Chapter Text
James Liang learned early that Gotham rewarded people who kept their heads down and their hands clean. It did not reward them for believing things would get better.
The courthouse moved around him like a living being, indifferent to the people inside it.
Phones rang in overlapping rhythms, some sharp and insistent, others muffled under the weight of too many hours. Voices blurred into fragments that meant nothing on their own. Footsteps echoed off marble floors worn smooth by decades of hurried decisions and late regret. The air smelled faintly of paper, toner, old coffee, and something metallic that James associated with panic even when no blood was present.
Gotham’s justice system, distilled into sound and light and exhaustion.
James sat at the centre of it, shoulders squared, spine straight, sleeves rolled just enough to look like he worked hard, but not so much that anyone could mistake him for careless. His tie was still knotted neatly, though it had loosened by half a centimetre without him noticing. His hair, dark and straight, had begun to fall out of place at the temple, the kind of small betrayal that told him it was later than he thought.
He had a habit, unconscious now, of tapping the bottom edge of any stack of papers twice against the desk before moving on to the next. Once to align them. Once, to reassure himself, they were still in control.
His desk was a battlefield of order.
Files stacked in precise columns. Colour-coded tabs. Legal pads filled with compact handwriting, every letter shaped the same way, every line evenly spaced. A mechanical pencil sat to his left, untouched. James did not trust pencils. They could be erased. Ink was permanent.
Financial crime reports lay open beside organised crime briefs, the numbers blurring into patterns he recognised before he consciously read them. He moved between documents without pause, pen tapping once, twice, then stilling as he circled a line and wrote a note in the margin that only he would understand.
Three cases at once. Two hearings scheduled. One plea agreement waiting on a signature that could decide whether a man went home to his family, or disappeared into Blackgate for a decade.
The plea agreement sat nearest to his right hand, like a threat. James had read it twice already, had checked the clauses, the dates, and the wording that could be misinterpreted by a judge who wanted to make a point. He had a faint ink stain on the side of his thumb from earlier, a thin blue smear that refused to wash off. It made him look messier than he felt.
James did not slow down.
He rarely did.
His mind moved with the smooth precision of someone who could not afford mistakes. He had learned that, too. Mistakes were expensive. In this building, in this city, a missing document or an overlooked detail did not mean embarrassment. It meant a case collapsing. It meant someone walking free. It meant someone being swallowed by the system because the system was hungry and needed to eat.
He went over the details again anyway. Not because he doubted himself, but because he knew what it meant to be wrong.
A knock landed sharply against his doorframe.
“James,” Harvey Dent said, already stepping inside. He never waited for an answer.
Harvey filled the doorway with motion and fatigue. His tie was loosened, his sleeves rolled up, and there were shadows beneath his eyes that no amount of optimism could disguise. He carried a manila folder under one arm as if it were an extension of his body, as if paperwork had grown from his bones. He smelled faintly of rain and aftershave and the kind of sharp coffee you drank when you stopped tasting it.
Through the tall windows behind him, Gotham’s skyline rose in steel and glass, watching them both like it had a right to be proud.
“You’re going to hate this,” Harvey said, tossing the folder onto James’s desk.
The folder landed with a soft, ugly slap. Paper against wood. One more problem added to the pile.
James did not look up immediately. “That doesn’t narrow it down,” he replied mildly.
Harvey huffed a laugh, brief and tired, like humour was something he had to ration now. “Falcone-adjacent shell company. Again. Different name, same structure. They’re getting bolder.”
James did not sigh. He had learned not to waste energy on obvious truths.
He pulled the folder closer, scanned the first page, then the second. His jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly, at the familiar geometry of corruption. It was always the same. A series of companies with clean names and dirty intentions. Assets moved in careful circles, never resting long enough to be seized. Men in suits made decisions that ended in bodies on streets they would never walk down.
“They’re not getting bolder,” James said. “They’re getting bored. No one’s challenged them in months.”
Harvey began to pace. He did not move like a man who wanted to leave. He moved like a man trying to stay in control of his own frustration. His hands disappeared into his pockets, then emerged again, then returned, as if he could not decide where to put the anger.
“This is the sixth case this week, Wei,” Harvey said. The name came out the way it always did in private, like familiarity, like something he had earned the right to say. “And it’s only Wednesday.”
James did not respond. Not immediately. He flicked through the folder, already scribbling details onto his notepad. Names. Amounts. Dates. He wrote a question mark beside a transaction, underlined it twice. The pace of his handwriting was calm, but it was not peaceful. It was a defence. If he kept moving, Gotham could not catch up.
Harvey leaned against the edge of the desk, watching him with something like pride and something like concern. “You know,” he said carefully, “most people your age would’ve taken the private sector job.”
James shrugged without looking up, pen still moving. “Most people didn’t grow up here.”
That earned him a look.
Harvey had never pushed when James spoke like that. He had never demanded details, never asked for the story behind the restraint. That was one of the reasons James trusted him. Trusted him more than Gotham had ever taught him to trust anyone.
Harvey stepped away from the desk and crossed to the far end of the office. A floor-to-ceiling window framed the city. Dusk had started to settle over Gotham in layers, turning the buildings into silhouettes, turning the river into a strip of bruised colour. From here, the city looked tidy, almost sensible. A place where people might live normal lives.
A few moments passed. A comfortable silence fell over them, the kind that only existed between people who had worked beside each other long enough to understand what words cost.
James kept annotating, careful and methodical. There was something soothing in the motion. Ink in margins. Notes made small enough that no one else could read them from a distance. The steady outline of cause and effect. When the world outside refused to be contained, he contained what he could.
Harvey did not turn from the window. His reflection hovered faintly in the glass, blurred by the city’s haze. Gotham looked almost beautiful from this height, the skyline sharp and severe, lit by thousands of windows that suggested life, routine, safety. The lie of it sat perfectly on the horizon.
“You ever look at it and forget what it does?” Harvey asked suddenly, voice low.
James paused, pen hovering above the margin. “Forget what?”
“The city,” Harvey said. He gestured vaguely to the view, as if the steel and glass were capable of taking offence. “From here, it almost looks normal.”
James followed his gaze. Cars moved through the streets like thin veins of light. A helicopter drifted past, slow and purposeful, its spotlight not yet switched on. The river reflected downtown’s glow like it wanted to make Gotham prettier than it deserved.
“It’s normal,” James said after a moment. “Normal for Gotham.”
Harvey exhaled through his nose, something between a laugh and a sigh. “You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say it like it’s weather,” Harvey said. “Like it can’t be helped.”
James did not argue. He did not need to. There were people in this building who still believed in speeches, who believed righteousness was a kind of armour. James had never been one of them. Righteousness did not stop bullets. It did not undo a body on a sidewalk. It did not hold up in court when the paperwork was wrong, and the defence counsel was hungry.
Harvey turned back slowly, leaning against the window ledge now, arms folded. The overhead lights cast faint shadows across his face, deepening the tiredness beneath his eyes. James could tell he had been living off adrenaline and coffee. So had everyone. The difference was that Harvey carried it like responsibility, not consequence.
“Six cases,” Harvey repeated, as if the number offended him personally. “Financial. Organised. Violent. It’s like they all decided to get ambitious at the same time.”
James flipped to the next page of the folder. The names were not even creative. They were meant to blur into each other, meant to drown prosecutors in paperwork until they missed the thread. The structure was familiar enough that James could have rebuilt it from memory. That was the worst part. Gotham did not innovate its cruelty. It simply repeated it until people stopped noticing.
“They’re reacting,” James said.
Harvey blinked. “To what?”
James tapped the page with the end of his pen. “To pressure. To changes. Something’s shifting.”
Harvey watched him for a moment, then shrugged like it did not matter. Like Gotham shifting was just another inconvenience to manage. “Maybe they’re just bored,” he said, echoing James from earlier. “Maybe crime’s running out of hobbies.”
James gave a quiet hum in response. He wrote down a company name, circled it, and underlined it twice.
Harvey’s gaze drifted to the other files on the desk. A manila folder with a torn corner. A thick stack of banking records held together with a binder clip. A case file labelled in James’s tight, precise handwriting. Yellow sticky notes protruded from the edges like warnings.
“You’re doing too much,” Harvey said.
James did not look up. “I’m doing my job.”
Harvey’s eyes sharpened. “You’re doing three jobs.”
James paused. Not because the words offended him, because he did not have the energy for offence, but because something in Harvey’s tone shifted. It was not irritation. It was concern.
“You think I don’t know?” James asked.
Harvey did not answer, and in his silence, James heard the thing neither of them said out loud. You’re becoming necessary. Gotham destroys people it needs too much.
James returned to his notes before that thought could settle.
From the hallway beyond the office, the muffled sound of raised voices bled through. A clerk arguing with a lawyer. Someone demanding paperwork. Someone else refusing to wait. It came and went like a wave.
Harvey tilted his head slightly, listening, then looked back at James. “You remember that week last year? When it felt like every gang in Gotham decided to host their own apocalypse?”
James did not have to think. “The Narrows case. The warehouse fire. The Maroni raids.”
“And the judge who had his car turned into confetti,” Harvey added.
James nodded. “I remember.”
Harvey’s mouth tightened. “This week feels like that.”
James did not respond immediately. He slid the Falcone folder into a pile marked Immediate, then pulled another file toward him without thinking. Habit. Muscle memory. If he kept moving, the city could not catch him.
“It’s worse,” James said finally.
Harvey’s eyebrows lifted. “Worse?”
James glanced at a printed list beside his keyboard. Calls waiting. Witness interviews scheduled. A hearing that needed preparation by morning. In the margin, he had written a note to himself to call a public defender back. Under it, another note: Check evidence timestamp discrepancy.
He did not remember writing that.
“It’s coordinated,” James said quietly. “It’s not just volume. It’s timing.”
Harvey’s expression sharpened. “You saying Falcone and Maroni are working together?”
“No,” James replied immediately. “They’d rather set themselves on fire first.”
“Then what?”
James hesitated. He did not have a clean answer, which irritated him. James liked clean answers. Causes with consequences. But Gotham had never been clean. It had teeth and rot beneath its polish, and sometimes things happened without explanation until the aftermath demanded one.
“I don’t know,” James admitted. “But it feels like someone’s testing boundaries.”
Harvey stared at him, and James could see the gears turning behind his eyes. Harvey Dent’s mind was a dangerous thing when it focused. It did not just notice problems; it chased them until it cornered them, until it could name them.
That was why Gotham loved him.
That was why Gotham would one day punish him.
Harvey rubbed a hand down his face. “I hate this city,” he muttered.
James’s pen paused mid-stroke.
Harvey let out a humourless laugh. “Not like I actually hate it. You know what I mean.”
James knew exactly what he meant.
There were days when Gotham felt like an obligation you could not refuse. Like a person you loved who kept hurting you and then acted confused when you flinched. James had never hated Gotham either. Hating it would require distance, and he had never been far enough away to afford it.
Harvey’s eyes flicked toward the folder again. “Do you ever think about leaving?”
James did not answer right away. The instinct to deflect came easily, like a reflex. But Harvey was not asking as a joke. He was not asking for banter.
James set his pen down carefully.
“Yes,” he said.
Harvey blinked. Not because the answer shocked him, but because it was rare for James to give one so cleanly.
“Where?” Harvey asked, voice quieter now.
James’s gaze drifted back to the window, past Harvey’s shoulder. Somewhere beyond Gotham were cities where streetlights did not flicker. Where people locked their doors because of habit, not fear. Where justice was not a performance put on for cameras.
“Anywhere,” James admitted. “Somewhere that doesn’t feel like this.”
Harvey nodded slowly, as if the word anywhere made perfect sense. “Sometimes I think about Chicago,” he said. “Or D.C. Something federal. Less personal.”
James almost smiled.
“You’d hate it,” he said instead.
Harvey snorted. “Why?”
“Because you can’t fight a city from a desk,” James replied. “You’d start yelling at senators by day three.”
Harvey’s laugh came more easily that time, a brief warmth in the middle of a suffocating week. It faded quickly, though. Everything faded quickly in Gotham.
“And you?” Harvey asked. “You’d be happy anywhere?”
James hesitated again. This time it was because the answer was complicated.
“My dad would be happier,” James said at last.
Harvey’s expression softened. “He still calls you every night?”
“Every night,” James confirmed. “Even if I don’t answer, he leaves a voicemail. Like he’s documenting my survival.”
Harvey did not comment. He did not need to. He had met Wei Liang once, briefly, in a courthouse hallway. A quiet man with hard eyes, the kind of gaze that assessed risk instinctively. The kind of person who looked at Gotham like it was a predator that had already taken something from him.
James’s throat tightened at the thought. He swallowed it down.
Harvey pushed away from the window and walked back toward the desk, tapping the Falcone folder once with his fingertip. “We can’t leave,” he said.
James met his eyes.
Harvey’s voice remained steady, but something in it held resignation. “Not yet,” he added, as if that softened the sentence.
James did not say it, but he thought it. Not ever.
Gotham did not let go of people like them. People who knew too much. People who tried. The city kept them close until they either broke or became part of its machinery.
James picked his pen back up. “No,” he agreed. “We can’t.”
The quiet that followed was different this time. Less comfortable. More aware.
Somewhere in the building, an intercom crackled. A voice attempted to announce something, cut off, then tried again. The words came out distorted, clipped, as if the signal could not quite hold.
James looked up.
Harvey frowned. “Was that?”
The overhead lights flickered.
Once. Twice. A brief dimming that made the office feel like it had taken a shallow breath. Then the lights steadied again, bright and indifferent.
James’s computer screen froze.
The cursor blinked, then stopped blinking. The open case file went white, as if it had been erased. For a moment, the entire machine felt dead beneath his fingertips.
James stared at it.
Harvey let out a long, slow breath. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
James tapped the keyboard once. Nothing.
“This again?” Harvey asked, tone sharp now. Not alarmed, just frustrated. “I thought they fixed it.”
“They didn’t fix anything,” James replied, voice still calm. Calm was what he did. “They restarted it and called it maintenance.”
Harvey’s mouth twisted. “Third time this week.”
“Fourth,” James corrected automatically.
Harvey gave him a look. “Of course you know that.”
James did not respond. He forced himself to remain still for a second longer, listening. Somewhere down the hall, someone swore loudly. A printer whined. Another computer beeped in protest.
Then, with a quiet click, James’s screen returned. The case file reappeared exactly where it had been. The cursor blinked again, innocent.
Harvey stared at the computer like it had personally insulted him. “If this is some budget issue.”
“It’s Gotham,” James said. “Everything’s a budget issue.”
Harvey shook his head, pacing a short line across the office. “It’s like the city is glitching.”
James’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. He pulled up the evidence database again, refreshing it once, then twice. It loaded slower than usual.
“That’s been happening all week,” James said.
Harvey’s expression tightened. “You reported it?”
James looked at him, unimpressed. “To who? IT? They’d tell me to turn the city off and on again.”
Harvey made a sound of frustration. “God.”
James’s gaze lingered on the file he had been reading earlier. In the margins, he had written a note about an inconsistency in a financial transaction. It looked normal. But something about the timestamps bothered him now. A transfer logged at 02:17 that should have been 02:11. A delay small enough to ignore, small enough to be explained away.
But James did not like small inconsistencies. Small inconsistencies were where Gotham hid its teeth.
He did not mention it.
Not because he did not trust Harvey, he did, but because paranoia was exhausting, and James had spent his life learning to ignore instinct in favour of procedure.
Harvey checked his phone, grimacing at whatever he saw. “I have to go,” he said, voice already shifting into public mode. “Meeting with the mayor’s office. They want reassurance. They always want reassurance.”
James did not look up from the folder. “Tell them what you always tell them.”
Harvey paused at the door. “And what’s that?”
James’s mouth tightened faintly. “That we’re handling it.”
Harvey’s gaze held his for a moment. In his eyes, James saw something complicated. Admiration, worry, and anger at the city for taking so much. Harvey Dent was good at carrying Gotham’s hope on his back, but James could see the strain. Even hope had weight.
“Go home tonight,” Harvey said softly.
James blinked. “I am home.”
Harvey did not smile. “You know what I mean.”
James did not promise. Promises were for people who believed the city played fair.
Harvey left without another word.
The door clicked shut behind him, and James’s office felt emptier immediately. The courthouse beyond the walls continued its relentless rhythm, indifferent to anything that was not urgent.
James returned to the Falcone file.
His pen moved again, steady and precise. He made notes. He flagged numbers. He built a small case out of fragments, as if assembling order out of chaos was something a human being could do indefinitely.
Outside the window, Gotham’s lights blinked on in uneven clusters, illuminating the city in pieces. Sirens stitched through the streets like thread. Somewhere, distant and unseen, something crashed. A sound too far away to identify.
James did not look up.
His phone buzzed on the desk.
A voicemail notification.
He glanced at it briefly. The name on the screen made something tighten in his chest.
Dad.
James stared at it for a moment longer than he allowed himself to.
Then he silenced the phone without listening.
His pen did not pause.
The courthouse lights flickered once more.
James lifted his gaze instinctively, then lowered it again when everything steadied. It was nothing. It was just Gotham. It was an overworked grid and a city held together with bad wiring and worse intentions.
Still, the feeling lingered.
Not fear.
Not yet.
Just a thin, cold certainty that somewhere beneath the surface, something had already begun to move.
James looked down at the Falcone folder, at the clean lines of ink he had written across the margins, and wondered, briefly and dangerously, how long order could be maintained before the city demanded something else.
Then he returned to work.
Because Gotham rewarded people who kept their heads down and their hands clean.
And James had never been foolish enough to believe that was the same thing as being safe.