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As the commissioner made his way back down the stairs into the MCU building, he heaved a ragged sigh. No Batman tonight. Gordon could only hope that he was busy taking down Gotham's never ending slew of scum instead of bleeding out in a back-alley somewhere. It was a thought that seemed to plague him more often than not these nights, and it left a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The last few weeks had been long and tiresome, yet he felt little had been accomplished in the city. His men had spent more time going after Batman than capturing and imprisoning the true criminals that Batman was still apprehending and leaving for them tied up and all but gift-wrapped for them to lock away.
He feared that Batman wasn't fairing too well either. Gordon had spoken to him briefly on the roof the night before, and the dark knight had been sporting a split bottom lip and what looked like a bruised eye under all the black makeup he wore. He had watched as the other man carried himself carefully, moving a little slower than usual as if afraid to jostle himself the wrong way. A knife or a gunshot wound to the stomach, Gordon guessed after watching him for the few brief minutes he'd spent going over details of a recent murder case.
It was exhausting to have had to pretend to care about capturing Batman. He had to let all of the snide, rude, and bitter things said about the caped crusader slide and then feign hate towards the one person he'd seen be nothing but a hero to Gotham. He despised every minute of it. Detective Stephens, was the only man on the unit that he trusted anymore, and while he considered him an ally and made him privy that he still met with the bat, even he didn't know the fully story. He didn't ask questions, though, and for that Gordon was grateful.
It was the wee hours of the morning when he entered his dimly lit office. These days he seemed to spend more time in this building than at home with his wife and kids, and his relationships with both were suffering. It felt like all of this at work was consuming him, but he couldn't stop - couldn't leave the Batman alone without anyone to fight in his corner, even if it was done secretly.
He fell into his office chair with a loud creak, wishing that he was home now in his own bed, but an ungodly stack of paperwork leered up at him smugly. He tried to steel himself, but he couldn't make himself pick up the pen and do it. Instead he reached for the day's neatly folded newspaper. He stared more than read with strained eyes, skimming words but not fully absorbing what the articles were saying. He glanced at the pictures and stopped on one in particular, fighting the urge not to roll his eyes as he read the heading of the article. "Drunken Fight or Another Spelunking Accident?"
Another accident, Mr. Wayne? I never would have thought you'd have grown up to be such a klutz, he thought ruefully as he took a sip and grimaced at the taste of his black, now very cold coffee. He studied the photo, curious to see how the Billionaire had injured himself this time, he nearly spewed the bitter mouthful all over the desk.
"Jesus Christ," he bit out.
The candid photo showed Bruce Wayne slipping out of his flashy new car with sunglasses poised to be donned. It seemed perfectly normal, but the paparazzo had been close enough to capture a busted lip and the blooming bruise of a shiner that the sunglasses would have soon covered up.
No, spelunking was unlikely. Gordon didn't know of any caves that could throw a mean right hook.
He rubbed his tired eyes and tossed the paper back down onto his desk. He sagged back into his chair, feeling shaken. No, it couldn't be. What he needed was sleep, he tried to reassure himself. The paperwork could wait until morning, surely. He stood up abruptly and retrieved his coat, and he was sure to lock the office door behind him as he exited.
He managed to keep his thoughts from the subject during the walk to his car, but as soon as he started his drive home, they came rushing back.
No. There is no way in hell that Bruce Wayne is the man I've been working with for the last year. No way he's Gotham's last hope… Gordon sighed and sadly admitted to himself, That man is an idiot. He'd often been embarrassed whenever he'd come into contact with Mr. Wayne or read news articles about his ridiculous antics.
But then abruptly his mind flashed back to the chaotic day when the Joker had blown up Gotham General Hospital, when Wayne had wrecked his Lamborghini and kept a truck driver from hitting the van carrying his employee Mr. Reese. Gordon's cop intuition hadn't really believed Wayne then when he had passed it off as 'just trying to catch the light', and he most certainly hadn't missed the pointed look Wayne had shot Reese as the man had been led away to another waiting van. He hadn't had an answer as to why either of those things had happened at the time, though. Perhaps it had been a coincidence, but it seemed even more unlikely now. He noted in surprise that Mr. Reese had never released Batman's secret identity to the press when he had so readily been about to come forward, not even now that the dark knight was being condemned of five murders.
Batman was self-sacrificing. He had allowed his reputation to be stained in order to keep Dent's clean. Bruce Wayne was a rich playboy living the life of a prince – in what way was he self-sacrificing?
And what of all the women Bruce Wayne supposedly slept with? Would they not notice the splotchy bruises and scars that a hero would undoubtedly bare?
His mind leaped to the press conference that Dent had held when the real Batman was supposed to turn himself in. Bruce Wayne had been there, and Gordon had had no idea why a billionaire would come to such an event just to stand against the far back wall and observe. He remembered thinking how bored Mr. Wayne must have been since he clearly had nothing else to do with his day. He had watched the man curiously and been aware that he had shifted slightly when Dent asked for the real Batman to come forward. He had only frozen when Dent had proclaimed that he was the bat, and Wayne's eyes had held sheer surprise. But then again, hadn't everyone stopped in their tracks?
He had wondered more than once why Batman had gone after Rachel instead of Dent on the night that the Joker had them kidnapped and stuck in their respective explosion-rigged buildings. Had the dark knight known that the Joker would switch the addresses? No, that had been made clear later when Batman had confronted Dent that he'd gone after Rachel because his main concern was saving her.
"Then why was I the only person who lost everything?"
"You weren't."
Gordon had never heard Batman's voice so bare as it had been that night. He had sounded so young.
And was it a coincidence that Rachel Dawes had also been Bruce Wayne's childhood best friend? Gordon had known that Batman and Rachel had been connected somehow – when the fear toxins had been released in the narrows, she had been the one to deliver the antidote that Batman had manufactured on a small scale.
What about the fact that Batman had started appearing at the same time Bruce Wayne had suddenly reappeared from the dead?
Was it just another coincidence that when Batman had traveled to Hong Kong to fetch Lau, Bruce had been supposedly on a cruise while a man from Wayne's company had gone to Hong Kong for a meeting with Lau? He had heard the rumors in the tabloids that Bruce had up and left on a plane during the little excursion, leaving his British butler with a ship full of beautiful Russian ballerinas.
The gear he had witnessed Batman use was another matter entirely. Two variations of a Kevlar suit, grappling hooks and capes made of some kind of memory cloth, and not to mention the car – yeah, Gordon still wanted one of those. He was sure all of it had to have cost a fortune. What average citizen could possibly dream of affording such things?
Gordon could count on one hand the number of times he had spoken to Bruce Wayne in person, including the tragic day the both witnessed his parent's murder. The man was carefree and appeared slightly dense, but Gordon had always felt that there was something had been off. His charming smiles looked convincing enough, but they never reached his dark eyes. They remained haunted and were often accompanied by shadowy bruising underneath them. If he had asked, he was sure Wayne would have answered that he had spent too many late nights partying.
Though they had never spoken of their first meeting, Gordon was sure that Bruce remembered him. He had always listened to the commissioner intently, not feigning interest like Jim had witnessed him do with countless others. He had always wondered why Batman had sought him out and told them how they were "two" on that fateful night. How had he known that Gordon was one of the guys who hadn't been corrupted?
He vaguely remembered the drive home, and the motion of pulling into his driveway jarred him from his thoughts. He sat in the driver's seat for a moment, trying to make sense of the whirlwind happening inside of his head. After he gathered himself, he reached for his bag and exited the car. As he fumbled with his keys at the front door, the sound of movement had his spine stiffening and his hand reflexively moving to the gun on his belt. The fluttering sound of a cape put him at ease, and he took a step back to look upwards.
"Long night at the office?" Gordon asked conversationally. Batman himself was perched on a beam, the same one he had balanced himself on during one of their first meetings at Gordon's home. He had to squint to make him out in the darkness, but he was sure he saw a brief flicker of a smirk.
"Murmurs on the street say that the Joker has something up his sleeve in Arkham," the Batman growled in that tone Gordon felt as much as heard.
That didn't surprise the older man. Men like the Joker would forever be a thorn in the side of Gotham – red and inflamed. He'd continue to bring chaos down on all who surrounded him until the day he died.
"I'll pass the memo along to Warden Sharp. If they can tighten security around him even more, I'll see that they do."
There was a moment of silence, and Gordon would have assumed the dark knight was gone if it hadn't been for the ruffling of his cape in the wind. "He'll find a way out," he said lowly after a minute.
The commissioner could only sigh. "I know. I fear that's inevitable, but we'll catch him again if he does. We are still two." He said with the tilt of his head, hoping to convey that the masked man wasn't as alone as he probably felt.
There was that hint of that smirk again, and Gordon watched the split in his lip pull with the movement. It looked like it had been fairly deep, but it was exactly where Wayne's had been in the photograph. He was lingering longer tonight, and it didn't do much to help the anxiety Gordon had been feeling.
Was it so hard to believe that Bruce Wayne was Batman – that Batman was Bruce Wayne? If that were the case, the man was a brilliant actor who played two different facades flawlessly. It made Gordon wondered what the real Bruce Wayne was like.
"Get some rest, Commissioner. You look like hell," the Batman said, his voice less rough than usual. Then with another ruffle, the evanescent dark knight had faded into the shadows.
"I could say the same to you," Gordon replied to the air, but a smile snuck out before he could stop it. It wasn't the abrupt vanishing he was used to. He wasn't sure what had been different tonight, but he'd take it.
How could he have been so blind? He had had all the clues laid out in front of him, and yet a tabloid had been the thing that caught his attention and opened his eyes.
He smiled sardonically and shook his head as he opened his front door. Some detective he was.