Gordon fell, his stomach was flipping and his heart was beating fit to explode. Adrenaline was overpowering all his senses and yet he was calm.
He had lived with death all his career and it was a type of suicide, joining the police force out of honest intentions in the time of drug lords and mobs. It had quieted down when the Batman had come into the field and now he was wielding more pens than handcuffs, not that he wielded handcuffs much in the old days anyway. Law had a funny way of biting the asses of honest people. You had to be a slippery son of a bitch to stay out of jail and a real, god natured fool to stay in one.
But he joined at age twenty-eight, there was no rhyme or reason to that decision. His mother wept as if he was leaving for war, in a way he was. His training was a slap-shod mockery of laws, mostly lectures on how not to get caught beating civilians and ways to escape persecution for accepting bribes.
It wasn't his life flashing before his eyes, and that was probably for the best. He had shut most of it out to save some of his soul and reliving the grimy parts of his career would kill his faith faster than reason.
Ah, but Batman had come, and then life suddenly had a purpose. Batman was everything to him. True, a man that dressed as a bat was a poor role-model but it was the best thing that this city ever had and he was Gordon's hero. A single man who single-handedly could drag Gotham back into the light, who could sacrifice everything and who would never ever, ever lose his faith.
Plus he had a cool costume.
Then the Joker even that couldn't shake his faith in the Batman. Because all that Gordon had to do was switch on a light all his problems could be passed onto to someone more able to deal with them. Laws could be fought by the lawless, but the lawless were never defeated by order.
And then it turned out that the one thing he had placed all his faith in was in a fact a person. That had never been an issue before. Hell, he knew that it was an ordinary man that was fighting criminals, but now that man had a face and he had placed the fate of the city on a mere echo of a vision. The bright future wasn't so bright when it sacrificed eyes and a voice and a soul.
The air was rushing and Gordon's eyes had closed to shut out the vision of an empty sky with cold, hard buildings and nothing that could mean anything to him.
He had witnessed the demise of more than a few jumpers and he knew what he would look like when they scraped him off the concrete. His bone's would liquefy and his head would explode with the slightest contact.
Damn his job.
The wind parted his hair and ruffled his standard issue cop uniform. He could never get used to wearing a suit and a tie into work, even thought the Commissioner's job required it.
He could feel the ground getting closer, the impact growing in his gut and he tried to organize his thoughts. What would his last moment on this world mean? What could he think to make it all meaningful?
Barbara.
He closed his eyes. And the breath left his body in a whoosh, his lungs aching and his ribs screaming.
Is this what dying feels like?
The Joker sat at the Wayne family table sipping slightly cold tea and nibbling on a pastry that had been set out for guests. In one hand was a gun and his fingers were relaxed and careless on the trigger, two grimy shoes were propped up on polished wood and his lank hair was leaving grease marks on the cloth covered chair.
Alfred's gaze was fixed on the peacock feather that was slowly waving in the air. The point of the gun was aimed directly at his stomach, but he didn't show any fear of the weapon.
Not that the Joker cared much. The butler's indifference was interesting and a little annoying but the end result was the same if he pulled the trigger.
He liked his fingers impatiently, took his feet off the table and leaned forward. The gun moving up to Alfred's face. "How long can one interview take?"
Alfred's eyes moved down and fixed on the Joker's face impassively. "Depends on how attractive the interviewer is."
The Joker shifted his position to slouch, his hand cupping his chin as he stared at the butler. "That's funny." He said flatly.
Alfred nodded gravely, not moving his eyes from the Joker's face.
"Did you hear the one about the butler and the millionaire?"
There was no answer.
"Its a long enjoyable story and it ends with the Butler being turned inside out and the cops pulling the millionaire out of three separate dumpsters around the city."
"A true American sense of humor." Alfred said distastefully
The Joker paused and squinted at him. "I like you."
The city was burning and Bruce had no blood left with which to suppress the flames. He ached and the pain was to much to bear. The comfortable numbness that he had come to rely on was wearing off. His brain was beating against his skull and his hunger was corroding his stomach. Every joint ached with no relief. In the distance was an ambulance siren. It blared on and on and he couldn't shake the sound from his mind. It slid past his sleep and he became awfully, horrible aware.
The dawn was breaking through the window and filtering onto his bed. Silver machinery had been crowded around his bed. There were various beeps and squeaks from the technology as it sensed his alertness.
Bruce sat up, or got as far as he could before he was stopped by the wires that connnected him to the screens and tubes. Complicated strings of cords wound around each other in braids and spirals, Fox's work.
What had happened?
There was a whole new level of pain registering on this body. Tiny spikes of twitching nerves centered on his chest and legs. Each one of his fingers popped as he moved it. Something bad had happened...
He looked down, a thick square of gauze was wrapped around his shoulder and chest, it felt like a gun-shot wound. Had he been shot?
Gordon.
Gordon? Of course. The plan...thing.
Had that really worked?
A low murmur of voices was coming from the hall. Bruce pulled off the wires and tubes and swung his feet over the side of the cot. He was wearing blue hospital pajamas and little else. He needed some real clothes.
There were familiar voices, it sounded like they were in the dining room. He stepped out into the hall and made his way gingerly into his own bedroom. The overwhelming scent of home overtook him. This was one of the only rooms in the house that he actually frequented. The mansion had been rebuilt over the summer and there was still that new-space look that came with starch white walls and recently polished wood but the basic shape was the same as it had been in his childhood.
The view out the window was of the street, most of the other guest bedrooms had the landscape of the endless gardens but Bruce had always preferred the attic room with the skyscrapers of Gotham in the distance. You could almost smell the greasy hot-dog stands if you thought hard enough.
The wardrobe had been replaced and refurbished. Suits of the same size ranged from black to white and all the colors of gray in between. Bruce Wayne was a stylish man. A playboy who knew how to lok god and look care of those looks.
But a Bruce who had just woken up from a coma with a bullet wound close to his heart and only the previous night had been thrown off a sixteen story building carefully worked himself into a blue silk shirt and a pair of black dress pants.
His eyes still hurt and he decided on a pair of dark sunglasses to mask a bruised eye and cheek. Let the visitor think he had a hangover. He hurt to much to put make-up on.
There was a cane in the closet as well, his father's from when Wayne Sr. had broken a leg. Bruce took that to. He could be trying to set a new style or whatever story Alfred could manage to cook up before the visitor could ask.
The hall was bright, Batman had to deal with the night, Bruce Wayne didn't need another ounce of darkness in his life.
The stairs were intimidating. They were long and steep and quite frankly just the fact that they were stairs made them unappetizing.
"Alfred?" He'd let his guardian know he was awake and greet the visitor and then he'd go back to be. After all his old friend had to be worried sick about him. The noise came out strangled and hoarse but he tried again, this time with a little more success. The voices stopped. Silence echoed throughout the house.
"Alfred?" Bruce called louder, curious now. Whatever was going on it didn't seem like any other social visit. "Alfred, is everything Okay?"
Maybe he should have called over the intercom.
"Master Wayne, you seem to have a visitor, And Mr. Jezebel is calling for his appointment later this evening."
Bruce ducked under the stairs. Jezebel was the code word that had been thought up by Alfred, a threat was in the house.
"But he's got no idea that you've got the mask he ordered."
That was new. Did the intruder not know that Bruce Wayne was Batman or was Alfred stalling for something?
Bruce crouched on the stairs, undecided on a course of action when a snide, overwhelmingly familiar voice reached him.
"Mr. Wayne. I really would like to talk to you sometime and I'm sure that your butler has pressed some sort of panic button or said something to tell you to go lock yourself up in a small room where I'm sure nobody could ever find you, but I think it's time we met face to face and had some sort of introduction. I would like to apologize for my behavior at your party. You might not remember the incident but I do feel quite sore about the whole thing."
"Joker?" Bruce straightened, the Joker didn't know he was Batman and he had a reason for coming to the manor.
"Oh, so you've heard of me? Only good thinks I hope?" The Joker stepped into the hall, even dirtier and more unkempt than Bruce had ever seen him. At gun point stood Alfred, his hands on his head. But there was relief on the old butler's face as he gazed up at his charge.
"Not as much as you would like. Is there something I can help you with? Is it money you want?"
The Joker shook his head and his purple hat slipped further over his eyes, a peacock feather waving crazily over his head. "No. Not at this point, I might need it later of course but for now, lets just talk."
Ja neka le metio je nekan sol. Pont ontre neka sel je fra ne intentio Quel nesepa trele Dua. Degeni en frequen neka hal ja intentio.
~take care
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