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Barbara sat in a chair that looked like a throne, staring into some middle distance in the darkened room. It was at least 2 a.m., the one time of the day that she felt like she could relax a bit. Even the worst villains Gotham had to offer slept sometimes, and she’d gotten into the habit of sleeping in and then staying up late after – well, since she’d been living alone.
Late nights like this, she couldn’t help but wonder how she had wound up in this place, in this time, in this mess. It hadn’t been all that long, in terms of years, since she lived in a beautiful penthouse apartment, since she was busy planning her wedding, since she hadn’t broken a law other than the speed limit. She remembered the person she had been back then, with her flat-ironed hair, her classy but boring clothes. She wasn’t a badass then. She’d always had a streak of rebellion, but really, it was mostly contained. All she cared about was marrying Jim Gordon and settling down. Eventually they’d get a house, a nice house outside the city, with a lawn where she would sit one day and watch their child play.
What a joke. What a fucking joke.
Here she was, in the burnt ashes of Gotham, holed up in a nightclub with more weapons than a Colombian drug cartel, with short hair and tight leather clothes she couldn’t quite zip anymore and gallons of alcohol that she couldn’t drink because she was pregnant, of all things. The only part of her dreams that had come true was the most inconvenient part. She thought of how, time-wise, it actually made sense. If she had married Jim Gordon as planned, they probably would have taken a few years just to enjoy married life before starting a family. They’d have wanted to travel, to enjoy candlelit dinners alone, uninterrupted by a crying child. Now was probably exactly the time when they would have felt the time was right. It’s just that the path to that point had whipped up and twisted out of control, like a narrow mountain road in a horrible earthquake, and so here she was with her empty club and her belly and Jim was out there, inexplicably married to a woman who had been sleeping with Edward-fucking-Nygma just months ago.
It would make so much sense if she woke up right now. It was all too weird to be real. But no matter how weird things got, she never woke up. Every morning she woke up and she was still Barbara Kean, who had respect on a level she’d never dreamed of achieving, who was feared, who was a crack shot, who had proven time and again how much smarter she was than any of Gotham’s so-called bosses, who was absolutely and totally unloved.
Tears came to her eyes again, making her angry. She shouldn’t care, not anymore. And really, for someone who supposedly didn’t love her, it certainly didn’t take much to lure him back, did it? Did it? For someone who thought that she was insane, thought of her as a madwoman in need of help. Ha. He should talk. She’d been around all too long. She’d seen the real Jim Gordon. Lee hadn’t. Or Lee had, and chose to ignore or deny it. Or Lee liked it. After all, she had been with Nygma, who was easily as batshit crazy as Barbara had ever encountered.
There had never been a time that she and Jim were together, even if she was halfheartedly trying to kill him, when she didn’t feel that he still wanted her. It never went out, that spark between them. It never would, and why wasn’t that enough? If he needed as milquetoast a woman as Lee in her law-abiding state to spark his delusions of love, why would she, Barbara Kean, even want those feelings? If that’s who he was, he wasn’t worthy of her. She could do better.
Like who?
I don’t know. Shut up.
She just wanted to run away. Barbara didn’t like trusting Ed and Oswald to get her out of the city, but what choice did she have? She knew Lee would be all too happy to appoint herself the more fit mother to Jim’s child and find a way to remove Barbara from the equation. It would be easy enough to put her behind bars for the crimes she’d committed. Even if Lee herself belonged in the next cell, but then – right or wrong had never mattered, had it? Not in Gotham. Power was what mattered, but it was hard to be powerful with a baby bump sticking out so far you couldn’t see your feet.
If you were going to lose, if you were going to be powerless, better to fail where no one knew your name. She imagined herself landing in some sleepy town, assuming once again the dull personality of the woman who had lived with Jim Gordon, keeping her past and her life to herself. It was easy enough to get new documents if you knew how to ask, and she’d learned how to get virtually anything in the past few years. She could be whoever she wanted, and her child would be safe. All she had to do was get out of this godforsaken city.
Barbara stood up – with some difficulty, her center of gravity was way off – and walked to the window, looking out. The city wasn’t as bright as it used to be with most of the lights off. All she could make out were the tops of some buildings and the reflections of starlight off the ones made of glass. She remembered the world it had once been – the galas, the charity dinners, her art gallery. Mostly destroyed now, or empty buildings that had been vandalized and looted until they weren’t worth even squatting in. She remembered when she wore sheath dresses and tasteful heels and cared about who should be seated next to who. It wasn’t the real her, but she wasn’t sure there was a real her. She was a chameleon; she adapted. It was her saving grace. Despite any other flaws, she could always adapt and so she always survived.
You could survive a very long time without being happy.
When she’d felt his hand on her arm, it was like blood that had been frozen for years rushing through her veins again. It was being high, taking that hit of a drug that you knew might kill you but you didn’t even care – if you died, you’d die happy and high. He’d grabbed her hard enough to bruise but she didn’t mind. She liked it. She’d looked at that bruise for weeks, watching it fade away and wishing she could keep it, wishing she could tattoo it on her skin as a permanent memento. And then she learned she had her permanent memento anyway, a new life that was forming inside of her, that would continue to grow and thrive. Unstoppable, adaptable – like its mother.
Barbara sighed. She would miss this town but Gotham and everything in it needed to be packed away forever, in a neat little box in a corner of her brain, like a movie that had ended, never to be seen again. If Ed didn’t get that fucking submarine finished soon, she was going to stab him.