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“The Waynes, huh?” Montoya said, voice carefully neutral.
Jim Gordon took a puff on his cigarette as he eyed the other officer. “Never would have thought.”
“I don’t think anyone did,” Montoya said, summing up his thoughts perfectly.
Gotham had its share of crime families. The Falcones. The Maronis. The Bertinellis, before they’d all been killed.
But the Waynes?
The Waynes were Gotham’s first family. Their knights.
They weren’t supposed to be a secretly psychotic collection of criminals with their fingers in plots all over Gotham, and even across the globe.
They stood there in silence for a few minutes, at the front gate of the inner fence of Wayne Manor. Jim had always thought the structure imposing rather than elegant, and often thought it didn’t quite fit the Waynes.
Bruce. Flighty playboy before he became a tired dad.
Dick. With his easy smiles and ready laugh.
(Oh God, he still hadn’t seen Barbara. She’d been brought in for questioning, was still in custody. He wanted to go to her. Make sure his girl was alright (make sure that she hadn’t known. He couldn’t bring himself to believe she might have known.) but he was a cop, and there were things that needed to be done.)
Jason. Always rough around the edges but very down-to-earth.
Cass. The shy, quiet girl who seemed to have a constant look of wonderment on her face.
Tim. Who stumbled over his words and whose face lit up at the idea of a puzzle to solve.
Damian. Well...okay, Damian Wayne had actually seemed to fit right in. But he was just a child, and in the end, maybe the most honest of them all.
The red and blue lights oscillating across the dark building and making the nighttime shadows dance between the gargoyles and rose bushes didn’t help much.
They’d turned the lights on once they’d cleared the manor. Gordon vaguely wished they hadn’t.
The radios in their belts flickered, voices. The vans were moving out. Gordon watched them go through the black metal gates.
“Kate Kane is still at large,” Renee said. Jim glanced at her. She was crossing her fingers, twisting them around each other and curling them into her palms. Nervous habit. “We still don’t know why she ended up not being at the Manor, but she managed to make a run for it.”
Jim nodded, took another drag. “They’ll find her.” He’s not sure why that’s what came out. Maybe because it felt like the sensible, cop thing to say, and here they both were, two sensible cops doing their jobs.
“Hey, Commish.” Jim turned around. One of the younger men gave him a brief smile. “I’ve heard you’re good with the kids, right?”
Jim grimaced at the mention of the reputation that had started to build at the scene of the Wayne murders, all those years ago.
Bruce.
Who would have thought?
“It’s been said, yeah.”
The officer jerked a thumb back. “Wanna take a shot?”
Gordon focused on the figure sitting on one of the stone benches, a shock blanket thrown around his shoulders.
“They figured it’s no harm to let him be for a while, poor kid.”
Jim knew he should.
A small part of him didn’t really want to.
He nodded and walked over.
The kid looked up while Jim was still a few feet away. His eyes were red and a little glassy.
“They left,” he said dully. “The vans.”
Jim nodded. “Mind if I sit with you?”
The kid shrugged. Jim settled onto the bench, leaving maybe a foot of space between them. “Duke, right?”
“Yeah.” The kid stared out the gates, still open, down the road that the Waynes had disappeared down. Likely for the last time. “What’s gonna happen to them?”
“There’ll be trials,” Jim said carefully. “Lots of legal stuff. Damian and Tim are still kids, so there’s still some room there—but the others, they won’t be getting out for a long time. If ever.” Kate Kane was still at large. Looking at the kid slumped next to him Jim felt a sudden sliver of worry.
“What’s gonna happen to me?” Duke asked softly. Resigned.
Duke Thomas. Parents in Bludhaven Psych Center after a Joker incident, no sign they’d ever be able to leave. Duke had been jumping foster homes and orphanages for two years before Bruce Wayne took him in.
Jim didn’t answer, because Duke already knew.
“You did the right thing,” Jim said instead. Already knowing it wouldn’t be enough. Not for the kid who’d just lost another family. Who’d risked everything, given up everything for the sake of their city. And what did they give him, in return for his trouble?
If all went right, Duke’s situation might not be far from the one he’d been in before Bruce adopted him. If he was very lucky, and Jim quietly vowed to do his best to make it so, he’d be able to live out the rest of his life somewhere else. Far from Gotham, with a family who could truly love him. To move on.
But Jim knew why Gotham still was what she was, why people stayed. Once from Gotham, always from Gotham, and the whole world knew it.
Duke shuddered, pulling the blanket closer. “I did,” he whispered.
Jim nodded. His fingers itched for another cigarette. Good with the kids? Jim didn’t know what to say.
“They told me I’d learn to fit in,” Duke said suddenly. “That I was already one of them, and I’d start believing it, too.” He shook his head, then turned to look at Jim. Gordon could see the steely resolve in the boy’s dark eyes as they met his own. “They were wrong. I won’t be like them. Ever.”