CHAPTER 39

Madness. That’s how the offices of Police Commissioner James W. Gordon appeared to Bruce Wayne. In fact, the whole floor was bustling with activity. National Guard officers were walking around in uniform, delivering faxes and discussing matters of citywide security, right down to the slightest details.

Bruce nodded and smiled at a few familiar faces, many of which he’d first encountered at the Policeman’s Ball. Bruce had been to City Hall before, and he’d never seen it like this. National Guard officers had augmented the police force until more recruits could be trained and pushed through the academy. That would cause problems in itself, he knew, because an influx of rookies would suddenly be faced with the most tumultuous time in Gotham City’s history.

“Mr. Wayne?” a woman said. It was a secretary near the police commissioner’s office door. She stood up to shake his hand. “Mr. Wayne, the commissioner is in his office. Hold on, and I’ll buzz him.” She tapped a switch on her phone. “Commissioner, Bruce Wayne is here.”

“That’s good, Connie. Send him in.”

“Yes, sir.” She looked at Bruce. “He keeps his door closed, but it’s always unlocked. Just knock and he should call you right in.”

“Thank you.” Bruce maneuvered around a female Guard who was carrying an armful of folders, and he winked at her. She rolled her eyes, but then smiled in return. He knocked on the door, which had some of the stencils spelling Gordon’s name etched off, as if somebody had expected him to lose his job weeks ago and was trying to get ahead.

“Come in,” Gordon called from within.

Bruce parted the door just slightly, and peeked inside. “Uh, hello, Commissioner.”

Gordon was behind his desk, looking at someone across from his desk. Bruce couldn’t see who it was because he hadn’t opened the door fully. “Mr. Wayne! Glad you made it,” the commissioner said, standing up.

“Uh, yeah, your office called earlier today and said that you wanted to see me, but they wouldn’t say what it was about—” He broke off when he opened the door all the way, and saw the boy sitting there. He looked pale, and a little nervous. Still, his eyes were the same—they were as resolute as that day outside the Iceberg Lounge, when he’d fired multiple shots at the SUV carrying the Batman’s prey.

“Hang on one minute, son,” Commissioner Gordon said, talking to the boy. “We’re just going to step outside for a minute and have a talk.”

Gordon winced as he stood up; he still had a limp. He came outside and shut the door, then limped down a short hallway with Bruce in tow. They both moved out of the way to let another Guard officer go by, and then two more came through pushing a cart full of brand new CPUs. “Sorry,” the commissioner said. “We’ve been a bit busy around here, getting some new equipment set up, and moving the old stuff out.”

“Change isn’t always bad,” Bruce commented.

“Yeah, well…” Gordon led him into a small break room, and offered him a paper cup from the countertop. “Coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

Gordon shrugged and helped himself, and started mixing lots and lots of sugar into his cup. As he stirred, he occasionally sipped, testing it. “I tried to quit this stuff. My wife would kill me if she saw me putting this much sugar in it.” Bruce smiled. “I guess you saw the boy in there?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I did. Who’s he? Your son?”

“No,” Gordon chuckled. “No, all mine are a good bit younger than him. No, he’s…well, he’s an orphan. He’s been made a ward of the state because his parents were killed in an accident.” He looked at Bruce. “An accident that the boy believes was no accident.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Gordon took another sip of his coffee, and decided it still needed sugar. “He was with the Flying Graysons, a part of Haley’s Circus. He’s the son of John and Mary Grayson. You’ve heard of ’em?”

“I’ve heard of them, sure,” Bruce said. “I read about the training accident they had. It’s a terrible tragedy.”

“Yeah, well, try telling that to that kid in there.” He gestured with his coffee cup, pointing towards his office. “He showed up at the Iceberg Lounge the day that my wife and I and Agent Essen were taken hostage by the Penguin and the Riddler. He showed up with a gun, and started shooting. The kid believed Cobblepot knows something about a man named Tony Zucco, the man he believes set up his parents’ death to look like an accident.”

Bruce put his hands in his pockets. “Why are you telling me all this, Commissioner? Why call me down here?”

Gordon took another sip of his coffee. “Mr. Wayne, you’ve had firsthand experience with this kind of tragedy. You lost both of your parents violently when you were young. I was wondering…I was wondering if you could help the boy.”

Bruce was a bit wary of that. “How do you mean, ‘help’? You mean talk to him? I’d be glad to sit down with him and chat, if he’s ready for that kind of thing. But what he needs right now is counseling and child protective services and—”

“We’ve covered all of that already,” the commissioner said. “As I said before, he’s a ward of the state right now, and we’ve done all we can do for him. The psychiatrist we’ve had him talking with says the boy’s bright—in fact, his IQ far exceeds the average of all other teenagers his age—and they say what he needs is freedom to move about, to be creative, since he’s a painter, an athlete, and a performance artist, and that he needs a challenging, stimulating environment to grow up in.”

Bruce didn’t like where this was going. “Commissioner, I live alone. I’m a bachelor and, in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t live a very private life. The paparazzi follow me every time I go to a club or a party—”

Gordon cut him off. “I know something else about you, Mr. Wayne.”

Bruce was slightly taken aback by this. “Oh?” He thought, Did the Riddler talk, or did Gordon figure it out himself? But Gordon’s answer had nothing to do with his identity.

“Yes. I know you’re a charitable man. I know that you’re…well, you’re a bit odd and eccentric, sure, but you were once the ward of your present butler, Alfred Pennyworth. The man obviously knows how to help raise a child with the special background that you and this boy share, and I feel that him talking to someone who’s been there before will help him. I talked to child protective services, and they actually thought that this was a great idea. Your property is wide open for an adventurous, energetic young man to explore.”

But what might he find if he started his explorations? Bruce wondered. He couldn’t let this conversation go on much longer. “Commissioner, I’m glad you thought of me. Really, it’s kind of you to think of me, and I’m glad you think I’d be good for anything, and I’d certainly be more than happy to talk to the boy about his experience, but I can’t adopt—”

“You wouldn’t be fully adopting him. Not yet, anyway. He’d just be your ward for a time, and, if it turned out he liked staying with you, and if he showed positive mental growth, then there would be no reason he couldn’t stay more permanently, at least until he’s eighteen years old.”

Bruce ran a hand through his hair, thinking. “Doesn’t he have any other family?”

Gordon sighed. “Not really. He has an uncle in Tennessee who’s a drunk and has a rap sheet longer than my arm,” he said. “His mother and father were his entire world, Mr. Wayne. Surely you can appreciate that.” He shrugged. “And, if the boy is right, and Tony Zucco did in fact kill his parents, and if evidence is found to back it up, well…”

Bruce understood. “Witness protection.”

The commissioner took a sip of his coffee, and wiped the bit off his mustache with his tie. “Yeah. He’d be a ward of yours, but it would be kept strictly secret.”

If a boy came to live with me, it could really, really hinder my investigations. He would have to constantly be worried about where the boy was, what he was getting into, and whether or not he was paying attention to when Bruce came and went. “There must be someone else, anybody else, who could take him in.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Mr. Wayne, have you seen the state this city is in?” Gordon said. “Right now, it isn’t so easy finding a safe place for this boy to stay. My wife and I considered taking him, but our home is crowded as it is, and we’re not even sure where we’re going to be living in the next few weeks—the general in charge of the Guard seems to think my family and I might be targets for anyone still loyal to Nygma or Cobblepot, or anyone who wants to get even with the Batman, so we’re moving into a safe house soon, one of the FBI substations in the city.”

“Commissioner—”

“Please, Mr. Wayne, just talk to him,” Gordon said. “That’s all I’m asking. Just go in there and talk to him. Once you’ve done that, make your decision.” Bruce started to say something else, but Gordon hastened to add, “Mr. Wayne, he saw both of his parents die right in front of him. He saw them both fall and die with his own eyes.”

With that, Bruce had been backed into a corner. He didn’t know what else to say. Of course, he didn’t mind going and talking to the boy about what he’d been through, even though it could be awkward because of the age gap, and Bruce hadn’t thought like a teenager in eons. Teenagers had a way of claiming that adults didn’t understand, and in many ways they were right, he felt.

Bruce sighed. “What’s his name?”

* * *

WHEN HE OPENED the door, Bruce found the boy leaning forward in his chair, elbows propped up on his knees. He had been staring at the floor, but now he slowly looked up to Bruce. The boy was wearing a black leather jacket and blue jeans, and he had moppy black hair, just as Bruce recalled from that day outside the Lounge. He had chewing gum in his mouth, and took it out and put it on the corner of an ashtray at the edge of Gordon’s desk.

Bruce shut the door behind him, and took off his jacket, throwing it over a chair. He moved the chair so that he could be facing the young man, and sat down. “Do you go by Richard, or…?”

The boy glanced at him sidelong. “Dick. Everybody makes fun of me for it, but I don’t care what people think.”

Bruce nodded. “That’s good, neither do I,” he said, smiling. Bruce had learned how to open lines of communication with people, and one of the ways was posturing—he mirrored Dick’s own posture by leaning forward and putting his elbows on his hands. “Dick, my name is Bruce.”

“I know who you are.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Dick said. “You’re the rich guy whose parents got shot when you were a kid, and everybody says that it messed you up pretty bad, made you go loopy and act like a clown.”

“Is that what they say?” Bruce said. “Good thing I’m like you and don’t care what people think.”

Dick nodded, and looked away. He was looking out the window, at a military helicopter that was landing on a helipad behind City Hall. “I guess you’re also here to try and talk to me, to tell me it’s all gonna be all right, and that you’ve been through what I’ve been through and that time heals all wounds, crap like that?” He turned and looked at Bruce. “That’s why they called you here, isn’t it?”

Bruce smirked. “Gordon was right. You are sharp.”

“Doesn’t take someone sharp to see the obvious.”

“Actually, it does, sometimes,” he said. In that moment, Bruce felt an uncanny sensation, as though he’d been flung into the body of someone else, to any of the dozens of police officers who had come over to console him right after the murder of his parents in Crime Alley. It was a cruel twist of fate that had put him here, in this moment, forced to relive it all over again. Or, on second thought, perhaps fate wasn’t being cruel at all, perhaps this was as kind as it got.

Fate might’ve been cruel to take his parents away, but it had been kind enough to give him someone like Alfred, to finish his upbringing in a safe and secure environment. He dared not think of Dick Grayson’s tragedy as cathartic for him, that would’ve been too selfish, but perhaps there was something he could connect to in order to help the young man.

Bruce tried to think of what it was that he wanted most back is those first days after his parent’s death. What he’d wanted most were answers. Over time, the demand for answers would swell into a greater need to understand the criminal mind, and how crime came into being in the first place—an analysis of poverty, personal hardships, the lack of education, and how it all too often led to a criminal path would follow—but in the beginning he’d wanted answers. He had wanted honesty from those around him. He wanted truth.

Bruce said, “But, since you’re obviously not one for games of manipulation, I’m going to be absolutely honest with you.” He licked his lips, and said, “I’ve been sent in here to offer you a place to stay. You would come and live with me, as my ward, and I would be responsible for your upbringing until you’re eighteen years of age. Until that time, I would be like a parent to you. I’d be your legal guardian. I was sent because…well, because there aren’t a lot of choices out there right now, not a lot of people that can be trusted to take in a young man.”

Dick snorted, and looked down at his fingernails, which he was starting to dig under. “So, I’m being shirked off onto somebody else. It figures.”

“I admit, this isn’t exactly something I’d ever planned for myself,” Bruce went on. “I’m a bachelor, and I’ve always enjoyed living that way. I can’t promise that what you’d have at my home would be as…warm as what you’re used to. Sure, you’ll have meals cooked whenever you’re hungry, and you can have whatever clothes you want, but…I know there’s no replacing that two-parent household. Your mom and your dad were—are—irreplaceable. I’m not going to pretend that I can give you what they gave you,” he said. “But, I can give you something you don’t have right now. I can give you a home, an entire gymnasium where you can keep practicing your high-wire skills. I’ve got regular martial arts and parkour instructors who you could have access to, and any other sort of teaching or training you could ever want. I know that doesn’t replace a real family, but it’s all I’ve got. Ultimately, it’s your decision, Dick.”

A tear escaped from the boy’s eyes, and he turned away quickly so that Bruce couldn’t see.

“I know you’re hurt,” Bruce said. “I know the pain you’re dealing with. It…it matures you faster than other kids your age all around you, makes you an adult before your time. And it’s unfair, Dick. It’s not the way a person should have to be exposed to the cruelties of the world, so suddenly and violently. It’s completely unfair and you have every right to be angry at everyone walking past you in the halls, going about their duties and solving other problems while shuffling you around from one psychologist to the next.”

“It was Zucco!” the boy hissed, still not looking at Bruce. But, by the way Dick’s body was trembling, Bruce could tell he was on the verge of tears. “Everybody tells me to drop it, or that they’ll look into it…but they’re not! They’re not doing anything, and he’s getting away with it!”

Bruce recalled something Alfred had once said to him: Young men rarely need encouragement to seek revenge of their hearts, they need guidance.

And then, Bruce dropped his voice to a whisper. “I can read your mind, Dick.” The boy turned to look at him, and stared at him, unblinking. Tears were running down his face, and he sniffled. His hands were trembling uncontrollably. “I know what you’re thinking. And I know you’re thinking about revenge.” The boy’s eyes were glued on his.

Then, all at once, Dick looked away again. “How do you know?” he said. “How do you know anything?”

“Because,” Bruce said, “I wanted revenge. I almost did it myself. Joe Chill killed my parents, and I showed up the day he got out of court with a gun in my hand. Look at me, Dick.” The boy slowly turned to face him, his eyes swollen. Bruce held up his right hand. “In this hand, I carried a pistol, and I meant to kill him. But somebody else got to him first, just seconds before I was on him. I was so close…so close to that monster, and I wasn’t even sure if I was going to do it. I’ve confided that secret in only one other person.”

Dick wiped the tears from his face. “You…you went to kill him?”

“I don’t know what I went to do,” Bruce said. “Half of me is thankful that I didn’t pull the trigger, and another half regrets that Joe Chill never got to look in my face and know what vengeance was before he died.” The boy sniffed, and looked away again. “Dick…I have other resources, as well. I have friends in high places, and, well, I have lots of money. I can put a lot of resources towards finding this Tony Zucco, and if he did kill your parents, we’ll bring him to justice.”

Dick turned back to him. “We?”

“I can’t promise you anything,” he rushed to add. “Nothing besides the fact that I will try my hardest to see that this thing is resolved. You have my word on that.”

The boy just stared at him for the longest time. His eyes were black and shifting, like the swirling miasma of the bats in the cave. For a moment, Bruce thought the kid had decided that he was full of it. Then, at last, Dick extended his hand. “My dad…he…he always said if you can’t trust a man’s handshake…then you can’t trust anything about the man.”

Bruce reached out, and took the hand, accepting a third partnership in the span of twenty-four hours. “Your dad was a smart man, then.”

At the mention of the boy’s father, something had broken him. He started to sob, even while he gripped Bruce’s hand. He squeezed hard, and fell off the chair to his knees, crying in a way Bruce was familiar with. It was the cry of the hopeless, of the utterly lost. Bruce went down to his knees, as well, and squeezed the boy’s hand just as hard.

“I…I was supposed to be there with them,” he sobbed. “My mom, she…sh-she told me to go and get some more chalk…we used chalk for our grip wh-when we…when we perform and…and…”

The boy was starting to break down. He was panicking, replaying every moment in his mind, thinking that there must be a way out of this nightmare, thinking a thousand emotions faster than the computer that was his brain could calculate and organize them. He was there, Bruce thought. He saw them die right in front of his eyes. Just like me.

“Listen to me, Dick. Are you listening?” The boy nodded meekly. “You will survive this. We will survive this. We’re survivors, you and I. We know a secret that nobody else knows. We know what terrible, evil things lurk in life, while most people get to go about their daily lives never giving it a second thought. You and I…as keepers of that secret…we can try and be the people who ensure that it never happens again. Look at me!”

Dick Grayson looked up with soft, pleading eyes. But, as Bruce glared at him, he poured his own fire and anger into the young man’s eyes. Something must’ve seeped in and taken root, something familiar to the kid, because, within the span of ten seconds, the boy’s eyes became that of an animal’s. The eyes hardened, they became focused, as though lifted from a dream. In a way, his face was akin to that which Batman had seen when the boy was firing the pistol outside of the Lounge, but in a way it was completely different.

“I will survive this,” Bruce said. “Say it.”

“I…I will…survive this…”

“Say it again!”

“I will…survive this!”

“Say it with conviction! Say it like you’re saying it to Tony Zucco’s face!”

Dick looked up at him, and said through gritted teeth, “I will survive this!” The tears dried up at once, and he looked calm, determined, and focused.

“We will make it out of this tunnel, Brother,” Bruce said, still clutching the boy’s hand. “We will make it out of the darkness.”