When Gordon finally got home, he and Barbara got into a fight. She'd waited late into the night, alone in a dark room, with a celebratory dinner on the table—the meal she'd planned to commemorate the small apartment they were about to purchase. The only element that was missing was the guest of honor.
Barbara was aware of Gordon's busy schedule. She also knew the real reason: not that he lacked the ability to do his job, but that the location where he worked did not require police protection at all.
She'd walked beside him long enough to see it clearly. With Gordon's talent, any city apart from Gotham would not treat him like this. Worse, all of this effort was useless. This place was beyond his ability to save.
When Gordon walked in, Barbara was sitting on the sofa, fingers tracing a photograph from the end of their internships—they were both so young they were practically children.
They were not yet twenty, had only been official for two months, and were drunk at a party discussing their plans.
Barbara grew up impoverished. She wanted to make enough money to support her parents and brothers. Gordon, the son of a comfortable middle-class family in Chicago, had wanted to be a cop ever since one saved his family.
Different dreams, yet the same love. Even years of long-distance had not thinned it.
But that night, everything seemed to come crashing down. Barbara cried quietly on the couch. Gordon stood silently by the door.
It wasn't that he didn't want to console her or couldn't bear to see the woman he loved cry.
He had anticipated her question. He also realized he couldn't answer the question: why did he have to stay in Gotham?
Gordon was not born in this location. He came from Chicago, not from a poor family, but from a prosperous one. He wasn't a prodigy; the majority of his accomplishments were at work.
Teachers, classmates, and even the woman who lived next to him couldn't understand why he had left a promising career in the Chicago Police Department for this pit called Gotham, where he had remained for years.
He'd accomplished nothing on paper. Promotions were slow, and after several years, he was only a unit leader. The major cases never went his way. Even when he carried weight, credit shifted elsewhere. As for righting the wrongs and changing Gotham, forget it.
Nonetheless, he remained, as if possessed. When his name was mentioned, the older officers shook their heads. They said if he bent even slightly, he'd be a lot further along by now.
He went across the room and grabbed Barbara. She kept crying and asking for nothing. She knew the one question she wished he would answer was the one he never did.
When faced with the choice between his badge and the woman he loved, Gordon always remained silent.
Weeping can be heard all night in Gotham, but Barbara's tears were different. People here rarely cry for love; they barely have enough warmth to keep themselves alive, let alone to spend it on something as trivial as romance.
Barbara's grief hurt him even more because he had heard so much crying in Gotham's nighttimes. He felt worse than the criminals he was chasing.
He reasoned that if he chose the abyss, he couldn't expect anyone on the surface to look down at him for long. If someone did, all she'd get in the end was tears—like Gotham's cold rain spattering his coat. Tears were thrown away. A thousand lovers' tears, like a thousand raindrops, were insufficient to soften his stubborn stone.
...
Harvey surprised Schiller by visiting him the following day. The lawyer was a stickler for proper manners and rarely arrived without an appointment.
"Gordon came to me yesterday," Harvey stated. "He wishes to secure a legal consulting position for his fiancée. Preferably in Metropolis or down south."
"I do not like how he looks. I don't think this is just a squabble. They've already picked a location and discussed children, and Gordon appears to want to end it. Something's wrong."
Schiller trusted Harvey's intuition, but when he called Gordon, no one answered. Colleagues at the precinct reported that the detective who routinely worked overtime had not arrived that afternoon.
Schiller's stomach tightened with an unpleasant sensation. He reached out to Gordon's partner, the Batman.
Gordon thought until dawn the night before. He told Barbara in the morning that it was over.
To get her out of Gotham as soon as possible, he asked Harvey to find her a new job, the further away the better.
He was simply human. He was devastated after breaking up with the woman he had loved for years.
Furthermore, he drifted through the station all morning. The hollow silence pushed him out the door at noon, when everyone else was eating. He needed to be around people, anything to keep from drowning in his grief.
It was ineffective. As he had feared, trouble was not finished with him.
He noticed the tail not long after he hit the pavement. He calmed down slightly and turned back toward the precinct, where heavy weapons and guards would keep most trouble at bay.
The men behind him were clever. The faces waiting ahead told him that going forward would only make matters worse.
He had only his sidearm. The magazine was full, but a handgun would not carry far. He cut right into an alley and turned a corner, disappearing.
It didn't really matter. His shadows were familiar with the ground. They followed suit when he turned right.
Footsteps neared. Twilight became more intense. Gordon mentally calculated the number of seconds. When the steps hit the alley mouth, he fired once into the entrance, taking advantage of the split second between dusk and full dark.
He erred. That alone told him the truth: these were trained hands that would not be fooled by light.
He ran, holstering his gun. Two muffled shots rang out behind him. That sound—suppressed, thick—brought things into sharp focus. They are not locals.
No hitman in Gotham uses a suppressor. It's pointless. There is no reaction to gunshots here. It's similar to putting earplugs on a deaf man.
A new plan was formed.
They were gaining. Stronger and faster. Gordon reached the end of the alley and scrambled up an outside wall.
He reached the top of the wall just as the first man approached. Gordon became motionless for a brief moment. The shot hit his arm, knocking him backward. He dropped into the courtyard on the other side.
It did not prove fatal. He clutched the wound and fled, shouting, "Black Tower hitmen!" They're shooting! "They're firing!"
A nightclub had its yard. The words enraged men. The pursuer had just climbed the wall, resulting in another moment of silence. He was hit with three or four rounds before falling to the ground.
The Gotham City rule is simple: shoot first, whether seen or unseen, friend or stranger. Talk when they are down.
Gordon was in danger. More was on its way. The first was just the start. A car swerved straight at him as he burst onto the street.
They were multi-layered. Herd him into open space, then finish him off with a bumper or a bullet.
He did a right dive. The car missed, but the barrel on the window did not.
The round smashed into his back. He let out a scream.
His speed saved him. Firing from a moving vehicle ruined the intention. A graze, not a kill. Pain overtook him, but instinct kept his legs moving.
His head became clearer as the pain worsened. He wouldn't last a minute like this. He clamped one hand on his chest while the other arm bled freely.
Memory led him to the back door of an apartment building. The lock was faulty and never fit properly. He twisted it with his good arm. Every move sent a white blast through his ribs. His breathing became ragged.
The door gave an inch. He was not large or muscular, which helped him get through.
He didn't pause. Not only that, but he took the stairs two at a time, shoved open a corridor window, climbed onto a jutting eave, and closed the sash behind him.
When he heard them battering the door below, he clenched his jaw, slid down the eave, and landed on a rain tarp. The blood smearing his back did not leave a visible trail.
He rolled away into a stack of garbage bags and let them swallow him. The footsteps thudded and then faded. They had not found him. They were no longer present for now.
He lay in the trash, inhaling iron with each breath. The bullet had hit his lung.
His arm tingled and dulled from blood loss, but he could still feel the engagement ring on his middle finger, the metal absorbing heat from his hand until they were both the same temperature.
He saw Barbara's expression when he said the words. The lack of faith. The destruction.
She'd been right. He acted foolishly. He is a hopeless fool. A man who will never learn to bend. A man born to die alone.
Cold rushed through him, followed by a false warmth from within. Blood from his brow cut trickled into his eye, turning it red before clouding over to black.
Rain began again. It was the same as any other Gotham night. Fine. Cold.
As the trapped beast at the bottom of a pit, his mind blurred. The lovers' rain from the high darkness could not save a life that was fading. But the memory of a loved one's tears sparked something more powerful within him.
If he was born a fool who would not bend, if he would rather spend his life in this mire, with a heart as hard as stone, let him die here alone. Allow the rot-wind to whistle through his ribs until it has removed all traces of him. And when the darkness became insurmountable, let the last shred of him fight in its corner and refuse to kneel.
Gordon thought:
Then let me stand here, one against a thousand, until dawn.
📝 FOOTNOTE
The Gotham Department of Public Works has issued a new advisory: "Due to increased incidents of rooftop chases, please avoid placing fragile items (potted plants, lawn gnomes, emotional support cacti) near building edges. Moreover, if you hear gunfire during dinner, continue eating. It's probably just someone learning a life lesson."