Is there anything you would love to do if there were no consequences?
Whenever I see a pyramid of cans in a super market, I inwardly fight the urge to push it over. So, I'd definitely give that a try.
This time, she didn't have to wait long for their next encounter.
It was a tough day at work. By now, Sophie had gotten used to the steamy heat of the kitchen and she could have sworn that the work here also made her a lot more coordinated and quicker than any job she ever had before. The tension that was brought by working under time pressure usually got dissolved by the loud and good-humoured chatter of her colleagues. But today, even those who usually filled the room with loud laughter were strained by the stress. Three people were on sick leave and apparently, their restaurant had appeared particularly attractive to customers this day.
Sophie had thought that it couldn't have gotten any worse and really looked forward to clocking off. As ever so often, the universe decided to prove her otherwise.
While she was solely focused on cutting symmetrical slices of tomatoes as fast as she could, an armed man in a suit stormed in and shouted at them to leave.
Sophie tilted her head and crooked an eyebrow at him while the rest of her colleagues seemed as unimpressed by the disturbance as she was. She actually felt a twinge of pride for herself. Not being terrified by armed men seemed to be one of the characteristics of a true Gothamite.
Here, a gun seemingly wasn't enough to inspire fear. Most citizens were almost used to the crime and criminals around them. To scare them, the person holding the weapon needed to be terrifying. Sophie caught herself thinking of how Victor Zsasz had caused everyone to leave by merely entering the room when she was still working in that coffee shop.
This man, however, did not seem intimidating to her or anyone else, apparently. So, Sophie chose to ignore him and shifted her attention back to the tomatoes.
Only a second later, the sound of machine guns rang through the room. This, of course, was a different calibre in more than one way. The least impressive person can be utterly terrifying with a machine gun. The two women in a rather punkish attire were trying to shoot the man, not seeming to care much about collateral damage, and definitely inspiring fear. With the sound of her colleagues' screams in her ears, Sophie threw herself to the floor and started moving towards the other exit.
Along with the others, Sophie half crawled, and half ran towards their way out and while everyone else did not slow down after they had exited the room, the sound of a far too familiar voice made her stop.
"It's an inevitability, Jim!"
Sophie let out a groan. Speaking of the devil. Or rather thinking. She dragged away the fact that too many of her thoughts revolved around Victor Zsasz and, with her back now pressed against the closed door, continued to eavesdrop. Not that any of the sounds were hard to overhear.
After the fire of machine guns had been replaced by the sound ordinary guns make, the two men had seemingly resolved to physical violence. At least Sophie could have sworn that it would sound exactly like this if a man's head was hit by a pan or another metal object repeatedly. It almost sounded the way it did in the cartoons she used to watch as a kid.
She started biting her lower lip. Due to what she had witnessed the last time she saw him, Sophie was sure that the bald man wasn't as good in a fistfight as he was when it came to firearms. His forte seemed to lie in agility and not in brute strength.
While Sophie was aware of the fact that it was morally wrong to root for the perpetrator, especially in a situation like this, she just couldn't help hoping that he would come out of this unharmed. In an ideal world, both men would be alright. But Sophie knew that Victor Zsasz was not likely to stop until the job was finished. For his target to survive, he would need to be stopped- and that would only be achieved by his own death. And that was something Sophie did not want to occur.
She should have walked away from this, but her curiosity was stronger. The kind of curiosity that kills cats. Carefully, she sneaked back into the room she had fled from and took in the scene.
Victor was hitting the other man's head with a tray.
So, she hadn't been wrong about the metal object, and inwardly congratulated herself on her perceptiveness. However, he did not keep the upper hand for very long; from one second to the next, the other man had him in a headlock only to send him to the floor with a kick in the solar plexus.
She let out a hissing sound by inhaling through gritted teeth. That must have hurt. She hoped that none of his internal organs were damaged.
With Zsasz being knocked out, she expected the other man to leave. Instead, he reached for the gun on the counter and aimed it at the unconscious figure.
Her insides turned into ice.
Sophie opened her mouth to scream at the man, to tell him to stop, but everything that came out was a pathetic sound that was far too quiet to be heard by the man. His hand pulled the trigger and-
Nothing happened.
With the empty gun still in his hand, the man walked out the same door he had come to and Sophie shakily hurried towards the bald man.
"Just how often do you get knocked out, Victor?", she asked the person laying on the ground with a sigh. The rush of adrenaline and the fact that he was breathing made her feel almost light-headed.
Getting down beside him, Sophie inspected the man for further damage. There was bruise forming on his left cheek bone, but it did not look too bad. He had probably dished out more than he had taken in- except for that hit in the solar plexus. Despite having passed out, the man was breathing heavily, and Sophie hoped that it was more from exertion than from pain.
She wasn't sure what to do. It was very likely that one of her co-workers had called the police by now who would soon walk in to find two dead women and a knocked-out assassin.
Sophie didn't want him to be arrested and she hated herself for it. Murderers belong to prison, so they can no longer harm others and be rehabilitated. As rational as it sounded, it still didn't suffice for her.
When he had been at her flat, Sophie remembered, he had taken out his phone and texted people to pick him up. With a trembling hand, she reached inside his vest, painfully aware of his heartbeat, found his phone in one of the inside pockets and flipped it open.
No pin code. Either this man was very confident that no one would ever dare to touch something as personal as his phone or he had very little care for privacy.
Opening his list of contacts, Sophie was quickly met with a dilemma. Which number should she call? Or should she text? Under 'B', there were two entries: "Boss" and "Boss (1)", each having a different number. Neither Oswald Cobblepot's name nor nickname were anywhere to be found.
Sophie didn't have the guts to call any number whatsoever and quickly sent a text to boss (1), assuming it to be his employer's more recent number, and informing him that Victor Zsasz and two bodies required being picked up at her restaurant's address.
About five seconds later, the phone rang.
With a long exhale to calm her nerves, Sophie picked up the call.
"Yes?" she asked, far too high-pitched to conceal her nervousness.
"Who are you?" She was pretty sure it was the mayor's voice and ignored the question. It would be best if no one influential knew who she was.
Instead, she said: "He needs to be picked up before the police-" but did not get to finish her sentence. "Let me ask you again, young lady. Who are you?"
Sophie hesitated. "I am a friend of Victor's." The person on the other end of the line seemed to be as surprised of that statement as she was herself. During the awkward silence that followed, Sophie wondered how many people would call themselves Victor Zsasz's friends.
"Right", the voice interrupted her thoughts, "I'll send someone. But if you prove to have lied, there will be severe consequences." Sophie nodded, forgetting that he could not see that, and then hurried to say "Of course, thank you", before he hung up the phone.
When she made an attempt to put the phone back into the bald man's vest, his sudden firm grip on her wrist almost gave her a heart-attack. With a clenched jaw and furrowed brows, Victor Zsasz looked at her in a way that suggested he wanted to know what she had done with his phone.
"You've been unconscious for a couple of minutes. I took your phone and talked to the mayor. He will send someone to pick you up. Are you okay?" She rattled off, almost stumbling over the words.
The assassin gave a short nod, before letting his head sink back on the floor and closing his eyes. While his one hand clutched at the area just below his rib cage, his other remained on Sophie's wrist, though with a much lighter grip, as if he had forgotten about it.
She allowed it to remain there and put her hand down to one of her knees. She told herself that she didn't mind it, but a part of her enjoyed being touched by Victor Zsasz, even if it was through gloved hands, far too much for her own good.
Remaining seated down where she was, Sophie became aware of how she was invading his personal space, how she could feel the contact his hand that was still around her wrist made contact with a part of her leg though the fabric of her – Focus, she commanded herself.
"Why are you here?" he eventually asked, bringing her back down to earth. Sophie hesitated for a moment, before letting out a short laugh. "I work here." She could have sworn that he had grinned for a second.
"What are you doing here? Who was that man?"
"Work. James Gordon of the GCPD.", he answered expressionlessly.
Sophie blinked. She couldn't believe that the mayor would order a hit on a policeman.
"Why does he have to die? What did he do?"
"Upsetting the wrong people."
"But he's with the police, and he seemed concerned to get everyone out of the line of fire before you came in here…"
"Jim's a good guy", he stated matter-of-factly.
"Um, you like him?"
"Yes." Still no expression.
"And you'd still… kill him?"
He raised his eyebrows. "Business is business."
Sophie decided against an argument about how while killing people in general was wrong, killing people you like was even worse.
"So, what did James Gordon do to upset the mayor?
"He didn't upset penguin. Someone else gave the order."
I thought he only works for Cobblepot? "Who?"
Instead of an answer, Victor Zsasz grinned, gave a slight shake of the head and closed his eyes again. She wouldn't pry any more information out of him today.
When he heard her sigh, the bald man finally let his arm slip from her wrist and started to slowly rise from the ground.
"You should leave before they come for the clean-up", he suggested, indifferently gesturing towards one of the dead women in the corner of the room that Sophie had avoided looking at.
Sophie had actually forgotten about them. The thought made her flinch. Am I becoming so cold that I don't even care about people dying in the same room? Yet, she was interested in who they were and how they had come to work with him.
Instead of asking more questions, Sophie nodded and did what he suggested. While leaving the man and the bloody mess behind, she could not help wondering if Victor Zsasz would put her in the category of people he "liked" and if it would mean anything if he did.
Consumed by her dark thoughts, she didn't pay any attention and never took notice of the car far too fancy for this neighbourhood parked opposite to the restaurant.
Author's Note: A big thank you to those who left a review! It's both very flattering and motivating. ;)
"The kind of curiosity that kills cats" is a sentence used by Neil Gaiman in his wonderful poem "The White Road" which I strongly recommend – as well as anything else this author has ever written.