Lines in the Sand

By Stargazer Nataku

James Gordon has never been the type of person who could leave things alone, particularly when he knew they were wrong. It was like that from the first time, as a kid on the playground, he fought a bully and won. It was like that in high school when he turned down the homecoming queen for a date because he knew he couldn't love her. It was like that on the force in Chicago, and he carried that with him to Gotham when they were the only department who would hire him after what went down there. He hadn't known then what he was getting into.

Gotham City is a harsh mistress, he's learned that over time. She is demanding, exclusive, begrudging every moment spent out of her service and in the care of others. Gotham is where, for the first time, Gordon was forced to leave things alone because he had a family to feed and no other prospects, powerless in the face of her dark secrets, her millions of other lovers who sacrificed at her different altars of evil.

Gordon's made sacrifices too, just like the criminals he tries to fight. The instant Gordon accepted the transfer from Chicago to Gotham, he'd sacrificed his own freedom and, in many ways, his life. Then went his idealism, shattered against the brick walls of corruption that were his superiors. After, associated with the violence—the everyday, run of the mill sort and special kinds that made his skin crawl and his stomach churn—was his faith in humanity. After that, Gotham demanded more, became harsher, took his promises and held them close.

He's bled for her. He's died for her, even though it was a false death. And he's always given more, and more. He sometimes wonders if there's anything he won't sacrifice to his dark mistress.

Barbara had asked him to draw that line in the sand, to make a choice about how far he would go, how much he would give to see Gotham restored to former glories. He had tried. He'd come home early, gone to Jimmy's baseball games and Barbara's gymnastics meets. But his mind was often elsewhere, on bloodstained evidence, witness reports, crime scene details. He had tried for her, for the children, but in the end Gotham had taken their love and warped it, turned it into pain. In the end, she'd gone, and Jim Gordon had sacrificed that which was most important to him.

The line he'd tried to draw was quickly washed away by the tide of blood of the victims, and the tears of grief and frustration that came upon him sometimes when a particular case was too disgusting, when what Gotham gives him breaks him down.

Gotham is a harsh mistress. It has left James Gordon jaded and alone, the youthful optimism and the love that sustained it gone. He has nothing left to give, save himself, his own blood and sweat and tears, and he gives all of them for her every day. That is the one last line he can draw, one that will last now all others have gone. He realizes it one night, standing at the top of the MCU with a cup of coffee on a cold night in January, avoiding going home to the empty house he's still trying to sell. The only thing he could not give up is Gotham herself. She's been a part of him so long, he can no longer imagine life without her harsh streets, the never-ending war against her darkness. No matter what else Jim Gordon loses, he cannot lose Gotham, because he'd lose himself with her.

It may be a place of pain and darkness and death, but it is home now, so much a part of him that it is inextricable; her beating pulse is his, her darkness is in him, cold and vacant. He knows he has two choices, but both are at her behest.

Live, or die.

He knows Gotham doesn't care which.