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Jim stood by the light with his heart in his throat. He didn't know what to think.
He'd been on shift, but the TV had been on in the breakroom, and Montoya's shout had brought him with half the precinct, and they'd all watched together as the shape of the night changed. The Batman was dead.
He'd gone into his office and closed the door, had put his head into his hands and breathed for five minutes, scrupulously counted, and then he'd straightened up, dried his eyes, and texted his daughter that he loved her.
Babs hadn't replied. He didn't wonder—as he hadn't wondered for more than a decade—what she was doing. He didn't wonder at her red-rimmed eyes at dinner that night, and he didn't speak the terrible grief that knotted his throat.
Dinner had been stilted that night.
And then yesterday, Jim had, quite by accident, bumped quite literally into the Waynes at the infernal Metro Luncheon, which he had dutifully attended every year on behalf of Gotham City Police, who received a small sum from the annual charity budget of the Metro Trust.
Brucie had been very much himself, exuberant and quite unwilling to let go of his beautiful wife. Except once, in the stillness of the keynote speaker's address, from afar, he had seemed both unusually subdued, and also leaning slightly away from Mrs. Wayne, something tight around his mouth. By the time the lights had come up, he had been himself again.
And then he had gotten back to the precinct, and Montoya had shoved her cell phone into his face. Batwatch had been covered in pictures of Batman and Robin, all timestamped the night before.
So Jim was standing on the roof under a sky threatening rain, with the Bat Signal splashed across the clouds above him. Jim stared at the signal, trying not to count, trying not to feel the quality of the night.
"Jim," the low rasp came from the shadows.
Jim didn't jump, because he'd stopped jumping at that particular shadow years ago, but he did turn very fast. "You are back," he said quietly.
Cowled bat ears tilted, and white lenses gleamed in the dark. "Did I go somewhere?" he growled.
Jim stared at him. It was the right answer. It was the right intonation. But it still felt wrong. He shrugged. "Heard a rumor," he said.
"Hn," Batman said. He loomed, despite the good fifteen feet between them.
Jim sighed. "Excuse me for being concerned there was a copycat when you died on live tv," he said, irritable for no reason he could explain.
"Hn," Batman said again, something more forgiving in him now.
"I can give you a cold case?" Jim offered. "In apology for dragging you out here."
"Good for them to see the light," Batman growled dismissively. "Know I'm not going anywhere."
Gordon nodded. Batman was known for being terse to the point of nonverbal with the officers, but he'd long since stopped holding his austere silence when it was just the two of them. Two complete sentences wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
And yet.
Jim sighed, rifling in his pockets for his lighter and a cigarette. He looked up, expecting a rebuke about quitting.
Batman was gone.
Jim huffed. That had been the other alternative, that he would vanish as soon as Jim looked away, but he still wasn't sure.
On the lip of the roof where his friend had been was his lighter. When he crossed over to fetch it, he could see his packet of cigarettes on the sidewalk far below.
Jim sighed again.
"Is it him?" Montoya asked him when he came back down.
Jim nodded. "Even more of himself than usual," he said. "You know he hates it when he makes the news cycle, and more when it's wrong."
Montoya nodded. "Was the bird with him?" she asked quietly.
Jim shook his head. "Why?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Robin's been out and about with him, but Nightwing's been quiet. The only one acting normally is Hood."
"Wing could be off planet," Bullock offered, passing by. "He was with the Titans in New York two weeks ago, and then the thing with the League. He gets around a lot more than the other Bats."
Montoya exchanged a skeptical glance with Jim, and neither of them answered him as he vanished around the corner. It was hard to imagine Nightwing going off planet when Batman had taken a hit like he had. Jim shrugged one shoulder to Montoya.
Montoya sighed, tipped her phone at him like it meant something, and headed back to her desk. It was probably a promise to keep one eye on Batwatch.
Jim headed back to his office. He hadn't known anything for more than two decades at this point. He certainly wasn't going to start knowing things now.