Since arriving in Gotham, Jim Gordon had been once, maybe twice, to the police academy. Objectively speaking, he was both totally unqualified to be an instructor and didn't need the training, but very rarely dead-ends on a case led him down to the firing range. A lot of guys went there every other day and blasted the ever-loving shit out of cardboard cut-outs until they felt something or felt better – rather than the bar, rather than taking it out on the wife, blam-blam-blam raw gunsmoke kind of satisfaction with shoulders and elbows raw from the blunt recoil of a semi-automatic pistol. Jim hated that. Pornographic, was a word for it.

But midway through his second October in Gotham, Loeb invited him down there, and he supposed (rightly) that it would be rude to refuse. Not that he liked the guy. Not that it mattered, as a cop, whether you liked the commissioner or not, but just then with the invitation rolling heavy in his gut it consciously occurred to him that his particular sharp distrust of Loeb would nag and not go away. He stayed quiet as they shot, taking turns at the same target. Three each, and compare.

The commissioner grunted and grinned as he popped out his first clip, meaty shoulders labouring visibly beneath his pressed white shirt. 'Still got it, whatya say?'

'Not bad.' Jim kept his eyes on the tattered silhouette down the end of the windowless basement range. 'I guess a desk job doesn't stop you staying in shape.'

'Huh, Jimmy – a desk has its advantages!'

They took a turn each. Loeb's last nicked a visible gouge into the shoulder of the silhouette; Jim's followed lower with a whining snap, just above the heart, not quite lethal. The commissioner had to go out and look and comment, just making sure who's was who's, playing it fair, running loud sceptical fingers over some of the better shots. Jim slid the clip out of his Glock and took his time rolling down his sleeves, gaze steady on the concrete floor.

'We'll call it a draw,' Loeb announced, eyes crinkling at the edges as he lumbered back with pistol slung nonchalant at his hip – absurd, stupid swinging against his hand-tailored grey trouser and Italian shoes. A draw was more absurd, but Jim by his second October knew how and when to be a good boy.

Loeb stood with his feet wide and watched him bend over the ammo table cleaning his pistol, his temple bulging with every absent irregular chomp of that cinnamon gum he kept in at least two pockets. That was a little thing that drove Jim up the wall these days – whiffs of artificial cinnamon on the subway, in crowds. Eventually he glanced back and raised a minute eyebrow.

Loeb wrinkled his nose at this.

'You're really not a fan, Gordon, are ya.'

No. Well – motherfucker. They rarely lied to one another, at least. 'Of you, sir?'

'Can't even watch me shoot a gun without thinking you're better than me.' He sounded more amused than anything else, leaning heavy and casual on his gun. 'If I was out on the beat still, it'd be the same way, that's the thing – I've got the boys in my office every other Monday morning, Gordon's busting my balls about this, he's sent me home for missing a top button, sonofabitch's got me on traffic for a fucking month, whine whine not fair et cetera. There's no room in the budget for you, Jimmy, know what I mean?'

Jim was very familiar with the budget – specifically, who poked it when they needed a favour – but that wouldn't do. He bit his lower lip and ducked his head. 'They should really come to me first, if they have problems.'

'But they're not, Jimmy, and the foreseeable future doesn't look too different.'

No particular answer for that, so they went upstairs out of the ringing sterile silence into the bustle, Jim struggling to do up his blazer buttons one-handed with the heavy gun case under his right arm. Loeb strode easily through the sea of dark blue-shirted trainees, some of whom called hellos as they hurried down the hall in packs. Looked to be hundreds of them – an unusually large turnout this year, Loeb explained. Everyone wanted to be a police officer in Gotham, these days. And why did he think that was? Jim did not know.

Loeb nodded almost triumphantly, chins digging into his collar, and mentioned as though in passing that he'd be here for the next few weeks. They'd shot for just over an hour, Jim realised in a daze as his eyes tracked across a passing window on their way to fix on the rather smug commissioner – it'd gotten dark quickly, or rather it did, in October. And just as suddenly, that was that.

'You're teaching?' Barbara asked incredulously when he got home, not rising from where she sat on the couch with thin hands curled around a steaming cup of tea. 'Do they give you a raise for that?'

He blinked in the doorway – he'd fumed quietly all the way home and consequently not thought about that at all. Probably it all had to do with the budget.

note: This is a bit of an odd one and may get long, I think. I'm facking around wildly with all kinds of canon here, but this is set before Batman Begins, early on in Gordon's career with the Gotham PD; it also assumes that the as-of-yet-unnamed-man-who-will-in-the-distant-future-be-Bane was not actually born in a prison but rather started out as a policeman and then a prospective MI5 agent. This is all you need to know, at present. If I add a disclaimer about my spotty Batman knowledge you may not like me as much. Oh ho.