Ernestina, Eris, Aequitas: to obtain that which is just we must ask that which is unjust.
August 24th
15:00 EST
RR Junction 17
I walk the streets, alone.
I have made six bolt-holes across the Narrows, renting cheap, noisy apartments. The landlords want cash. I pay. There are no questions asked.
"Rent due, first every month," the last hag grunts, slamming the door in my face. She reeks of cigarettes and cat shit. I slit open the lice-infested mattress, stuffing a final wad of cash into the seam.
I have finished.
Stalton lives up river, on the northern Fringe of Gotham. Abandoned factories, empty warehouses, a turn of the century slaughterhouse straight from Sinclaire's Chicago and an abandoned railway station all grace this sprawling reek of desolation. To men like the Joker, it's merely a playground. Since the Bastard's imprisonment in Arkham, the scum have slowly begun to trickle back into its noisome gutters. The Fringe is a proverbial Old Town, and tragic, boarded up brick houses line its streets in varying stages of disrepair, the broken dreams of a bygone era.
I cross an empty expanse of rotting tracks, dead and disturbingly silent, a demilitarized zone between Gotham and the Fringe's sprawling shithole. The last steel rail passes under my trudging feet.
A century old billboard swings from a rusted water tower. It is scrawled with a thousand curses, crude, fucking figures, and a bold, red swastika. I pass under its shadow.
I'm on the Fringe. I'm in Old Town.
The Badge is not respected here. The Badge is not brought here. When GCPD wants someone from the Fringe, they send the Riot Squad…or bounty hunters.
But I'm bringing no one in for questioning. I am taking no prisoners. I will bring my interrogation straight through Stalton's door. Already my heart is pulsing, lusty, yearning for the thrill.
I don't need this Badge anymore. I pull it from my wallet, a bronze, burnished star in my palm: to serve and protect. I think of all it stands for, of justice and honor and peace…of the mockery the GCPD has made that vow. Of the countless brave officers who have died redeeming it. Of the pride and glory it personifies.
But mostly, I think of Gordon.
It is March 29th. It is thirteen years ago. Slowly, door by door, I am leaving Jane C. Arkham Memorial Women's Correctional Facility.
A squad car sits outside the prison, idling in the abandoned drive. I am clean, my legs shaven, wearing to the bra the exact clothes I walked in through these same gates three months ago. The last locked door opens before me. Gordon stands there, his haggard face more worn and weathered than I have ever seen it, before or since.
I do not care. I waste no pity on those undeserving. I continue walking.
"Paltron," he says, thinking perhaps I have not seen him.
It's fifty-seven miles from the Prison to Gotham City. Fifty-seven long miles along four-lane highways, thundering traffic, toxic fumes of gasoline. I am ready to walk it all.
"Palton!" He pulls the car in front of me, rolling down the window.
I walk around it. I had ridden in that beat-up cruiser numberless times over our four year partnership. But always in the front. The last trip I made in the back, handcuffed, a sheet of bullet-proof glass cold and silent between us. Hell of a way to end a partnership.
"Paltron, get in the car. Please get in the car."
"Go fuck yourself, Jim." I say, never letting my eyes leave the road.
For five faithful miles he follows me, urging me to let him take me back.
Traffic careens around us. Night has fallen. His flashers blink rhythmically with my unwavering steps.
"Paltron, please. Get in the car. I'll take you home." His voice never whines, never begs. He barely raises it above a mellow whisper and it drowns in the cacophonous chorus of blaring horns and the roaring of the freeway.
"Stay the fuck away from me." I hiss.
The cruiser drops behind me. For a moment I am victorious, the conqueror. I need no one. I accept no help, no sympathy, no pity. I don't need it, and I reject it wholly. I am alone. Horribly alone.
My shadow stretches forever in front of me. The cruiser is parked on the shoulder, the flashers still pulsing their melancholy message. "Paltron!" Gordon barks, his voice growing harsher. "It's fifty-five miles to Gotham. Just get in the car!"
My lips twitch in a silent sneer. For a moment, our eyes meet, and there is anger and pity in his stern gaze. I turn.
"You've got to report to MCU by eight am, Paltron." He reminds me sternly, standing inside the opened driver's door. "For parole. You'll never get there in time." I stop, drawn back by a loathesome lodestone, pausing against my will.
"I'll hitchhike, thanks."
He laughs harshly, the sound empty and hollow between us. "On 47? Everyone knows Memorial's on this road. I've heard seven calls over the scanner already about a possible runner. No one's going to pick you up."
Wordlessly I shake. He opens the passenger door. I am defeated.
The flashers fade. We are driving.
"We found the…bodies." He says quietly "And the cell. They molested him, didn't they?"
I am silent. A district attorney, a judge, a courtroom of reporters could not drag Angel's secret from me. Gordon will not. But my silence says everything. I am betrayed.
"Jesus, Paltron." Gordon says. "Wouldn't it have been easier just to tell us?"
I stare out the window, the luminescent lines of traffic burning in my eyes. I tell myself it is the unending glare making my eyes hot and hollow, nothing more.
"You meet with the DA on Tuesday," he continues. "We're…reopening the case in light of, of the circumstances. Dent is still… willing… to represent you." He casts me a glance in the review mirror, either not daring to face me or too uptight to take his eyes off the road. I've known him long enough that it is a mixture of both.
"I'm not going," I choke.
"You don't have a choice," he says after a pregnant pause.
"I said I'm not going."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not allowed within twelve hundred yards of a school or a fucking daycare! Oh, SHIT!" My throat is bursting, burning. I kick the glove compartment, spilling the registration papers and the mileage log across the floor. Tears flood down my twisted face, I am sobbing into the window, I cannot breathe, I cannot see. I am crushed beneath the weight of my stigma: I'm a woman. I'm a marine. I'm a cop…and now I'm a goddamned, fucking child molester.
There are rapists. Murderers. Dealers and Pimps. Mob. Judges. Councilmen. Senators. A Governor…and they have chosen me. The sin and shame of an entire city rests now on my shoulders. Twenty-seven people die a day in Gotham due to gang related violence…I am innocent, and yet I am sacrificed.
My blood is tainted. I am no one's savior.
"We found his clothes, his blood, hair, skin cells, everything!" Gordon barks. "They were all over your apartment, all over your mattress-" He stops, panting at the fury of his outburst. "What the hell were we supposed to think?"
"How could you think that you've known me-"
"And I know evidence when I see it! Christ, Paltron, do you know what it looked like?"
I sob against the doorframe, gasping for air.
"The boy's in protective custody." He says tersely. "CPS and SVU are handling it."
"Angel…"his name is a dying prayer, my last hope, my only love.
"You are not to contact him. There's a restraining order and a warrant already signed. Any calls, any messages, Paltron," his gaze is cold and fixed. "You come yards of his location and I'm taking you straight back to Memorial."
"Angel," I choke.
Gordon says nothing. We ride in silence.
The dull hum of the car ceases. I stir.
I wake, Angel's eyes disappearing into the haunting, glorious sight of Gotham's breathtaking skyline. She spirals into the starless sky, cold, deadly and cruel. A lonely tomb for my abandoned Angel. I have only traded my Hell for his.
The thought of his boyish innocence, as utterly alone and wretched as I am…
Tears fall again, flowing unhindered down my cheeks.
Gordon's kind eyes brim with compassion. "Paltron," he begins, reaching a hesitant hand to comfort me. He holds me against his chest as I weep…
But I am Rachael, I am Mara. His empty embrace fills me only with disgust.
"Don't touch me," I spit, wrenching away to open my car door and blinking back the hot tears that glaze and prickle my lidless eyes.
I spare him no second glances. I don't look back. Angel is taken. My promise broken.
I walk alone in Gotham, lips set, eyes dry. I will not weep again until Aaron Lawless' voice breaks, wracked with sobs over the static of the phone, a bullet clenched tightly in my quaking fist.
I do not see Gordon for six years.
I am in Old Town. In less than seven hours, I will kill again. I stare at the badge in the shadow of that swinging swastika, making to drop it from my hand.
But I cannot let go.
I place it again in my wallet.
Not for Jim Gordon, a good man and a good cop, a man so solid and stoic he can bend no rules, not even for his closest friends. Not for Art Jamison, my first Captain, willing to take a chance on the chanceless, leaving behind his kindness like a grandfather, his Beretta like a legacy…Not even for Aaron Lawless, my last and latest partner, perhaps the closest thing I have now to a friend…
I keep it for Jimmy Connolly, a murdered rookie cop…my Angel.
It's the only link to him I have.