"For far too long, Gotham has allowed itself to be defined by those who stand outside the law: Scarecrow, Batman, Joker, Mister Freeze. For far too long the morally upstanding citizen has allowed himself to be terrorised by people too ashamed to show us their real identities. We have allowed cowards to control us.
"And who has allowed this to happen? Your own government, that's who. The police, the politicians, all have made room to accommodate these costumed criminals. But I say 'no more!' It's time for the ordinary citizens to start taking back control of their lives."
Freeze stood quietly in the doorway of the conference room, listening to Gotham's DA deliver her speech to a rapt audience of cameras and microphones. Those machines had been built for her alone and she loved them for it. The reporters and cameramen behind those machines loved her back; even the women, who looked up at her in the kind of awed envy only women know.
Even Freeze had to admit she cut a striking figure standing there behind the podium, sun from the large windows behind her creating a golden halo around her coiffured head. Although he listed her physical merits in a clinical, detached way. No more emotions for him. He eyed the slavering male reporters in the front row with disgust. No matter how beautiful Janice was, she was nothing compared to Nora either before or after the disease of her brain had ravished her handsome good looks.
"Please, no questions until the end," Janice snapped at a reporter who had half raised his hand, her fine blonde eyebrows coming together in a frown. The reporter flushed like a mawkish adolescent.
There was no danger of Freeze being spotted from his place behind the doors, the only person anyone had eyes for was Gotham's latest rising star, the city's very own Lady Guinevere without all that ascending up out of the lake nonsense.
A shiver of cold ran down his back and he allowed himself a certain grim satisfaction in the sensation. In exchange for his promising to cooperate, the police had fetched one of his spare suits to replace the ruined one and allowed him to wear it, although of course they hadn't allowed him to wear his freeze gun. He'd been in such a state that he would have agreed to anything the police had said just to be cold once again. Now back in his suit, his mind clear, he knew that he'd made the right decision in agreeing to comply with their orders.
He turned his eyes outward from his thoughts to refocus his attention on the press conference. Across the room, Sergeant Peck caught his eye and gave an almost imperceptible nod. That was his cue. Time to get this over with.
Mister Freeze aimed a hard kick at the door he had been standing behind, sending it flying inwards to hit the wall with a loud bang, revealing his imposing form. The noise had its desired effect, as almost immediately it broke the spell of Janice's words and people turned towards it. A clamour of frightened excitement broke out when they saw who the source of the disturbance was. Cameras were swiftly turned towards him. Somewhere off to the side, a woman uttered a shrill scream.
"It is in acknowledgement of this that I propose a new law-" For a few timeless seconds, Janice continued her arduously prepared speech, unaware that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Then the scream penetrated her consciousness and she realised that someone else had stepped into the limelight that was meant only for her. She looked up sharply, a reproach already forming on her lips, but they were lost in a gasp when her eyes fell on Freeze.
"Hello Janice," he said calmly. "You seem surprised to see me."
An ugly flush crawled up the DA's neck to stain her cheeks, mouth twisting in anger. The German's appearance had caught her completely off guard – never, not even in blithe assessment of worst case scenarios that could arise out of her involvement with Freeze, had she ever imagined something like this happening. It was like suddenly finding out that the old childhood nightmare of turning up naked to an important exam you hadn't prepared for had become reality. Her mind hit a blank wall and remained there, bashing its head impotently against its relentless surface, so she reacted on panicked instinct.
"Freeze!" She barked, a scowl on her face. "What are you doing here? Come to make some more demands?" Upper lip curling in a snarl, she glanced down at the cameras around her, coaxing their attention away from the criminal in the doorway. "I think you'll find us Gothamites are no pushovers, we won't give in."
Freeze seemed to consider this a moment, a general air of calm surrounding him. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and thoughtful, a telling contrast to the uneven excitement heard in the voice of the DA. "You are right Janice; they are a lot hardier than you led me to believe at our first meeting. I realise that now."
A low murmur from the room greeted this statement as reporters speculated amongst themselves as to what it might mean. Doubtful, curious glances were thrown Porter's way. Again, Freeze knew that he had made the right decision. After all Janice had put him through, only for him to come out of it on the other side with nothing but a maximum security prison cell to look forwards to, he felt he was justified in enjoying the look of panic that surfaced on the woman's face. He could see that she knew she was losing her audience. Reporters, always hungry for scandal, had sniffed out their prey and begun to move towards the oddly dressed criminal. They were in his power now; he could do anything with him that he wanted. And he wanted so many things.
Another glance at Peck and he knew what it was he wanted most of all. He wanted to destroy Janice, as she had destroyed his hopes of ever being with Nora again.
"I don't know what you're talking about," the woman was blustering.
Freeze fixed her with his impassive blue gaze, silencing her. "I think you do. You told me to meet you here, did you not?" He spared a glance for the enraptured reporters, adding frostily "If I had known you were entertaining then I would not have come."
If there was anything that annoyed Janice more, it was people that couldn't keep to pre-arranged appointments. Her patience snapped, along with her clear thinking. "You know very well that I told you to meet me after the press conference. Or is your brain so frozen solid that you can't even remember a simple instruction?" Too late did she realise what she had said, when the vacuum left by the collective gasp of reporters brought her attention to the whirring cameras that had just broadcast her confession to the city. She had been tricked into condemning herself, outwitted by a man who kept his wife in a freezer. Her long nailed hands clenched into fists out of sight behind the podium.
Desperately, she tried to cover up her blunder, hoping that no one would recognise the significance of her words. They were only reporters after all, part of the mindless herd. "Police!" She shouted at the uniformed officers who lined one wall of the conference room, pointing an accusing finger at Freeze. "Arrest this criminal."
Peck regarded the incensed woman with a hard look. "With pleasure, ma'am," she replied, but made no move no obey.
Janice was ready to scream with impatience, a mounting look of fury on her face, when yet another unpleasant surprise came bursting in through the conference room doors. A ripple of excitement went once again through the reporters, who were having the time of their professional lives, when they saw the mysteriously resigned Commissioner standing there.
They parted respectfully for him as, bypassing Freeze altogether, he made his way straight for the new DA.
In the midst of the reporters, his gaze flickering over each in turn, Gordon reached into the folds of his coat and produced his badge. "I want these cameras off and then I want you all out," he commanded in authoritative tones. This was met with a general air of reluctance and much grumbling, but when the police officers left their positions by the wall and began moving amongst the reporters, ushering them towards the door, all the cameras were obligingly turned off. That didn't stop the reporters from recording every meticulous detail in their minds however, even as they were painstakingly herded out.
Janice watched Gordon's single-minded approach, heedless now of everything except her. There was a smug look on his face that she would have liked to slap right off of him, and she probably would have tried to, were she not paralysed with shock. As it was, it was all she could manage to hiss vindictively "You're behind this, aren't you? Whatever it is you're trying to do, it's not going to work Jim, because you're not Commissioner anymore. You're nothing and you can do nothing."
At first it seemed that he couldn't have heard her, because he made no reply. But then he was standing right in front of the podium and he was putting his badge in her face, saying "I was reappointed just this morning, Miss Porter. And as for my first official act…" Slipping his badge back into his coat, he came up with a pair of handcuffs in its place.
"Janice Porter, you are under arrest for aiding and abetting the known criminal Mister Freeze."
"What?" Janice near-shrieked, her mouth twisting in rage. The microphone attached to her podium was still functioning and it picked up her voice, carrying it easily to the throng of reporters at the door, who strained back against the police officers trying to eject them, eager to see what the fuss was about. "This is a complete and utter outrage! You are arresting me on false charges. What evidence could you possibly have of my involvement with Freeze?"
Gordon cast a pointed look over his shoulder. "Come on Janice, you don't want to make a scene."
"I know who put you up to this," the disgraced DA suddenly hissed, leaning forwards over the top of the podium like a zealous priest of hellfire and brimstone, so that she could deliver her accusation right into Gordon's face. A strand of hair escaped its neatly hairsprayed arrangement and fell into eyes blazing with anger, but she hardly seemed to notice it. "It was your little pal the Batman, wasn't it? He told you to do this, didn't he? I bet you two even conspired together to come up with fake evidence to plant on me.
"Well I've got news for you – I'm fed up with that bat-eared freak ruining my life! I won't let him get away with it any longer." For a moment her eyes burned into Gordon's and then lifted, coming to rest slyly on the knot of people blocking the doorway. A joyless smile touched her lips as an idea formed in her mind.
"Call off this ridiculous charade Jim, or I'll tell them all who you've been taking moonlit rides with."
"Was that yet another threat of blackmail I just heard?" The Commissioner asked with raised eyebrows. "I certainly hope it wasn't, because that could add considerable time to your prison sentence."
"He is behind this though, isn't he?" The woman's eyes flickered frantically between both of Gordon's, searching them deeply. "He just can't stand me being successful. All my life I've been second best to that lawless miscreant and now when I finally have the chance to get rid of him he does this to me! And you're helping him!"
Gordon had expected the arrest to be difficult, but nothing like this. The woman was enraged beyond reason, spouting conspiracy theories. Even though he felt she deserved everything she was about to get for willingly unleashing another terrorist threat on Gotham whilst it still wasn't fully recovered from the last one, he couldn't help but pity her slightly. Despite Janice's obvious anger, she seemed lost somehow, vulnerable. It seemed she had some deep underlying psychological damage relating to the Batman in some way. Not for the first time, Gordon wondered if it really was the right thing to allow a masked vigilante so much power, but now was not the time for idealistic concerns. He had a job to do.
So, he did his job. Any notions he might have had about getting his own back for the blackmail couldn't have been further from his mind as he cuffed the almost hysterical DA and recited rights that she didn't listen to. Rights that she knew off by heart as well as he did, ones that she had studied and learnt to uphold in law school. She seemed so small and helpless to him now, a petty little thing that couldn't possibly ever have held that much power over him. There were much bigger things in the world than the Janice Porters.
She didn't even have the power to intimidate him with her glacial beauty anymore, not now that the mascara smudged by her tears and her disarrayed hair pointed towards the ugliness inside of her.
The police vans had been parked around the back of the building the press conference had been held in, partly to keep the media out and partly because the situation on the streets was still bad. Riots had been threatening to break out for the past couple of days, the crowds baying for Batman's blood more often than not. Although the police had managed to keep control so far, the general opinion was that it would be wise if the DA's arrest was kept as out of the way as possible. At least that was, until it was splashed all over the front page of the newspapers the next morning. But so too would the news of Mister Freeze's arrest, and Gordon hoped that would placate the angry Gothamites a little. It would show that their police force was still there for them, fighting for their safety. Although of course, it had actually been the Bat who had brought an end to the threat.
Giving Janice a vehemently resisted hand up into the back of a waiting van, Gordon was so wrapped up in thoughts of the Batman that when he first noticed the pointy eared shadow on the cement, it didn't strike him as anything out of the ordinary. But then he gradually returned to the outside world and the significance of the sight struck him.
Hurriedly, he pulled shut the van's doors and gave them a brisk slap with the heel of his hand to indicate that it could get going. Once that was done, he turned and searched the array of buildings behind him for the source of the shadow.
His eyes rested upon the dark figure, crouched on top of an ornamental pillar like a medieval gargoyle given life. He squinted, the vigilante's face blurred at this distance, giving the man a small nod of greeting which was returned. He wondered why Batman had showed up, surely not to gloat over the arrest of the DA – that wasn't his style – so it could only be that he was here to oversee the arrest, make sure it all went smoothly. In a way this irritated Gordon, for it showed up how dependent the force had become on the actions of a vigilante. But alongside his irritation, he simultaneously glad to see the Bat. Evidently there were some things Gordon needed to sort out for himself. As it was, things had been allowed to go on for far too long without critical analysis.
Gordon made a sign indicating that he wished to speak later and was met with another nod, this one of agreement.