A/N: This story is technically set in the Batman Beyond continuity, which directly follows the B:TAS continuity. I posted it in B:TAS because it only contains those characters, and none from Batman Beyond. However, you do need to have seen the beginning of the very first episode of Batman Beyond, which contains information vital to this story and was its inspiration. Bruce Wayne is still Batman. It's sort of...an epilogue to B:TAS that deals with what happens after the events at the beginning of the first Batman Beyond episode.
As an aside...I never liked that they made Batgirl aware of Batman's identity, but it was necessary in this story, so I used it. Bleh.
This is my first foray into Batman fanfiction. I've started other pieces before, but never finished any. My Batman IS the B:TAS Batman (excluding that dumb final season when they changed everything) so if the couple of things from the comic continuity I've mentioned are wrong, the reason is I've never read the comics. I just...liked the storytelling aspects of what I wrote. And hey, the comics change continuity all the time, so why can't I? Anyway, that's all. Enjoy.
The Last Good Men
She sighed and turned her collar up against the cold. After giving a nod, the officer with her pulled the switch that turned off the large searchlight.
"Pack it up," she said huskily, her eyes downcast.
"Pack it up? But...detective—"
"Just do as I say," she bit back and strode toward the stairs. As the door behind her swung shut she heard the sounds of the heavy tarp being thrown over the bat-signal.
Batman hadn't come. And he hadn't come in a long time.
She would have feared he was dead, except she knew from reports of the kidnapping months ago that he had left the scene apparently injured, but alive. And there was of course the fact that Bruce Wayne was still alive, fighting corporate battles that made headlines almost daily.
Detective Barbara Gordon kept her collar up after she'd gotten into her car, not bothering to turn on the heat. She didn't think it could do anything against the ice that had crept into her soul.
What had happened to the Dark Knight that made him disappear without a word? If it had been injury, there would have been news about Bruce Wayne. Or perhaps it had been a different type of injury, like the one Barbara felt now as criminals ran rampant through the city, taking advantage of the obvious disappearance of Gotham's most stalwart warrior of justice.
She felt betrayed.
It was true, she had dealt Batman a similar blow herself when she told him she was retiring her alter ego to focus on the unmasked side of law enforcement after her father's retirement. He hadn't tried to argue with her, but the anger and hurt was evident on his face even half-hidden by the cowl. And after he had swung away on one of his now-antiquated grapple lines, they never spoke again.
She was the last to leave, making him alone in the vigilante fight for Gotham. Reflecting now, she wondered if he hadn't considered all of them more than allies, and if their absence in his life was part of why Batman had suddenly vanished. Or maybe it was simply that Wayne Enterprises needed more attention from its CEO, with all the pressure Derek Powers was putting on the company.
No matter the reason, Batman was clearly no longer one of those who fought for justice in Gotham. And it was with a heavy heart that she knew she had to break the news to her father.
She parked the car in the driveway of their shared home, where she lived as his primary caregiver. His mind was as sharp as ever, but age had taken its toll and the former police commissioner's body was barely holding on to life. Barbara lived in fear of the night when she would return and find him no longer breathing.
"Dad?" she called gently, with baited breath as she entered the house and turned on the entryway light.
"Barbara?" came the soft reply from deep within the house.
She released her breath and hung her coat and hat in the hall. As she made her way to her father's room she released her graying-red hair from its professional bun, the tresses warming her a bit as they fell over her shoulders.
Jim Gordon lifted his head from the pillow and squinted his eyes to read his daughter's face. And he let his head drop heavily as he sighed.
"He didn't come."
"I'm sorry, Dad," she said with a heavy heart.
"He must be dead," Gordon gasped bitterly, and reached for the nearby oxygen mask connected to the tank that sat beside his bed.
"He might not be. He might come back some day."
"It's been months, Barbara. Ever since I saw him that night..."
Barbara remembered the tale her father had told her. It was after her father's retirement, but Veronica Vreeland had come to see him and begged him to work on her daughter's case, and he agreed.
He was only at the site of the kidnapping because he had happened to be at headquarters going over evidence when Batman had alerted them that he'd found the young woman. He didn't even try to get out of the squad car, his arthritic body preventing him of being of use in the arrest. But while he was watching the officers leading the cuffed criminals to justice, he caught a glimpse of black and red out of the corner of his eye.
Batman, without his cowl, leaned heavily against the wall of a building across the street. He would have missed him entirely in the darkness but for the startling red bat emblazoned across his chest. And now, for the first time, he saw the shock of silver hair the Dark Knight sported.
Gordon's jaw had gone slack at the sight of the man, seeming no longer the enigmatic and terrifying warrior of the night, but a tired old man, just like himself.
Batman's back was to him, and Gordon struggled to open the door of the squad car and get a foot planted firmly on the ground. He finally succeeded and shakily lifted himself out of the vehicle.
"Batman!" he had called, and the black-clad man turned and they looked at each other face to face for the first and last time. He was too far away for Gordon to make out any details beyond the already-familiar jaw and the silvered hair, but the vigilante had looked at him for several seconds before turning and launching into the sky with his new flight-capable suit.
It was the last time anyone had seen Batman, both Barbara and her father remembered. Whether he had been injured in the fight, neither knew. Barbara had closed the door on that relationship when the moniker of 'Caped Crusader' still applied. But never again did he haunt Gotham's criminals and give hope to the masses.
Now, he only haunted those he had left behind. Like Jim Gordon.
"Dad, I..."
Barbara wanted to tell him what she knew. That Batman wasn't dead, and still doing good for Gotham in the form of his other persona. But then she would have to reveal his identity. And some loyalties she would never betray.
The former commissioner took a long draw from the oxygen and then set it aside. "Wish...I could have talked to him, that night. Maybe I could have...said something...to change his mind..."
"Dad?" she leaned forward, watching her father's face twist in worry and then fall into a sudden sleep. Part of the curse of old age.
A tear slipped down the detective's face as she watched the ragged breathing of the broken shell of her father's body. It wasn't fair. That he should suffer because of another man's selfishness.
All her brooding ended there as she angrily strode to the phone and dialed a long-memorized number. Bruce Wayne may be able to distance himself from Gotham City with all his wealth, but he couldn't ignore its people any longer.
"Hello?" a familiar raspy voice answered almost on the first ring.
Barbara nearly gasped. She hadn't forgotten the sound of that voice, but hearing it again so piercing and masterful brought back a flood of memories. She was left speechless.
"I can hear you breathing," the disembodied voice said. "If this is a prank..."
"No! No, B-...Bruce, it's me."
There was a momentary silence. "What do you want?"
She suddenly didn't know. What did she want?
"Did...did you see the signal tonight?"
"I've stopped looking for it."
Barbara felt her anger rising again.
"Well...that's all well and good for you," she said, feeling like a petulant teenager again, "but there are people out there who still depend on you!"
"No one depends on me anymore. Gotham has changed."
"But its people haven't! My father hasn't!"
"Your father?" he asked, and she detected a change in his voice. A softening of the cold exterior.
"Yes, my father. He waits up for me every night to see if you've come back. He's going to worry himself into the grave, thinking about you."
Another pause. "Tell him Batman is dead. It may as well be true."
"What happened to you, Bruce? I thought you would never give up the fight. It's what you taught me! It's part of why I joined the police force."
"I already told you. Batman is dead!"
"So that's how it's going to be. Well, just know that he took my father and all of Gotham's soul with him!" she cried, slamming down the receiver.
She looked over to where her father was still in a fitful sleep. She wondered how long it would be until her words were true.
It was that thought that sent her into a distressed sleep of her own that night, plagued with nightmares of losing fights against both old villains and new. It was hours later in the middle of one of those nightmares when a sound woke her and she opened her eyes suddenly, staring at the ceiling in the darkened room.
She didn't move, and barely breathed, aware that if it were a break-in the slightest sound could alert the criminals. And with her dad helpless in the next room, that was the last thing she wanted to do.
Sure enough, a moment later she heard the slightest scraping sound—that of a window being opened. She rose from the bed and with slow, precise movements lifted her weapon from its holster. The window she had heard was in one of the two rooms adjacent to hers, the closest of which was her father's.
She listened to the sound of feet softly moving across the floor and cocked her gun. This wasn't their first break-in, and there were too many criminals who still wanted revenge on Jim Gordon for her to take any chances. She tiptoed carefully toward her father's room where the light from a lamp suddenly shone from the crack of the open door.
She put her hand on the knob and calmed her breathing. She would shoot first and ask questions later, but if she moved too quickly now her father could still be in jeopardy. She carefully poised her finger on the trigger, took a deep breath, and...
"Jim?"
She barely kept from gasping when a familiar voice sounded from behind the closed door.
"Jim? Jim!" the voice became more urgent, and then she heard the sound of her father stirring. She positioned herself to peer through the crack and squinted as the bright light hit her eyes. She watched her father blink himself and then his jaw fell slack.
"Batman!?"
The Dark Knight stood near the bed, tall and masterful as ever, the black and red of his suit an unusual sight in the light. He had made one change to his costume however—the cowl that completely covered his face was absent, replaced by the shorter-eared cowl and cape from his younger days.
"Boy, you're a sight for sore eyes! Where have you been?" Jim Gordon asked, his voice filled with glee and hope that had been absent for a long time. Concealed outside the door, a tear slipped down Barbara's cheek.
"...Away."
"You should wake Barbara in the next room, and tell her you're back! There's been a case of serial killings that she—"
"I'm not back, Jim," Batman said gravely, turning away from the bed.
"You...what do you mean you're...not back?"
"I only came to...to say goodbye."
The former commissioner began to speak but a cough came out instead, and he reached for the oxygen. Batman turned to face him again.
"I figured I owed you that."
"I don't understand. Why have you stopped fighting?"
There was no malice in Jim Gordon's voice like had been in his daughter's. Batman sighed, his eyes visibly downcast behind his cowl.
"I'm old, Jim. I can't...be Batman anymore. He used to be all that I am, and now...he's just not."
Batman watched his old friend blink in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"Gotham has changed. Its people have changed. Batman was forced to change with them. But..."
He strode away from the bed and stood in the far corner of the room, facing the wall. He pulled the cowl back and let it hang behind his head, revealing his silver hair.
"...I can't change."
Barbara watched her father push himself to a sitting position with great effort, something he'd not been able to do alone in years. He stared intently at the back of Batman's uncovered head, eyes agape. From her vantage point, Barbara could see the tightly closed eyes and pained expression on the face of Batman's alter ego.
"I still don't understand," Jim said.
"I can't find the good anymore. There's still people like you, and your daughter. And...and me. But for the most part the whole city...maybe the whole world, has gone the way of people like Derek Powers."
"Derek Powers?"
"People who don't care who they hurt. People who are only invested in themselves and don't care who they destroy to get what they want. And there's no way to stop them, except—!"
Batman had started to turn in his rage, but stopped, and Gordon caught a glimpse of an ear and an eyebrow along with the familiar jaw. For a split second he thought he recognized the man, but then the image was gone and he was again a complete mystery.
"You can still stop them. You've been fighting people like that all your life. Both of us have."
"No! You don't understand, they..."
"What? What is it?" the former commissioner asked, and reached for his oxygen again as another cough gripped his chest.
"They...they were going to take away what Batman stands for. What justice means. It was becoming harder, and harder to stop any of them without...resorting to their methods."
"Their methods?"
The silver-haired man hung his head in the corner and sighed, sounding defeated. "I only survived the fight with Bunny Vreeland's kidnappers by...pointing a gun at them."
Jim Gordon watched him uncertainly. "I used to point guns at criminals for a living."
"But I don't!" Batman said, starting to turn again and then catching himself. "And I don't...I don't know if I was bluffing or not. If they had called me on it, I couldn't have made it out of there unless I pulled the trigger!"
The bedridden officer took another draw on his oxygen. "I've had to kill in self-defense before. I never liked it. I still have nightmares about it sometimes. But it was still self-defense."
"It's different for me. I can't take a life," Batman replied lowly, shaking his head.
Jim Gordon was silent, having no words to offer. Only Batman understood his reasoning, and the former commissioner knew he couldn't change his mind.
"Well...for what it's worth, I'm glad you didn't have to."
Batman straightened again and pulled his cowl back on. "What's worse is not knowing if I would have or not. I was in pain, and afraid. Anything could have happened because my...body betrayed me!" he said angrily, throwing a wild punch in the air.
"We all get old," Gordon chuckled. "Just look at me."
Batman did finally turn, the calculating cold back in his eyes. "It's not...just age," he said, approaching the bed and sitting down on the edge.
Gordon was momentarily startled by the action, but recovered quickly. "What do you mean?"
Batman took in a breath, and then shook his head. "Nothing." His gaze seemed to soften behind his mask then as he regarded the frail man before him sitting in the bed. "You know, you're the same age that my father would have been...if he were alive."
"Oh. I'm sorry. When did he die?"
Batman looked away, taking a deep breath before looking back. "When I was a boy. Both of my parents were murdered. By a common, frightened thief. It's...why I decided to become Batman."
"Oh. I'm sorry... Was the killer ever caught?"
"Yes," Batman replied, a faint growl in his voice.
"Well. I'm glad of that."
"You were one of the cops who worked on the case. You were just a detective at the time. But I remembered you."
"Oh," Gordon said again, his vocabulary seeming to have diminished. He didn't see the point in Batman telling him all these details about his life.
"I've always looked up to you, Jim. And admired who you are. You've always been...part of my family. And I thought...well, I wanted to tell you. And to say goodbye, now that Batman is no longer part of Gotham." Batman's gaze was now lowered. "I'll keep fighting...in other ways."
"It's your choice of course, my friend. I always figured you'd be the last good man in Gotham. I fear for the future of this city without you."
"So do I... But Batman doesn't have a place here anymore. I should have realized that long ago."
Gordon took another breath of oxygen as Batman rose from the bed and strode back to the window, his cape flowing behind him.
"Hey, for what it's worth, I'm glad you wore the old cape and cowl. Always thought it was scarier than that new one."
Batman glanced back and grinned, and then in flourish took the whole thing off and tossed it to the former commissioner where it landed over his head, blocking the brief glimpse he would have had of Batman's fully uncovered face.
"You can keep it."
By the time Gordon had managed to pull the cape down Batman had switched out the light and was climbing out the window, the darkness now obscuring his identity. But the smile on his face was still evident.
"Thank you, Batman."
Gordon was startled when Batman next spoke, the ever-present rasp suddenly absent from his voice and replaced by the soft, gentle tones of a familiar one. "No, Jim. Thank you. And...goodbye."
He was gone a moment later, his footsteps growing distant outside. Just then the door swung open and Barbara hurried in and rushed to the window, gun in hand.
"Barbara! No, you don't need that! It was just Batman."
"I know. I heard everything," she said as she tried to catch a glimpse of the formerly-caped Crusader. All of her resentment towards him had faded when she heard his revelations about the kidnapping. The friendly affection she had felt when she was Batgirl had returned.
"Can you believe that? I never would have thought old age would take him. But I guess it did have to happen."
"It was more than that..."
"What do you mean?"
"Didn't you hear what he said? He was scared, and afraid. If he had pulled that trigger, it would have made him no better than Joe Chill."
"Joe Chill...why do I know that name?"
"He was the man who murdered Thomas and Martha Wayne," Barbara said, leaving the window to sit at her father's side.
"Thomas and Martha Wayne...I remember the case. But what do they have to do with—?"
Just then the soft purr of a car's motor sounded outside the open window, and both Gordons peered through the dark to see the headlights of a Town Car lighting up their driveway as it backed up.
"Hey. That's not the Batmobile." Gordon leaned forward to squint out the window, and just made out the black lettering of 'WAYNE' on the car's license plate.
Barbara smiled and put a gentle hand on her father's shoulder, watching the wheels turn.
"Oh my gosh!" he exclaimed, looking down at the cape and cowl in his hands, eyes wide shock. Batman's words while he was seated on the bed suddenly came back to him.
'You were one of the cops who worked on the case. You were just a detective at the time. But I remembered you. I've always looked up to you, Jim. And admired who you are. You've always been...part of my family.'
Tears began forming in Jim Gordon's eyes as the full depth of everything the now-unmasked man had said hit home. He looked up at his daughter. "And...and Barbara, you knew? How!?"
She smiled with girlish shyness. "Dad, there's something I've been meaning to tell you for years..."