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In late May, Jim comes to Reese Hughes with a simple request. Well, simple in theory.
“So, let me get this straight,” Reese says, the mild breeze blowing what’s left of his hair. “You want me to babysit your son?”
Jim stubs out his cigarette. New York is different from Gotham. Brighter, louder. Cleaner, even. That’s no easy feat, but Gotham’s garbage dumps are filled to the brim with things that are decidedly not trash, including bodies, evidence, bombs and mysterious substances. No one wants to be a garbage collector in Gotham, so the city suffers because of it.
“No, I just want you to keep an eye on him.”
“Yeah. Babysit.”
Jim sighs. “Look, I can’t give you all the details, but he needs help that I can’t get him in Gotham. He just needs help staying on this side of the law.”
Reese gives him a strange look. “What does that mean?”
Jim needs another cigarette. Barbara would scold him if she were here, but she isn’t. He slides one out of the pack and lights it. “He just… has some criminal tendencies.”
Reese scoffs. “You’re not inspiring a lot of confidence here, Jim.”
“Look,” Jim says, growing more and more stressed. “All I need from you is to keep him on a leash. Don’t let him stray too far, don’t let him go out by himself, and, most importantly, don’t take your eye off of him.”
“Should I be worried? Is James the kind of person that needs to be locked up?”
Truthfully, Jim doesn’t know. To this day, he still doesn’t know what went on with Bess Keller, and he isn’t sure he wants to, but he knows what James used to do with animals, and he remembers the strange feeling he used to get from James when he was a kid and… “It’s just better that he’s not left alone.”
Reese nods. He studies Jim carefully, no doubt noticing the stress lines on Jim’s face and the way he looks a little more tired these days.
“Do you not have mental health services in Gotham? Don’t they have benefits for the families of cops?” Reese asks. Jim gives him a look. Reese nods and hold up a hand. “I heard it.”
Jim smirks. “Will you do it?”
Reese is silent for a moment. He looks different these days. Jim has noticed that the cops that make it out of Gotham typically do. Gotham is a black hole, and there’s no hope of ever seeing light unless you run and never look back. Jim is glad to see that Reese did, and his job here seems to be a lot less dark.
White Collar crime doesn’t deal with the darker aspects of humanity. Tracking down an art thief or a gem smuggler isn’t as emotionally taxing as finding a serial killer before he takes the life of his ninth victim, or disarming an entire criminal organization before innocents get caught in the crossfire of their infighting.
Seeing people die and dealing with death every day for years on in is heavy on one’s soul. Living in Gotham has the same effect. Jim often wonders if that’s the reason for James’ inclinations. Maybe he should have left Barbara and James in Chicago.
Or maybe people like James are born, not made. Maybe taking him back to Chicago wouldn’t have made a difference, but there’s only one way to know.
“I expect an explanation at some point, but I’m trusting you. I’ll take him on as a consultant. That should keep him pretty close.”
Jim feels warmth blossom in his chest. Reese has given him something he hasn’t had in a long time: hope.
Justifying James’ position within the FBI takes a lot of planning, time and behind the scenes work on Reese’s part.
Jim sends James to New York in July with blue contacts and box-dyed brown hair. Jim tells James about a small-time conman operating in New York, someone that goes by the name ‘Mozzie’. He thinks he’s flying under the radar, but Jim knows a con when he sees one.
Mozzie teaches James the tricks of the trade, and Jim keeps a close eye on James. He doesn’t think Mozzie suspects anything, but it’s entirely possible that James deviated from the plan. Though, if he did, Mozzie is very good at hiding it.
The longer the chase goes, the more apprehensive Jim grows. James is unpredictable. This entire thing hinges on James following a strict set of rules, and Jim is increasingly unsure if James can do it.
He’s taking risks. He’s cutting it close with the cops and letting the wrong people in. Kate was a risk, and Jim still isn’t sure if it paid off, but Alex is unnecessary. James’ goal isn’t to make money, it’s to establish himself. He needs to lead the FBI on for a while before getting caught, so it looks like his position as a consultant came about organically.
That was Reese’s idea, not Jim’s.
James risks the whole operation by making impulsive choices like this. A pretty girl is not a good enough reason to blow his cover.
Jim will have to watch how it plays out, but his hope is dwindling.
Kate turns out to be more useful than Jim had anticipated.
She turns on James, leading him to a warehouse full of FBI agents. Jim watches through a camera feed that Reese gave him access to. He watches as one of Peter Burke’s agents slap a pair of handcuffs around James’ wrists, and he tries not to let the nausea crawling up his spine win as he imagines a very different scenario.
The skeleton key in James’ hand. Bess’s box, pried open. James’ hands, stained red.
A swarm of FBI agents lead James out of the warehouse and into a police van. Jim reminds himself that it’s all part of the plan.
Convicted of bond forgery. That’s it. The FBI couldn’t prove that he was involved in art forgery, racketeering, theft, or any of the other crimes that Jim watched him commit. Part of it terrifies him, how easily James was able to cover his tracks, but the four years he’s sentenced to simplify the plan, at least. If he had been convicted for all the crimes he was suspected of, he’d be in prison for well over thirty years, which would require some crafty thinking on Reese’s part to get him out of, if that was even possible.
James goes quietly. Prison, he says, will give him some time to make sure his alias is foolproof. It will give him practice.
Reese, though, has a different viewpoint. “Prison might scare him straight.”
The thought of his son in there, stuck in a building that is always a perfect mixture of damp and cold turns his stomach. Maybe Reese is right, and it will convince him to change his ways, but Jim doubts it. James never cared much for punishment. Things like grounding him and putting him in timeout never really worked.
But Reese still doesn’t know everything about James. He doesn’t know about Jim’s concerns and hopes, so his perspective is a little skewed.
Jim feels guilty about it sometimes, tossing James into Reese’s watch without briefing him, but Reese is one of the most capable men Jim has ever known. If anyone can handle it, Reese can.
James spends three years and ten months in prison. For those three years, Jim rests relatively easy knowing his son can’t get into much trouble. When he is released into the custody of Peter Burke, Jim is a little nervous. An ankle monitor isn’t foolproof, and two miles is a lot in Midtown Manhattan. James could do a lot of damage and it wouldn’t even register on the FBI’s radar until it was too late.
Jim almost calls it quits when James finds a place to live with an older widow.
“I’m not going to hurt her,” James tells him, voice pitched low.
“How can I know that?” Jim snaps. “You won’t even tell me what happened to Bess Keller.”
James rolls his eyes. “That again. I told you I didn’t hurt her.”
They’d been having this argument since the incident happened. When James was younger, Jim had decided to take James, Barbara, and one of Barbara’s friends on vacation to a cabin in the woods. Not long into the trip, Bess had gone missing, and James had come into possession of Bess’s box filled with science things.
Her disappearance had been blamed on the currents of a nearby lake, with the local police force assuming that she had been swept away. Jim, though, had suspected her death to be a murder, and the murderer to be his own son.
In retrospect, Jim had acted rashly. The moment he had stormed into James’ bedroom expecting him to be hiding a knife or a blood-stained shirt, he had effectively pushed his son away. From a cop’s standpoint, he had been right to be suspicious, but from a father’s standpoint, he regrets the way he acted more than anything.
His relationship with his son has never been great, but making his ten-year-old son feel like his father believed he was capable of such a thing was not his best moment.
Regardless, James is an adult now, and that day made Jim look at him differently, whether intentional or not. If James is going to be living with an unsuspecting old lady, Jim needs to be sure that James is trustworthy.
“Fine,” Jim says. “You didn’t hurt Bess Keller. Does that mean you wouldn’t hurt anybody?”
James sighs. “No, Dad. I’m not a killer.”
Jim is silent for a moment. He listens to the white noise on James’ side of the phone. He can tell James is outside based on the sound of traffic. The noise is distant, though, so he thinks James is somewhere up high like a balcony, or far from the road like the middle of a park.
He can pull up a window on his work computer in his office in Gotham and find out where James is in an instant, but he’d rather not. If James is where he’s supposed to be, then he will appear to trust James. But if James isn’t where he’s supposed to be, then there’s nothing Jim can do over the phone anyway.
“Okay, James. I trust you.”
James doesn’t reply. Whether he believes him or not, Jim doesn’t think he’ll ever know.
The phone calls are sometimes regular occurrences, but sometimes sporadic. As time marches on and James seems to be walking the line, Jim grows to enjoy the calls.
Mostly, they talk about the past. Happy memories, like holidays, vacations, and school trips. Sometimes, they reminisce about the candid moments, the ones that were there and then gone. These are Jim’s favorite memories.
He’s starting to really enjoy the calls. If nothing else, they serve as great bonding moments.
One afternoon, when Jim is sitting in his office with nothing else to do, he calls James. The conversation starts amicably, but a few minutes in, it lulls.
“He asked me about you.”
Jim is lost. The conversation had gone from baseball to this. “What?”
“He asked me about my dad. I told him you were a cop.” Oh. Peter Burke, James’ handler.
Jim doesn’t know much about the man other than that he had been on the path to a career in baseball before an injury squashed that idea. From what he can tell, Burke is an upstanding agent, always on the side of the law and always willing to do what’s right. Whether that is the reality, Jim can’t really tell. He’s met lots of cops that didn’t turn out to be what they appeared.
“James,” Jim says, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I know, I know. I’m not supposed to give him personal details.”
“Then why did you?”
“I…” The line is silent for a moment. “I want him to think I trust him.”
Jim isn’t sure how to react. He thought that James was making strides with Peter, but now he isn’t sure. James doesn’t want to trust Burke. He wants Burke to think James trusts him. There’s a difference, and thinking about it makes Jim feel sick.
Maybe this whole experiment was a waste of time. Maybe it’s the wrong approach, or maybe it never would have worked at all. Either way, Jim feels frustration grow in his chest.
James doesn’t want to make connections. He’s never had friends, never seemed to care for them, and he still doesn’t. When James was young, Jim often felt overwhelmed, like he wasn’t doing enough. He feels that now, and he doesn’t think this little experiment is going to change James or divert him from a destructive path.
Still, they’re too far in to pull out now. If Jim wants to stop, it has to be done naturally so Reese’s career doesn’t take a hit.
James has a commutation in a week and Jim is conflicted. On one hand, James hasn’t improved. That much is obvious. On the other, Jim doesn’t want to give up yet.
As the week trudges by, Jim is more and more sure that James needs to stay in New York. Gotham has soul-sucking darkness about it and, though the Caffery cover isn’t helping, James being miles away from this place is for the best.
Jim drives to New York that Saturday and books a hotel room not far from James’ apartment. It’s nothing special. He lives off of a cop’s salary, so he can’t afford the kind of lavish hotel rooms he dreams of.
Reese keeps him updated. The commutation hearing begins without a hitch, but as Jim watches the texts pop up on his phone, he realizes that none of this is going to be as simple as he hoped.
“What the hell were you thinking, running off like that?” Jim demands, throwing his arms in the air.
James is sitting in a chair across from him with the same anklet he’s had for the past few years around his ankle. He won’t be getting it off for a while. Not with the antics he’s pulled today.
James doesn’t move. He keeps his eyes glued to the always moving cityscape below.
“Do you think this is a game? Can’t you see I’m doing everything I can to keep you from…”
James turns slowly, calmly. “From what?”
If James is offended, it doesn’t show on his face, and that is part of the problem. Jim can’t read him. He can never tell what his son is thinking, and it’s equal parts upsetting and eerie.
Jim shakes his head. “Just… don’t pull that shit again. I’m serious.”
James stares at him for the longest few seconds of Jim’s life. He feels his heart beat in his chest in time with the car horns below. Finally, James nods. “I won’t.”
And the worst part is, Jim can’t tell if he’s lying.
Reese calls at least once a week. Even for mundane things, Reese calls. Every Wednesday afternoon, like clockwork.
But this week, he doesn’t.
To say Jim is on edge would be an understatement. He’s sitting at his desk in the precinct, alone in the dark, and he waits. And waits.
Jim waits until the sun goes down, and his patience runs out. He picks up the phone and dials a familiar number.
“Jim. I was just about to call.”
Jim sighs. “Sorry, I… didn’t have anything else to do, so--”
Reese hums. “Does the GCPD have slow days?” he asks, sounding amused.
“Ah, well. With Batman running around, our workload is significantly smaller,” Jim tells him. Reese knows he’s lying, and Jim knows he knows. Reese is obliging and decides not to say anything.
“Masked vigilantes. What can you do?” Reese laughs.
“Nothing we haven’t already tried, apparently.” Jim fidgets with his pipe. He inhales, preparing to ask when Reese cuts him off.
“James is doing fine, Jim.”
“Oh.”
“What do you mean, ‘oh’?”
Jim shakes his head. Truthfully, he’d expected the worst—maybe Reese would tell him that James had run, or maybe that he’d stolen something or been arrested. Or… or that he’d done what Jim always worried he’d do.
But he didn’t, and maybe Jim has been too cynical in the past. Maybe the medication James had started is working, and had worked all along. Maybe creating Neal Caffery had been unnecessary.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Jim turns and admires the hazy night sky. Maybe he’s imagining the swish of a black cape and the smaller, brighter cape swinging after it. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
“Actually, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Jim holds his breath as he braces himself for the other shoe to drop. He forces his heart to slow to its normal pace. Reese had just said nothing was wrong. “What is it?”
Reese sighs. “James is doing fine. I didn’t lie about that. But he’s…”
Jim is suddenly craving a cigarette, though he’d quit years ago. “He’s what , Reese?” He doesn’t mean to snap, but the stress is getting to him. Reese doesn’t deserve it. He’s been plenty patient with him.
“There’s something going on with him, and he won’t talk to anyone. Agent Burke has tried. Multiple times, even,” Reese says.
“Have you sent him to a shrink?” Jim asks, though he knows it won’t accomplish anything. James has been to many psychologists, and they’re still here. No doctor has made a difference.
“We haven’t. That’s kind of a last resort. I was hoping you would talk to him.”
Jim has tried. Reese might believe that Jim has the kind of relationship with his son where they share intimate things like feelings, but they don’t, and they never have. Jim doubts it’s even possible to get James to open up.
“I’ll try,” Jim tells him.
They exchange goodbyes and hang up. Jim sits back in his chair and tries to ignore the impending feeling of doom.
Predictably, James gives him nothing. When Jim asks, James says he’s fine, that nothing is wrong. When Jim keeps pushing, James finally just tells him that he is tired and wants to go to bed.
Jim isn’t content with that. If his handler and other agents notice that something is off with James, then Jim doesn’t believe that it’s ‘nothing’.
The thing with James is, if you push, he just pushes back harder. Trying to get information that he doesn’t want to give out of him is like getting information out of a man with no mouth. Nine times out of ten, you won’t come out the victor.
He decides that whatever is bothering James can wait, but the moment it looks like it might be boiling over, Jim will step in. He can’t let anyone be hurt.
Things in Gotham pick up, and he finds himself relying more and more on Batman. Three of Gotham’s worst decide to team up and as much as he hates to admit it, the GCPD isn’t equipped to deal with it on their own.
Jim spends his days running around the city, fortifying the vulnerable areas and patrolling the not so vulnerable ones. He’s busy all week, and, as a result, the situation with James is put on the back burner.
This is his first mistake.
Reese calls him one Wednesday afternoon. He’d forgotten, momentarily, about the calls. About all of it, really. For a few quiet moments, he’d only had to worry about the citizens of Gotham. That was impersonal. If he fucked that up, it would still be catastrophic, of course, but at least he didn’t have to face the consequences when he goes home at night.
He picks the phone up, greets Reese, and promptly freezes when he hears Reese speak.
“What the hell have you gotten me into, Gordon?”
A thousand inevitabilities run through his head in that moment. He flashes back to that moment in the cabin, when he stormed into James’ room and demanded an explanation. James had been clueless at the time, but Jim suspects he was never as innocent as he liked to pretend.
“What do you mean?” He tries to keep his voice even.
“He’s lashing out. You said he was non-violent.” Reese’s voice is neutral, but Jim knows him. He can hear the fury.
Jim rubs a hand over his face. “What did he do?”
“He punched one of my agents.”
Oh. Well, not ‘oh’, but Jim had been expecting… not that. “He punched someone?”
Reese hums. “He did.”
Jim sighs. James has never been violent before, so it’s definitely a cause for concern, but Jim is just thankful it wasn’t worse. It could have been so much worse.
“Can you come to New York?”
“Gotham is really--”
“Jim. We have to talk, and it needs to be face to face.”
He’s right. He’s owed an explanation. No matter what Jim’s responsibilities are in Gotham, his responsibility as a father takes precedence. Besides, Batman runs circles around the GCPD on a nightly basis. He can cover for a little while.
Jim drives straight to the office. He doesn’t plan on staying, and the drive had only taken two hours, so he should be back in Gotham before too long.
He parks in the garage and makes his way to the elevators. Reese always stays late, though it is a bit later than he’s used to. The office is deserted when he steps through the door, the one light on in the office at the top of the stairs is the only exception.
Jim walks into the office, closing the glass door behind him. Reese glances up at him, eyes serious. Before Reese can say anything, Jim speaks. “About the punch--”
“This isn’t about the punch. This is about the fact that you led me to believe that your son wasn’t a threat.”
Oh. Well, straight to the point, then. “Yeah. That was a lie.”
“ Yeah ,” Reese says, his tone harsh. “How much of a lie?”
Jim looks him in the eye. During his days in Gotham, Reese had looked just like he does now: stressed, angry, and far older than he actually is. Jim feels a pang of guilt. Reese had left Gotham to escape the stress, and here Jim is, bringing it to his doorstep
He sits in the chair across from him. If nothing else, Reese deserves an apology. “When James was a kid, we took him, Barbara and a girl named Bess on vacation to a cabin. Bess never made it home.”
Reese shakes his head, a mournful look on his face. “That’s awful. What happened?”
“We don’t know. She was there one minute and gone the next. After I realised she was gone, I just…” Jim takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I should have never assumed anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if James resents me to this day.”
“You thought he was responsible?” Reese asks.
Jim hates himself for it, but yes. He did. James just never gave him an adequate explanation for why he had the skeleton key that belonged to Bess. Jim had gone into his bedroom and saw him playing with the box Bess had brought, and he couldn’t see straight. A girl had gone missing on his watch, and to think that his son might have been responsible sent a rage through him that he couldn’t control. He only wishes that he could take it back.
“I did.”
Reese sighs. “Okay. What about now? Do you still think that?”
Truthfully, he doesn’t know. Time has dulled the memory, and his feelings about Bess’s disappearance. He mostly feels sadness and regret for having presented the opportunity for the girl to go missing in the first place. Still, he knows he isn’t the kind of man that preys on children. He’s met plenty of those kinds of men throughout his life.
Jim knows that Reese is asking two questions. He wants to know not only if James was responsible for the death of another person in the past, but also if it’s possible for him to do so in the present.
“I think--”
The high-pitched sounds of Reese’s office phone cuts him off. Jim is thankful for it. He sits back in his chair with a sigh.
Reese picks up the phone, greeting the caller with an irritated, “What?”
Whatever the caller says must be serious. Reese glances up at him, eyes wide. Jim frowns.
The call only lasts a few more moments before Reese hangs the phone up and grabs his jacket. “We have to go.”
“We?”
Reese holds the door open. “We. Come on.
Reese says nothing the entire duration of the car ride, but Jim can tell he’s seething. He can’t imagine why Reese decided to bring him along. FBI matters are far above his paygrade, especially if the GCPD isn’t working with them.
Reese parks the car next to a parking meter, but walks right past it without depositing any coins. Jim has done the same when he was in a hurry, but he always feels bad for the attendant.
Reese seems to be guiding him to a brewery. Jim would love to know what is going on, but he assumes he will find out in a moment. He follows Reese inside and freezes just past the threshold.
Blood.
“Reese?” he says.
Reese doesn’t respond. He just glances back, meeting Jim’s eyes before gesturing for him to follow him. Reluctantly, Jim does.
It’s not that blood makes him squeamish—he’s been a police officer in Gotham for around two decades, blood comes with the territory—but he’s in New York with Reese, who works white collar crimes. White collar isn’t supposed to get bloody. Even when it does, Reese is hardly ever a field agent. Why was he called when he was supposed to be at home?
The room is large and filled with giant fermenters and other equipment. The place is swarming with various agents and officers, though Jim doesn’t see the need for both. That is, until he rounds the corner into the storage room.
There’s a man in a suit, lying on the ground in a puddle of blood. His chest seems to be the source of the puddle, marred with gashes. His face had sustained damage too. His cheek is split, and his forehead is so red that Jim can’t even tell where the injury is.
The death was a fast one, but the murderer was angry. It doesn’t take a profiler to tell that. Jim wonders if it was a robbery.
“Shit,” Jim says. “Did you catch the guy?”
Reese meets his eye with a look that is far too solemn for a random murder.
In that moment, Jim’s heart catches in his throat. He doesn’t know for certain, but it makes sense. Why else would Reese bring him here? Why else would he interrupt a conversation as important as the one they were having?
“No,” is all Jim can say.
Over Reese’s shoulder, Jim spots James’ handler, Agent Peter Burke. He’s standing in the middle of the room, phone in hand, with his eyes glued to the door. Jim steps around Reese and marches over to him. He stops right in front of him, interrupting his staring contest with the doorframe.
“Where is he?” Jim says.
Burke blinks, eyes focusing on Jim’s face. “Who?”
“James?”
“ Who ?”
Jim sighs. His heart is pounding now, anxiety seizing his throat. When he finds his voice, he all but yells, “Where is Neal Caffery?”
Burke frowns. Slowly, he points toward the door. He looks shell-shocked, but Jim doesn’t have it in him to comfort the man right now. He’ll leave that to Reese.
Jim spins around and sprints through the door. There’s a police car parked on the curb. Three cops surround a dark figure, and though Jim can’t see his face, he knows .
It was a stupid idea to begin with. Anyone who knows anything about psychology could have seen it coming.
As he stands thirty feet away from a body, watching his son be led away in cuffs and red and blue strobe lights burning into his retinas, he wonders how he didn’t see it coming.
They shove James into the back of the cruiser and slam the door shut behind him. One of the cops climbs in the front seat, causing James to look up. He spots Jim and meets his eye, the look on his face undecipherable.
Jim is frozen. The scene plays out exactly like it had in his nightmares. The only difference is, James appears to be… proud.