"We're here." Ray said, drumming his fingers on the wheel. He could badly use a smoke. He sympathised with Barbara's inner turmoil. Returning to a family who had abandoned you...he shook his head. It reminded him of a homicide he'd once worked. Family man comes home from work one day. He wants his gazpacho soup served hot. His wife tells him its meant to be cold. So he puts her head in the oven and turns it all the way up to Gas Mark 8, and then he sits down calmly at the table to finish his soup.
That seemed logical by comparison to the traumas families seemed to inflict on themselves every day.
"Well, we can't sit here all day." he said, without an ounce of enthusiasm. She simply glared ahead, before pulling the buds out of her ears. He took that as a sign of readiness, and got out the car. The cold air hit him hard, like a hammer to the chest, his breath coming ragged. It was going to be a very cold winter, he could tell.
He helped Babs out of the car. She was wearing a thick sweater and long pants. It was a bit casual for something intended as a formal get-together, but it was comfortable, and the last thing Babs wanted to do was endure any more discomfort for the benefit of her family.
They walked up the drive-way, the detective in his heavy winter trench-coat, his fedora turned low, his gloved-hands guiding her protectively towards the front-door. It felt like he was escorting a prisoner to the lock-up. Yet for much of her life this had been Bab's second home, the place she spent her time when it was her mother's turn to have custody. It had been that way for at least seven years.
Babs glared up at the fortress of her enemy. She sighed, unclenching her hands for the first time since the drive had begun. It felt painful, but pain helped her focus, kept her awake and kept her sane.
The door opened before they could knock. Apparently they had been expected.
"Babs! Glad you could make it! This must be Detective Wills." Harry Barnes, a jovial man with an earnest expression and a University dean sweater and slacks, opened the door for them. Barbara-Keane Gordon's new husband, and in a sense Barbara Gordon's step-father. Not that she'd ever seen him as anything more than "Harry" at best.
Her relationship with her mother had been strained even before the Joker. Harry had tried his best to smooth things of course, but a young girl going through her teens and being raised by an often-away detective father would be someone difficult to warm up even in the best of circumstances.
And these were most definitely not the best of circumstances.
"Mr. Barnes." Ray said stoically, speaking for Babs, who was still glancing around the porch and the hall-way, as if discovering an entirely new planet. Ray awkwardly produced a modestly expensive bottle of wine, which Mr Barnes took without batting an eyelid.
Harry then took Ray's coat, waiting nervously. Babs reluctantly took off her scarf and handed it over. She said nothing. Ray coughed, awkwardly, and busied himself by analysing the premises, as if this house was any other response call.
A standard two-story detached house. Creature comforts. Warm, cosy. A place that was lived in, full of life. It was like the mirror opposite of Jim's house, where Barbara had convalesced for over a year now. The presence of pictures of Barbara growing up, adorning the walls conspicuously, set off some small alarm bells for him. They seemed too new, too fresh, too clean. They stuck out, an artefact from an earlier time.
Where Babs had left her father's house largely untouched, a frozen moment tended carefully mostly by Patricia, keeping it a safe space for Babs to recover in, this house had changed. Things had moved, and even the smell and style of the place seemed unfamiliar.
Two large house-cats came padding into the hall-way, and the aroma and din of a family gathering could be heard in the dining room beyond. Wills mentally braced himself for Babs's sake. It seemed a pleasant enough place, which he intuited would make the pain all the more acute.
They had simply moved on without her. He couldn't blame them for living their lives, but he still found it hard to understand why they had distanced themselves so easily from Barbara, or, having made the cut, why they now sought to naively bridge that gap, as if nothing had happened.
"The rest of the family's in the dining room. Jim Jr's still upstairs." Harry said, a little awkwardly. "I guess he's...still getting ready."
Babs said nothing. Her brother. Somehow she had hoped to avoid this meeting. The memories of their childhood threatened her sea-wall of calm, but only for a moment. She regained control, and looked up steadily, impassively, as if she was simply an acquaintance newly come to this family, like Ray.
"Oh, that's nice."
Harry seemed to sense a little of her mood. He faltered a little as he led her through into the Dining Room.
The room was immediately silenced by their arrival. Babs couldn't help but feel a small stab of icy satisfaction at drawing their attentions so.
She took in all their faces. The rest of the extended Gordon-Barnes clan was there too. Aunts, Step-Uncles, cousins, step-grandfathers and grandmothers. Some familiar, some new, some old.
Babs tried to remember her own grand-parents, now all dead, the last being her grandmother, her father's mother, who had passed away shortly before the Joker's reign had begun. Mercifully spared that tragedy, at least.
Yet she somehow found it hard to imagine her grandma ever abandoning her the way her mother had. The thought steeled her. How had her family become so torn, so distant, so alien? It wasn't just her, or the Joker. The seeds of disaffection had been sown long before. The answer seemed obvious now, in retrospect. How would a man who lived a double life, as her father had, affect his family? And how would people treat a girl who still seemed so much her father's daughter? He was more than a father to her now. He was a martyr, a hero who had fallen killing the monster that had made her the way she was.
In a way, their abandonment had only made it all the easier for her to become more like her father. At that moment, it was hard for her to feel any doubt, only anger. Only; Barbara-Keane Barnes now turned, her face unreadable at the sight of her daughter.
And suddenly there she was, right in front of her. Her own mother. Now they would have to talk.
"Barbara." her mother said.
"Mother." she replied.
"Hey dear, this is Detective Ray-" Harry began.
"We've met." Ray cut them off. He'd been Jim Gordon's friend for twenty years. He'd seen the marriage begin, bloom, wither, and die, and then everything that came after. What he hadn't seen, and still couldn't quite fathom, was how this woman's coldness towards his best friend and boss had turned into this seeming coldness towards the daughter.
She bore this woman's name, for Christ's sake. It was a puzzle, but one he didn't really have the right to go digging around in. No, he had a more important duty this Thanksgiving. Helping Barbara endure it, the way he had stood by her side for the Anniversary, and for her treatments, these many past months.
He gave Barbara-Keane a look. She simply stared back. His look said "I am your child's parent now. Not you." Her look said...nothing.
Babs pushed past them, seating herself at the table, determinedly not looking at everyone else. The smell of cooking food from the kitchen, hung like a discordant note in the air. She looked around, noting everyone's reactions. She sat, and made a show of getting ready to eat, hoping that this would dispel some of the tension. A few shot encouraging looks Babs's way, but most seemed...detached. Disengaged. Afraid, possibly. The ghoul-faced girl who until recently had had the most ghastly grin.
She was tempted to give them a smile just to see if they'd flinch, but she honestly was worried that if she started she'd start laughing till she cried. And that would be a sign of weakness.
She looked around, noting a few other children, most too young to properly understand what had happened, except that Babs was now not someone who came to this house. There was little Anna, of course, Harry's eldest by his own former marriage. There was Richard, and Peter, and a bunch of other cousins and half-cousins.
Somewhere in the mix would probably be Margaret Gordon, the woman who had divorced Jim most recently, and had been her step-mother. Her abandonment was the most perplexing. Trying to think about why Margaret, or Maggie as she had called her, the woman who had taught her about tampons and boys and showed her how to race quad-bikes...why that woman hadn't been there that year, was the hardest. So she ignored that problem, and focused on hating the easier problems.
"Would you like anything to drink?" Harry asked her, a little unctuously.
"I'll have a beer." She asked, bluntly.
"You're a little young-"
"Do you have a beer?" she cut across him sharply.
"Yes." he finished, before reluctantly going to fetch one. Detective Wills suppressed a chuckle, watching this exchange go on.
He sat down beside her. "Make that two, Harry!" he called out, a weathered smile on his face. He gently took Barbara's cold, shaking hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "Not alone, partner." he whispered.
She looked at him, and she felt some of her tension ebb out. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
Her brother arrived next, skittishly taking his place by his mother. She noted how they seemed to be seated opposite one another, like two opposing camps. It seemed so like the old days it made her head ache.
She let go of Ray's hand, reluctantly. There had to be a better way of doing this. She had to get through this cold, this confusion. James was her brother. He didn't need to be one of them. She felt overwhelmed once more, and felt her breathing grow ragged.
The place no longer seemed cold, but overly warm.
"James..." she tried, her voice seeming thick and hoarse in her throat. "Jimmy. It's me."
He looked uncomfortably around, as if unsure what to do, what to say. Barbara-Keane lay her hand on his shoulder, keeping him still in his chair.
"Barbara." The name seemed almost to twist in her mother's mouth, as if saying her own name to address this other person was another difficulty.
"Let's all be civil shall we? Harry, bring in the starters. We're going to eat. Like a family." her words were clipped, and there was an obvious iron will behind them.
Her younger brother looked down, fidgeting, uncertain. Babs had a sense that she had lost something she didn't even know she still had.
The food came, and she found herself trying to focus intently on these thick, rich textures, anything except the nervous, awkward conversation starting up around her, the eyes looking at her. The room seemed oppressive now. No longer did she feel like a defiant outsider storming an enemy camp, but now she felt like a stranger in her own land, the victim of occupying forces.
She tried to reconcile this cold, imperious woman, with the mother she had grown up with. It was so cruel, so unfair, so weird.
"Ray, I..." she choked on her words. "I need to use the bathroom. Excuse me." she retreated, her head pounding, confusion warring with anger and uncertainty. She had thought herself immune, a wall against insult. She hadn't thought it was possible for her to lose more ground.
She splashed water on her pale face, the trace scars faintly visible around the corners of her mouth, around her eyes and brows. She looked at the ghost in the mirror, and tried to see herself as her family must see her. A ghastly reminder. Ugly. Discordant.
Ray knocked politely on the door. "You okay in there Babs?" he asked softly, wondering what must be going through this girl's head. He too smelt something odd here. There was something he was missing, some detail he hadn't seen. It was almost as if they...he shook his head. That couldn't be it. Could it?
"I'm fine." she responded. She dried her face, so no one would think she had been crying. She set herself as she had been. Rigid, cold, as icy as her mother. She would eat, and ignore them all, even her brother. She was alone now.
The chill night air was broken by the roar of trucks, a convoy of unmarked trucks snaking through the black winter night. The lights of Gotham were on the horizon, as they pulled into a truck yard, the thick gates closing behind them, nervous men with side-arms and wearing black hoods keeping watch.
Black Mask watched all from his office above, harshly illuminated by the yard's arc-lights. He smoked a thin cigarette nervously, the butt dangling from the thin slit in his mask, his lips sucking the smoke down hungrily. He had over forty men involved in this operation, and had armed over half with everything from Uzis to out and out assault rifles. He even had a sniper-team set up in the Tower, keeping a vigilant eye on the black horizon for movement.
As the first truck came to a rumbling halt, its driver looking about nervously, two figures in grey hoods moved forward quickly from the shadows, throwing open the doors at the back, revealing a large stack of crates marked as electrical goods. A second pair of grey-hood men ran forward to pull the driver out, patting him down vigorously, checking the cab for weapons or wires.
Black Mask watched all of this with a keen eye, his own weapon of choice, an automatic carbine, lying on the desk in front of him. Could never be too careful these days.
He fished out a Lexpad, his handheld palmtop computer. He quickly began tapping in notes with his stylus, counting the product as he saw the men manhandle it out of the back of the first truck, cutting open boxes of electrical goods to reveal tightly packed packets of the purest white. One shipment accounted for. Fourteen more to go.
The walkie-talkie on his desk crackled, as the grey-hoods reported in.
"Truck's clear, Big Black, over."
"I read you Grey One. Get the next one in, pronto, Over." he responded with a growl, flicking the cigarette away nervously.
Black Mask sighed irritably. Chances were the whole convoy was going to be like this. Fifteen trucks in all, each carrying somewhere in the region of thirty to fifty kilos of the purest cut Colombian White. A cargo of this magnitude came every year, at different times, but always helped fuel his Winter trade, when the ports were closed and the roads were icy, and his customers had nothing better to fill their time with than the buzz of narcotics.
They had come late this year, he knew, but it had been necessary. He'd doubled the security, then doubled it again. Business had been good this past year in Gotham, but the recent attacks by this... "Wrath" fellow, had quickly put Black Mask on edge again. He remembered all too well the days of the Dark Knight.
Let them say he was a paranoid nut, he sneered. But never let anyone say the Black Mask was a damn fool.
The first truck was quickly pulled into cover by more black-hoods, and the truck driver was himself hooded and taken to somewhere safe. Once the haul was safely analysed, they would be released, with a thick wad of cash.
Executing them all was messy, and word of his generosity on these high-risk runs ensured he always had a steady supply of patsies to use. Plus if things went wrong, no one could say he was being unfair.
The Black Mask was nothing if not fair.
The second truck quickly came rolling in, and he allowed himself to sit down, though not quite relaxing yet. He fidgeted with the carbine, dis-assembling and re-assembling it with practised hands. Although not a military man, Roman Sionis had long learned how to take care of his weapons, knowing they would take care of him.
"You better come, wing-boy." he growled. "We got a nice party for you and everything."
He remembered what that newcomer the Riddler had said. He hated to be a pawn in another's plan, but the green guy's ideas had made sense. He just hoped his plan would work. If not... Black Mask allowed his face inside to grin, matching the face outside.
If not, he had his own little contingencies.
The Question darted swiftly into the back of the truck, just before some tired goons slammed the doors shut. As the truck roared into life, she quickly concealed herself amongst the shifting, rattling boxes filled with all manner of riff-raff. The first few trucks had actual dummy goods, but as with any operation of this size, the goons had gotten sloppy, and in some the only thing between the drugs and the outside world was a thin layer of packing nuts.
She steadied her own breathing, and reached inside her pocket for her little data pad, bringing up the relevant applications with the stylus. She tapped away silently, as the truck bounced and roared around her. No one would notice her presence, she hoped, until she was way into the Black Mask's compound.
Renee had long ago learned that Information was key to any successful operation. The days when you could just shake down some thugs, run in, crack some heads and call it a night were long over. She had spent weeks doing all of that too, true, but she had also spread a wide drag-net over cyber-space. Finally she'd found what she needed, a clue as to the Black Mask's invisible operations, the phantom traces his vast criminal empire left on the world wide web.
These were the threads she'd untangled, and they had led her here. Now she was hiding in the back of a truck, wondering what she was going to do next. All her preperation, all her efforts, were for this.
She had begun as a Detective, but now she knew that there was competition in the Revenge Game, she'd had to abandon even that facade, derelicting her duties, the last thing in her life that had kept her sane.
She wanted to be the first to get to the Black Mask. She -needed- to be first.
She tapped gently on the pad in front of her, waiting for a number of complex programmes to begin their long and difficult work. This operation was reckless even beyond her previously insane standards, but she had to know it all. The Question would be asked, the Mask unveiled.
Soon her journey would be over, she tried to comfort herself, shivering in the cold. Last stop on a long road that began several months ago. Jim Corrigan had confessed drunkenly to his crimes, and she'd been just sober enough in her own stupor to remember. When she'd awoken the next day, she knew she could no longer be just Montoya any more. She had to be The Question, and get revenge for Jim Gordon. Her quest had led her all the way to the unforgiving and cruel interrogation of Rebecca Mulcahey. Saving Rebecca afterwards had been...something. A last paean to a now departed code of ethics, perhaps. A confession of guilt, an attempt to assuage a damaged conscience.
She didn't know, or really care. All that mattered was finishing what she had begun. Tonight, she was going to infiltrate the lair of Gotham's most well-armed and most paranoid crime lord.
She was going to corner him.
She was going to beat the shit out of him.
And she was finally going to know who had killed Jim Gordon, because she knew sure as shit it wasn't The Joker. That laughing coward could never have bested the Dark Knight, she knew.
Though her face was covered by her epidermic mask, her eyes watered a little beneath the protective artificial skin. She wasn't crying for herself, or even for her murdered boss. She didn't really know why she felt like crying. It wasn't fear, either.
Maybe it was a last hope that it wasn't going to end the way she felt it was.
"Last stop." she repeated again to herself. She tapped the tablet with her stylus, and waited.