A little attempt at filling in some missing pieces (I won't say plot holes) towards the end of TDKR regarding the Batman's legacy.

As usual, I don't own the characters, etc. Just borrowing stuff from whoever does own them.

Enjoy!


Watching the Batman fly off, toting the ticking time bomb that would have been Gotham's end beneath his strange helicopter, Jim Gordon was struck with a sense of déjà vu. They had done this before, hadn't they? When he and the masked vigilante he only now knew was in fact Bruce Wayne had made their pact of secrecy with Harvey Dent lying dead at their feet, when they agreed to lie to the people of Gotham for the sake of the greater good; the problem, of course, with the Noble Lie was that it inevitably backfired. He had spent eight years waiting for the other shoe to drop and the world to go to hell again, and he had gotten his wish.

Eight years ago, he had watched the Batman disappear into the shadows, and had nearly been crushed beneath the weight of their lies. This time, he watched Bruce Wayne disappear into a supernova with no way back. There would be no masked hero waiting in the wings next time. That there would be a next time was something that Gordon took for granted, because the world was full of psychopaths and deranged maniacs, and greedy men eager to take advantage of a wounded animal, and that was exactly what Gotham was at the moment. The city crouched beneath the first rays of dawn, licking its wounds and trying to put what was left of itself back together, even as the vultures circled above.

Even with most of Bane's army rounded up and shipped off to prisons outside the city until Blackgate could be repaired and rebuilt, there were more loose ends than Gordon could even quantify. His chief concerns included hundreds of incidents of petty crimes, missing persons, riots and killings that had followed in the wake of Bane's revolution, and he didn't have nearly enough manpower to handle all of it. On top of that, at least seven of Blackgate's most dangerous prisoners, the ones who had been held in Arkham until after the passing of the Dent Act, had vanished during the coup; Crane had been the only one who showed his face in the city, presiding over his nightmare court at the Stock Exchange, but the other escapees included the Joker. The thought of that psycho running around somewhere sent a chill down his spine.

He wasn't sure they could come out of this without the Batman; at the very least, having an ally who wasn't chained by the law would have been extremely helpful. But the Batman was gone, and there wasn't much use crying over it. He'd just have to make due.

Gordon returned to his sparse apartment only when he started misspelling things on his reports, or he couldn't keep his eyes open, and even then, he didn't sleep all that much. Mostly, he sat at his kitchen table, his hand hovering over the telephone. He wanted to call his wife, the kids; he wanted to tell them he was fine, let them know he had survived the occupation. But only once had he managed to actually dial the number, and when a male voice he didn't recognize answered the phone, he had hung up. She hadn't called when reports surfaced that the city was no longer under nuclear threat; as far as he knew, she hadn't called into any police stations, hadn't tried to contact the mayor or anyone else who might have been in charge to see if he had survived. She hadn't bothered, and what was the point if they didn't care enough to even ask?

He still sat at the table staring at the telephone every night.

But one night, three months after the bomb went off over the Atlantic, a ghost paid him a visit. One minute he had been staring at the phone over an untouched bottle of beer, and the next he saw a shadow move out of the corner of his eye. He was on his feet, gun in hand faster than he could believe himself, the weapon pointed into the dark living room.

"Show yourself! I'm armed!" he called out.

Bruce Wayne stepped out of the shadows, looking worse for wear, but beneath the half-healed cuts and bruises, a wry smile stretched across his face.

"Having an off day?" Gordon asked. His voice was even, a tinge of amusement even colored it. This should have shocked him, but it didn't. Gordon was more surprised that he had come without a mask.

Wayne shrugged, "It's been a rough few months."

"Tell me about it," Gordon lowered his gun and slid it back into the holster on his belt as he took his seat once more, "You're supposed to be dead."

"As far as most of Gotham is concerned, I am," Wayne took a seat at the table, "I did manage to make some last-minute provisions to my will. One of them, in particular, might need your help."

"Is that right?" Gordon pulled his glasses off and absently used his shirt sleeve to clean the lenses, "So… you're leaving. The Batman really is dead."

Wayne cocked his head to the side and stared at Gordon for what seemed like a very long time. There was something of a mischievous grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, but it was gone before Gordon could ask just what was so damn funny about what he had just said.

"The Batman can't die," Wayne sat back with a shrug, "The Batman is an idea. He's a symbol. You can't kill that. But Bruce Wayne is dead, yes."

"The point is he's not coming back," Gordon looked towards the drawn curtains over the kitchen window, a heavy sigh escaping him.

"I didn't say that," Wayne was giving him that funny half-smile again, "You just have to give him some time to learn the ropes. Provisions, remember?"

"What provisions?"

"The kind where I leave the cowl to someone else. A successor, if you will. Someone else who is willing to be the symbol that could unite this city."

"Who?" Gordon was honestly surprised. From what he had heard about him, Wayne was a paranoid SOB if there ever was one; he had never struck Gordon as the type to entrust something like this to someone else.

"Better if you don't know," Wayne gave the commissioner an apologetic look as he continued, "For his safety, and yours."

"What does he need my help for?"

"Do you really think I did all of it without any help?" Wayne asked with a pointed look, "I had significant advantages that he won't. For one thing, his training was a lot more… conventional than mine was. And he had a lot less of it. The tech may not be as expendable and unending as it once was. He's going to need support. He's going to need allies. Which is where you come in."

Wayne was gone within the hour, once again melting into the shadows. Gordon fell asleep at the kitchen table, and when he woke the next morning, he was half-sure it had all been some kind of bizarre dream. He'd just been sleep-deprived, overworked, that was all. A hallucination born of desperation, because he had been there, he had seen the Batman fly off into oblivion.

By that evening, after a long, hard day rounding up what was left of Bane's criminal army, he had convinced himself that it had only been a dream. Bruce Wayne had not turned up at his apartment in the dead of night to tell him that he had left a successor to look after Gotham in his absence. The Batman was not coming back. He was as dead as the smashed signal on the roof of the station-

"Well, I'll be damned," Gordon murmured, setting his file down and running a hand over the newly-repaired metal bat welded over a brand new searchlight. He imagined if he asked someone downstairs where the new light had come from, they would have asked him what he was talking about. No matter. Gordon didn't need to ask.

So much had changed, for worse and for better, and Bruce Wayne was gone again, but this time Gordon didn't feel like he was waiting for the world to end all over again. The Batman hadn't abandoned Gotham, and Wayne had had a plan all along. He could only hope that this mystery successor was up to scratch.

But for the first time in a very long time, Jim Gordon had hope. And for now, that was enough.


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