just as good or bad as another; there was no mercy to be had in the justice system, and Jim knew that a crime like this could lead to a lifetime behind bars. Once in the system, no one escaped, not in Gotham. In this city, littering was almost as likely to get you jail time as murder. Robbery…
He shouldn’t hesitate. They were committing a crime. Jim knew that. The grocery store, for one, wouldn’t appreciate their likely explanations of starvation and necessity. That was, after all, why the Reform had restructured the fight against Gotham’s poverty and begun providing for all its citizens, no matter how poor. For a price, of course.
He should do it. He shouldn’t just sit here, frozen with indecision about something that seemed so simple. Crime. Consequence. Police officer. Punishment. Criminal record. Jail. It was all laid out in black and white. Simple.
So why wasn’t he hitting his siren? And why weren’t they running? They’d all frozen like deer in the headlights, and as the moments bled away, the tension ratcheted up higher and higher until Jim thought his head might explode. He let out a breath. He was hesitating, but the truth was that he wasn’t an indecisive man. The hesitation was to sooth his sense of duty, nothing more. He’d decided what he was going to do the second he spotted them. Before that even. Maybe the first day he’d gotten into his car and headed out to patrol the streets after his demotion. Or the day he’d blown up in Commissioner Loeb’s face and decided to throw any chance of climbing the promotion ladder out the window. Months before that perhaps, or earlier still, a year ago, the first day Gotham news crews had run the story, posted articles on every available magazine and newspaper: Reclamation Project Approved by City Council.
That had been it, he rather thought. The first day of the rest of his life. The beginning of the end.
He took his hand away from the button. Put his car in reverse, backed out of the alleyway. Turned back onto the main road. Shifted into gear; kept on driving.
You didn’t do anything spectacular there, Jimbo, he told himself. You bought those kids a day, maybe two or three, before they get sighted by someone else and hauled in. Or worse yet, before the shadows catch wind of the grocery store robbery and they disappear into the night, their fate a mystery to all but the most powerful of Gotham’s elite. You had to run in the right circles in this city, to get any sort of useful information out of it.
But three days was three days. And three days of freedom was an unheard of prize in Gotham.
It seemed idyllic. Gotham was now Reformed, completely revamped from the inside out. The Narrows had been obliterated, crime had all but stopped, poverty was reduced by better than half, and the streets were safe. But no one walked them. No one dared.
No more gangs, no more dirty money, no more organized crime. Justice was served dispassionately, wholly, and without bias, just as it always should be. A perfect utopia. And in exchange for this veneer of peace, they traded only their free will, their silence, and their obedience. And fear. Of all things, fear was paramount in everyone’s mind, and with good reason. There was only one law in Gotham City now, one man who applied it without hesitation and without pity, and if you were the one he applied it to, your life wasn’t worth living.
Bruce Wayne ruled Gotham City with an iron fist. And with Batman as his enforcer, none would, or ever had, dared to defy him.
The Prince had taken up the mantle of his station, and in his reign, the city and everyone in it belonged to him, without question. Beneath the heel of his boot, Gotham became a safe place again. And in that safety, silence blossomed, still than darkness and stiller than death.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Dark, disturbing themes.
Place: Nolan-verse. Based off events from Batman Begins.
Disclaimer: Not mine, more's the pity.
Summary: AU. The consequences of one action have radical repercussions; events in Nolan-verse take a different turn here than they should have.
This is by no means perfect; there's a lot about it I want to tweak, but after staring at it for 30 minutes without the first clue of how to go about doing that, here's what I've got. Hope you find it interesting!
Chapter One
Summary: Nothing is as it seems.
Jim Gordon had never been particularly fond of silence. Too many childhood associations, he supposed. The bogeyman lurking in a quiet corner, the dark spaces underneath his bed, the calm before the storm, the silence of a tomb; the euphemisms were too many to express. He rather thought that his quiet, controlled upbringing had given him an unhealthy love of chaos. And Gotham was nothing if not chaos.
So after years of patrolling her streets and accustoming himself to the frequency of violence on them, he had to admit, if only to himself, that he was beginning to find their current unnatural stillness disturbing. He’d gotten so used to the status quo that he could hardly fathom the new and ‘improved’ Gotham. Where once before the alleyways and underground tunnels of Gotham would have teemed with vagrants, criminals, and the height of human filth, now nary a soul could be seen wandering about at this hour. The echoing emptiness was astonishing; even the high traffic areas lay empty. As he wove between the residential streets heading to the waterfront, Jim cast a critical eye over his beloved city.
Most people would celebrate the system working as it should; the anarchy brought to heel, the quiet. But not Jim. I feel, he reflected, like an old man trying to fill a young man’s shoes, and I’m not even forty. Too much of what they did these days was politics. Jim liked the grunt work; it made him feel connected, part of Gotham’s solution. If he’d wanted to be part of a public relations forum, he’d have applied to ride a desk at city hall.
These days, it was almost difficult to justify the gas needed to patrol the streets, considering there was no one out to protect, or to catch in the act. As happened quite often now, he found himself thinking about life in other districts, other cities, other areas of chaos. At least once a week he seemed to talk himself out of it. Gotham was in his blood, and he knew in his bones that leaving wasn’t an option, but sometimes he couldn’t help but wonder. It would make Barbara happy, he knew. Or happier, he reflected, since it seemed a long time since the sum total of the word could be applied to her. To either of them, really. But that was Gotham for you; you were really only in danger when you were most content, because then it had something to snatch away.
Depressing thoughts for an oppressive night, he thought, grimacing. A storm was coming in; the air was heavy with unshed rain, the night swollen with the threat of a sharp breeze. Jim flicked his turn signal as he eased into the more industrial areas of Gotham. Before the Reform, the warehouses here had overflowed with homeless people and still did to some extent, but each day more and more of them disappeared - into specialized housing, into oblivion, institutions, or into the river for all Jim knew. Technically, he mused as he spotted squatters trying to warm their hands by a barrel fire, he was obligated to report this nomadic activity. But in spite of what his superiors wanted, he just couldn’t see the reasoning behind pulling in dozens of desperate people and confining them to holding cells until they could figure out what to do with them. Jim had never been good with authority; he supposed that accounted for most of the reason he was out here wasting gas. His demotion from sergeant to detective had been a harsh blow. With the reins tightening at the GPD, Jim knew he hadn’t been the only one chafing at the newly required levels of discipline; he’d just been the first to break. While disappointing, it had come as no surprise to anyone. His penchant for questioning orders was well documented.
Barbara hadn’t spoken to him for two weeks when he’d brought home the news. Not that that was anything new, he thought sadly. For himself at least, the demotion had one unexpected benefit; it got him out of the station. Pounding the streets of Gotham beat pounding papers at a desk these days; being at a desk usually meant being in the vicinity of other cops, which to be frank was something to be avoided if at all possible. He couldn’t help it. Jim didn’t consider himself a confrontational man by nature, but he’d found his patience and faith in humanity seriously tested in these last hard years.
He glanced at the clock. It was late, going on midnight. He’d been out here for hours; if he had any sense, he’d call it a night, turn in, head home. But that, much like the GPD, was the last place he wanted to be. These streets were familiar; their names were so much a part of him they were practically family. Visiting them held far more appeal than heading home to his mediocre, uninspiring life, sad as that seemed.
At least he was riding solo these days; as a senior detective, he had his pick of partners, which was something anyway. And Jim had never shirked at getting his hands dirty, though there was little enough to dirty them with these days. The streets were almost meticulously clean; in the beginning, construction had torn Gotham apart, but things had recently begun to settle and expand. The number of service buildings had tripled; shelters and low-rent housing were vastly available now, and availed of. Security was mostly high, the better to keep people both out and in. It wasn’t yet illegal to be out doors after a certain hour, but Jim imagined a curfew was well on its way. By the same token, vagrancy wasn’t yet illegal, but it was so strictly policed it might as well have been.
The Reform had scrapped Gotham from the ground up; all that remained was to rebuild her.
Sometimes Jim almost preferred the old, damaged, but infinitely more understandable Gotham.
He happened upon it so suddenly that at first Jim didn’t realize he was witnessing an actual crime until he was practically part of it. When he finally noticed the beat-up, nondescript black minivan parked at the sidewalk, his mind began automatically cataloging events. Broken display window, getaway vehicle (trunk open), four young adults ranging anywhere from seventeen to twenty-five years, in various stages of relieving a grocery store of its merchandise. One young man - Caucasian, brunette, 5’7, thin, plain sweats - was in the drivers seat, idling the car, the other three - female, two males, two blond, one brunette, approximately 5’6-5’11 - scurried from car to store and back again. It had been so long since Jim had witnessed an actual (major) violation of the law that he spent a long second hesitating, reconfirming what his eyes had already been telling him.
He took so long, in fact, that the man in the drivers seat had enough time to see him, panic, and press down once sharply against the horn. At the blare of noise, all three teens jumped nearly a foot in the air, dropped whatever they had in their arms, and froze.
Jim’s first reaction was all cop. He reached out automatically to turn on his siren and flashing lights. And stopped.
Each of these kids - and kids they were - bore signs of severe malnutrition and exhaustion. Their faces were skeletal, bloodless and chapped. They all looked like a strong breeze might knock them over, or perhaps expire them on the spot. His fingers nudged the signal but didn’t press down. As with most decisions in regards to the law these days, Jim hesitated.
He could bring them in. If they were really slow (and chances were they would be), too startled to react, or otherwise too stupid to run in the right direction, he should be able to tag them all, easily. But seeing their poor, wretched faces tugged at Jim’s heartstrings. The dirt caking these four was probably enough to fertilize his garden for a year; they were obviously without homes. Turning them in might be good for them, he reminded himself. They might be stealing food instead of electronics or cars, but that didn’t make them pitiable, just more selective criminals. If I pick them up, he thought, they’ll get shelter, central heating, and probably steady meals. Surely it couldn’t be worse in the system than it was out here, even behind bars.
But it could, of course. In this town, one criminal offense was just as good or bad as another; there was no mercy to be had in the justice system, and Jim knew that a crime like this could lead to a lifetime behind bars. Once in the system, no one escaped, not in Gotham. In this city, littering was almost as likely to get you jail time as murder. Robbery…
He shouldn’t hesitate. They were committing a crime. Jim knew that. The grocery store, for one, wouldn’t appreciate their likely explanations of starvation and necessity. That was, after all, why the Reform had restructured the fight against Gotham’s poverty and begun providing for all its citizens, no matter how poor. For a price, of course.
He should do it. He shouldn’t just sit here, frozen with indecision about something that seemed so simple. Crime. Consequence. Police officer. Punishment. Criminal record. Jail. It was all laid out in black and white. Simple.
So why wasn’t he hitting his siren? And why weren’t they running? They’d all frozen like deer in the headlights, and as the moments bled away, the tension ratcheted up higher and higher until Jim thought his head might explode. He let out a breath. He was hesitating, but the truth was that he wasn’t an indecisive man. The hesitation was to sooth his sense of duty, nothing more. He’d decided what he was going to do the second he spotted them. Before that even. Maybe the first day he’d gotten into his car and headed out to patrol the streets after his demotion. Or the day he’d blown up in Commissioner Loeb’s face and decided to throw any chance of climbing the promotion ladder out the window. Months before that perhaps, or earlier still, a year ago, the first day Gotham news crews had run the story, posted articles on every available magazine and newspaper: Reclamation Project Approved by City Council.
That had been it, he rather thought. The first day of the rest of his life. The beginning of the end.
He took his hand away from the button. Put his car in reverse, backed out of the alleyway. Turned back onto the main road. Shifted into gear; kept on driving.
You didn’t do anything spectacular there, Jimbo, he told himself. You bought those kids a day, maybe two or three, before they get sighted by someone else and hauled in. Or worse yet, before the shadows catch wind of the grocery store robbery and they disappear into the night, their fate a mystery to all but the most powerful of Gotham’s elite. You had to run in the right circles in this city, to get any sort of useful information out of it.
But three days was three days. And three days of freedom was an unheard of prize in Gotham.
It seemed idyllic. Gotham was now Reformed, completely revamped from the inside out. The Narrows had been obliterated, crime had all but stopped, poverty was reduced by better than half, and the streets were safe. But no one walked them. No one dared.
No more gangs, no more dirty money, no more organized crime. Justice was served dispassionately, wholly, and without bias, just as it always should be. A perfect utopia. And in exchange for this veneer of peace, they traded only their free will, their silence, and their obedience. And fear. Of all things, fear was paramount in everyone’s mind, and with good reason. There was only one law in Gotham City now, one man who applied it without hesitation and without pity, and if you were the one he applied it to, your life wasn’t worth living.
Bruce Wayne ruled Gotham City with an iron fist. And with Batman as his enforcer, none would, or ever had, dared to defy him.
The Prince had taken up the mantle of his station, and in his reign, the city and everyone in it belonged to him, without question. Beneath the heel of his boot, Gotham became a safe place again. And in that safety, silence blossomed, still than darkness and stiller than death.