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One Year Earlier
Captain James Gordon turned up the collar on his overcoat against the bitter wind, shivering in the cold night air. He watched the sky anxiously, waiting for a myth to appear. Two other men stood beside him on that rooftop. A detective named Harvey Bullock puffed on a cheap cigar, his rumpled overcoat stained with jelly and icing sugar from a thousand different donuts. Bullock was massive, flabby, and certainly not the poster boy for an ambitious urban police force like the Gotham PD. His presence at this meeting was beyond Gordon, except for his suspicion that Bullock was in bed with the mayor and would report to Kroll in the morning about this midnight rendezvous.
The other man freezing on the Central rooftop was the Commissioner of Police himself, Jeffery Loeb, a wrinkled, corrupt, ugly little man who cared for little besides vintage collectables and the advancement of his own career. Loeb alone among the three was willing to break the uncomfortable silence on the rooftop: he muttered like a madman, offering insults and epithets to the cold night wind. The Commissioner was a wreck, popping mentholyptus cough-drops like they were tabs of Ecstasy.
Gordon turned from his colleagues, disgusted, and looked up at the night sky. The stars and late winter moon hovering above Gotham were, as always, obscured by a constant cloud of industrial pollution, and so the brightest object in the sky was the Symbol. Gordon felt a shiver run along the base of his spine as he looked at it, his eyes wide and excited behind his glasses. On a particularly cloudy night, the light covered an area of sky the size of five city blocks, the strange symbol of an angry cat looming over Gotham like an Egyptian god returned from the afterlife to pass judgment.
Gordon alternately loved and hated the light. It had come to represent law and order, the hope of peace, inheriting that role from the badge Gordon wore on his lapel. He regretted the loss of law in Gotham, but knew justice still existed: the light was proof of that. Criminals were afraid of it, and so were men like Loeb. Even Bullock, impassive in his girth and dishevelment, looked impressed.
"Is she always this late?" Loeb asked impatiently, covering his nervousness with anger. "It's been twenty minutes."
"She'll be here," Gordon promised, taking his hands out of the pockets of his warm overcoat to blow on them and rub life back into his fingers. As feeling began to return to his digits, he felt a tingle of awareness. She was here. Probably had been watching them the whole time, gauging the threat, assessing options and avenues of escape in case this was some kind of trap. Gordon smiled to himself. She would have made one hell of a cop, had things been different. Had Gotham been different.
Loeb turned from the spectacle of the bright Catsignal to look at Gordon. "I'm still not entirely comfortable with this arrangement," the Commissioner said, gesturing to the giant projector occupying a large portion of Gotham Central's rooftop. "It opens the department up to a lot of criticism. Most of the city still thinks she's a some kind of boogeyman."
Gordon bit down an angry, impulsive response, making use of the restraint he had cultivated during his long purgatory in Gotham City. "You've been clear about your objections. And the signal is still the only way we have of contacting her. If we tear it out of here, we have no way of reaching her until there's a body count."
Gordon turned up his collar against the bite of the wind and deliberately faced away from where he guessed she would appear. He wanted to better gauge Bullock and Loeb's reactions. She was a spectacular sight, the first time, and he would have paid good money to see the expression on his own face the first time he'd set eyes on her.
Right on cue, although not exactly where he'd expected, Catwoman stepped from the shadows. The Commissioner visibly jumped when she materialized on Central's roof nearly at his elbow. "You rang?" she asked in a low, throaty purr laced with steel.
Gordon bit back the urge to smile. It was all part of the act. Sometimes, when she was among people she considered allies in the war on crime, she played the sex kitten. And it wasn't hard; Catwoman dressed in tight purple leather, so form-fitting it revealed every curve of her body. Her chest was protected by a black Kevlar corset, and she wore thigh-high stiletto boots to assist her in gravity-defying gymnastic tumbles and leaps. Catwoman carried a whip, her features obscured by a black leather mask that revealed only the white slits of her eyes. Long, dark hair flowed out beneath the mask, catching on the wind as she was perfectly silhouetted against her own signal light.
The bondage-fantasy appeal of her costume, Gordon knew, was designed to confuse and inspire over-confidence in the men she intended to fight. Full-figured and graceful, Catwoman at first glance looked less than intimidating. Sexual appeal and the assumptions of men were her weapons, and Gordon had seen her put people three times her size in the hospital. He watched, amused, as Bullock and Loeb struggled to pull their jaws off the ground.
Gordon cleared his throat, knowing she would be aggravated by this find this delay in her patrol. Loeb sputtered, the candy he'd been sucking forced to the side of his mouth as he talked, making his cheeks bulge out.
"I assume you're aware that my home was invaded earlier tonight. Several precious objects were stolen."
Gordon was watching her face carefully, and he could have sworn he saw her mouth twitch in a strange, fleeting smile. Or perhaps it was annoyance; despite their long acquaintance, Gordon didn't really know enough about her to tell if she was amused or annoyed. Catwoman, at least to him, always looked angry.
"And why should that interest me?"
Loeb blinked once or twice in confusion, swallowing his cough drop. "Why should that interest you?" he repeated, half-choking on the candy. "You operate at the discretion of the Gotham City Police Department. I give the order, I'll have you hauled in on all manner of charges!"
Catwoman was visibly unimpressed by Loeb's threat. To Gordon, it looked like she was trying to suppress a yawn.
Loeb continued, angry spittle flying from his mouth as he pronounced each word. "You claim to fight crime: fine. A crime was committed against me and I want the issue resolved, the perpetrator apprehended and brought to justice. You will do this for me, or I will put an end to your sexy little costume party."
Gordon winced, his sense of amusement fading at Loeb's blundering exercise in intimidation. Catwoman hardly needed the Commissioner's permission or the compliance of the GCPD to continue her nightly activities. She was a vigilante, and so had taken the law into her own hands. She worked with Gordon because she realized the value of a trusted colleague on the force, but even after operating in Gotham for over a year, she had never met Commissioner Loeb face-to-face.
"I don't require your acquiescence," she hissed, then, after a cold silence, continued. "I have more important things to worry about. Your people lost the Joker again last night, and my first priority has to be locating her before there's a body count. Is that all?" Catwoman asked sharply, and after a beat Loeb nodded. Catwoman looked pointedly at Gordon, and then turned her back on the three men, walking to the ledge of the building to stare down into the busy streets of the city.
"I'll see you downstairs," Gordon dismissed the other two men. Bullock nodded, chewing on his cigar thoughtfully as he studied Catwoman's leather-clad posterior, lechery making his eyes look beady and small in the dim light.
Loeb clearly wanted to say more, but as the anger faded from his eyes a strange expression crawled across his wrinkled smear of a face. The Commissioner smiled smugly. "Have fun, Jimmy. Don't do anything I wouldn't do." Commissioner Loeb retreated down the stairwell with Bullock.
"He makes me feel like I need to take a bath," Catwoman said from her position near the edge of the roof.
Gordon sighed. "He has that effect on people." They were silent a moment, the soft sounds of traffic below filtering up to their spot on the GCPD's rooftop. "I'm sorry about the interruption; I know you hate to be bothered with politics, and this business with the Commissioner's home…it's all politics."
Catwoman's head snapped around, her dark hair settling around her shoulders like a short, wild cape. "You could have told him no. Or offered to talk to me yourself. I told you before, Loeb has no part in what we do."
"And I agreed with you," Gordon replied, agitated himself. "Loeb's greedy, dangerous. We could never trust him. I just think that, since we lost Harvey -"
Her eyes dropped to the city again, and she shifted her position slightly, turning away. "I'm sorry," Gordon said softly. "I-"
"Forget it," she told him, leaning on one bent knee, her whip held lightly in her palm. "We didn't lose Harvey Dent, Jim. He was stolen from us by the evil that rules this city. We forget that, and everything we're trying to change in Gotham goes right down the toilet." She paused. "I think Harvey would have agreed."
Gordon nodded and said softly, "I think so too." After the respectful silence that ruled all conversations about Harvey Dent, their former partner and the District Attorney of Gotham, Gordon cleared his throat. "I was worried, if you want to know the truth. I haven't seen you since Christmas, and -"
Catwoman turned her face towards him, her face expressionless. "I'm fine. I've just been busy."
"Little James is walking now," Gordon said gruffly, unsure how she'd react to a conversation about his domestic life. Until the thing with Harvey had strained the relationship between them, he had been building a slow, careful friendship with this strange masked woman. Gordon got the feeling that she liked hearing about his family, his life away from Central and the maniacs they dealt with on a regular basis. At least, whenever he'd brought up the subject of his son or his wife, Catwoman hadn't left with her characteristic abruptness.
"I brought a picture," Gordon offered, taking a snapshot out of his wallet. The photo had been taken a few weeks ago at a birthday party thrown for his son, James Jr. Barbara, Gordon's young niece, was holding his chubby son. Both children mugged for the camera, twelve-year-old Barbara endearing in her goofy smile, cake smeared across James Jr.'s chubby face. Catwoman took the photo, her masked face not allowing for any kind of reaction.
"They look happy, Captain," Catwoman whispered, handing the photo back. "Keep them that way."
"I'll do my best," Gordon replied, carefully replacing the picture in his wallet. He offered her a file-folder next, and she glanced up at his face in question. "The Loeb burglary," Gordon explained. "There's an itinerary of the items taken. The Commissioner collected antique toys, novelty items. That sort of junk is worth a lot of money to the right people. We've been checking possible fences, but you might have better luck going straight to the buyers."
Catwoman nodded and secreted the folder away in a hidden pocket on her costume. She arched her back, which had stiffened slightly in the cold wind. "I should get back to work," she told him. There's lot of ground to cover tonight. I will look into the Loeb burglary, Jim, but the Joker has to take priority." She turned to him, the strange, white, soulless eyes of her mask in sharp contrast to the emotion of her voice. "If anyone dies this time…"
"You'll find her," Gordon interrupted, wondering how often people saw this side of Catwoman. She was so many things to the people of this city, both demon and savior, an urban myth and a terrifying reality to those on the wrong side of the law. He wondered how many of them ever thought about the sad, lonely woman beneath the mask. He doubted any of them even believed she was human. It was the way she wanted it.
"Good hunting," he told her, and Catwoman nodded, leaping off the roof of Central onto a fire escape. He watched as she bounded away, flying across rooftops and tenements, a true creature of the night. He smiled to himself, thinking he could rest easy, knowing she was watching their city.
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