Personal Interest
By Indiana
Characters: Jim Gordon, Edward Nygma, Barbara Gordon
Synopsis: It turns out Edward has a vengeful streak a mile wide. Jim is going to have to do something about that.
Follows Father Figure
"So," said Edward, parking himself on the corner of Jim's desk, "what did I miss?"
Jim looked tiredly at where he was sitting and recalled a time where he'd been able to keep things there without the impending threat of Edward coming in and sitting on it or pushing it out of his way. "You know where we keep the police reports."
Edward waved his hand in dismissal. "I spend all day on the computer! And all night. Besides, we haven't spoken in two weeks. Surely you've been wanting someone intelligent to talk to."
"Surely," said Jim.
"Other than Barbara, I mean," he continued, not noticing or not caring about Jim's lack of interest. "Though I'm sure you can agree that she – " He frowned down at one of the files on Jim's desk. The edge of a photograph was visible outside of it, and Edward picked it up and opened it there. He rarely interrupted himself in the middle of a sentence, so Jim had to admit he was curious as to what it was he'd noticed about a sliver of a picture that was so important. His expression had gone from its habitual haughty self-importance to something… he wasn't sure. He almost looked perturbed.
"What," said Jim. Edward flipped to the front of the folder.
"Nothing," he said. Jim leaned back far enough he could read the first page of the report.
"Oh, that was a hell of a mess," he said. "All over sixty bucks."
"Who was it?" Edward asked, lifting up the first page to scan the second. "You don't have any suspects listed."
"Because we don't have any," said Jim. "That diner is down the road from the Asylum. It could be almost anyone. I've got people on it, but -"
"You're wrong, Jim," Edward retorted, snapping the folder closed in one hand. "It could not."
"You find some clues in that folder?"
"No," said Edward. "I'm merely better at narrowing down likely possibilities than you."
"Mm," said Jim, rubbing the back of his neck. "We might learn more when the coroner's report comes back, but I'm not betting on it."
"Coroner's report?" Edward flipped through the folder. "This says –"
"Haven't amended it yet," said Jim. "I got word about twenty minutes ago that she didn't make it."
Edward stared down at the words in front of him.
"I was told the paramedics got there too late." He watched Edward closely. He almost seemed to know something about all of this already. The diner, a rundown little place down the road from Arkham Asylum, was not the sort of place Jim would have thought Edward would be found dead in. But he seemed personally interested in the case, which was something that never happened. Edward did not care for anything other than his own personal interests.
Except when it came to this, it seemed.
"Why?" Edward asked. It wasn't a demand for information. It was an expression of confusion. Jim tapped his thumb against the edge of his keyboard. He needed to dust it. Vacuum it. Something like that. Barb would know.
"Anywhere in the vicinity of the Asylum we have to send a full outfit. The perp is almost always someone who got out of there. Can't just send paramedics to deal with those people." He was pretty sure they had special armoured ambulances just to send down that way.
"Perhaps some of the billionaires in this town should do something about that," Edward muttered, and Jim shrugged and leaned back in his chair.
"Lot of things a billionaire could do but doesn't."
Edward snapped the folder closed with one hand. "Why are so many people able to plead insanity in Gotham, Jim? In most other places in the country it's nearly impossible to do successfully, but here –"
"I have no idea, son," Jim said, afterward yawning into his hand, and when he opened his eyes again he saw that Edward had left for his desk with the folder. Jim was no closer at all to figuring out what his interest in all of it was, but he wasn't about to discourage the person at the precinct with the highest solve rate. Even if they were an annoying pain in the ass most of the time.
/
"You gonna let him go home, Dad?" Barbara asked the next morning, having come to the GCPD during her free period, and Jim looked up to see that Edward was facedown at his desk, head resting on his folded arms. He still seemed to be wearing his glasses, so this was definitely not intentional. Jim shrugged.
"Barb, I don't know what he does over there and I don't want to know."
"I want to know." Barbara went over to stand next to Edward, shaking his mouse, but then she grimaced. "It's locked."
"Well, that's that," said Jim.
"No," said Barbara. "I've got something for him."
"He probably doesn't want it."
"He's getting it anyway." She put her backpack on the desk and unzipped the front portion. She produced a small stuffed animal and plopped it on top of his keyboard.
"What is that?" asked Jim, coming around to pick it up and inspect it.
"It's a green and purple giraffe," said Barbara. "You know, because he always dresses like… that." She waved a hand up and down at his clothes, which were, as usual, green and purpl0065. "I saw it at the drugstore."
"Huh," said Jim, putting it back down. "Well, Barb, you need to –"
"One sec," Barbara interrupted, and she stuck her index finger in her mouth and then put it into Edward's ear. He immediately sat up straight, palm flying to the side of his head.
"Tabarnac, Barbara, I promise you are going to regret your continued insistence on doing that."
"What're you working on?" she asked, and he looked at his monitor and unlocked it almost as though it were something he'd meant to do but forgotten. The contents of the window filling the screen looked vaguely familiar.
"That Skyrim?" Jim asked. Edward stared at him in a way that gave Jim the impression he had just said something irredeemably insulting.
"EVE Online," said Barbara.
"Thank you," Edward said with emphasis, looking pointedly at Jim. He shrugged.
"It's all Skyrim to me."
"What do you want, Barbara?" He folded his arms and sat back in his chair, a clear indication he considered them both to be wasting his incredibly valuable time.
"I wanted to give you this," said Barbara, holding the giraffe so that it was right in front of his face. He leaned back and took it from her.
"Oh," he said, clearly unexcited.
"It reminded me of you," she went on as though she hadn't noticed. "That's all. I gotta go. I'm already late for class." She kissed Jim on the cheek and walked back around the desk, waving. "Bye!"
"See you later, Barb," said Jim. Edward stared at the giraffe. "Edward, please don't tell me you were playing games all night."
"I thought you knew better than to question me," Edward snapped. Jim rolled his eyes and checked his watch. Yep. Still a full shift to go.
"I'll learn one day." He made his way over to his office, glancing behind him with the full expectation he would see Edward drop the giraffe in the wastebasket… but he didn't. He tucked it next to the right side of his monitor and left it there.
Huh.
/
Jim was sitting on his living room couch that evening with a stack of folders in his lap and a half-forgotten beer next to him when it suddenly crossed his mind how weird it had been that Barbara had walked up to Edward and stuck her wet finger in his ear. "Barb," Jim said, and Barbara looked up from her laptop.
"Yeah?"
"You put your finger in Edward's ear a lot?"
She put her computer aside and turned to him. "Remember that time you asked him to go to the parent-teacher conference because you got called to a crime scene?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, we didn't go. We went to the movies."
He should have expected that. "Barb –"
"It's fine, Dad," she said, waving him off. "They would have said I'm a wonderful student and a joy to have in the classroom. Anyway, it was one of those movies where they put all the good stuff in the trailer and the rest of it is really boring, and after like twenty minutes he fell asleep. So I started trying to wake him up. He slept through everything."
"Until you gave him a wet willie," said Jim, wishing he had the ability to sleep in a movie theatre while a teenager was poking him and whispering in his ear.
"Then he woke up and got mad and told me not to do that." She pulled up her sock. "And then he said the movie was terrible and we left to get ice cream. He had pistachio."
"Of course he did," said Jim. He looked back down at the file in his lap, which Barbara frowned at. She leaned over and picked up the stack of crime scene photos.
"I know this place," she said. She flipped them one over the other, stopping at the photo of the victim. "Oh, I know her."
"What?" asked Jim, who did not recall ever bringing Barbara anywhere near the diner in the photos. She tapped one finger on the one she was inspecting.
"She's um… she's Eddie's friend. She makes him these special cheesy fries with gravy on them. We went here to pick them up when he was driving me home from school once."
Jim stared at the photograph. "That explains a lot," he said finally. "He's been… weirder than usual. He gets a kick out of solving cases that aren't his, but this one did seem… personal."
Barbara put the pile back into his lap. "I think she's like his only friend or something."
"Why would you think that?"
She retrieved her laptop. "He hugged her when he saw her."
That did sound unusual for him. Jim flipped back to the first page of the file and stared at it. He'd had to borrow it from someone else for the night because Edward had never returned his.
He was getting a bad feeling, suddenly.
/
"Hey," said Jim the following afternoon, finally locating Edward outside where he usually smoked. There were no signs he was doing so now, though. "Barb told me Ainsley was your friend. I'm sorry about what happened to her."
"It's all right, Jim," Edward said, a little too calmly.
"A tip came in last night." There was something about Edward's demeanour that was bringing back last night's misgivings. "We may just find this guy after all."
"You won't because I already did," Edward said in a disturbingly serene voice. "And I hid him away where you'll never find him."
Jim's throat seemed to close suddenly. Dammit. He forced his voice to remain level. "Tell me where he is, son."
"No," said Edward. "No, I'm not going to."
"Then why did you tell me you have him?"
"As a courtesy. Now you can stop looking."
"Whatever you're planning to do," Jim said, "you don't need to. Let me handle it. That's my job." Edward laughed a little.
"It's not up to me. It's up to him."
"Up to him?"
"When I found him," Edward said, "my initial intention was simply to beat him to death. But it wasn't… enough. It was too easy. Too simple. It would hurt him, but it would do nothing to teach him what a horrible, parasitic drain on society he was. So I abandoned that idea."
"And then?"
Edward was staring off into the distance. It seemed almost as though what he was describing were playing out invisibly right before his eyes. "I made him a little puzzle and I told him the rules: if he solves it, he's free to go. If he doesn't…" He half-shrugged.
He was right. Jim was never going to find him. His only choice was to keep Edward talking in the hopes he would self-aggrandise and let something slip. "The puzzle will kill him?"
"Ever been to one of those escape rooms, Jim?" He pushed his gloved hands into his pockets and leaned back against the precinct wall. "It's like that, but… challenging. And the stakes are considerably higher."
"Tell me where he is, Edward."
"Why?" asked Edward. There was something sharp about his face, suddenly. Predatory. "So he can plead insanity and return to the streets in two years under the guises of rehabilitation and good behaviour? I'm sorry, Jim, but that simply isn't good enough. No, no. My way is better. You'll see."
The easiest solution would be just to arrest him for kidnapping and imprisonment, but if he did that it didn't guarantee that Edward would tell him where the perp was. He might just clam up out of spite. Not only that, but Jim doubted it would teach him anything. Edward needed guidance, that was for damned sure, and the kind he would get behind bars would take him down exactly the path Jim was trying to keep him off of. There still had to be a way to talk him out of this.
Jim removed a pack of cigarettes from his coat, removing one and offering the box to Edward. He stared at it with confused suspicion.
"Go ahead," said Jim. "I'm not playing good cop bad cop."
He did so, and after they had both lit them they stood there in silence for a minute. Then Edward said,
"I'm not sorry."
Jim took a long breath through his cigarette and let it out completely. Then he answered, "I'm not always sorry myself."
Edward looked at him, cigarette between the first two fingers of his left hand. "What?"
Jim tapped the ash off of his before answering. "For nailing somebody. I've landed my fair share of unapologetic punches. Laid out quite a few guys pretty badly when I first got here. Cops on the take don't like it when you play by a different rule book, especially when it's the one they've been spitting on since they got there. But you know that."
"Yes," said Edward. Jim ground the end of his cigarette beneath his toe.
"I don't care if you're sorry. I don't even care if you liked roughing the guy up. But I do care that you're keeping him from justice for your own gain. You don't think her friends deserve a little peace? Her family?"
"I don't care about them," said Edward. Jim turned to face him.
"No," he said, "but she did. You think she'd want this? What you're doing?"
Judging by the look on his face, those questions had never crossed his mind. This was probably the first time he'd ever thought about what anyone but him wanted.
"If you care about her," Jim said, yanking open the door to the precinct, "then you care about that."
/
Jim didn't sleep much that night. There was no way of knowing if he'd gotten through to Edward or not, and if he hadn't he wouldn't know until it was too late. He stared at the ceiling with one ear turned towards the police scanner, adrenalin spiking with every fresh dispatch. But one about a man killed inside of a deadly puzzle never came in. The sun hadn't even come up by the time he decided enough was enough and sat down at the kitchen table with the first of what would be many cups of coffee.
"Morning, Dad," Barbara said several hours later, planting a kiss to his forehead on her way to the cereal. "Hey, when you see Eddie can you ask why he doesn't come by anymore?"
"He was just on vacation, Barb."
"He didn't go anywhere," Barbara said, choosing a bowl from the cupboard. "He was in Gotham the whole time. Can you just ask him?"
"Alright." If it didn't turn out he'd skipped town ahead of being collared for murder, anyway.
The minute he walked into the GCPD he was accosted by the sergeant, who grabbed his arm and said, "Guess who we've got in interrogation right now."
"I don't know, Sergeant," said Jim, already too tired for this.
"That prick who shot up the diner," he said. "Found him tied up outside with the murder weapon on him. Lucky break, huh?"
"Yeah," agreed Jim, though not for the reason the man thought.
/
He didn't have a spare minute for another couple of hours, but when he did he headed to Edward's desk. His hands were folded together and pressed beneath his nose, elbows tented on the desktop, and he was glaring over his glasses at his computer screen. For a long moment he almost didn't look like himself, but like someone much… worse. It occurred to Jim suddenly that the things Edward was willing to do to get what he wanted went up to and included murder.
He should never have taken on this responsibility.
"You did the right thing," Jim told him. Edward snorted.
"The right thing," he said into his fingers, bitter and subdued. "Right."
Jim understood that.
"It's not always enough," he said. "But once you cross that line, it gets hard to come back. Better not to cross it in the first place."
Edward sat back in his chair and folded his arms. He seemed to intentionally be avoiding Jim's face. "I'd do it again," he said.
"I hope you don't," said Jim. Edward's eyes flicked up for just a second, but he didn't say anything else.
Jim usually preferred not to pry into other peoples' business – things were simpler that way – but as he went to continue on his way his eye caught a particular square on the newspaper on Edward's desk, the page having been folded to centre it exactly. A funeral announcement.
"Barb and I can come with you, if you like," said Jim. "She's been asking about you, by the way. Wants to know why you don't come by anymore."
Edward glanced down towards the paper, and when he looked up the curated harshness of his features had given way to… realisation. Realisation of what he had almost lost as payment for what he had planned to do.
He didn't say anything. He just nodded and looked back down at his keyboard. Jim walked off towards his office. Edward seemed genuinely spooked, which was good. Hopefully it would keep him on the straight and narrow until he really started understanding consequences. God knew how he'd managed to live this long without encountering any.
/
"Jim," Edward said, catching him as he was leaving the precinct, "I need to show you something."
Jim glanced at his watch. Almost seven. "Can it wait?"
"No," said Edward, and he put one arm behind Jim's shoulders to direct him towards his car. Jim went along with it resignedly. Getting it over with was good too.
Edward, shockingly, drove a black two-door Honda Accord, and he must have noticed Jim's puzzled expression because he offered without being prompted, "Their only green offering is a bit conspicuous."
"You didn't strike me as someone who cared about conspicuous," said Jim, belting himself in. The car was as impeccable as if it had been driven off the lot ten minutes prior. It even still smelled as though it had barely been driven.
"I'm not," Edward admitted, putting his hand on the – it was a manual, which was also a little surprising – gearshift and starting the engine. "I have a pickup truck in that colour."
"A pickup truck," Jim repeated, not having expected that either.
"Mmhm. You'll see why soon enough."
He took Jim in what he was pretty sure was the complete opposite direction from his condo, eventually coming to a stop outside of a long-defunct two-storey motel. "Come, come," said Edward, exiting the vehicle and rounding it towards the motel without checking to see if Jim was following. He took a deep breath and resigned himself to whatever it was so important he saw it right now.
Once he had entered the building and followed Edward up a set of stairs towards a room illuminated with a handful of floodlights, he had to admit he had no idea what he was looking at. No idea at all. Edward seemed to have knocked out all the walls and replaced about half of the floor with glass, which looked down upon… he shook his head. It almost looked like… a maze, but littered with all sorts of electronic contraptions that it was impossible to tell the function of from where they were. About half of the walls on the first floor had also been knocked out in order to create the maze, and across the room from them on the far side was what Jim could only describe as a command centre: a desk with six or seven monitors mounted on it and some other equipment he couldn't identify from there. He looked over at Edward, who was regarding the space below them as though he were envisioning his wildest dreams coming to life in there somewhere.
"You didn't build this all for him," Jim said, not really asking because it was quite obvious this had been a long time in the making. It was probably what he had spent his vacation time working on. Edward shook his head, rocking forward on his toes for a moment.
"If there's one thing people love," Edward said, "it's paying for experiences that are extremely difficult to come by. They love extreme haunted houses and they love extreme escape rooms. This, then, is to be both."
"I'm not sure this would pass a safety inspection," Jim said, and Edward waved a hand.
"Not in its current state, no. It's a work in progress, but once I have achieved completion I'll… dumb it down."
"It's impressive," Jim had to admit, "but I'm afraid I'm not sure why coming here was so urgent."
Edward slowly rubbed the fingertips of one gloved hand over his cheeks. They were smooth as always. "Now I can't use it again," he said finally.
Jim stared up at him. "You planning on kidnapping a lot more people?"
"Not planning." His eyes raked the darkness below them, for what Jim couldn't tell. "But that line you mentioned, Jim… it's difficult to see at the best of times."
Jim was not quite sure why he felt relieved in that moment, but he would figure it out later. He put a hand on Edward's shoulder. He felt Edward's eyes on him, though he didn't indicate he wanted Jim to move it. He probably didn't.
"I'm glad you understand, son," said Jim.
"I don't, actually," said Edward.
Jim removed his hand to his coat pocket. "You need to show me any more of these places?"
"No. This is it."
"Good."
They made their way out and Jim waited while Edward locked up, after which they got into the car. "Just drop me off at home," Jim said as Edward turned the key in the ignition. He nodded.
They continued on in silence for a while until Edward asked, almost accusingly, "Why do you care so much what I do with myself, Jim? No one else ever has."
Jim was tempted to light a cigarette but thought better of it. Edward obviously did not smoke in his car. "You make yourself very difficult to give a damn about," Jim said, idly taking in the graffiti on a nearby mailbox. There was so much of it jumbled together that none of it was legible. "People can tell when you don't care about them. And I'm not sure there's anybody you do care about."
"I cared about Ainsley," Edward said defensively. He drove with one hand on the bottom of the steering wheel, but it was clenched there tightly now as opposed to being loosely draped over it a moment ago. Jim shook his head.
"You cared about what she did for you. Caring about a person means putting them before yourself. You think you've ever done that?"
Edward did not answer.
When they pulled up in front of Jim's house he hesitated, hand on the door release. Then he said, "You wanna come in? Say hi to Barb?"
Edward shook his head. "No, I –"
"So you didn't listen to a word I just said."
"It could simply be that I'm tired and want to go home," Edward snapped, though more to the windshield than anything, and Jim shrugged and opened the door.
"Alright."
"Fine," Edward said, shoving open his own door. "Fine, fine."
"Don't bother if you're going to be like that with her."
"I'll behave, Lieutenant."
Jim doubted that, but he unlocked the front door and held it open for him anyway. "Barb!" he called as he shrugged off his coat and put it on the rack. Out of the corner of his eye he saw it slip off into Edward's expectant hand. Jim would have to think about why he'd done that later.
"Living room!" Barbara shouted. Edward followed him in there, which for some reason made Barbara jump off the couch and demand, "Eddie, what took you so long?"
"What?" Edward snapped, looking irritated about being accused of absolutely anything.
"My water-cooling stuff came in like last week! I've been waiting on you because you told me not to do it myself the first time."
"Oh," said Edward. He actually sounded cowed, a little bit. "Yes. Of course."
"C'mon," Barbara said, grabbing his arm and almost but not quite pulling him upstairs to her room. Jim looked on bemusedly. He was pretty sure the last person to do anything like that with Edward's arm had had the remainder of their week mysteriously ruined.
Jim absently watched the news for about ten minutes before realising he hadn't had supper yet. He got up and went into the kitchen, but the refrigerator didn't hold anything particularly appetising. Pizza seemed like a good idea, so he went upstairs to ask what Barbara thought. What he found was Barbara kneeling on the floor, looking at Edward expectantly. Edward was also sitting on the floor, one leg laid flat and the other foot tucked against his thigh. He was wearing green and purple argyle socks. Barbara's computer and a whole lot of bits and bobs were laid out in front of him, which he was just sort of staring at. They seemed to hold some secret he was waiting for them to reveal, and when Jim looked to Barbara for clarification she just shrugged and said, "It's part of his process."
"Uh-huh," said Jim. "You eat yet?"
"I had some popcorn."
That was a no, then. "Pizza okay?"
"Eddie likes vegetarian," said Barbara, leaning on her computer case to look at the parts on the floor. Jim frowned a little.
"Why do you know that?"
She shrugged. "He's nicer when he knows you're paying attention when he talks. Right, Eddie?"
"Hm?" said Edward without either looking away from the doodads or moving at all, a clear indication he was not listening even a little bit.
"He agrees," said Barbara, and Jim decided to take her word for it. When he brought them their share of the pizza twenty minutes later, Edward was still sitting in the exact same spot and Barbara was digging for something in her desk.
Barbara was certainly being very patient.
It was an hour or so later when Edward came downstairs, Barbara not in tow, and Jim glanced over from the television when he got to the front door. "How'd it go?" he asked as Edward slid his feet into his shoes. He paused.
"It didn't," he said. "I have to bring some tools."
"All right," said Jim. Edward shrugged on his jacket.
"And her desk drawer sticks," he said.
"Never been one for that kind of thing," said Jim, knowing exactly what he was implying. Edward nodded.
"See you tomorrow," he said, pulling open the door, but Jim wasn't finished.
"That wasn't so bad, was it?"
"What wasn't?"
He already knew. Jim could tell by the way he was emphatically staring out the front door. But he'd say it anyway.
"Coming in even though you didn't want to."
He shrugged. "I suppose." But he didn't move at all, just stood there with the door open.
"Yeah?"
"Are you going to tell her what I did?"
Jim watched him closely. "Are you?"
"Should I?"
Jim took a moment to decide whether or not he genuinely didn't know. "Yes. Yes, you should."
Edward grimaced at the porch. "All right. I'll tell her."
Jim nodded. "See you tomorrow." He wasn't sure if he believed him or not, but it would be nice to be able to.
"Dad," Barbara said when he'd gone up to tell her goodnight, "Eddie asked me to go to Ainsley's funeral with him."
"He asked you," Jim repeated.
"Yeah."
"You wanna go?"
"Of course," said Barbara, as though the question were silly.
"Tell him he has to tell you something first."
"He does?"
"Yep," said Jim, and he patted her on the head and went into his bedroom.
"What does he have to tell me?" Barbara called from her doorway.
"Ask him," said Jim, and he turned out the light.
Author's note
Yes Ainsley is the same person from the other series and yes she made him poutine.
EVE Online is a space MMORPG otherwise known as a spreadsheet simulator. I've never played it but one of my friends does.