the gift

by living_to_read

Summary:

Commissioner Jim Gordon finds himself suddenly meta-human.

Chapter 1: the gift # 1

The gift
part one

 

I felt like beating something huge with a baseball bat.
I'd just missed James's first soccer match to chase another 'Joker wanna be' through half of Gotham, and James scored twice. He was so excited about it that I could almost see him bouncing about the phone while I was talking with him.
He said he was sorry I missed the game, but his tone was condescending as if he was accustomed and resigned to my absences. He asked me when I was going to visit them, and then started talking about him and Babs starting at the new school soon.
That's when the ton of bricks fell and shattered my childish illusion that Barbara and the kids were going to come back from their 'extended' vacation in that little spot in the map in the middle of nowhere which had the only perk of being anywhere but Gotham City.
They were starting over. Without me. I remember thinking I shouldn't be so shocked, then I leaned against the wall and slumped inch by inch toward the floor. I put my head in my hands and cried.

I didn't even pack a change of underwear. I just jumped in my car and drove three and half hours straight, without even stopping to take a leak, till I parked in the driveway of Barbara's white-picket-fenced two-story house. I spent a couple of seconds wondering if I could adapt to the change. If I could find something to do in this small city, maybe I could stay. Maybe the local sheriff had an opening for an experienced deputy. Maybe I could take the bar exam and put my degree to use.
Surprisingly, the first answer that came to mind was yes. For my family I could adapt to this and worse. If only leaving Gotham wouldn't feel like giving up and putting a tomb stone on everything I'd fought for.

I spent the evening with Babs and James latched to my neck . The perfect picture of a father playing with his kids. I could see they were a lot happier here; Harvey's threat to their lives just a fading memory. We ate pizza and ice cream, went for a walk around the unnaturally (for me at least) silent block and looked at kids riding their bikes without fear of being run over by some hasty crook.

After we put the kids to bed, Barbara made love to me as if it was our last time together, which of course it was. I let her set the pace and enjoyed the feeling of her body above mine, her sex seeking mine, her arms about me, her lips devouring mine.
She kept me inside her long after we were over, just holding me, caressing me, gently playing with my mustache while we came down slowly from our coupling. Then she kissed me and said what I knew already; she wanted out. She loved me, but she wanted the divorce. She was crying, softly, quietly. I was probably crying too, or maybe it was her tears falling on my face. I don't remember.
I begged her to give us another try. I told her I was going to give up everything and move there.
She smiled among the tears, holding me even tighter. Her embrace telling me, even more clearly than words could ever do, that she really did understand how serious I was about staying, but doing so would have simply destroyed the man I am.
She didn't blame Gotham or its gallery of freaks, mobs and right-sided sociopaths with pointy-eared masks and black capes. She didn't blame my commitment to that life and to Gotham. It just wasn't for her anymore and sure as hell wasn't for our kids. They deserved better.
In the end we made love another time, cuddled for a long while after and then I redressed, went with her into the kitchen, and signed the papers that severed away another piece of my life.
I went to kiss Babs and James, hugged Barbara one last time on the threshold and left with the promise that I'd come back for James' next match. I wasn't going to disappear from the kids life just because we were over.
Something in her eyes told me 'Ok, but for the love of everything holy, don't let those creeps follow you, here' .
Realizing that Barbara feared me as much as she feared the Joker hurt like hell. I wish it didn't.
I left like a thief, in the middle of the night, knowing that I would never be present in the life of my kids the way I wanted; the way a father should. Phone calls would have to be shielded from triangulations, and trips there planned and realized in total secrecy. Perhaps I'd already endangered them coming this time. Some mobster probably was already planning how to use the discovery to his advantage. This wasn't life, and I berated myself for being too stubborn to admit it.

Hours later, still wiping the slow-falling tears away to clear my vision, I kept my sedan going on up the narrow, wet road, climbing imperceptibly into the foothills that acted as a natural barrier between my family, now safe and secure in their new life, and the harsh mistress that'd stolen me from them and kept me hostage: Gotham City.

It started raining. It seemed the perfect complement to my mood. I balled my fist and bashed it down onto the dashboard viciously, wanting to strike out at something. Anything!
I brushed the sleeve of my overcoat across my eyes again, and shook my head. Batman and I were going to clean up Gotham and make it a place where my family could come back without fear.
I know it was wishful thinking, but I needed to believe it. I needed to believe I hadn't sacrificed the most important thing in my whole life for nothing.

I pushed the heater control lever hard to the right. It was getting cold. The trees lining the road - tunneling it - cast a dark pall on the road whenever the lights of my car hit them, chilling me as much in spirit as in body. They all looked like the Joker.
It was slow going in places on the too-narrow road. Just staying out of the mud on either side was a chore. I really needed to be more attentive, more focused on the driving.
The road, the trees, the stubble in the fields all became a blur, my nearsightedness not helping any in a night as dark as this.
I so needed to rest.

There was a gray something up ahead. I squinted my eyes to see a bit better.
There was a small figure, a child, walking in the center of the road, under the rain, in the middle of the night. He seemed to be limping and my car was aimed right at him.
Even as I recognized him for what he was, I saw him, as if in slow motion, turn to look at me. He
seemed to stare at me, not with the same kind of horror that I felt, but with an almost acceptance.
Jamming on the brakes was probably the worst thing I could do, since the road was so slick, but that's exactly what I did. The tires screeched and the rear-end of the sedan started to swerve to
the right, in the very direction of the boy. At the last moment, I had the sense to release the brakes and press down on the gas pedal. I didn't gun it all the way to the floor, but I did overreact, pressing too hard too quickly, and the tires wailed out once more, slipping before biting into the
gravel of the road. I heard a high-pitched scream from the boy and, at the same time, the clash of the heavy metal of my car against the nearest tree.
That scream knifed into me. I felt my heart pounding in my chest as I practically wrenched the steering wheel out; I gripped it so hard. In my head, I heard that scream again and again, replaying.
I couldn't believe that I had actually hit, perhaps killed, a little boy.

I don't know how long I sat there behind the wheel. All I know is that when I finally had a clear thought, and knew what I had to do, I felt a streak of throbbing pain across my forehead. At some
point during all that, I had slammed my head against the steering wheel.
Slowly at first, I lifted my head from the backrest and started to shake it. Big mistake. The pain shot down, like a sword stabbing down from my forehead all the way through to my neck.
I reached up tentatively and felt my forehead, then turned my hand palm up before my eyes and examined it. No blood. I was alright, then.

Moving as quickly as I could, I opened the door and swung out. I had to steady myself momentarily against the door frame, but then I quickly plodded down the length of the car, straining to search for the boy, all the while dreading that I would find him sprawled lifeless in a pool of blood.
Gathering my wits about me, I quickly swept the entire area around the car, even looking under its chassis and for several meters in front and behind it. The kid wasn't there. There was no sign of blood. Nothing.
Then I saw him crouched behind a large bush. Even shrouded in the darkness, I saw his pale white visage peeking through the foliage at me, as he held his body all scrunched up in an attempt to hide. We looked at each other for a blink of an eye, and then he tried to walk out of the bushed and fainted.
Staggering, I launched myself forward, imagining the worst. Cautiously I knelt beside him and bent down. The light from my damaged car was just enough that I could see the gentle rise and
fall of the outline of his coat. I thanked the saints for the small favor.

“It's going to be ok, little one,” I uttered, just above a whisper. He didn't even flick an eyelid.
I reached for my cell phone and found it dead. That was no good.
The boy's little head lay awkwardly in the wet dirt. I saw bits of gravel sticking onto his cheek and forehead.
I hunched down and placed the fingers of my right hand upside down upon the ground, just at the top of his head, where it touched the ground. In small motions, I pushed and leveraged my hand under his head, lifting it, balancing it till his cheek lay against my warm palm, the side of his head cushioned across my forearm. His flesh was cold, but the whisper of his hot breath from those little nostrils brushed my wrist.
I made my decision in a flash. Quickly, I unbuttoned my long overcoat and shrugged out of it. The residual warmth from it would have to do. It would shelter him from the cold at least and hold in more of his own body heat. I wrapped it around the little boy tightly, tucking him in and leaving only an opening for his eyes.
Moving him was probably a big mistake, but I couldn't leave the boy there, and the car was heated.
Swiveling on my heels, I quickly slipped my hands up under the little frozen boy, walked slowly to the car and settled him gently onto the cushion.
“It's going to be fine, kid. I promise,” I muttered again, and this time he moaned, opened his eyes and smiled faintly at me.
“I know...” he whispered . “Everything is going to be fine, Mr Gordon.”
I jumped out of my skin and looked at him, my mind running wild trying to understand how he could know my name. I imagined everything from a trap set by one of the many enemies I had in Gotham, to some sort of extra-sensory experience, like those that make the core of most of the urban legends.

"You're a good man, Mr. Gordon. You don't have to worry," he said, taking my hand with his.
Needless to say I worried even more and he smiled reassuringly.
He looked a lot like my boy and he reminded me of Bruce Wayne from the night I met him for the first time, after his parents were killed. Too much like them for comfort. If I wasn't so shocked, I would have been really scared.
“We've got a gift for you, Mr Gordon,” he said with another smile. He looked suddenly perfectly healthy, and then he started to glow.

“It might not be so pleasant, in fact some of your body parts may feel slight pain, but there will be no damage done to you. You may trust me.”

I didn’t feel any pressure changes. I just saw the light around him growing in heat and intensity.
I felt myself getting a little dizzy then sort of faint. My stomach cramped and double-cramped like I was passing a kidney stone. I sank to my hands and knees and moaned with the sudden hurt of my insides. I wondered if I was in some kind of microwave cooking me from the inside.

I looked for the boy, but as far as I could tell I was alone. The light was so bright it hurt to open my eyes for more than an instant. I closed them again, and I could tell through my eyelids the light was pulsing real fast like a strobe. I hurt everywhere. It was especially bad in my chest and
stomach, but it was strongest in my lower abdomen and my groin. It hurt in my legs, arms, and even the inside of my head. I wondered if my bum ticker was burning out. Even my damn teeth hurt.

"We apologize for your discomfort. You'll be through it in a second," came the boy's voice from nowhere and everywhere. "I promise."

There was a whistling sound, and I sort of blacked out but not completely. I was vaguely aware of something or somebody helping me up and helping me to the back seats of the car.
The ordeal exhausted me physically. I was suddenly terribly sleepy. I lay on the cushions, curled up like a dog on its rug. There was no more pain. There was almost a feeling of total peace.

"Long life," said the voice from behind me. "You are a valuable person, James Gordon. We won’t forget you. We love and appreciate you."
A shiver went through my body. I turned my head to look toward the voice, except I couldn't seem to open my eyes for some reason.
I woke to the call of some bird somewhere nearby and opened my eyes. My head hurt, but only a little, like I had one glass too many of whiskey before I went to sleep.
The sky was getting clearer, showing the first signs of the incoming dawn. I couldn't tell how much I slept, but I couldn't deny I didn't feel as bad as I should have after sleeping in such cramped space. My back felt fine, not even a small protest from it, as I put my feet on the ground and stretched.
My clothes were in pristine condition, as I hadn't slept in them at all, and my overcoat was accurately hung on the head rest of the front seat.
As I walked around the car, I saw that it was still against the tree, but neither the car or the tree showed a single trace of the impact. Even the cell phone was working again.
I shook my head to clear it of the remnants of the strange dream I had dreamed. It still felt so real. The accident, the boy, everything.
I answered to a call of nature and went back to the car. I tried it, and it started at the first attempt.
Then I checked the rearview mirror to be sure no one was coming and put it back on the road.
I checked again, and that's when I noticed something different. I was looking at my face in the mirror, at the road, and the fields all around me. Everything was clear and perfectly focused, and I wasn't wearing my glasses.

Chapter 2: the Gift # 2

Summary:

Some gifts don't come free.

Notes:

This fiction is Jim Gordon centric. It starts after the second movie and probably will bring in elements from the comics, but it may be considered an AU.

part 2

 

After my arrive at home, things went pear-shaped real fast.
One moment I was preparing myself to hit the shower and get ready for work, the next I felt slightly dizzy, nauseous, and then I began to vomit.
In a matter of seconds I was doubled over, crouched on the floor of my bathroom, writhing in pain, and screaming my lungs out till even that became too much. Everything tightened and spasmed. I felt like I was burning from the inside, and I started to sweat buckets of rancid fluids. I lost control of my bowels and bladder. I watched with morbid fascination as my nails grew and fell,and the skin of my hands and arms cracked and flaked off.
I lost consciousness feeling cheated. The little boy had said everything was going to be fine, and stupidly, I believed him, and I was going to die in a pool of piss and shit because of it.

-*-

There was no light, white or of any other color; just silence and peace. All in all, I thought, it wasn't as bad as I expected.
Then something broke the silence, a kid's laugh. I saw a shock of carrot-red hair pass quickly in front of me.
“You're dead, Jimbo,” my brother Roger said, practically sitting on my chest and aiming his toy gun at my face. His freckled face lit with joy for the victory. The little brat was a doll for the rest of the day when he managed to win our cop-thief games, while he was a real whiny pain in the ass if he lost. That's why I used to let him win almost all the time. I just pretended to make it difficult for him to get the game to last longer.
Since I was the cop, I always chased him. I came close to catching him several times, always letting him fight to escape the clutches of the law by the nick of time, and then when I was sure he'd spent some energy planning it, I fell into his ambush.
It was a lot easier to make people happy then.

-*-

“Hold on, Jim,” a stouter, more muscular version of me screamed from nearby. He reached out and lifted me as if I weighed nothing. I vaguely thought that the mustache was fake and the eyes beneath the glasses weren't mine at all.
“I won't let you die,” he said, and I sort of mumbled, “too late for that.”
Another voice, one I didn't recognize, and my look-alike probably didn't hear at all, stated firmly: “you're not dying, Gatekeeper.”
Everything faded to black again with me thinking, “Glad to know it, but who the hell is Gatekeeper?”

-*-

Chicago.
It was after we had little Barbara and long before James Jr.
Truth be told, the chances to have James were close to nil at the time, and it was, as always, my fault.
That fault had a name and a surname: Sarah Hessen.
I didn't plan to fall for Sarah. If I work my mind hard enough, I can write down a page long list of reasons why it happened, but there would be just meaningless excuses. A married man with a baby child at home doesn't go screwing his colleague, no matter how many problems he had at home.
I don't remember how it started or where we were. All I remember is that we had escaped an ambush and were alive, but only through a bit of skill and a monstrous amount of good luck.
We were both still too high on adrenaline and had a couple of beers too many to celebrate our being still alive. Then we were all over each other, Sarah yanking violently at my T-shirt and me going for her bra with the grace of racing bull.
I knew very distantly that what I was doing was horribly wrong. If I had stopped to think, the words *Post Traumatic Fuck* might have entered my mind, but the overwhelming need for comforting pleasure drove every thought of impropriety right out of my mind. I was lost and never wanted to be found.
I was on complete auto-pilot and relying mostly on instinct.
Holding her close, I reached down and undid the top button on my slacks. I needed to let myself lose, or I was going to explode.
Sarah reached down and began to help me. She unzipped my fly and pushed my trousers down from my hips. I wriggled against her as she reached down and pulled at my boxers. She had to tug a bit to get them past my erection. She started to run her fingers up and down my length and I groaned.
“Jim,” she purred, “ fuck me.”
I didn’t need her to repeat herself. I reached forward with both hands and picked her up. Sarah mewled in surprise as I pulled her quickly forward, shifted her up and rammed her onto my dick. She wrapped her legs around my waist and began to go along for the ride.
I felt like I could stand there holding Sarah up on my dick forever and fuck her until her tonsils rattled. I pulled out and pumped back into her using my arms, hips, and the wall against my back to propel her forward half off and then back onto the entire length of my erection. Sarah clung to me. She was sobbing and slapping my shoulders, begging me to do it harder and faster, and I was only too happy to oblige. I began to sob with each movement into her. I was so close, and I hoped Sarah was close enough to come too because I just couldn’t concentrate on anything anymore and was pretty much beyond rational thought.
She yelled as her entire body convulsed in orgasm. She gripped my waist tight with her legs and her inner muscles clamped down over my dick. I grunted as I rammed into Sarah hard, fast, and deep. I tried to say her name but nothing would come out. I groaned one last time, and then the huge wave that had been rushing towards shore broke over me. Throwing my head back, I howled.
We were both crying out hoarsely, trying to ring out every last spasm of pleasure from our flesh. My thrusts began to finally slow and become more languid. My knees went weak all at once, and I collapsed towards the floor. I tried to go slowly, crawling along the wall until I felt the carpet below my naked ass. I fell taking Sarah over on top of me. She lay over my chest and hips gasping for breath.
I lay flat on my back and looked myopically up at Sarah. She pulled closer and rested her head on my shoulder and bicep. She stroked my chest as my breath finally began to slow. I shut my eyes.
“Christ Sarah, I’m...I’m so tired,” I whispered in a very small voice.
“Go to sleep, Jim,” she breathed into my ear. There was a note of sadness in her voice. “Go to sleep,” she said, and I did.
That was the first and only time I cheated on Barbara. We all wound up hurt from that. I confessed to Barbara that same day, feeling like the most horrible man on the face of earth. She confessed the reason of her estrangement of late was she'd fallen for a colleague and cheated on me too, so in the end we both felt like the most horrible people in the world. The word divorce went pronounced a couple of time, but without real conviction, so we decided to wait and see if there was something worth saving.
Sarah moved to New York and Barbara and I moved back to Gotham city, still trying to decide what to do about each other. By the time we were expecting James, we were pretty much sure things were back to normal, which they were, but I never stopped feeling guilty. Some days, wanting to or not, I still missed Sarah.

-*-

Some other voices surfaced, distant and muffled. One belonged to a woman and the other to a man with a badly concealed British accent.
The woman was saying “I see it with my eyes, but I can't believe it.”
“That good or bad, Leslie?” asked the Brit. “I don't know how he'll react if he loses this man, too.”
“Look at the readings. He should be dead. He was in deep coma. Now he's just sleeping, and by the look of it, he's having pleasant dreams too.”
Oops, I thought.

-*-

I was up in the air, on a platform of some kind, maybe two or three hundred feet high, looking down on Gotham City. Everything was absolutely crystal clear. My vision was better than ever. I had never seen this good even with my best glasses on. I saw the Wayne Tower, and Lucius Fox looking out of his office's window. I saw the city all, the Courthouse, Gotham Central and the hole that once was the Gotham General.
I thought that if I concentrated I could see my whole city, street by street, house by house, and never get tired of it.
Gotham was beautiful from my favored place. I decided I had to remember how beautiful it was the next time discouragement hit me hard in the face, as it usually did.
I saw the crisp details of Bullock's cruiser parked close to his favorite deli, the number "GCP65" in white letters on the night-blue side.
I saw him and Montoya leave the deli, get in the cruiser, and head out to the docks. I followed them until they entered into Hyurchenko's territory and wondered what had led them there. I should be informed of such things. I was the commissioner, after all.
It was a dead body in a warehouse. I guessed one of Valenti's men. He'd been beaten to death with a blunt object in perfect Hyurchenko's style. Another message to the city that there was a new shark in town trying to fill the void left by Harvey, Batman and me. And by that fucking Joker.
“We need to pin both Hyurchenko and Valenti before this gets out of scale again,” I said to nobody in particular. “We're running in circles around them like vultures, but so far nothing stuck to them, not even a parking ticket.
I hope the Batman is on them. I hope to find a way to clear his name without ruining Harvey's memory. I want to move the cops of the Batman's task where they're really needed, and I want to be able to speak with him again. I miss him.”

A plane sailed far above and way North, probably a flight from Gotham to New York, and I found myself tailing it for a while, wondering where I was going. Then I turned clockwise and looked at the road beneath me. I was back where I'd met the little boy.
“It's all right now, James Gordon,” the boy's voice said. “We're sorry it hurt so much. We didn't know.”
“Didn't know what?” I asked.
“That it was so painful.”
“Well. Now you know. Be more careful next time.”
“There won't be a next time. You're the one.”
“I'm the one what?”
“Our champion.”
“Why me?”
“Because you're the right one.”
“I'm not right for anything. I'm just a plain cop.”
“You're the right one,”the voice insisted. “You're our Gatekeeper.”
“What's a Gatekeeper? What do you want from me?”
“No time left. We'll be back. Long life to you, James Gordon. We love you."
And I woke up.

-*-

A groan came from low in my throat. I was lying on a hard surface, inside a long tube. My first thought was MRI scan, and looking closer, I realized I guessed right.
That felt reassuring. Somebody had found me in my bathroom and got me to the hospital.
I glanced down, and I'm sure I blushed. I was stark naked, but for a towel wrapped around my waist, tented by an unmistakable male salute to the morning.
“Oh shit,” I thought grimly, but then I laughed. If after all I went through, all my concerns were about an embarrassing erection, I probably felt a lot better than I thought.
“Are you awake, Mr Gordon?” asked the voice of a woman from outside the tube. It sounded familiar, like I'd listened to her already.
She didn't wait for me to answer and got the gurney out of the tube.
I found myself looking at a woman in full surgical gear, white hair peeking from beneath the cap, mask on her face, blue scrub and gloves.
“How do you feel?” She asked.
That was a loaded question. I had to ponder it for a while and do a cursory check to be sure. The result astonished me.
“Like a million dollars,” I answered sincerely. “Whatever you did, it worked wonders.”
“That's the point, Mr Gordon. We didn't do a thing besides watching you, keeping you hydrated, and running some useless tests. When B...” she stopped. I had the feeling she was going to say something I shouldn't know.
“When our common friend brought you here,” she corrected herself.
“A friend?” I asked. “Someone with a penchant for the dramatic and a cape?”
She nodded, and I felt childishly happy. Batman had found and saved me. Batman still watched over me. I wasn't as alone as I felt. I started to understand my son's dreaming expression when he spoke of him. It shouldn't be a lot different from mine in that exact moment.
“When 'our' friend brought you here,” the doctor continued, matronly, “we thought you'd been poisoned with uranium or some other radioactive isotope. The symptoms lead in that direction. You were in a coma and losing hair, skin, fluids, and burning a high fever. But there was no sign of radioactivity or of any other poisoning. Then you spat out all your teeth's fillings and the bridge on your molars.”
Instinctively, I ran my tongue over my teeth. They seemed normal to me. I looked expectantly at the masked doctor, who nodded.
“All grown back as new, even the one that wasn't there to start with. Not a single cavity has remained. All your teeth are there and in perfect condition. They're also whiter than they were.”
“That's impossible.”
“My words exactly, but I guess the memo never reached your body.”
She turned and pushed a monitor near my gurney. She clicked a sort of remote and pictures started to appear.
“These were your lungs when we ran our first scan. Typical lungs of a middle aged heavy smoker.” She clicked again. “These are your lungs now. These are the lungs of a twenty year old athlete who's never seen a cigarette.”
I looked at the picture in awe, my mouth agape.
“You had a stomach ulcer and now it's gone. The same can be said for a cluster of kidney stones and colon's polyps. There were a little growth on your shoulder and it simply fell off.
Your prostate was a bit swollen and now it's normal. There was your appendix scar and it's gone, but on the other hand, you've got your appendix back.
There were signs of an old fracture on your tibia and fibula and guess what...”
“It's gone too?” I asked stupidly.
“Yes. Even your marines' tattoo on your shoulder is gone. You weigh 5 pounds more than when you arrived, and that's another impossibility with all the fluids you've lost. ”
“Something else?”
She pointed at my belly. “That six pack wasn't there when you arrived,” she paused. “And you've got your foreskin back. That's all I've seen so far. I'd like to run some more tests and see the full extension of the change.”
That made me feel like a guinea pig. I wondered if I was free to go, or if I was trapped here till she found an explanation for what happened. If it was so, it was a life sentence because I was sure there was not an explanation. Not a logical one anyway.
“May I say no to that?” I asked.
“Of course. Our friend said you were going to say no. Seems like he knows you well.”
“Wish I could say the same.”
I sat on the gurney and stretched languidly. I really felt wonderfully.
“So I may go?” I insisted.
“I guess so. Bur you'll have to wait for our common friend. Truth be told I have no idea where I am either. And I'd really like to be sure the process is finished.”
“It's finished,” I declared.
“How do you know?”
“Before I woke up, something or someone managed to let me know it. I thought it was a dream, but I don't feel like excluding a sort of contact from whoever put all this into motion.”
“Sounds incredible,” she said, making me laugh cynically.
“And the rest of it isn't, doctor? I'm having the most incredible...”
I stopped, realizing I had no idea if it'd been days, weeks or months since I got sick.
That brought to my mind a new problem: how was I going to explain my absence?
“How long?” I asked without finishing the phrase for fear of the answer.
“It lasted?”
I nodded to her question.
“Our friend said he found you a quarter past six this morning.” She looked at the watch on the wall. I did it too. It was 8:46. Not even 3 hours.
If I sped up a bit, I still could reach my morning meeting with a justifiable retard. That was, of course, if I was still in Gotham and able to call a cab, and if I could find something better than a towel to wear.
“It may be hard to explain all this to your doctor next time he sees you, Mr Gordon. So if the need rises...” She took a paper from somewhere, scribbled a number on it, and passed it to me. “Don't bother about tracing it. Our friend knows how to cover his trails.”
“Tell me about it.”

-*-

I found a razor, shave cream, and a toothbrush in the bathroom the mysterious doctor indicated, along with a set of too fluffy and too expensive towels.

I felt my chin for whiskers and was dismayed to find a thick crop on my cheeks
and neck, which felt like a four-day growth. I looked in the mirror and had problems recognizing myself. My beard was darker than usual, chestnut brown like my hair used to be before I started going gray, and it was thick like it never was before. It covered my face almost to the cheekbone and grew on my neck almost to my Adam's apple. The hair on my head seemed okay, but there was practically no gray left. I was back to the deep mahogany red - chestnut I used to have. Even my nose seemed different. I couldn't tell how, but I knew it was different.
I checked the rest of my body. There was little hair left on my chest to speak of, and absolutely none on my belly. My pubic hair was still there; however, even some of that seemed to be gone. My legs seemed to have lost all of the hair above the knee, and most of what was below.
I shaved slowly because the hairs resisted the attack of my razor. I had to
change the blade and had to work to give my mustache its usual shape.

I jumped into the shower and kept looking down at myself. The doctor was right. I never had such a six pack, or muscles so defined beneath my skin. I'd always been slender and well toned, but never so athletic. It didn't look like my body at all.
My knees weren’t so knobby and my shins didn't have the soft puffiness like they had for the last few years. My thighs didn't look as skinny as they’d been. There was far more muscle development showing. Even the wrinkles were gone from
my skin. It was stretched and taut.
And yes, I really had my foreskin back. I wondered how I was going to explain that to Barbara, but then I remembered the papers I signed and realized the chances to have to explain it was pretty close to nil.

I got out of the shower, grabbed a towel, and dried myself. I went back to the room where the doctor had run her tests on me, and I found a gym suit with the GCPD logo on the gurney. I put it on without a second thought.
Then I really looked around for the first time and realized where I was: his hideout, or one of them. There were so many devices all around. Computers and monitors and contraptions of all sorts. Damn, he also had a MRI scan. The man should be richer than Croesus.
“Are you here?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“Yes,” he answered and emerged from the shadows, walking slowly in my direction.
The emotion almost choked me. It was the first time we had met since the night he saved me and James from Harvey, winning him a charge for multiple homicides for the effort.
I knew he was still around because we kept finding criminals tied to lampposts; and from time to time, I had found some anonymous manila envelops with evidences or clues about some crime hidden where only I could find them, but this was the first time we were face to face after that awful night.
I fought back the urge to run to him and give him a bear hug. I also ignored the voice in my head that said I could have used a bear hug too.
I wanted to ask how he felt, and how he was doing, but he anticipated me with the same questions and with the most loaded one: what had happened to provoke such a change?
I could have lied, but I couldn't find a reason why, so I told him everything, from my trip to see my family, to the little boy on the way home and the following brush with death.
“And then you found me,” I concluded, noticing he had problems believing such a story. I couldn't blame him. I had problems too, and I'd lived it on my skin.
“I was in the neighborhood,” he growled with his usual guttural and raspy tone.
“Were you wearing fake mustaches and glasses?” I asked, and he nodded.
“And you were in the neighborhood because?”
“I wanted to warn you. Hyurchenko and Valenti reached an agreement the other night. The first who kills you gets the city.”
That picked my attention. I didn't bother to hide my concern. I didn't have to keep up my stoic mask in his presence. If only the thing was mutual...
“When I heard you screaming, I thought they'd got you already,” he added and I heard a slight vibration in his voice, something that wasn't there usually. Was it panic?
I remembered the words of the Brit about not knowing 'his' reaction to losing me and suddenly everything made sense. The man beneath the mask had serious issues about losing people. It didn't take a profiler to imagine why.
I could have said something, but I let it pass. Some things are better left alone.
“You know this is our occasion to get them in the open, right?” I said instead, letting the moment pass.
He nodded.
“Good... So it's better if I go out there and start yanking their chain. I trust you'll watch my back.”
“Always.”
“I count on it. Now if you'd be so kind to let me out of here, I have a couple of mobsters to kick in the ass, a city to watch over, a department to run, and a mayor to strangle if he doesn't give me the money I asked for to upgrade our precincts and crime labs.”
I may have dreamed it, but I'm pretty much sure I saw him smiling.
“I think you should stay here longer and allow my doctor to run more tests. We still don't know what happened to you,” he said without any real conviction.
“And I think you should enlist, get your badge and fight crime as it's supposed to be fought. Guess we both have to live with our disappointments.”
He laughed a real laugh. Probably the first he ever had while wearing that cape, and I joined it. I think it surprised us both to discover we were still capable of it.
When we sobered up, he said he was sorry for my divorce and promised to give me a scrambler to shield my calls to my family. Coming from him I felt sure it was going to work wonders.
In return I asked if he could lend me the glasses he was wearing when he picked me up. I could explain the hair color as a mid life crisis, but there was no way I could explain how I could see without glasses all of a sudden. He agreed it was wise to keep what happened close to the chest and disappeared for a moment, coming back with the glasses in his hand.
I put them on and, even if the lenses were just pure glass now, I felt a lot less naked. With them on my face seemed my face again.
“So, How do I get out of here?” I finally asked. “Do I click my heels together and think of home?”
“More or less,” he answered. Then he put something under my nose, and I woke up in my bed half an hour later.

I called Bea, my secretary, and told her to reschedule my meetings because I'd overslept. To make it more pathetically convincing, I told her of the trip to the kids, the papers I signed, my long drive through the night, and how I went to bed feeling beat and didn't hear the alarm.
She fell for it hook line and sinker and promised me another hour of relative peace before going to the arena with the mayor and his councilmen.
No one but her noticed anything different about me that day, and it took me few more days to realize that being in perfect physical condition was not the end of the story, but just the beginning.