I don't own Batgirl or any other Gotham properties.
Oh Brother Mine
The knife planted itself in the window seal and Barbara delivered a blow to her brother's face. It was a hard blow, one intended to knock him out. It didn't, of course, villains rarely stayed down for long. But it did cause him to fall down towards the corner of the room, clutching his jaw. She could have ended it right then and there. Get him with her taser, put him in some handcuffs, or even hit him with a good-old fashioned kick to the face. She didn't though, as usual with these fights. "Ow, that- that was a good one, sis," James complemented, wiping his lip. He stood up, wobbly leaning on the wall for support. "I think you might have given me a concussion." He said it so calmly, so politely, as if they were just teasing each other in one of those fake-arguments they used to have.
"James, stop," Barbara pleaded, placing a hand on his shoulder and hoping to God Almighty he said yes, "Stop this and let us help you. Me and Dad, we can take you to a place you can get it. Not Arkham, but an actual Asylum or something that actually knows how to treat its patients. Please." She had said this a thousand times before, and she hoped he agreed. But she knew what the answer would be. What it would always be.
"No, Barbara, I can't," James said, "This is just who I am, and you know what they always say: Be Yourself. So, that's what I do. Be myself." Barbara didn't fail to notice the smile on his face. That sweet, dorky smile she'd seen as he prattled on about Pokémon cards and the latest Nintendo game. He smiled that way while talking about his favorite superheroes and that stupid crush he had when he was twelve. And then she remembered those times where Dad was working late and Mom was asleep and James would get scared of the dark and crawl into Barbara's room looking for shelter, so she quietly wrapped her arm around him and assured him he was safe from all the monsters and that she'd protect him. And it was, and it… and it was the same smile he wore while talking about all the ways a knife could be used to kill a man. The same smile he wore while reading about Jack the Ripper and H.H. Holmes and The Lady Bathory. The same smile he wore when she found him in their basement with two bodies on the floor and a bloody knife in his hands.
She hated that smile.
He threw another punch, but it was slow, sloppy, and predictable. He'd pulled his arm back which practically told her what hand he was going to punch with. She moved to the side, grabbed his arm, and threw him against the wall, cuffing him. "It's over, you're done with, James," she said, activating the signal on her utility belt that immediately contacted the nearest three police cars.
She took him downstairs so that she could cuff him to the bench outside. As she did so, she found her eyes drawn to the kitchen, where a family of four- Mother, Father, Brother, and Sister- sat in chairs with slit throats. She'd gotten used to these sights since becoming Batgirl, it bare affected her these days, even when they still should. These were people who had lived lives, who had lives yet to live, who'd laughed and danced and yelled and cried, and who were now gone because of her brother. She hated him, she really did. You'd never know by talking to him that he'd already killed at least twenty people. Twenty four now, she supposed. She hated that fact, that her brother killed people and didn't even care when he did.
She cuffed him to the arm of the bench and kept her eyes on him, not looking away for a second. James didn't seem to care as he walked around and sat down on the bench. He looked up at the few stars that remained in Gotham's sky despite the pollution and asked, "Hey, did you hear that they're making an Elried Chronicles movie?"
"I'd heard something like that," she replied, "Thought I'd tell you, then I remembered you'd escaped again."
James nodded and said, "I really don't think it'll be that good. I mean, the books are a thousand pages long each. They'd do better to make a TV Show instead but, oh well, something's better than nothing I suppose." Something's better than nothing, huh? Yeah, she could relate.
"Did you read the one that came out last month?" she asked.
He shook his head replied, "No, I haven't read it yet. After the stunt I pulled with the last one they gave me, Arkham decided books were 'too dangerous to let me handle'. Can't even get an e-reader now. Was it good?"
"Yeah, really good. Best one so far," Barbara said, her throat becoming more and more clumped up at the familiarity of the conversation. Another thing to add to the list of things she hated about her brother: it was alot easier to act normal around him as opposed to the other psychos she had to deal with. So she decided to be cruel. "You might want to know Aliata kills Roderick, by the way."
"WHAT!?" James yelled, moving to turn towards her, but being stopped by the handcuffs, "No! But they were engaged! She declared her undying love for him and everything in the last book."
"Yeah, well, when you're secretly Aatail the Dreammarked One, you tend not to care about little things like that," she said calmly.
"No, why'd you tell me that, Barbara?" he asked, on the border between a pout and a frown. Like he always did when- no. No she wouldn't think of better times, back when they were happy and they weren't spiraling down into a pit of death and rotted love. She couldn't talk like this anymore, not about their favorite book series since they were in high school. It hurt too much. She needed something better, something less painful.
"Why'd you kill those people, James?" she asked, changing the subject to something more comfortable.
He sighed, and shrugged, "Stress relief, mostly. I'd been hiding from the cops and you for so long that I needed something to take my mind off of everything and then I saw this house, so I figured why not?" That was yet another thing she hated about her brother: how casual murder was to him. To Joker it was a game, to Penguin a means to an end, to Two-Face it was balancing the scales, and to Scarecrow it was a way to improve his formulas. But to James, it was browsing Netflix when you had nothing better to do.
"How can you treat people's lives like that, James!?" Barbara asked, "Don't their lives mean anything to you?"
"I don't know them, Barbara," he replied, "So they mean about as much to me as the lives of the individual soldiers lost in the numerous conquests of Rome or the victims of some terrorist bombing in a third-world country. It's not like how I care about yours and Dad's lives. I know you, you mean something to me. Some random strangers whom I've never met before in my life? No, I don't care about them." It made sense, it really did. It was the same logic that made her forget about a funeral procession she passed on the way home, the same reason she cried at Jason Todd's funeral but not Conner Kent's, it was the same reason people could live every day knowing so many people had died already but don't even flinch in response. Because they didn't know who died. Under danger of sounding repetitive, that was yet another thing Barbara hated about her brother: he made sense.
To say Barbara's stomach felt it was tied up into knots would be like saying the sun is kinda small, a vast understatement. But she continued anyways. "You say you still care about me and Dad," she continued, "Yet you've tried to kill us more than once. Seems kinda backwards to me."
"Of course I care, Barbara," James said, "That's why I do what I do. You and Dad have thrown yourselves into saving Gotham, into saving people. I see it every day in the news, the magazines, and every time we meet. This….. thing you're doing, trying to save people, it's pointless and it's going to destroy you. It'll just be better if you and Dad give up and move on with your lives. Forget about the down-trodden, the forgotten, and the broken, Barbara. You can't do anything for them, and I don't want to see the only two people I love die trying to save them. Besides, if I really wanted to kill you two, you'd be dead." She hated the fact he was probably right in that last statement.
"But do you, James? Love us, I mean," she asked, "Or is that just some twisted excuse you've come up with to mess with me? Because if so, shut up."
"I don't know," he answered, "I believe it's true, so it probably is." He says after having murdered a family.
The police had yet to show up and Barbara didn't know what the delay was, but until things started to explode she'd stay here and watch with her brother. Unable to stand the silence she told him, "You might want to know I talked to the Red Hood recently."
"Did you?" James asked, not looking back at her.
She nodded anyways and continued, "Yeah, I did. I told him that if he ran into you and pumped you full of lead, I wouldn't go after him. Heck, I'd buy him a drink for doing it."
James nodded his head slowly. "That's smart, logical even," he said, "Regardless, you'll still cry at my funeral." She didn't answer that question, she didn't want to.
It was then that two police cars with sirens blazing rounded the corner, parking in front of them. Two police got out of one car and walked towards Barbara and James while the police ran into the house. Moving over to James, Barbara detached him from the bench and re-cuffed his other hand before giving him off to the officers. "He's all yours," she said. They nodded in acknowledgment and took James back to their car.
"Have a good night, Batgirl," James said as he was driven away. She hated how polite he was.
"Yeah, you too," she whispered under her breath. Barbara was done with patrol for that night, so she got on her bike and drove back to the Clock Tower where she'd park it.
Barbara Gordon hated many things about her brother, but the thing she hated most was that, despite everything he'd done, she still loved him nonetheless.
Author's Notes:So I'm absolutely fascinated by James Gordon Jr. I mean, a psychopathic serial killer who's also Barbara Gordon's brother? That's an awesome villain idea. I feel like if anyone would make a great archnemesis for Batgirl it'd be him. Sadly, the only place he really serves this capacity is in Gail Simone's Batgirl run (which is awesome and I highly recommend it) hence this piece right here. Well, I hoped you liked it, please let me know what you think.