A/N - With all the timeline talk I forgot to mention: this chapter and the previous one take place during season 4 episode 16, and the next two chapters cover episode 17, if you're wanting to follow along at home. :) I hope y'all are prepared for beefy installments from here on out. I think the shortest ones are ~15 pages and they're usually closer to 20. Mostly because I was completely unwilling to ruin the pacing of the story by chopping them up into more chapters, and even so, I ended up with 3 more than I initially planned. ain't that just the way.

I edited this chapter while snowed in, under an electric blanket, candle burning, listening to Ethel Cain's new album through headphones. I wish that level of coziness for each and every one of you.

5.

I turned on the news and it said that I was
The number one most wanted person in the United States, the United States
The most wanted person in the United States

(I got the gun in the backseat, ready to go, don't need to ask me) – 100 gecs | The Most Wanted Person in the United States

As of midnight, it was three days before Christmas, but so far, the sky had remained a stubborn dirty gray, the constant cloud cover and low temperature teasing snow that it thus far had yet to deliver. The best Gotham had gotten was a heavy drizzle the previous day, which by now had turned to slush and ice patches, and as Isabel navigated the treacherous sidewalk with Jerome, she was glad he'd insisted on her bringing a coat—it wasn't like her to forget, but she was so off-routine and off-balance, she probably would have. (The coat, moreover, was her favorite one she'd ever owned, had in fact been her first big purchase once she'd graduated to a grown-up paycheck: an intensely warm, deep burgundy wool piece that fit her like it had been made custom for her, flaring at the hips and cutting in at the waist and featuring a hood that came to a slightly witchy peak.)

"Where are we headed?" she asked a she sidestepped to avoid a grate belching out evil-smelling steam. Sirens were wailing in the distance, but she didn't think twice about it—it was Gotham, sirens were always blaring somewhere in the city.

"Couple blocks this way," he said without breaking stride. He kept a fast pace, which she appreciated as someone who'd fielded her share of complaints that she "walked too fast" and "took having long legs for granted," which—that may all have been true, but Isabel was a born-and-raised Gothamite; she had shit to do and no time to linger.

"No, I mean, like, final destination." Isabel checked the streets furtively as they went, looking for cops, civilians that might recognize Jerome, civilians that might not recognize Jerome but would clock that he was wearing half an Arkham uniform, or various other dangers, but by now it was two in the morning, and Gotham might have been the city that never slept, but it didn't necessarily follow that most people would choose to be out and awake in this weather. Most people had more brains and were safely tucked inside by now.

"Final destination?" He hummed thoughtfully as he considered his answer. "You know a guy named Oswald Cobblepot?"

"Um." The name rang a bell, but when she searched her mind, she turned up nothing but the vague idea that he might be involved in government somehow. "He's not a cop, is he?"

Jerome chuckled at the idea. "He's got a hard-on for them—for our old pal J-Gourd in particular—but, ah, no. He prefers to work outside of the law."

"Big deal, so does the GCPD," Isabel said, shooting him a brief sideways smile when that got a bark of laughter from him.

"That's our final destination," he said. "Oswald's house."

"Uh-huh," she said skeptically. "Does he know we're coming?"

"Sure he does. Who wouldn't want to play host to the revolution?"

That was a worrying question. "Um. Most people?" He waved a hand dismissively at her, and before she could press the issue a blast of icy wind took her breath away. Once she recovered, she remembered an earlier concern, and she hurried up to fall in step beside him, eyeing him critically. It hadn't escaped her notice that his hands had been bare while he'd been visiting her apartment, but at some point when she was getting her things together, he'd magicked up a pair of his favored white gloves—better than nothing, but just the gloves and his thin stripped-down uniform wouldn't get him very far in these temperatures. He noticed that she was watching him, of course, eyes darting over to her, then back to the sidewalk in front of him, then back to her again, until she asked, "Aren't you freezing?"

"Cold builds character," he said after a moment. Isabel rolled her eyes; he shot her a sly sideways glance and asked, "Why? Offering to warm me up?"

"Fuck off?" she suggested, earning a deep-throated cackle from him.

"You're a hoot and a half, Izzy," he said once he'd fought his way through it. "Glad you made the decision to come along for the ride. It was the right one."

Isabel mulled this over as they went along, and eventually asked, "Was it really my decision?" When he cut a look sideways at her, she clarified the question. "If I'd told you no, would you have left it at that?"

"Weren't you the one refusing to entertain—what'd you call em—'bullshit hypotheticals?'" he asked idly.

She shook her head. "Not an answer."

"I'd have carried you out of there over my shoulder. Like a caveman," he said, wiggling his eyebrows at her when she looked sharply over at him.

Don't smile, she told herself sternly, don't let him off the hook, and she successfully fought the impulse back. "Seriously?"

"Seriously," he rasped with the complete lack of shame or self-consciousness that she would have admired if it didn't so often prove inconvenient in her dealings with him. "I'm still glad you came on your own. This all works better without you trying constantly to escape."

"So there is something to escape." He snorted, amused, and she shook her head, less so. "And this, 'this all works better,' what is this?"

"My master plan," he said, with an implied duh in the tone.

"I always forget how bad it is, trying to talk to you when you don't want to share," she muttered, and then sped up—someone idling in his car at the curb ahead of them had just dumped an entire bag of fast food trash out onto the sidewalk, and Isabel channeled the minor frustration she felt at the sense that Jerome was leaving her in the dark into spite, scooping up the trash and tossing it right back in through the window.

The guy yelled in startled protest and called her a bitch and started to open the car door to come after her, but Jerome, right behind her, kicked the door shut hard enough to stun the guy, then wagged his finger warningly in his face. He didn't say anything, but he didn't really have to. At the sight of the look Jerome wore, Isabel shuddered and thanked her lucky stars it wasn't directed at her—it was an expression he got every now and again that she particularly didn't like, one that reminded her all at once that he'd been a dead man for over a year, empty and cold and very, very scary.

The guy in the car seemed to agree. "What the sh—" he started before the window closed, cutting off his voice, and he peeled out as he took off from the curb, still with all his trash in his car.

Jerome watched him go—Isabel tucked her cold hands in the pockets of her coat and stood beside him to watch as well—until the car was out of sight, then Jerome shrugged and resumed the walk, firing a question over his shoulder as he again set the rapid pace. "So was your birthday actually yesterday, or are you counting it as starting at midnight?"

"It did start at midnight," she said, and he tsked his tongue a few times at her.

"A bar serving you drinks before you officially turned twenty-one," he play-scolded. "For shame."

"Yeah, I'm a real rebel," she said. "Take it up with the bouncer that let me in. It was kind of a last-minute thing, anyway. The real rager is supposed to be tomorrow—tonight," she corrected herself. "Now that it's officially my birthday. Jane's supposed to make it to that one. Actually," she muttered, grabbing around in her bag for her phone, "I need to text her. I need to let her know—you're not planning me on dropping me back off at my place in time for me to make the party, are you?"

"Nnnnope," Jerome said, and snatched the phone out of her hand.

Naturally, she moved to jump on him, but he repelled her with the heel of his palm against her forehead (insulting), and when she ducked away and then came at him again, he fully turned around, giving her his shoulder to contend with as he held her phone out of her reach.

"Knock it off," she growled, half climbing him and reaching over his shoulder for her phone, but the stupid idiot had longer arms than she did to begin with, and having to reach over his shoulder limited her reach even more. "Give it back!"

"No can do, Iz," he said, having to croak out the words, since she'd very recently reached clumsily up with her other hand and grabbed him by the throat. He dropped his shoulder out from under her, and when she twisted forward in an effort to keep her balance, he lashed out with his free arm and pinned her tight to his chest, holding the phone well above his head. She tried to squirm away, or at least get her arms loose—but, in what turned out to be the worst possible way to confirm beyond the shadow of a doubt that he'd been working out regularly in jail, his arm was like a vise, holding her so tightly she could barely wriggle. She couldn't even take advantage of the fact that he couldn't hold her head still or control her teeth, since he'd only enjoy it if she bit him.

After a few valiant struggles in which she confirmed that she was shit out of luck, she exhaled in annoyance and went still. Jerome, as if the whole interlude hadn't happened, explained with perfect pleasantness: "If you start canceling plans and the cops look through your messages later, you've got no deniability—then everyone knows you're my accomplice."

"I'm not your accomplice."

"Yeah, cause the GCPD will be so keen to believe you on that front."

He had a point. "Let me go," she said after a brief pause, pushing against his chest again. "You've got, like, weird green soup all over your shirt."

"What, the soup Uncle Zach stuck in the microwave for five minutes straight before pouring it all over me? Yeah, I'd noticed," he said dryly. "Trust me, you're having a better time with it than I did."

Isabel temporarily forgot about her phone in favor of the more pressing topic. "What the fuck," she said with feeling, tilting her head back slightly so she could see him better. "Tell me what happened."

He angled his chin down a bit so he could look at her whole face instead of talking to the side of her head. "…that about covers it," he said after a beat.

"Not remotely," she disagreed. "You said it happened after you left Arkham, sure, but how did he find you?"

"Wrong way around. I found him," Jerome said, before pausing to bark "Yeah, yeah, keep it moving!" at a passerby who had slowed to a near-stop after stumbling upon their weird quasi-embrace.

The person picked up the pace immediately, and Isabel waited till they'd skedaddled around the corner before asking, "Why would you want to do that? If he was like your mom, then I'd think you'd want to stay as far away as possible."

Jerome hummed thoughtfully; she felt the pleasant vibration of it from where her chest pressed to his. She was starting to suspect that he was still holding her close like this because he was freezing his nuts off, because his skin was ice cold against hers for a change and he seemed in no great hurry to let her peel away again. "Well—you and I always have had opposing philosophies when it comes to dealing with people who made our lives a living hell."

"Right," she sighed. "I leave and never see or speak to them again."

He nodded. "And I track em down and kill them. You really should try it," he said, angling his face down even further so he could look her earnestly in the eye. "It's very cathartic."

"Pass."

He shrugged. "That's fine, we can revisit this later."

Now that he mentioned it, she could totally believe that he'd tracked down his uncle for the sole purpose of murdering him. The idea prompted further questions, but another brisk gust of wind set her teeth chattering, and she pushed against his chest again. "Seriously, Jerome, we're gonna freeze in place here if we don't get off the street soon, let me go."

"Are you going to try for the phone again?" he asked, mock-stern.

"Not until we get indoors," she conceded. He loosened his grip so that she wasn't plastered to his front anymore, but didn't let her go entirely, maneuvering so that his arm was stretched along the back of her shoulders as they started off. This was better—for the chill, and because the novelty of being able to touch him like this was still a thrill—and she slipped one arm around his back as they picked up the pace again.

"So you broke out and went straight to your uncle's place to kill him—where'd the soup come in?"

Jerome grimaced, touching his mouth with his free hand at the reminder. "Turns out he kept in touch with the circus strongman. I got ambushed. Don't worry, I survived," he assured her. "Hey, did you know Bruce Wayne has a girlfriend?"

"Wait, what? Did you see Bruce Wayne tonight?"

"Oop—hold that thought," he said, removing his arm from her shoulders (the cold air rushed in, entirely unwelcome, and she made a disgusted little sound of protest that had him smirking) and turned to abruptly approach a nearby doorway. Isabel paused, tucked her hands in her pockets and watched.

The shop—if it was even a shop—looked closed to her, possibly for some time now. There was no sign, the lights were out, and the windows were boarded up. Jerome was searching around the edges of the door for something, and she watched him for about a minute before stepping forward and saying, helpfully, "I think they're closed."

"A-ha," he said, and jabbed something with his pointer finger—a button, blended in along the edge of the door, that made a satisfying click as it depressed.

Then… nothing. Isabel waited for another ten seconds or so, then said, "I don't think that did anything."

Jerome lifted his hand impatiently. "Just… just—give it a minute." As he spoke, a light went on inside, visible through the slats of the boarded windows, and he shot her a smug little look before the door opened in front of them.

Isabel had met some of Jerome's associates in the past, had seen that, like Jerome, their appearances tended to be a little off-kilter, a little edgy, so it came as a total surprise when the person who answered the door turned out to be the most normal-looking man she'd ever laid eyes on. He was a light-skinned black man in late middle age, average height, a little stocky, with dark brown eyes hidden behind unstylish silver-framed glasses, a close-trimmed black beard, and a bald pate with tufts of salt and pepper hair around the edges. When he saw Jerome, his expression morphed into one of genuine warmth.

"Mr. Valeska," he greeted him in a pleasantly low voice. "I've been expecting you any day now."

"Bogdanowicz, you old so-and-so, how the hell are you?" boomed Jerome, matching the old man's friendly tone as he seized his hand for a vigorous shake. "You finish the job?"

"Last week," said the man, stepping aside to admit Jerome entry. "Please, come in."

Jerome strolled inside, not a care in the world, while Isabel hesitated, not sure what the move was. She was "with" Jerome, sure, but she didn't know this man, and both courtesy and common sense dictated that she refrain from just waltzing in his house uninvited. Bogdanowicz seemed to have the same thought; once Jerome had passed, he moved to block the doorway again and peered at her over the frames of his glasses, the warmth so instantaneously drained from his expression that she was left wondering if she'd imagined it.

"And who, exactly, are you?" he asked, and if his tone wasn't exactly hostile, it was certainly icy.

Jerome had disappeared inside; she'd clearly find no help on that front. "Um," she said, taking a step back, as much to get a little distance from the situation as to communicate that she had no intentions of barging in uninvited, "I'm Isabel." Her voice sounded small to her own ears, which was frustrating, because she'd long stopped thinking of herself as someone who could be intimidated easily.

She cleared her throat, preparing to take another run at it, but at that point, Jerome popped back into view behind the man, grasping him by both shoulders as he said, "Oh! Slipped my mind. Isabel, Bogdanowicz. Bogdanowicz, this is Isabel Montalvo. She's with me."

Rather dismayed that he'd given her full name but thinking twice about communicating that, Isabel tried instead to project polite calm as Bogdanowicz eyed her, turning his head slightly to address Jerome sotto voce: "You know the protocols."

"I know, I know," Jerome said in a stage whisper, taking on a conciliatory tone. "It's just been a bit of a night, yeah? Lotta moving pieces, hard to do everything by the book." He paused, then, flooring Isabel, added, "I apologize." He moved on fast, clearly not comfortable lingering over the fact that he could say such a thing without spontaneously combusting. "But I'll vouch for her. She won't cause trouble. Stand down, wouldjya?"

Bogdanowicz regarded Isabel for a few more seconds, then yielded. Isabel hadn't realized that one of his hands had been hidden behind the door frame until he retracted it and she saw the revolver in his grip. He clicked the hammer down, holstering the weapon at his back, and Jerome squeezed his shoulders and gave them a little back-and-forth shake. "Swell," he said, turning to go further in.

He was back a second later, index finger held up as if to say and another thing! "Interesting note, Izzy—if you've got daddy issues, Bogdanowicz here will activate every single one of 'em. It's the damndest thing." He stared into the middle distance for a moment, then shook his head. "Weird," he said, and then disappeared for the final time.

Isabel, feeling vaguely mortified—now this guy's gonna think I have daddy issues—stood stiffly on the sidewalk, still unsure of what protocol dictated here, but as another blast of wind hit and her teeth began to chatter again, Bogdanowicz seemed to thaw a bit. "You may as well come in, Miss Montalvo," he said, stepping aside. "Don't touch anything, please," he added as she crossed the threshold, to which she didn't say anything, but did tuck her hands securely into her coat pockets to signal her cooperation.

The space she found herself in was dark and cluttered, and she didn't trust herself not trip over or destroy something if she tried to venture through it alone, so she stopped and waited as Bogdanowicz closed and triple-bolted the door behind her. It was a shop front or workshop of some kind, hard to tell which, since the only light was streaming in from an open door in the back. Door secured, Bogdanowicz stepped past her, briefly said, "Follow me," and led the way to the back. Isabel picked her way carefully through the room after him, managing to avoid bumping into any of the clutter, which she sensed would be the worst possible thing to do at this point.

The illuminated doorway led to a cozy living space, where Jerome was already making himself at home, standing next to a little woodstove with a fire burning inside, holding out his hands to warm them. He looked over as they entered and said, "The place looks good. Well—this part, anyway. It was getting a little hoardey last time I was here."

"There was a fire a year ago," Bogdanowicz said, removing his glasses to clean them on his shirt and indicating with his head that Isabel should join Jerome, which she did gladly. Over by the stove, it was warm enough that she realized just how cold she'd been as they wandered the streets, and Jerome briefly pressed his hand to her spine, positioning her a little closer to the fire, before craning his neck to look back at his friend, eyebrows swooping up.

"No kiddin'. You get those insurance dollars?"

"Enough to rebuild," Bogdanowicz said neutrally. "I lost a lot of work, though. There's no replacing that."

"Yeah, well, Gotham's a bitch," Jerome said, upbeat but with what appeared to be real sympathy.

Bogdanowicz nodded, replaced his glasses, glanced from Jerome to Isabel then back again, and said, "Watch her. I'll go make sure everything's in order."

"You got it," Jerome said, sketching a little salute. Bogdanowicz nodded and vanished through another doorway, into a dark room.

Isabel peered after him, giving up when she realized she could see exactly nothing. She put the screws to Jerome instead. "What is this place?" she whispered.

He looked over at her, giving her a little frown. "Bogdanowicz's."

"Thanks. What are we doing here?"

"Picking something up."

"Like what?"

"Surprise."

Obviously she was going to get nowhere with this line of questioning. She shifted her focus slightly. "Who is that guy?"

"Bogdanowicz."

"Jerome," she scolded.

He gestured with both hands, surrendering. "He's—I've known him since I was a kid. He worked with the circus sometimes, when we were back in town." He paused for a moment, and sensing he was working his way to something, Isabel didn't press. Sure enough, after a few seconds, Jerome said curtly, "He was always nice to me when I was little, so I kept on working with him on occasion, all the way up to now."

Isabel absorbed this information. As always when he invoked his childhood, she felt a little flare of temper on his behalf, mostly fixated on the things he sidestepped, avoided saying. He was always nice to me walked hand in hand with the inference and nobody else was. The way he talked to this man in this dark, crowded shop, with about as much earnestness and courtesy as he could scrape together, pointed directly to the fact that that history meant something to Jerome, even now. That in itself was almost a miracle.

She wanted to reach out to him then, touch his arm, his shoulder, to lock him into a hug, but she knew that in similar circumstances, she'd knock someone's lights out for trying that, so she suffocated the urge and stuffed it down deep. Instead, she quit needling at him, quit trying to suss out answers, which she figured he'd appreciate. Instead, she changed the subject. "How'd you find out about Bruce Wayne's girlfriend?"

"Saw her."

"Tonight?" He made an affirmative noise. "Isn't Bruce Wayne, like, fourteen?"

"Tsst," Jerome said scornfully. When she looked questioningly at him, he said, "I had a girlfriend at fourteen."

"Is that supposed to come as a surprise to me? I also had a girlfriend at fourteen—thirteen, actually. I told you about her, remember?"

"That kid's like twenty now."

"There's no way he's twenty. If I had my phone, I could check—he's definitely got his own Wikipedia page."

He made another noise of contempt, totally ignoring her hint about the phone. "Like that's something special. I have my own Wikipedia page."

His tone made her double-take. She glanced over her shoulder quick, checking to make sure Bogdanowicz wasn't sneaking up on them, then to Jerome, she hissed, "Are you competing with the Wayne kid? Are you out of your mind?"

"According to four out of five experts, yes." In response to her furrowed brow, Jerome elaborated: "The fifth one got sectioned himself not that long ago, so. Not an ideal witness for the defense these days."

Isabel huffed out an exasperated breath, turning to look steadily at the fire so she wouldn't be distracted by his stupid face. "Bruce Wayne… the one time I spoke to the kid, I liked him fine, but he was born on third base, Jerome. You weren't even on the field."

"That seems unnecessarily harsh." His tone was jocular, but when she glanced over at him, she saw that his usual grin was gone, the corners of his mouth drooping down in what looked like real irritation.

"That's not what I meant," she said. "I don't know what's going on with you and the Wayne kid—I don't think I want to—but he's not on your level. He's a nice guy, sure. It's sad what happened to his parents, definitely. That still doesn't mean he's in the same league as you are when it comes to just… survival. Fight, I guess. So what if he's got a billion dollars and, like, a mansion and a butler or whatever? I'd still bet on you over him, every time."

The second she finished speaking, she regretted it—felt embarrassed, like she'd just handed him pages out of her middle-school diary—and from the looks of him, when she dared to sneak a glance at his face, he didn't really know how to feel about it, either. Fortunately, neither of them had to figure out how to move on from it: Bogdanowicz spoke quietly from the dark doorway: "Jerome. Come with me for a moment. I'll see if I need to make adjustments."

To Isabel, Jerome said, "Back in a jiff," and skirted around her to go join his friend. Bogdanowicz himself gave Isabel a stern look over the frames of his glasses, and she felt herself raising her hands, re-signaling that she had no intention to touch anything. That appeared to placate him; he nodded, and vanished into the dark behind Jerome.

Isabel wished she'd picked her phone out of Jerome's pocket before he'd left. Now that she was alone for the first time since she'd decided to come along on his little joyride, all those considerations she'd shoved out of the way were slamming into her again all at once, and if she'd had her phone, she might be able to mitigate some of the damage: she could at least text work, let them know she wouldn't make it in tomorrow. It wasn't like her to miss a day, and it certainly wasn't like her to miss a day without giving anyone a heads-up.

The voice of reason she'd buried earlier in the night punched through now that she was finally alone with her thoughts and not talking a mile a minute with Jerome. So what's the plan? Isabel stared at the fire behind the stove grate, her forehead notching into a little frown. Miss just one day of work? Two? More? What about your birthday party? Your friends are going to freak when you just don't show up and they can't get you to answer your phone. And what is Jerome planning, anyway? It's not like him to just lay low, he's cooking something up, and it's not going to be anything good. Are you suddenly just cool with being a part of whatever terrible thing he's got planned?

Her buzz had faded, leaving a little headache in its wake, and the hangxiety was kicking in early. She was brought to mind of what she'd told him a few months ago, of comparing him to meth. She was really feeling it now, the conviction that he was her own personal drug, the one person who could make her ditch her common sense and sense of responsibility—usually the most potent drivers she had—and go along with him without a second thought. It made him extremely dangerous, a different kind of dangerous from the way he was to everyone else—a danger specific to Isabel herself, and one she only seemed capable of worrying about when he left the room.

Because, simply put, she wanted to be around him, pretty much always. She wasn't sure when it had started, exactly, but she could certainly date it back to the Maniax, pretty early on—even as she feared him, was frustrated by the opacity of his thoughts and motivations, she engaged endlessly with him, trying to pick him apart as he did the same to her, the two of them orbiting one another to the exclusion of everyone else.

Then he was dead and she'd had to pretend that the few days they'd spent together hadn't left a mark on her, because he was the bad guy, the one who'd taken her in the first place, and nobody—not Jane, not Lee, certainly not Jim Gordon—would understand why his young death had left an open wound in the core of her, raw and confusing. She told herself that it was because the last thing he did was free her, triggering something, as Jane put it, "Stockholm-y" (as if she hadn't been flirting with it even before then, as if she hadn't tossed herself into emotional chaos by making out with him the day before he died).

Then he came back. Then she couldn't avoid it anymore. The asylum's restrictions and her own wariness of him kept her away for long stretches at a time, but she thought about him constantly—most of it taking the form of intentionally not thinking about him; thus, indirectly, thinking about him.

Then he'd showed up at her apartment, and, living up to every secret fear she had about him, and herself, and the way she couldn't help but react to him, she'd just… walked out the door with him.

Insane. Just what do you think is going to happen?

From the doorway, someone cleared their throat. She turned to see Jerome, and the reason he'd disappeared—he'd ditched the stained Arkham uniform and changed into an entirely new outfit, and when she looked over at him, he splayed his hands out, ta-da! "Whaddya think?"

If he'd been one of her girls, she'd have jumped instantly into gushing and gassing him up, but she figured it'd be wisest to play it cool here. She narrowed her eyes critically and crossed the room, looking him up and down as he posed and preened under the attention. The new clothes fit him well, clearly custom-made, and she didn't have to ask how involved Jerome had been in their design—the variety of patterns and colors had his fingerprints all over them, particularly in the buttery yellow of the shirt and the dark gray plaid of the trousers. The coat, too, was a standout, light taupe and soft on her fingertips as she brushed them over the lapels, long and strapped at the waist, very Patrick Bateman.

"Dynamite," she pronounced at length, looking up to meet his eyes. "Brummel would be jealous."

Jerome's eyes lit with real pleasure, and he growled, leaning in close—apparently remembering at the last minute her moratorium on kissing, he ran a gloved thumb down her cheek, chucked her chin, then turned away.

By then Bogdanowicz had reappeared in the doorway. "Survey says the threads are threadin'," Jerome said, carefully adjusting his tie about one centimeter to perfectly center it. "Thanks a million. Money came through?"

"Precisely on schedule," Bogdanowicz said, and looked him over. "It was a pleasure. Turned out well."

"I'll say. We gotta go," Jerome said, and stepped forward, planting a mwah of a kiss on the top of the man's bald head. "Stay paranoid, pal. It'll keep you safe. Izzy!" He stuck a finger in the air and spun it in a circle. "Forward march!"

Isabel hesitated, regarding Bogdanowicz awkwardly. "Um—"

He saved her from having to figure out how to politely extricate herself. "It was nice to have met you, young lady," he said, peering at her from over his glasses.

"Yeah—yeah, you too. Thanks for not… shooting me."

"Be careful," he went on, glancing over at the dark doorway Jerome had already gone through. "Jerome has a gift for collateral damage. Whether he intends it or not—it follows him around."

Isabel didn't know what to say to that. What threw her most was that Bogdanowicz didn't seem worried, or even just judgmental in any way when he said it—his tone was as level as it had been the whole time, his face as calm, like he was only stating an observable fact.

Once again, she was saved from having to decide how to react when Jerome popped his head back in the room. "Isabel," he said impatiently, "what, do you got lead in your shoes? Come on, let's go, vamanos!"

"Yep," Isabel said, scurrying after him. "Bye," she said to Bogdanowicz, and then she was following Jerome through the dark shop and out the door, which fell heavily closed behind them and locked automatically.

Jerome paused to get oriented, and the weird feeling Bogdanowicz's warning had given her (combined with the troubling ripples of what she'd been thinking about while Jerome changed clothes) vanished fast as she realized that things had changed a bit during the short period they'd been inside. She gasped aloud, and when Jerome looked sharply back at her to see what was wrong, she jabbed a finger towards the sky.

"Snow," she said reverently.

Jerome glanced up, then back at her, then back up again at the tiny flakes whipping around in the beam of the streetlight, barely even a flurry. He looked at her again and there was a wry little smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Um," he said. "Yeah, it's December."

She bounced up and down on both feet a few times, inching closer to him. "First snow of the winter. And so close to Christmas!" When he continued to just look at her, she settled back down on her feet and gave him a faintly disgusted look. "Don't tell me you're too cool to get excited about snow."

He stared at her for a second longer, then grabbed both her hands in his and imitated her enthusiasm, jumping up and down in place—she joined in with him immediately, giggling, not worrying that he might just be trying to mock her, because it was a Christmas snow (or as good as) and even though she knew it would get old in a week, she always, always, no matter what else was going on, got excited over the first snow of the winter. She and Jerome hopped up and down on the sidewalk a few times, her laughter growing breathless in the cold, then he dropped one of her hands and tightened his grip on the other and said "We gotta go!", bolting northward and pulling her along with him.

After running for about half a block, he slowed their pace to a fast walk, crossing Isabel's arm forward over her chest and then giving her a twirl as they moved before releasing her entirely. She matched his stride, taking a look around and recognizing the neighborhood by way of a free clinic—closed for the night—that she sometimes worked with on the occasion that a client of her kitchens needed medical care. The thought sent a lightning bolt into her brain.

"Oh, my god!"

"You have to quit doing that," Jerome said after a quick look around for any danger that might have prompted the exclamation. "Crying wolf. Gets me all worked up."

"I forgot to tell you about Lee."

"What about Lee?" Jerome asked, immediately interested, as she knew he would be.

"She's a black hat now."

He stopped dead—she overshot him by a few steps, and backtracked fast, turning around to stand face-to-face with him. He was staring at her. "I don't believe you."

"Swear," she insisted, raising her right hand.

"Lee? Lee Thompkins? We're talking about the same Lee, right?"

"Doctor Leslie Thompkins, yes."

"About yea high, dark hair, with the—" He used his hands to sketch breasts in front of his chest. Isabel snorted.

"Yes, that Lee. She's… well, there's a lot that's happened to her since the last time we talked about her, but the bottom line is she's disillusioned with the cops and she's decided she's going to try to change the system from inside."

Jerome scoffed. "Good luck with that."

"You would say that," Isabel said, unbothered. "I think it's badass."

"You would say that," Jerome said, rolling his eyes hard. Because Isabel was facing him now, she saw the cop car turning onto the road behind them, her eyes flying to the black-and-white as soon as it appeared, recognizing it from years of being wary of police even before her brain really caught up. Her hand shot out, grabbing him by the coat, and she hissed, "Cops" as she dragged him into the alleyway they'd just passed.

She'd just been planning to cut through to one street over, but Jerome caught her before she could really bolt, spinning her around and placing her back to the wall, stepping in close. "Don't run," he murmured as he turned up the collar of his coat to slightly obscure his face. "They're like dogs. They'll wanna chase."

The alley was empty and unlit, with only the light from the street to faintly illuminate his face. In the shadows, the cops wouldn't recognize him just as they drove past, but if they'd seen the two disappear into the alley and decided to investigate, they were shit out of luck.

Isabel looked up at him, certain her worry was showing naked on her face. Jerome clicked his tongue, put his hand on her hip, and said, "Pigs are stupid. We'll be fine."

Sure enough, within seconds, the cop car cruised by—a little on the slow side, but Isabel, straining to listen, heard it continuing on down the road without braking. She started to breathe a bit easier, but when she looked back at Jerome, his stare was so intense in the near-dark that it nearly took her breath away again. With him hemming her in against the wall, it was comfortable, almost warm, his body heat offsetting the cold air nicely.

"Let me ask you something," he said.

Her anxiety spiked. "What?" she asked cautiously.

"Why'd you decide to come along tonight?"

She waited, but that appeared to be it. Good question. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she thought it over, not missing the way the motion drew his eye.

There were a lot of answers she could give him, most of them even true. I thought I might be able to mitigate some of the damage you're about to do was one that she didn't like to dwell on and certainly wasn't going to share with him. I haven't really taken many big risks since I started living like an adult and you're a risk I have a hard time resisting was another one, also true, but he definitely didn't need to hear that one.

She sighed, putting her hand on his coat over his heart. She felt it thrumming faintly against her palm, not quick, not slow—he wasn't nervous, wasn't worried about what her answer might be. He was just asking.

"If I tell you a secret, do you promise not to tell anyone?"

He looked up and to the side, thinking it through. "Can we make an exception for my therapist? I'm not supposed to put up barriers. That apparently means I'm not allowed to have any secrets of my own."

"You can tell your therapist," she allowed.

"Great. What's the secret?"

She looked at a tiny snowflake caught in his eyelashes and said, "I am kinda into you."

His mouth tipped up on one side before he screwed up his face into faux sympathy. "I think my therapist would tell you to schedule an emergency appointment," he confided.

"Not a chance," Isabel said with a little grin. "I'm really good at not going to therapy; I'm not gonna break my streak now."

Jerome laughed at that, like she knew he would, and after a second, he leaned in—still abiding by her command to avoid kissing, she noticed, he pressed his forehead against hers instead, and she pressed back, hard, relishing in the pressure, the little pain, the rough raised edge of his scar pushing into her skin.

We should just stay here. It was an unbidden thought, and an unwelcome one. It reminded her that they wouldn't be staying, that they were moving inexorably forward to something that, knowing Jerome, was going to ruin things, would ruin this easy camaraderie. She already knew that—she didn't see the point in letting that awareness pop up now and ruin the pleasant moments, too.

Jerome must have seen something in her face change, because he was pulling back and exiting the alleyway before she could pull herself back together. "Clock's ticking," he called over his shoulder. "Let's go."

The mood cooled for a while after that. Jerome was either displeased or made wary by whatever he'd seen in her expression (or he was just concentrating on the task at hand and not thinking about her at all), and for her part, she was at first trying to keep the thought this has to end, this has to end from parading endlessly through her mind, and eventually she was so focused on trying to keep up with Jerome she stopped thinking much at all. He was moving much more quickly now, taking rapid turns and more often as they traveled into the guts of the city, and the sirens continued to wail endlessly, sometimes seeming as close as just one street over.

Gotham or not, it seemed to be an unusual amount of sirens. She had a good guess who they were for, and eventually, after they passed two people on the sidewalk and caught them looking over their shoulders at them, she asked him if he wasn't worried about all the cops out. He looked at her like he'd forgotten she was there, and after a few seconds, pulled a dismissive face. "Nah," he said, and he certainly sounded unconcerned. "They're busy right now."

"Busy with what?"

"Shhhh," was the only response, and Isabel rolled her eyes but decided it was probably better if she didn't know. What she did know was that it appeared to be working.

Her questions about the errand they were apparently running were answered soon enough when Jerome walked them right underneath Union Bridge, where she got the life nearly scared out of her when the shadows right beside her appeared to generate a masked, tattered figure from thin air. "Je-zus," she hissed, jumping back as Jerome chuckled. When she looked indignantly at him for an explanation, he waved a hand at the figure.

"Isabel, Jonny, Jonny, Isabel," he said.

"Scarecrow," the figure corrected him, a bit of pique in his tone.

Jerome waved a hand. "Whatever. Do your thing. Are we on schedule?"

"Your timing is… frightfully good," the Scarecrow guy said. "The police band indicates that they'll be along in minutes. If that."

Jerome looked supremely self-satisfied. "All that without a watch," he said, turning to Isabel like he expected applause.

She was too distracted to indulge him. "What's going on?" she asked both of them, but looked at Scarecrow, because he was the unknown entity here, and the known entity had a long, long, long history of either ignoring her questions or spinning her around with non-answers for so long that she'd almost forgotten the original question. Scarecrow wore a sort of combined burlap hood and gas mask, the only visible skin around his eyes smeared with charcoal paint so she couldn't actually make out his age or race or any real details about the guy in the costume… which was weird, actually. Sure, it was Gotham, and there were masked weirdoes around every corner, but she realized looking at him that she'd gotten used to Jerome's approach—he loved a costume, loved one, but he'd never bothered with a mask. The Scarecrow guy's eyes shining out of the dark paint felt uncanny in comparison, gave her a little chill.

He also was clearly reluctant to share. Rather than answering her, he looked silently at Jerome, as if in protest, and Jerome took over fast, stepping between them and taking hold of Isabel by her elbows. "Nothing you need to worry about," he said, in a patronizing tone of voice that chafed her immediately, and even as she turned her glare on him he was walking her backwards, well away from the street and towards the huge concrete piles that supported the bridge, and she moved with him, more focused on arguing than fighting him.

"You came and got me," she protested. "If you're trying to pull some boys' club bullshit now that we're in front of your friend, I'll literally just go home."

Jerome grinned at that. "What, are you jealous?" he teased as he positioned her in front of the pillar and glanced fast over his shoulder, checking the road.

"I don't get jealous," she said stubbornly. "But I also don't third-wheel. If you think I'm just going to sit in the corner and wait around for you, I'll walk my ass to the train station right now."

"Noted," he said, clearly amused. "But I'm not freezing you out, so cool your jets. Just moving you out of the way."

"Out of the way of what?" she demanded, and then powerful lights flashed past them, and she and Jerome both squinted to see that an armored police transport had appeared beneath the bridge, and Scarecrow was standing in the road, blocking its path. "What is he doing?"

"Shh," Jerome said, touching her mouth briefly with his gloved fingertips (and narrowly avoiding getting chomped). "Just watch. You're getting to see a master at work."

The rare generosity in his tone was effective enough to get her to shut her mouth and watch—she'd seen Jerome with teammates before, knew he played terribly with others, that his admiration seemed to be reserved exclusively for Lee Thompkins (and, occasionally, Isabel herself), so she looked more closely at Scarecrow as he effectively stopped the police transport, then sprayed the driver with something that sent him running screaming down the road. I could see how that could be something Jerome would appreciate, she admitted to herself, even as she braced for more cops to appear and the bloodshed to start.

But it never did. Jerome left her side, practically skipping towards the back of the truck, and she followed warily, expecting next for bullets to fly as soon as they opened the back, but it proved to be empty of all but one person, a man in a muzzle.

Isabel hung back as Jerome and the Scarecrow hopped into the back, justifiably having no intentions of getting into a police truck with two men who were strangers to her and a third she didn't actually trust, and she checked over her shoulder as Jerome teased and crowed and eventually removed the muzzle from the man, checking for police backup which didn't appear to be coming.

A new voice rang out the second Jerome shut up: "Your timely intervention is welcome indeed," and Isabel turned to see the previously-muzzled guy staring past Jerome at her, slightly bulbous brown eyes fixed on her—he brought to mind a nerdy Skeet Ulrich. "But who, I ask, is this fair maiden I see?"

Jerome turned a full circle, like he had no idea what the guy might be talking about (she hadn't realized he'd toned down the performing until now, because he was going full throttle again) before his eyes landed on Isabel again. "Ah," he said, and finger-gunned her. "That's Isabel. She's my attorney. Isabel, Jervis Tetch."

"Cool," she said, staring hard at Tetch, trying to figure out if he'd spoken in rhyme by accident or if he was just a LARPer type who hadn't realized yet that calling women fair maiden made most of them want to commit homicide. "And why have we met up with Jervis Tetch and… Scarecrow?"

Jerome came to the back of the truck and hopped down to the asphalt beside her. "Be nice," he chided her. "Jervis has been a real team player. He's the reason the cops have been busy all night. We owe him one. But!" He turned back to the van. "No time to palaver, gentlemen. We have fish to fry. And by fish I mean faces." He frowned. "Or... feet." The bit wasn't landing. He gave it up, flapping his hands at his colleagues. "Dawww, something fun to fry! Buckle up." He gave them no opportunity to respond, slamming the truck doors closed.

"Right," he said next, dusting his gloves off, "let's make tracks before someone figures out this thing isn't where it's supposed to be."

He started off, only to double back when he realized that Isabel wasn't following. "Uh," he said, forehead furrowed theatrically. "You're supposed to come with."

Isabel had crossed her arms over her chest, aware that she was telegraphing defensiveness but incapable of caring. "I'm not so sure I just want to hop in a truck with you and two random guys I don't know, apparently heading to another random guy's house. Sounds like the beginning of a horror movie, Jerome."

Jerome ran his arm up along the tall edge of the truck and leaned into it, staring at her with his lips pursed into a frown for a few seconds. He drummed his fingers along the edge, ducked back to look up the street and make sure nobody was about to happen upon them, then returned his attention to her. He said, "Hey, y'know, I get it. But it's not like that."

"What's it like?"

"Well, first of all, there's at least… one other girl."

"Really? Awesome!"

His frown deepened slightly at the audible sarcasm, then his whole expression shifted, eyes crinkling, teeth flashing in a little grin. "You gotta meet this crew, Iz. Not a single person has their life together. Everyone's a mess. You're gonna have so many people to boss around and be mean to—so many people who will thank you for it."

That didn't help the reality of the situation—not really—but she found herself having to fight a little smirk anyway as a pleasant feeling blossomed in her chest: he was teasing her, but he was teasing her accurately, and as always, being seen by him made her happy on a core level.

Fuck it. Not like I've made a wise decision all night, why start now?

She pointed a warning finger at him, said, "We better not be going to a flophouse," and started towards the front of the truck to claim shotgun.

She heard him laugh, a pleased, high-pitched little cackle, and he called out from the other side of the truck: "Have a little faith, wouldjya? One more pit stop. Then we'll get to see how the other half lives."

A/N - feat. Jeffrey Wright as Bogdanowicz :) just because I like him. (guess who clean forgot he was already in The Batman when she selected him for this)

I fear my personal biases are showing through in this chapter but despite the show's best efforts to convince us that Jim's a good leader, I really don't think the GCPD is competently-run. I mean, they sent one unarmed guy- the driver- to transport the man who'd had Gotham in a stranglehold of terror the whole night. No wonder Jerome isn't worried about wandering the streets out in the open!

Next up: Isabel meets the rest of the Horribles, including her host. Jerome pays a visit to his brother's place of employment. See you then!