"With the drug smugglers we put away last week out of the picture, the Falcone crime family will be looking for new ways to procure their narcotics shipments. Unfortunately, an… accident has befallen our inside contact with the family, so we will have to use our initiative on this one for now. At least until we're able to find someone else.
"It has been suggested that we try to force everything out into the open with a false business proposal, and at this point I'm open to that option."
Commissioner Gordon stood in front of a briefing room full of seated police officers, the sun too warm on his back as he addressed them. He'd removed his jacket and slung it over the back of a chair and rolled his shirt sleeves up, but still he could feel an uncomfortable bead of sweat inching down the curve of his spine. Leaning both hands on the table in front of him, he looked around the men and women gathered before him, confident in them… but then his eye fell on the dark shadow lurking by the door and for a moment his confidence wavered.
As part of the deal Gordon and Batman had struck in order to remove the vigilante from fugitive status, the Dark Knight was kept up to date on police business in order to allow him to go about his, but only if he attended meetings just as official personnel had to. He never took a seat amongst them, just haunted the doorways, a black and forbidding presence. No one had ever offered him a chair.
Letting Gordon's words wash senselessly over him, knowing instinctively what they were about, the bat closely studied the officers in the room, wondering which of them were on the Falcone payroll. He was convinced that someone on the inside was feeding information to the crime family, sabotaging police missions. Trying to get rid of him. The force turning up late for the drugs bust last week, his radio going off at just the wrong moment, it was too much to be mere coincidence. Batman didn't believe in coincidences, they were for superstitious fools.
His eyes fell on Bullock just as the big detective turned to glare at him. The man's heavyset face folded itself into a scowl at finding himself under scrutiny. Of all the officers in the force, Bullock had been the one to complain most vocally about the vigilante's semi-official inclusion. For a moment the eyes of the two men were locked in combat. Bullock was the first to break, turning back to look at Gordon with a disgruntled jerk of his body.
Batman started to smile, but upon feeling the pull of ridged scar tissue on his cheek, he instantly relaxed his face.
It wasn't that he didn't trust the police. After all, they were only doing the best they could do, trying to build order out of chaos. But Gotham's chaos was like no other city's and the builders were only human. They might have been holding the symbol of law and order, but the ordinary men and women behind it could individually be bribed and broken. Harvey Dent had found this out at the cost of his own life. As much as it troubled Batman, they needed his help, but he couldn't give it whilst restrained by their frailties.
His mind made up, Batman turned and slipped silently out of the door.
A few streets away, the sunshine breeze played around the eaves of a church, coaxing moans and wails from the masonry. Hulking gargoyles, missing teeth and ears, clung to the guttering, spewing moss from motionless jaws. The stone guardians squatted protectively over a small yard of graffiti-sprayed gravestones and flowers as dead as those beneath the ground. It was perfect.
Inside the stone belly of the religious beast, Joker sat in the confessional box, his hands on his knees. His tongue would occasionally creep out and trace a well-known path around the scars that forced him to smile upon the sunrise of every new endless day. He hardly even felt the hardened, twisted tissue against his tongue anymore. It was just another part of the scenery. He couldn't remember the last time he had tasted smooth, unmarred flesh.
Turning his head, he peered through the complex lattice-work that separated priest from confessor, studying the interlocking crests and the darkness beyond them. His fierce gaze burned the shadows. He could feel them flinching away from him, horrified.
Red-painted lips peeling back from neglected teeth in something that was neither a smile nor a snarl, the clown curled his fingers familiarly through the gaps in the lattice work and crooned "Are you there?"
And then he laughed because he knew the answer. The darkness on the other side was complete. Laughing like he would never stop, tears streaming down his cheeks, he clutched and tore at the dark priest's robe he had clothed himself in, leaning over as he choked on his mirth in the emptiness of the church.
Gordon followed the noises down to the locker room, where the officers stored street clothes and the personal effects that got them through the day. He could have kicked himself for not noticing Batman's absence from the meeting sooner. He'd only noticed upon drawing the meeting to a close roughly five minutes ago.
Coming down the last steps onto the concrete floor, he flicked a switch to bathe the room in artificial light. One shadow refused to be dispersed. Gaudily highlighted, the patch of darkness clung to a bank of lockers, surrounded by doors that were hanging open, their locks violated and their contents hanging out. The shadow glanced up with disinterest, and then back down at the light brown jacket it was turning over in gauntleted hands.
"What – What are you doing?"
Batman turned the pockets of the jacket inside out and, finding nothing, carelessly stuffed the garment back into the locker it had been taken from. "Looking."
"What for?" Gordon blustered in exasperation.
"Evidence."
As if unaware of the Commissioner's shock, or even his presence, Batman methodically moved onto the next door and began to pick the lock. Gordon's hand fell on his forearm, stopping him. The bat looked up into eyes filled with muted anger. But there was something else in them too. Something that might have been concern… or pity…
"Batman, I know the past few weeks must have been difficult for you. I knew when I first offered you the chance to make your activities more legitimate that it would be a rocky transition for both of us. But you've got to remember that you're part of a team now. You should act as if you believe in it."
The Dark Knight held the gaze of the other man, but let his hand fall away from the locker. "I believe in the truth, Commissioner."
"And truth involves trust." Gordon sighed and looked away, as if searching for the right words with which to continue. "I've always trusted you. Even in the face of higher authority I've kept you in on the loop, given you information, traded ideas with you. I've always accommodated you in what is, basically, illegal vigilantism.
"But we've both seen that it doesn't work. You've earned my trust, but now, in order to successfully continue, you have to show the public that you can be trusted. That means no more hiding in the shadows, no more working outside the law. You've got to work with us and that means learning to trust us as much as I've learned to trust you."
There was a moment in which Gordon thought his words had truly made an impact and he was glad to have finally said what had been on his mind for a while. The Dark Knight's shoulders relaxed, his head bowed as he surveyed the personal effects scattered about on the floor at his feet. Gordon felt a smile blooming on his face. Things might just work out okay after all.
But then Batman had to say "I think one of your men is working for Falcone."
"What? That's impossible, I – I'd have noticed if…"
"You shouldn't rely so much on trust, Commissioner."
His figurative bombshell dropped, it became apparent that Batman had nothing more to say to the man he had come closest to considering a friend. He turned and walked away, the echo of his footsteps dull and muted. Gordon was left alone with nothing but his troubled thoughts.