Title: Five People Who Could Never Escape Gotham (and the One that Got Away)
Author: Pitry
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "I see a beautiful city, and the brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life peaceful, prosperous and happy." (A Tale of Two Cities)
Characters: Selina Kyle, Anna Ramirez, Lucius Fox, John Blake, Alfred Pennyworth, Foley's Wife, Jen.
Five minutes after the bomb went off, the National Guard went in. Five minutes after that, the riots started.
The flames were visible already from the bridge, where Ramirez sat with the rest of her unit. Then the order came in - the south tunnel was open. She stared at the flames - downtown, unless she was completely mistaken, and West Fifth. Not far from the old MCU building. She threw her cigarette on the road, still half unsmoked.
"Let's go let's go let's go!" Jackson, her CO, barked, and they were on their feet, into the vehicles, and heading south.
The entry, of course, wasn't as smooth as Jackson had predicted. "Smooth sailing," he had said, all the way to the tunnel. "We'll just go in there and get the bastards." But nothing was ever smooth in Gotham City.
Fuck. Gotham City. The one place she thought she'd never see again. Maybe this was her punishment - coming back.
She shook her head. Fuck this shit, she thought defiantly. She deserved no punishment, and especially not this.
The south tunnel was completely jammed. The state police already set up the blockades, to stop anyone from leaving the city, but it didn't stop what looked like the entire population of the city, all 12 million people, from getting in their cars and trying to get away. "Get back in your cars," she could hear the state police calling - unsuccessfully, of course, as this was Gotham - with their loudpseakers. "Get back to your homes." As if.
She jumped out of the truck, rifle in hand, and started shouting at the people who ignored the police and tried to leave their cars. "Get back in! Get the fuck back! You are obstructing the police!" The rest of her unit soon started following her lead, jumping off the truck and pushing the people back inside, back into the city. They needed both lanes to get in properly, and that entire bottleneck wasn't doing anyone any favours - and besides, who knew how many of them were trying to hide as citizens here?
These were their orders. No one leaves. Not until they identified all of Bane's terrorists. Jackson made it absolutely clear. Better dead innocent citizens than free bad guys.
It was Ramirez who had laughed during that part of the briefing.
"Something funny, Ramirez?" he had asked.
"I was born in Gotham, Sir, lived there most of my life," she had answered shortly. "There's no such thing as innocent citizens there."
Ramirez cocked her rifle and aimed it directly at the man in front of her, the bastard who refused to get inside his car. "Get in, right now, or I will shoot you!" she shouted.
Perhaps he recognised her. Perhaps he just recognised the look in her eyes. Whatever it was, he stopped arguing and walked back inside. The rest of them followed.
It took them another three hours before the line of cars shrank and the lane cleared. By the time they got back into the truck and exited the tunnel, half the city was in flames.
Good, Ramirez thought savagely when she recognised the old opera house at the centre of the fires. Let the whole place burn. The only way to get rid of the filth.
"Ramirez!" Jackson shouted, and she finally tore her eyes from the opera house and turned back to the briefing. "Yes, sir."
"Get your people to the docks and make your way into the city from there. You'll meet Marks' force around halfway though, they're starting on the financial district. No one - and I repeat, no one - is to enter Old Town before we clean up the rest. Move."
She moved. Better move than keep on looking at Jackson, she thought - or keep on looking at the man next to him. He was a civilian, walking back and forth, an anxious look on his face. She knew the man, of course - Alfred Pennyworth, the Wayne butler. How on earth did he end up with them, she didn't know, but she hated the way he looked at her, that piercing gaze, as if he was weighing in her guilt - as if she had something to do with this sorry mess. She didn't. She had left Gotham. Why did Pennyworth want to come back was a mystery to her.
The docks didn't look at all like they did eight years ago. There were no ships there, no shuttles. Bane made sure of that. It was almost as if in the five months since he took over a rot had taken over the place. It was absolutely quiet.
But Anna Ramirez new better. 'Absolutely quiet' was a misleading sentiment in Gotham. Anything could lurk in the shadows. Bane's men, looking for a way off the city. Citizens. Rioters. Fucking Gotham. But the docks were absolutely quiet. The riots hadn't made it there yet. Out here, they couldn't hear the shouts and screams, couldn't see the flames, not even the old opera house, just big old industrial buildings and fifty years old apartment buildings, on the brink of collapse. And as always, above it all, Wayne Tower ruled, oddly undisturbed by the rest of the city.
"Ramirez!" She heard the urgent whisper. Davidson - he only finished his training two months ago, she thought darkly. Doesn't he regret joining in now.
"What?"
"I think I saw - there was movement there."
She immediately aimed her rifle and her flashlight at the building. She couldn't see anything. Could be the shadows... could be something else. "Get Michaels and Ashton. Let's check it out," she whispered.
They kicked down the door in three seconds. It was one of those warehouses - where heavy machinery provided a thousand different hiding places, where the different rooms were like a maze. It could be a trap, she knew. It was the perfect place for a trap. She should have brought more people.
But room after room, machine after machine, and there was no sign of movement, no sign of life. They went from a room full of crates - all open, all empty, all untouched - to a huge conveyor belt that hadn't moved in months. Smaller labs, more crates, nothing. Not a whisper, not a noise, no movement. Maybe it really was the shadows, she thought and turned around. Time to call this off.
"Shit," Michaels said all of a sudden and she tensed again.
"What?"
He pointed at the floor - and now she saw it. A pool of blood, at the centre of an even larger pool - salt water. Sea water. Something came up here from the sea. She touched the blood gingerly with her finger. Still warm.
But there were no foot prints. No sign of the source of the blood. And there was so much blood there - whoever it was, they were severely injured. Shouldn't be too hard to find them, and yet... and yet, there was no sign of them around. None at all. She called back-up now. With the freaks of Gotham, one could never be too careful.
Another half hour, and she was forced to admit defeat. Whatever it was, it was no longer there. The warehouse was completely empty. The only thing they had found was a small, torn piece of black fabric, with a texture like she had never seen before. Soft and hard at the same time, she thought when she felt it with her hand - and soaked with water. But that was it. Fabric and blood and water.
"We're wasting our time," she said. "Let's continue to the financial district, they'll wonder where we are."
The way to the rendezvous point in the financial district was through block after block of the dockland apartments. They searched each and every one. Some of them pretended to be sleeping, some of the parents put their children on parade, as if to say, Look, we're innocent, we've got children! The junkies just looked at them apathetically as they searched through apartment after apartment, building after building.
She wasn't buying any of that. Not the terrified looks, not the screams, not the children crying nor their parents begging. She wasn't even buying the junkies' apathy. She knew Gotham. By now, everyone had heard what had happened here. Revolution, they called it. Uprising. Let the people of Gotham take what was theirs.
"How many of these things did you steal, huh? How many?" she shouted at a beefy man with small, beady eyes. "No, shut up! Shut up and get inside! I said get - and what's this then, huh?" she noticed all of a sudden the small handgun on the table. "What's that? You were going to shoot us, were you? Defending your home, my ass. Michaels! Arrest these fuckers, put them on the truck, all of them, move!" She waved her rifle to silence the woman's incessant wailing about how young her son was - she grew up in this damn city, nine year olds were practically gangsters here - and moved on to the next apartment, where the same thing happened all over again.
By the time they reached the financial district, the truck was full of 'families' - they would have to check how many of these were real families, how many were pretending - and the flames had almost reached the dockland neighbourhoods.
She could hear them before she saw them. They were marching down the street, shouting, shattering glass - at least, those glasses that had not been shattered by the heat and flames - and waving their guns around. Bane's men, was her first instinct. And they were advancing towards them. "Open fire!" she ordered her men. No one in her unit was going to lose their lives because of the scum.
She could see by the way they halted, by the way they dispersed - disorganised, frightened, untrained. They weren't Bane's men, they were just people from Gotham. Innocent civilians, she snorted, and ordered her men to keep on shooting towards the main group, those who didn't run away or hide away. Far ahead, she could hear Marks' force advancing, closing in the trap. Once they neutralised all of the dangerous elements, they would arrest the rest.
It took them another half hour, but in the end, there was a respectable group of people in cuffs, blindfolded with their own shirts, lying with their faces down on the road. The bodies were on the other side. There was no room for either group in the trucks, and they hadn't yet taken over a building that could serve as a temporary prison. She lighted a cigarette, kicked one of the bound men on the ground, smiled at his yelp. Yeah, fourteen, fifteen, she estimated. Well, Sunshine, don't jump in the fire if you can't stand the heat. She kicked the man again, just for good measure. Michaels smirked next to her, lighted his own cigarette.
"Ramirez!" They turned around - Jackson had arrived with his force, accompanied by SWAT teams and, unless she was much mistaken, one of the military units. It definitely looked like a tank there in the back. "Good work, Ramirez, really good work."
"Thank you, Sir," she said and looked at her handiwork all around, and couldn't help a little pride at her CO's tone of voice.
"All of them are Bane's men?" he asked.
"Some. Some just thought they could take advantage of the situation, you know? Same for those in the truck. Loads of weapons in those apartments, Sir. So we brought them all in."
"Good work, good work," he repeated. "We'll need this kind of resolution when we're going to deal with Old Town."
"Yes, Sir," she agreed. Old Town. The worst of the lot. And, according to their intel, where most of Bane's men found refuge.
"You know your way around there, don't you, Ramirez?"
"I know it pretty well. Haven't been there in over eight years, though, Sir," she admitted.
"We'll still need you. Let's see if we can - "
"Sir!" It was Davidson. And behind him -
"Well, well, well," Jackson said as they both recognised the man. "Commissioner."
Anna and Jim Gordon looked at each other in silence for just one moment. They were both, she knew, thinking of the same thing. That night, more than eight years ago. And one phone call.
The years had not been kind to Gordon. His hair was greyer, his demeanour subdued, his anger harder to control. And the years had not been kind to her memory of Jim Gordon, either. She thought she would feel guilty, looking at his face. When she looked at him, she knew he still lived that night. His wife had left him since, she heard, took the children and escaped Gotham, never to return. But Gordon was stupid enough to stay. Stupid enough to pretend Dent had been a hero.
She couldn't help but smile. She smiled at the man's presumption as much as she did at the irony. Harvey Dent Day. The Dent act. The Batman who took the fall, and now was blown to smithereens all over the Bay. Now everyone knew who Dent was. Now everyone was in with Bane and his like. All for nothing. She could feel her smile curling, expressing the disdain she felt.
Gordon wasn't looking at her, though. He might not have even recognised her. Instead, he was already off, shouting at Jackson. "What is the meaning of this?" he gestured at the people on the ground, at the bodies, at the trucks. "These are citizens of Gotham, what do you think you're doing?!"
"Ramirez," Jackson was smiling as well, in on their little joke, and Gordon was staring, confused, at the two of them. Don't worry, Commissioner, she thought and her smiled widened. Soon you will know. "I believe you wanted the honour?"
"Yes, Sir." She faced Gordon now. "Commissioner James Gordon, you are under arrest on suspicion of treason and collaboration. I believe you know your rights?"
Gordon just gaped at her. "Under - ?" he managed after a few moments.
"Someone is going to need to take responsibility for this," she said shortly. "And, last we checked, you were the man in charge. Cuff him," she told Davidson. Gordon was so shocked that he did not even object. "Keep him under guard, Davidson, he's your responsibility. We need to go into Old Town."