All you readers are the best. I'll keep trying to thank you by posting regularly. As of right now, I'm projecting 17-18 chapters, so stay tuned. More fanfic is on the way. :) I hope everyone has an awesome, candy-filled Halloween! I'll be parading around as Tigger, trotting my almost 3-year-old around the neighborhood in his Winnie-the-Pooh costume. Because that's how we roll.
Rated M: For language. As usual.
(x)
Harvey holed up in a booze joint and drank himself into oblivion the night he got the news. For the first two weeks, the story went that Lee was out on maternity leave. Then, it was that she moved down South to be closer to her folks. When the whispers around the precinct went darker, he thought it was just Gotham's rumor mill taking a turn for the worst. Denial at its finest, he supposed. But for once the gossip train had it right. Barnes confirmed it for him that Lee lost the baby.
He couldn't say for sure if he cried or not. He vaguely remembered that when he got done drinking whiskey, tequila seemed like a reasonable replacement. Early that morning he woke up dressed in the same rags he wore the night before, lying on his bathroom floor, staring up at the light fixture on the ceiling. It was by far the first time he blacked out and still somehow made it back to his apartment in one piece. That meant things hadn't gotten so bad that he'd passed out at a bar, in a gutter, or worse.
Later that morning, Harvey got into it with one of the bureaucratic guard dogs down at City Hall. The woman behind the desk looked straight out of a government employee casting call with her gray bun, old ladies spectacles, boxy build, and distinct air of indifference.
When she asked, "Could I have your name?" He tried laying on the charm. "What s'matter with the one you got, gorgeous?" Harvey was either out of practice, still smelled like half the booze he drank the night before, or for some reason the middle-aged version of Chunk from The Goonies wasn't her idea of a hot date. That went over like a lead balloon.
Everything she said and didn't say told him that she was doing him a real favor just by talking to him. Harvey ate as much humble pie as he could stomach before he blew his stack and threatened to come back every hour on the hour until she decided to, you know, do her job. Instead of -nothing-. The interaction with this government lackey ended the same as all the others. He'd make more headway sucking marbles through a straw.
He got through the rest of his workday only half-present. In the middle of doing stupid DMV checks, he wracked his brain for any legal connection he had left to put to work on the Gordon front and came up empty each time. The headache from his lingering hangover pulsed steadily, and he realized with some chagrin that he pulled a muscle in his back, probably from yelling at the paper-pusher down at City Hall.
On the short walk from the annex back to his desk, he got his confirmation that Barnes had left for the day. He saw an officer in the evidence room openly stuffing bags of cocaine down into his pockets. A detective grabbed the ass of a strung-out prostitute with both hands before he shut and locked the interrogation room door behind them. Another officer palmed a wad of cash from a slimeball in lock-up before thanking him for his contribution and telling he was free to go.
It was back to business as usual ever since Gordon got pinched. Rackets, extortion, and frame-ups were high. Oversight and fucks given were low. The place was falling apart like a Chinese motorcycle. The sad thing was Harvey'd be lying if it all didn't seem to put the universe back into balance. Just because he wasn't exactly thrilled by it didn't make it any less of a universal truth. Ten is greater than five. Always hit on a soft sixteen. Gotham and police corruption go together like rohypnol and prom night.
When the end of his shift finally came and went, he cast half an eye up to Madeline's office. The door was shut, but the light was on.
He wondered if she knew. Harvey inwardly winced and ran his hand through his uncombed mop of hair. If she didn't know by now, somebody had to tell her. It sort of exhausted him to realize that there was no one else who was going to do it. This assignment fell squarely to him.
When he knocked loudly on her door, he heard her voice call, "Come in."
Harvey found her where he usually did. At her desk, mining her way through a mountain of paperwork.
She turned her face to his, and they did that thing. Where they both read each other like some people read the newspaper.
Her dark red hair was down but nicely styled. She wore the usual steam-pressed button-down shirt and pencil skirt, paired with impossibly high heels. But her dark eyes looked tired, and he could tell her makeup had been wiped away from the dusty arcs of freckles now visible high up on her cheekbones. He thought he knew why.
After giving him a quick assessment right back, she drew her own conclusion. "When did you hear about it?"
Harvey clicked the door shut behind him and took the seat by her desk. "Last night. You?"
"This morning." She ran her hand down through her hair and let it rest at the nape of her neck. She started, "I…" Then her bottom lip quivered, and she looked away. Even with her staring off, Harvey could see tears shining in her eyes.
It hit him like a punch to the gut. It reminded him that even now he couldn't take seeing her that way.
When she snuck a glance at him, she caught the look on his face. Then she sighed and pointed vaguely to her tears. "It's fucking sad, okay? This is what this is. When someone …" Her voice broke off and then returned. "So don't ask me to stop. This is how it's done."
Harvey dealt with things by taking shortcuts to oblivion. Maddie would rather feel it all to the nth degree. He'd never understand it, not in a million, billion years.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. He wished it didn't hurt, wished he could do something. "Look, Maddie. You gotta know-"
"Don't," she said, her voice cracking. "Just… You don't have to fix this."
He lightly tossed up his hands in frustration. He remembered suddenly how useless she could make him feel when she got like this. Don't help me. Don't do anything that concrete and natural. Just sit there while I cry buckets.
He thought quite clearly, Yeah, fuck that. Harvey noisily pulled his chair next to hers, and he placed a strong and steady arm around her shoulder. The coddling and patronizing would probably only piss her off… but whatever. Tough shit. When a girl's crying, men are supposed to make it stop.
He managed not to go into shock when the exact opposite happened. She turned toward him and rested her face into his shoulder, not unlike she might have six or seven years back. There were Wizard of Oz munchkins who had an inch or two on Maddie, but you'd never know it to look at her. She had a way of walking in and owning a room. Grief like this always made her look so much smaller and more fragile than she actually was.
Harvey found himself falling back into protocol himself. He shushed her, and when his hand fell to her waist, she moved in a touch. He tried not to think about how right that felt. It was anything but time for that.
This was usually the part where he'd say something vaguely reassuring. Something about how it was going to be okay, but … he realized he wasn't willing to lie to her.
Eventually, she pulled away and grabbed up a tissue from the box on her desk. After she cleaned herself up, she said, "I know it's not … It's not my life. It's not happening to me."
"It ain't like that," he said, almost chastising her. "We both know there ain't nothin' about this that's right."
"Whoever did this." She pushed hair out of her face and shook her head. "Harvey … they've ruined their lives."
Yet another line from her beacon of truth file drawer. And here Harvey sat, no closer to finding the piece of shit who did this than he was a month before.
Either his self-pity didn't show up on his face or she didn't catch it. Either way he was grateful for it. Sitting beside him, she tossed up her hand at the closed door. "Then you walk around this place. It's like someone gave all the shitheads in here the green light. I overheard one of the assholes out there talking about him today. 'Look at Jim Gordon. That's what you get. That dumbass s.o.b.'s been asking for it since he got here.'" She got on a roll and stayed there. "So I jumped in and said, Yeah, he thought what he did inside this fucking hellhole would actually change things. Tell me something. How is what he did any worse than your complete and total fucking apathy?"
Harvey sat back, letting her get it all out. He found himself surprised to find he was trying not to smile.
Madeline caught it, and then she tried not to smile, too. She heard the question in the ether, and she said, "Then he told me I was crazy." She rose up with energy, "So then I told him to shut the fuck up or I was gonna kick his dick off. Then I slammed the door in his face so hard it almost hit his nose."
Harvey let the smile break through just before he said, "That'll show 'em."
She laughed while wiping the rest of her tears away with the heel of her hand. "It wasn't even my office, so … I had to wait in this back room until he left the hallway."
He let loose a short huff of laughter and went back to rubbing his hand down her back.
They stayed like that for a minute, and Harvey set to work getting his own head in check. He tried not to let his mind go to that place where he actually felt things, but the problem was he understood too much. He knew what it was to be fighting the good fight tooth and nail, and then suddenly, there you are. Left in the midst of a battle that means nothing. Every time that sort of loss hit it was nothing but a spiral of pain and uncertainty … and when it's buried, a part of you gets buried with it.
His mind took its regular exit off the freeway. He needed a drink, needed to let the booze do its thing. Though he had his flask on standby, he decided to be decent and wait until he wasn't in her presence to do so.
When Madeline's gaze met his, she seemed to be looking for him to say something, and Harvey took the opening. "Listen, I already know what you're getting up to in that head of yours with this. But look it, it's better for you to back off. Least for the time being."
"Better for me or for him?"
"For everyone in this thing," he said. "This ain't the sorta news that should come from me or you. You need to give him time to hear about it from Lee or her people." He sat back and said, "Besides, for now, he's staying off Grey's radar and between you and me-"
"We need to keep it that way?" There was something vaguely accusing in her voice. "Maybe I should wait another two or three weeks?"
Harvey made a frustrated noise in his throat and raised his eyebrows at her. Okay, so maybe she'd figured out that he and Wilson were in cahoots, allies in the 'Madeline needs firm handling' game.
She sent him a look that was a little too knowing. Of course she figured it out. Do you think I fell off a stump yesterday?
Harvey opened up his hands and came clean. "Look, I trust what Wilson's got to say, all right? That man's got his fingers on the pulse of this thing. I don't."
"Yeah, well, I can guarantee you that things in that snake pit aren't any worse or any riskier than they were a month ago."
Great. This debate again. He went to shut it down. "How 'bout it ain't gettin' any less risky? Whatever goes on in Blackgate is like Wendy's chili, okay? You don't know what the fuck is going on in there, but takin' a closer look ain't the way to improve things."
Madeline took them down a different path. "Yeah, well, here's something I do know. The only thing more extensive than Blackgate's drug and contraband network is the information network. You really think by now Gordon hasn't heard about what happened?"
Good question. But when you stripped it bare, the answer was pretty simple. "I don't know for sure," he said. "And I won't 'til I go see him."
"So for the sake of argument, let's say that he does know. You really think after getting that sort of news that he doesn't need to speak with a professional?"
"Let's ask all my degrees up on the wall." Then he raised his voice slightly, "Oh, wait, I don't have them up. Because I'm not a freakin' doctor. How the heck should I know?"
"I think it's pretty self-evident. Don't you?"
Harvey worked not to openly roll his eyes at her. If she ever became a WWE wrestler, he had the perfect stage name for her. She could either be 'Bulldozer' or 'Sledgehammer'. "Look, you don't know him like I do." He found himself pleased to hear the words ringing true. "Gordon's tougher than a two dollar steak. If anyone can make it through this, it's him." He patted his lips and said, "So if you don't mind, let's curtail reacting all over the place. Keep our heads with this."
Her face told him that she didn't appreciate the phrasing. It made her sit back and cross her arms. But he could tell she had more to say. He kept silent and waited her out. Finally, she caught him in that laser stare of hers. "Are you telling me that you can take another 'what if?' One more 'what if I'd just done this?' 'What if I just did that?'"
Harvey felt the full weight of her words hit him, and though he didn't say anything, Madeline nodded at his expression. "Yeah. Me either."
He breathed another heavy sigh against his closed lips.
After a long pause, Madeline asked, "You said you were going to see him?"
"Tomorrow. I'll make it a point."
She looked back at him. "Okay, I'll make you a deal. When you go to see him, if you really think he's in decent health, if you really think that he's in the right headspace even with everything that's happened, I'll stay out."
When she held out her hand, reluctantly, he shook on it.