Gordon stood at the window of his office with his hands thrust deeply into his pockets. On a closed-circuit television in the corner, a copy of the tape sent in by Mister Freeze ran on an endless loop, but the Commissioner wasn't watching it and was staring straight through the reflection it cast on the window without even seeing it. The sound had been muted, making the mouth behind the surrealistic helmet move with silent meaninglessness, but that was okay because Gordon could still hear it. He'd listened to it so many times over the past few hours that he didn't think he would ever forget the taped message.
If you do not give me what I require, then your city will enter a new Ice Age.
Up above, rain clouds amassed around the groping fingertips of Gotham's tower rises and tall buildings. As so often with nature, as above so below, news vans amassed around the base of the Police Headquarters building. Only these storm clouds spat out news reporters and cameras instead of rain. All things considered, Jim Gordon much preferred rain. How the tape had been leaked he didn't know, he obviously couldn't trust anyone in his department. Although down that road, paranoia lies. Maybe even Freeze himself had released a copy to the media. It didn't really matter, how a video had gotten into the grasping hands of reporters was the least of his problems.
I know you will not disappoint.
Unable to keep the ultimatum from playing over and over in his head like a broken record, Jim distractedly ran a hand back through his hair. It needed a cut. The thought was forgotten almost as soon as it had surfaced – when on earth was he going to find time for a haircut? Under current circumstances, the notion seemed almost ridiculous.
He raised his eyes to the rain-threatened city, allowing his gaze to come back into focus as he automatically scanned the horizon for the building he shared with his wife and children, even though he knew it couldn't be seen from this window. Sometimes, Barbara and the children were the only things that kept him going. When Freeze threatened Gotham city, in Gordon's mind it was his children the maniac was threatening. The constant soundtrack in his head blurred with the image of a ruined Harvey Dent pointing a gun at his eldest son and Gordon abruptly removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose fiercely between forefinger and thumb.
Gotham had already proved that it would not give in to terrorists, he thought as red flowers bloomed on his closed eyelids beneath the pressure from his fingertips, bleeding away the clarity of the lingering mental images. When Joker had demanded the Batman they hadn't given in, they hadn't allowed his insanity to destroy them, and so they wouldn't give in to the monetary demands of Mister Freeze. Rather than hand over the money, they would hunt Freeze down and fight him.
If you do, Gotham's fuel supplies will be the next to freeze.
But Gotham wasn't cold and dead yet. After all that had happened, she still had a lot of fight left in her. Gotham was a survivor.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything, Commissioner."
Woken from his thoughts by that arch tone, Gordon wheeled around to face the voice, hurriedly replacing his glasses in the hopes that they would hide his tears. He found himself facing the gracefully petite form of Gotham's new DA Janice Porter, looking stylishly ruthless as ever in a sharply tailored red suit jacket and a white calf-length skirt that dared the sky to just try and rain.
"Nothing that hadn't already been interrupted," he returned somewhat testily. He meant to keep his open resentment for the woman out of his voice, but having to use up so much energy on simply remaining on his feet didn't leave him with much spare for controlling his emotions. He couldn't help it that every time he looked at Janice Porter's sternly pretty face, he saw Harvey's dead one, the spectre of a broken man who'd deserved so much more than to be replaced by a woman who had undone all of his good work. Janice Porter, DA, did not believe in such 'publicity stunts' as Harvey had 'indulged in at the expense of the people'. Just a couple of choice highlights from her acceptance speech.
"Obviously," the blonde agreed curtly. Her gaze drifted deliberately to the files and large maps of the city that haphazardly littered Gordon's desk. Both pairs of eyes found the glaring coffee stain obscuring some of the map's meticulous annotations at the same moment. The spilt beverage had caused a series of tactical blue highlighter lines to blur into incomprehension. Blustering, the Commissioner pulled a manila folder over to cover the incriminating stain. He'd meant to go and find a clean map earlier, copying out all the information that had been ruined.
"What did you want to-"
"How far have you gotten-"
Both began speaking together and then both fell silent, eyeing the other with wary contempt. Gordon made a quiet sound that might have been a snort and dropped into the chair behind his desk, making a polite little gesture with one hand. "Please, ladies first." His smile as he sat back and folded his arms was cold.
The brief look Janice gave him suggested to the Commissioner that his ironic tone had not been lost on her. But she had far too much dignity to acknowledge it in anything other than a subtle lift of one of her perfect eyebrows. "What progress have you made on-"
With unusual hostility, Gordon interrupted the new DA once again. "On looking for Mister Freeze?" Again, the spread out, soiled map was given a pointed look. Aside from the coffee stain, half a dozen colourful push pins had been added to it since that morning. Each pin was a potential hiding place for Gotham's latest costumed terrorist. "I assure you Porter, my team and I are doing everything we can to find him."
"I'm sure you are, Commissioner," the DA replied with a slight quirk at the corner of her lips, the closest she would ever come to a genuine smile in his presence. "But I wasn't asking about Freeze; I was asking about the fugitive Batman."
This irked Gordon immensely. Not for the first time he almost threw professionalism to the wind and gave into the anger welling up inside of him. Did the woman understand nothing? "With all due respect Porter," he managed through clenched teeth, "now is hardly the time to be concerning ourselves with Batman."
"My thoughts exactly, James."
He looked up sharply at her use of his first name. Usually she didn't stray away from the neutral address of 'Commissioner' and the sudden leap to first name basis was disconcerting to say the least. He didn't care for it, and neither did he care for that little smirk lingering at the edges of her sparsely made-up mouth. What he cared for even less was her saying "So perhaps you'd care to explain this to me," as she brandished a padded envelope at him. If her voice had been cold before, now it was even more frozen than the river. Had there been a barometer in the room, Gordon wouldn't have been surprised to see the room's temperature drop by a couple of degrees. A shiver ran down his spine in sympathy.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he huffed quietly, uncrossing his arms and sitting forwards in a position that was unconsciously more intimidating.
Janice did nothing but smile her insincere sub-zero smile in answer, slitting open the envelope with a beautifully manicured nail painted the same shade of red as her jacket. The Commissioner found himself thinking of his wife's nails, unpainted and bitten down to beneath the soft pads of her fingertips, and he wondered why he was making the comparison at a time such as this. The human mind was unfathomable, especially under stress.
Instead, he forced himself to focus on the VHS tape Janice was withdrawing from the envelope with no little ceremony. A small stamp on its hard plastic casing marked the tape out as CCTV footage. Suddenly, he became aware that he was sweating and passed a hand across his forehead.
"You and the Bat always did have a special relationship, didn't you?" As she spoke, the new DA crossed the room to the small television where Freeze soundlessly mouthed his demands, smoothly ejecting the tape replacing it with her own. Before she even pressed play, Gordon knew what he was going to see and his heart dropped into his stomach, a constricted white-hot ball. And then he was watching himself on the screen, descending lightly down the steps outside the police headquarters, a slim figure in grainy CCTV black and white, glancing back at his unmistakable companion. The footage clearly showed the bat-eared outlaw, cape winding sinuously around armoured legs, catching up with the police commissioner and together the two conspirators headed towards a parked car. Gordon's car, the license plate discernible despite the quality of the recording.
He watched numbly, time and date at the corner of the television screen flashing with accusatory persistence. "How-"
"I don't think you're in any position to be asking questions, Commissioner."
Raising his eyes wearily to the woman's, Gordon saw something he had never seen in them before – the hungry spark of twisted ambition. He'd seen it the eyes of others, but he couldn't think of a time it had ever led to anything but hurt and ruination. This was a side of herself that Janice had kept well hidden, but he was face to face with it now, her zealous hatred of the Batman. And she obviously wanted to use Gordon in her personal quest to bring the vigilante down. He felt a stab of anger at that. After all Batman had done to protect the city and still he was persecuted.
"No one else has seen this footage apart from you and me, and I rather expect you'd like to keep it that way, wouldn't you Jim?" The shortened use of his first name sounded so intrusive and gloating coming from her lips. "If you had your way, you'd probably have this tape destroyed. It doesn't look good for the Police Commissioner to be taking midnight rides with known murderers and criminals." She glanced over her shoulder at the screen, the rictus of a cruel smirk twisting her mouth. "You two looked pretty cosy together."
Gordon thought of that night in the hotel room, of the helplessly resigned look Batman had given him as he was brought down by armed policemen under Gordon's command, and said nothing. What was there to say?
Janice evidently took his silence for grudging agreement on the Commissioner's part. "I have something you want, you have something I want; the perfect conditions in which to make a deal. Either you deliver the Batman to me so I can rid the city of his menace, or I deliver this tape to the Mayor so he can ride the police force of your corruption." Her eyes flashed with unabated greed and Gordon wouldn't have been surprised to see her lick her lips, but she didn't. Oh no, she was far too ladylike for that sort of behaviour. She would stick to underhand blackmail.
There was a pressure building up behind Gordon's forehead through which he could barely hear the woman's next words.
"I'll give you twenty-four hours to decide which it will be. See you tomorrow, Jim." The new DA paused at the door, turning back and pushing a loose strand of fine blonde hair back behind her ear. When she exposed her teeth in a parting smile it looked more like a snarl. "Have a good night." With that she was gone, leaving with a coy little wriggle of her blood-red tipped fingers.
Gordon was left alone, staring blankly at his betrayal as it played out again and again on the screen. Just moments ago, although it was starting to feel like years, it had been the impassive face of Mister Freeze looped on that screen. Did Janice want him to believe that it was just one criminal swapped for another? Because he thought perhaps it was.
'But he hasn't done anything wrong' the perplexed voice of Gordon's eldest son spoke up in his mind. The boy had been right that night they had stood and watched the Batman run from a crime he didn't commit. He still was right. Batman had done nothing wrong except to try and save Gotham's soul from those who would wish to break it. He put his head in his hands, dragging his fingers absently through his hair. How could he try and explain that now? That Harvey had killed himself, not murdered by Batman at all. It had all been a terrible, merciful lie. Now it had spiralled out of control as he should have known it would and caused repercussions that he should have been able to foresee.
He wished the bat-signal was still intact.
As good as the police department was, as proud as Gordon was of the men and women under his command, he knew they could not hope to bring Mister Freeze down without the help of Batman. They had grown too dependent upon him. But he couldn't lose his position. He was needed here, where he belonged, as commissioner.
He wished the Joker had never happened.
He sat behind his desk, watching his Judas kiss on the cheek of Gotham play out eternally and wished he knew what to do.