After spending years in a bright and sunny city, the return to the dark and downtrodden was a strange feeling. It had taken her quite some time to get adjusted to the consistently peppy attitude that nature was practically shoving down her throat, but once she had it was the norm. Now, here she was, back home headed for her first day at work with her briefcase in hand, trying to convince herself that it was not evening. Reid had been hoping that readjusting to Gotham would be quick, but it seemed that the four days she gave herself weren't enough. Not that she could do anything about it now. Stifling a yawn as she made her way into the building, Reid kept replaying what her uncle had told her when she moved out to Metropolis: "Stay there, and keep out this pit that is Gotham."
Reid did an amazing job of listening to her dear uncle's advice. He had always known that her plan was to come back and join the GCPD. She wanted to help people, and the people of Metropolis didn't need the same kind of help that the people of Gotham did. The kinds of people in Gotham were those who wanted to do good, those who were wrapped up in crimes, and those who were just trying to get by. Those just trying to just get by were out numbered by the ones who wanted to take advantage, and those who wanted to do good were...few and far between.
To say that the police station was busy was an understatement. Uniformed officers were running around shouting and yelling, detectives were yelling at each other, people in the holding cells were either yelling at everyone or just plain yelling. There were a few officers struggling with hand cuffed suspects, and even a few beating one.
Maybe her uncle had been right when he called this place a pit. Reid was standing in the middle of the police station watching three officers beat a man. A handcuffed man. Her left hand tightened on the handle of her briefcase, and, not hiding the disgust from her face, Reid made to go over to the officers who were clearly out of line, when a hand took a firm hold of her shoulder. Pulling herself out of their grasp, Reid jumped as she turned to face the offending person. She came face to face with a man just slightly taller than herself. He was wearing a uniform, and had a bright smile on his face as he looked down at her.
If she were honest, Reid would say that it felt more like the man was looking down on her, as opposed to looking down to see her. From his cocky demeanor, supposedly suave hair, and smile that was intended as inviting but appeared far more disconcerting, she knew that there was some deep seeded misogyny waiting to make itself known. And, lucky or unlucky, she didn't have to wait all that long to find it as he spoke to her.
"Now, what is a lady like you doing in a place like this? With a pretty face like that, you might find yourself getting hurt. Wouldn't want that, now would we?"
"Well, given that your tone is far more predatory than helpful, maybe you're right and I should be somewhere else. Like the captain's office. Mind pointing me in that direction Officer..," Reid trailed off as she directed her line of sight to the officers name badge, "T. Dougherty?"
The police officer let out a smug little laugh, while taking a step towards her, "I'll do you one better, miss."
Reid felt her back go ridged as the man wrapped an unwelcome arm around her waist and began chauffeuring her towards what she could only assume was the captain's office. Her arms moved from their home at her sides, joining together at her front. A small subconscious act in protection, she reminded herself. Now, she was not a woman who was put off by physical contact; on the contrary, Reid quite enjoyed physical contact. Hand holding, hugs, small affectionate grazes. But this man was not someone who gave off good vibes, and her uncle had made sure she learned to trust her gut.
He taught her that a lot of women ignored their gut to try and make men comfortable, and that was not the way a woman could be. Especially in a place like Gotham. And if her gut told her anything it was that she did not want this man touching her.
With that thought going through her mind though, she knew that she couldn't jump to a reaction. She was out numbered, in unfamiliar territory, with no obvious allies. Reid was big talk, but she knew when her bet was better kept close to home, and she could fairly easily find herself freezing as opposed to reacting. So, with a painfully fake smile on her face and her briefcase knocking against her knees, she walked along with Officer T. Dougherty to wherever he was shuffling her off to. The only thing that calmed her was that she was walking in the middle of a police station, so the odds of anything too bad happening were slim.
Than again, a man was being beaten in that very same police station.
After what felt like hours passed, but was actually only moments, the officer spoke again, "So what's your name anyway? You know mine, it's only fair if I get yours, too."
Another stiff smile made it's way to her face. She was going to have to work here, it wasn't like he wouldn't get her name eventually, "Uh, Reid. I'm Reid."
"Oh, I get it. You only know my last name, so that's all I get from you, is that it?"
The smile on her face turned a little less forced at that response from her escort. Reid was very used to being poked fun at due to her name, not only was it an uncommon name for a first name but even less so for a woman to have it as a first name. The thing was, Reid wasn't actually her first name, it was her middle name, but there was no way in hell she was going by her actual first name. Her father had wanted her to have a soft and feminine name. A name that would would be a woman's name.
It was a horrible. Just like her father. And while this may be her new place of employment, she was not about to tell Officer Hands-y her real first name. She didn't go by that name, and she hadn't since she was thirteen. "Reid actually, is my name. It's not my last name."
The next question was going to be about her last name, and she had yet to even work part of a day on the job. Though as the two were moving up the stairs, she caught sight of a woman, storming out of an office with a vengeance. Reid couldn't help but think to herself, Oh thank god. An out.
"Captain Essen!"
The women in charge quickly turned to face her newest employee and a look of relief made its way onto her face. As the captain started to walk over to the two, Reid felt Dougherty's arm release her from his grasp. "Thank god, you're even a little early."
"You were expecting me to be exactly like my uncle, weren't you, Captain?" No longer being restrained physically, Reid felt better about engaging in a more normal fashion. Though her arms were still in front of her, not entirely comfortable. "The man might have had a substantial hand in raising me, but that doesn't mean that I am him."
"To be honest, yes. I was expecting you to be closer to the Bullock Way, than you seem to be."
Suddenly the all but forgotten officer spoke up again, "Wait a minute. Bullock? I thought you said your name was Reid."
"Officer," Essen spoke up quickly and forcefully, drawing the conversation to a quick end, "Don't you have something else to be doing right now?"
Reid watched the exchange between the superior and subordinate attentively. It was an interesting experience to watch them have an unspoken battle of wills, changing the originally protective act of placing her arms before her as cover to a stable base of her observation.
Sarah Essen was a women who had been around people who felt that they had a place above her for the majority of her life, and it showed. Her eyes didn't show an ounce of baking down, her stance was sure of itself, and the small tilt of her head was all but daring the man who stood before her to question her. To the Captain, Dougherty may as well have been any other faceless officer below her. A point she made painfully clear by only addressing him by his position and not his name.
On Dougherty's side there was less controlled frustration, and more poorly veiled irritation. While Essen was a person who became strong, T. Dougherty was a person who wanted to be seen as strong. He was like a cat lifting its fur to appear bigger; only, while his hair was stationary, the not so subtly annoyed smirk was not. Pulling back his shoulders, Dougherty gave a single stiff nod.
For all of a moment, Reid was surprised that the pompous officer was going to back down as quickly as it appeared he was. But, good things never lasted long, especially in Gotham. As he turned around to go back to whatever it was he was supposed to be doing, Dougherty leered at Reid again before throwing out that he'd see her again. While Reid resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the man and plastered on a fake smile, Captain Essen did nothing of the sort.
Essen shook her head slightly, once the two women were finally free of the abrasive man, as though to remove it from her recent memory. An act which Reid couldn't blame her for. With the Captain moving forward into getting Reid ready for her new position at the GCPD, Reid was quick to follow along, her arms once again swinging by her side. It was day one, and she was eager.
"Come with me, Ms. Bullock. I'll show you to the office you'll be working in, and on the way I'll introduce you to our medical examiner and our forensic scientist. Just a forewarning, they can both be a little...annoying. Especially when they're together."
Reid's new boss threw in this tidbit of information in a very casual way, which only made Reid all the more suspicious of it. The statement was a little foreboding, as the casual nature was extremely forced. Not wanting to seem off put by the knowledge, Reid decided to proceed cautiously. "Annoying, how, exactly?"
"Well," Essen started, coming to an abrupt stop almost causing Reid to fall into her. The captain's face showed how unsure she was on how to handle the situation, and her eyes joined in the response as she let out a tired breath. "Well, do you want the 'you're new here' answer, or the honest answer?"
Showing her intrigue, as well as confusion, Reid answered slowly, "Lets go with both."
"Both, right. Okay than."
Her boss shook her head, squared her shoulders, and looked Reid dead in the eye. The small smile on her face was one of the most convincing ones that Reid had seen, and stayed on the older woman's face while she got through the first half of her introduction, "Dr. Guerra and Mr. Nygma are both good at their jobs, but sometimes have disagreements on how things should be handled. As a result, there can be some tension in the space."
If that was the 'you're new here' response, which she was definitely thinking it was, she was a little nervous to hear the honest answer. Reid knew that her office was going to be in the same part of the building as those two, and she was really hoping that she wasn't going to be subject to screaming matches, and a pathetic turf war. She was going to be working closely with both of them, and she didn't want to get pulled into some ongoing dispute.
"That's the nice answer. What's the real answer?"
"The honest answer isn't all that different, except that I would keep you away from Nygma as long as possible."
"He's the instigator?" Reid needed good clarification on this.
"Not really. Ed is a good guy, who's great at his job," Essen began her explanation as a ruckus was now heard not that far away from them. Letting out another sigh, the woman continued, "Unfortunately, he also thinks he's allowed to do everyone else's job, too."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that he can-"
What was a ruckus came to a head with a loud bang, and a door behind the captain swinging open. A darker skinned man in a lab coat stepped out of the door in a fury, looking around for something. That something was found as his eyes landed on Reid and her tour guide. The man's entire body turned at once, and his anger quickly started to boil over as he stormed over towards the two women. Essen didn't even bother to turn around as the man approached them; this was obviously a conversation that she had had on many an occasion.
Just as the seething man got close to them, another rushed out of the open door and looked towards them. This man looked incredibly embarrassed by the situation at hand, and reached up to adjust his glasses. A nervous habit, it would seem, to keep his hands occupied. He was still wearing a plastic apron, though no gloves. If Reid had to guess, he had taken those off, as well as a head piece, before leaving the room, which Reid also assumed was the medical examine room. Based on the information at hand, the angry man was Dr. Guerra, and the shaken man now making his way towards them was Mr. Nygma. Not the dynamic she had been expecting.
The ME stood to the side on Captain Essen and looked down to her, his frustration evident, "Captain Essen-"
Not even turning her head to look at him, Essen cut the doctor off, "Doctor Guerra, how nice of you to join us. This is Ms. Bullock. She's going to be working here. Today is her first day and I'm showing her to her office."
"That's great. You need to deal with Nygma."
Harsh and boorish, a delightful combination. For the second time Reid decided to take a backseat and observe, her hands lightly clasping her small briefcase in front of her once again. It would serve well to know exactly how the power structure worked here. The captain turned to face the agitated man with an entirely bored expression and asked why she would need to do that as the man accused took a place to the opposite side of the parental figure, his hands clenching and unclenching intermittently.
His demeanor was almost the exact opposite of his counterpart. He stood rigid with false calm, his eyes were moving quickly between the angry doctor and the annoyed captain. His anxiety radiated off of him, and could surely be felt by anyone who paid any attention to him and his behavior. Definitely not the dynamic Reid was expecting.
Nygma was the one that Essen wanted to keep away from people as long as possible, but Reid couldn't figure out why. He seemed genuine, overall. As the Captain and the ME discussed why Guerra was so upset (Nygma examining a body), he stood waiting for an opportunity to explain himself. The cue for him to jump in was apparently when Dr. Guerra claimed he was good at his job.
"But if you were good at your job, you wouldn't have ruled the Marks case a suicide, as it was clearly a murder," the nervous man spoke in a remarkably confident way given his current state.
Reid was a person to take the first impression that she gets from a person, and roll with it. So far, in her time in the GCPD building, Reid liked two people, and was apprehensive about two. Dougherty was full of entitlement, with no effort to actually earn anything. Essen oozed a desire to do good, but having too little help getting there. Guerra was insecure in his ability, and lashed out when questioned. Nygma wanted to see things done in the best way possible, even if that meant getting in trouble for it.
"What was the cause of death?" The three people in front of her, faced her in shock as she spoke. One of Reid's favorite things about casual observation was people forgetting that she was there.
Quickly removing himself from shock and slipping back into indignation, Guerra spoke first, "Suicide."
"No, the cause of death," Reid insisted, "I want to know how Marks died, not why."
Nerves taking a back seat, the forensic scientist spoke up, and a completely different person was seeping out. His brown eyes brightened, and his features became animated in his excitement, "Christopher Marks was hit by a car when he fell from a building into an ally. But there's no way that he just fell out off the roof-"
"I told you," Guerra interrupted, causing Nygma's sad puppy dog look to return, "He didn't fall, he jumped. If you would listen-"
Foregoing the high road Reid cut the doctor off, holding her hand up to him, "Let him finish," she said briskly before gesturing for Nygma to continue his explanation, which he did eagerly.
"He couldn't have fallen or jumped because he was unconscious when he died."
Puppy had been the right word to describe him, because he looked like Reid had just scratched him behind the ears and called him a good boy. He was about ready to bust of excitement, and Reid thought it was one of the funniest things she had seen in a good long time.
Not getting to dwell on that for too long, Essen spoke up, "What do you mean he was unconscious? How do you know that?"
"He's assuming!" Guerra seemed to have reached his limit of placating.
"I am not assuming. I don't assume."
"Stop, both of you!" The captain as no longer dealing with the situation, she was ending the situation. This was not the way her new employee was meant to spend their day. "Ed, why do you say that Marks was unconscious?"
"Because of the extreme amount of propofol in his system. The fall didn't kill him, the propofol did. It was injected in the middle of his back, which no one reasonably would or could do. Someone injected him, and tossed him off the building to try and hide it."
"Reid?" Essen looked to her, searching for conformation on what the man accused said.
Reid didn't want to be involved in this, but it seemed she had already involved herself. She was going to be working with both of them, she was probably going to get pulled into situations like this one a lot. Better to rip the band-aide. "Without knowing what the blood work says, Mr. Nygma is very likely right in this. Now, I can't say that he was dead before he hit the ground, but propofol is highly effective and is used as an anesthetic during surgery. If someone were to looking to kill someone, it was be a good way to go. Easy to overdose on."
The rigidity of false calm went away on the taller man as Reid's words vindicated him. A large smile was on his face as he looked at her, clearly thankful that she not only agreed with him but supported his conclusions. Feeling endearment to the yet unknown man, Reid returned the smile.
Captain Essen spoke to the doctor quickly after that, "Go look again, Dr. Guerra."
"Why, because Nygma and some random woman say so?"
"No," Essen spoke again, "Because Edward is your colleague, as the forensic scientist, and Ms. Bullock is as well, as the forensic psychologist. And because this wouldn't be the first time you made a mistake, now would it?"
All the tension that had left came rushing back, and it was all directed at her. Guerra was mad that he got called out by the new girl, and Nygma was now confused that she worked with him. Now she was the one uncomfortable., and her arms were once again subconsciously protecting herself.
Great first day so far, Reid. Great first day. She smiled an awkward smile at the three people in front of her, waiting for someone to break the tension. Nowhere near soon enough Guerra spoke again, allowing the focus to shift back to him.
"Fine, I'll look again if that will make you feel better," he started in a condescending tone, "But you need to address the issue of Nygma deciding that he can play with dead bodies."
Not waiting for a response, the doctor stormed back off into the direction that he came, much to Reid's relief, leaving the three alone. Ed Nygma continued to gaze at Reid skeptically, as though deciding what to make of his new coworker, and Reid suddenly found herself uncomfortable. Maybe she had made a bad call with this man, and he was not a person she should like. But, being unsettled yet again, the man in question extended his hand to her, "Edward Nygma. Pleasure to meet you."
Grasping his offered hand in hers, she smiled up to him yet again, "Reid Bullock, and same to you, I'm sure."
While to two were shaking hands, the captain decided it was time for her to take her leave. The Captain began to make her way to anyplace that was away from the situation that was away from there, and threw over her shoulder, "Great, now that introductions have been made, I'm sure Ed can show you where your office is, and the two of you can get acquainted. That being said: Ed, stay away from Guerra. I can't protect you forever. And Reid, you're gonna do great here."
Well that is chapter 1! Please leave a review to help keep me motivated. I am about mid-way through the next chapter, and want to know if anyone will actually be interested in this.
That being said, I have no claim to Gotham the show, nor any characters created in the Batman universe.
