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lurkinglurkerwholurks · 2 years

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Inspired by this art by @terracyte

The footage was no less brutal on replay. The man beside him shifted his weight, coiled as a spring twisted to breaking.

“Play it again.”

The technician looked from Nightwing to his boss. Jim cleared his throat but gave the nod. The small huddle watched again together, a bubble of eerie silence in the center of the chaos.

The tape rolled. The glittering crowd spread across the room, drinks in hand, or hors d'oeuvres lifted to lips, or skirts spinning in dance. Jim could spot laughter, real and fake, as well as boredom, interest, and a few curled lips. But no one seemed uneasy. No one seemed tensed in preparation for what was about to happen.

It was the standard opener, shouts and gunshots into the ceiling. Black ski masks—not clown masks or card masks or anything with a theme, thank God. No gas masks either. In a situation like this, Jim would take the lucky breaks. There wasn’t much else lucky about this.

The feed they’d hooked into didn’t have a good angle, and the sound was crappy. Jim could still hear the screams, high and startled but the short blast of a knee-jerk reaction, nothing more. Fancy gatherings like this in Gotham were always a risk. This crowd knew what they were doing. For some of the out-of-towners, Jim suspected it was part of the allure. Despite the ripple of surprise and unease at the sight of the gunmen, the crowd all obediently lifted their hands, likely expecting to be out their second-best jewels, their insured wristwatches, their backed-up phones.

Then one of the gunmen stepped forward, the ringleader as best Jim could tell, and grabbed a girl from the crowd. He couldn’t tell how old she was—they were all just kids to him now—but even with the crappy angle, she was clearly terrified. The gunman had an elbow hooked around her neck, his gun pressed to her side, and Jim would bet dollars to donuts she was on the edge of passing out, either from fright or lack of air. Not good when you had a gun pressed to your gut and a trigger-happy gunman pulling you backward.

The hostage-taker’s mouth wasn’t clear, his head turned away from the camera, and the audio crackled and popped, so they didn’t know for sure what he was saying. Had he picked the girl at random or on purpose? Was she a hostage or something worse? Was he shouting orders at the crowd, at her, at his men? It was all speculation right now, and speculation gave Jim ulcers.

Not as much as what came next, though.

As the gunman and girl backed away to the left, the crowd rippled to the right, then parted to spit out a familiar face. Bruce Wayne, drink in hand, tie casually pulled loose, Gotham Gazette’s Most Eligible Bachelor smile plastered on his face, took a step forward.

This part Jim didn’t need to hear to know. Take a hostage anywhere in Gotham and nine times out of ten, somehow a Wayne would get himself (or, on the very rare occasion, herself) swapped in exchange. Not that he didn’t get it, but with them all being so smart, Jim thought they’d find a better way. Jim could rely on all the times before to know exactly what charming palaver was coming out of Bruce Wayne’s mouth. It was like a script at this point, the charm, the ease, the little jokes.

Bruce had made it that one step when the ringleader lifted the gun from the girl’s side and shot the billionaire in the stomach.

Jim didn’t jump, mostly because he’d seen it on repeat four times now, but the sudden violence was still a shock, even to him. Gotham gala shoot-ups went a specific way, with the well-worn path of tradition. There were variables, of course, largely hinging on what masks the intruders wore or what players were making moves in the more organized underworld, but nothing like this.

You didn’t haul off and shoot a high-roller in the stomach for no reason, but especially not Gotham’s most harmless son.

Next to him, Nightwing was stiff as iron. Jim wasn’t even sure he was breathing, and he didn’t dare peek to check. There were things a person needed to know to navigate Gotham, and then there were things a person couldn’t afford to know. As police commissioner, Jim’s box of the former tended to be deeper than the Average Joe’s, by necessity. But the things he kept hidden in the latter, few though they were, meant he had to tread very, very carefully.

The footage only went on for a few seconds more. The wise guys finally remembered to check for surveillance and turned their guns on the security cameras. The last frame Jim had was of a ballroom full of frantic high society folks, a group of gunmen with all the hostages they could want, and Bruce Wayne crumpled on the ground, blood seeping from beneath him onto the marble tile.

Well. They weren’t helping anyone staring at a black screen like this.

Jim cleared his throat again. “SWAT’s moving into position,” he said. Nightwing didn’t move. “We’ve got exits staked out, windows, any vantage point we can get. We’re trying to set up communication, see what they want, so we can get folks out of there as quickly as possible.”

That was straight from the handbook, right alongside trading favors for the wounded first.

“We’re working on getting eyes inside.”

Nightwing’s gaze did swing around to him then. Jim found himself looking at the bridge of the man’s nose, rather than dead in his eyes.

Jim knew the list of attendees, had had it appear as if by magic on his car’s dash computer before he’d even arrived on scene. He assumed Nightwing had seen it, too.

“Some of the civilians made it out,” he continued, careful of where he looked, aware of the ears of his staff. “Catering, mostly, waitstaff from the kitchens that heard the commotion and bolted.”

Jim shifted his gaze just slightly, to watch Nightwing’s eyes before gesturing over his shoulder at the ambulance idling with its doors open, silhouettes perched on its end as EMTs circled. “Some kids, too.”

Nightwing’s attention jerked to the ambulance.

“Guess they’d slipped into the back halls to give themselves a breather. Can’t say I blame them. They heard the gunshots and slipped out with the staff.”

Four kids, all middle school or high schooled aged, Jim thought. Again, they all seemed like little tykes to him at this point. Three of them sat on the bumper of the ambulance, shock blankets wrapped around their shoulders. One of them had black streaks of mascara running down her face, her friend’s head buried in her lap, and another wore dress pants with the knees ripped to shreds, probably from a hard fall. The fourth wasn’t sitting but pacing, blanket draped around his shoulder less like a comfort than a king’s cloak. Or a cape. One of Jim’s officers stood nearby, an icepack from the EMT pressed to his broken nose, a precaution in case that last one tried again to run back inside.

“We haven’t had time to question them on what they saw,” Jim added carefully, “if you want to take a crack at it.”

Nightwing’s gaze swung back around, an eerily heavy impression of his usual partner, before a small nod softened the lower half of his face. “I’ll do that. Let me know if you get anything new.”

Jim returned the nod and watched only until Nightwing reached the ambulance before turning his—and with it, his team’s—attention back to the situation at hand.

The issue was they were blind out here. With the cameras out of commission and the gunmen not answering the damn phone, Jim and his team were stuck sitting on their thumbs while the comms crew set up surveillance.

Nightwing was back a few minutes later, lips set in a thin line.

“Anything?” Jim asked.

The vigilante shook his head. “Nothing we can use. Gunshots and shouting. They did the smart thing and got themselves to safety.”

There were holes in that story for sure, considering Perkins’ bloody nose and the scowl on the fourth kid, but Jim had to trust that whatever he wasn’t being told wasn’t relevant.

Nightwing glanced over his shoulder at the ambulance, where all four kids now sat and sipped on their juice boxes, before lowering his voice and adding, “I didn’t tell them anyone was shot. I think it’s best to keep it that way.”

Yeah. Yeah, Jim could see that.

“Quite the party we’ve got going on.” The mechanized voice was the only warning they had before Red Hood jumped literally into their midst. He’d always been one for an entrance. “Gotham sure knows how to throw a blowout.”

The officers nearby rippled with alarm and unease, looking from Hood to their commissioner and back again. Though no longer on the department’s Most Wanted list, GCPD’s relationship with the former crime lord hadn’t come to the same understanding as his with the bats. Hood might wear the symbol on his chest, but no one had forgotten the duffel bag or the drugs or anything else he’d done since his arrival in Gotham.

Hood, for his part, looked completely at ease even as hands drifted to holsters. “What’s the word, bird?” he asked Nightwing. “Commish,” he added, a nod to Jim. The box in the back of Jim’s brain rattled.

Jim gave the officers a small shake of his head, urging patience and hands far away from guns in the presence of a man who could outshoot them all. Nightwing carried none of his ally’s civil spirits.

“Six gunmen,” he said, tone tight, gesturing for the technician to pull up the footage again. “Came in through the west entrance. Ski masks, AK47s. Went straight for the ballroom. Seemed like the usual, but they tried to take a hostage and one of the guests got shot.”

Hood had leaned in to peer at the screen, but he cocked his chin to give partial attention back to Nightwing. “Oh?”

“Bruce Wayne.” Nightwing’s voice was steady, smooth. Jim tried hard not to think about it. “Gut shot. They shot the cameras right after, so we don’t know how bad or what else happened.”

Hood had turned back to the screen, leaning in so close that his head hovered over the tech’s shoulder, his hand gripping the back of the chair. He didn’t flinch at the shot, but he also didn’t move until the tape had reached its end again. When he straightened, Jim did his best not to picture his expression under the helmet.

“What’s the play?” Hood wanted to know. “We got eyes?”

“Working on it. Oracle’s trying to get an in. Have you heard—?”

Hood was already shaking his head. “Nothing. O sent me. Didn’t say, just said to get here.”

As he spoke, Hood looked around, using his height to scan over the crowd of milling police officers, firefighters, and EMTs. His gaze paused for a breath on the ambulance, but kept moving. Jim could guess what he was looking for. He wished he had the answers for both of them.

“Sir?” a sergeant asked. All three men swung her way, but she was looking at Nightwing. “Is Batman on his way?”

Nightwing’s smile was flat, a glimmer short of real, but no one could blame him, given the circumstances. “‘Fraid not. The big guy’s tied up.”

He gestured upward. “Business out of town.”

The other officers looked up to the night sky, where they all knew the Watchtower orbited. Jim and Hood didn’t.

“Just us, kiddies,” Hood said, any change to his tone disguised by the helmet.

Jim cleared his throat again. “So what are we thinking here? No demands so far, but they could be trying to make us sweat.”

“They shot their biggest meal ticket,” one of the officers pointed out. Jim hid a grimace. “If it were about the money, that’s a dumb move.”

“What was the thing with the girl about?” Another asked. “Crowd control? Maybe she was the target the whole time.”

“What? Yeah. Yeah, O, throw it up,” Nightwing interrupted, one hand to his ear. “Footage from inside,” he explained, as the command center screens flickered, then changed on their own.

Bodies contracted, clustering together again. Jim found himself shoulder to shoulder with Red Hood. The kid—and he was a kid, not even the helmet could fully disguise that—was built like an ox. Funny how life worked. He was also about to snap the back of the chair in two if he held on any tighter. That wasn’t Jim’s problem to solve, so he turned his full attention back to the screen.

It was a new view alright. Jim squinted, trying to orient himself.

“Is that a tablecloth?” the sergeant asked.

That was it. A tablecloth. The footage was coming from under a table, slanted-like. A white tablecloth hem framed the top edge, but they still had a partial view into the ballroom beyond.

“This is from a civilian?” one of the uniforms asked, voicing what Jim didn’t dare.

Neither vigilante answered. Onscreen, there was shouting. It sounded like the gunmen, but Jim couldn’t be sure. They could see the guests crouched or lying on the ground, hands folded over their heads, bank robbery style. Not good. It was harder to pass over goods that way, which meant either wearable items weren’t the focus, or the crooks planned to pluck them off of corpses instead of living people.

As if to emphasize the point, a dark streak of blood cut across the floor within view, its trail smeared as if from a dragged body—Wayne’s or someone else’s, Jim wasn’t sure. There were too many things he couldn’t think about right now, so he tried to focus on what he could.

Something was strange about the new footage, but he couldn’t pinpoint what.

Every uniform in earshot flinched at the sound of a gun cocking. All eyes swung to Red Hood, who had straightened and was readying his weapons.

“What are you doing?” Nightwing demanded.

“Going in there,” Hood said in the flattest well duh Jim had heard from anyone on the far side of puberty. “What’re you doing.”

“Hood—”

“No, dickhead, don’t start.”

Around them, emergency responders shifted, still wary of Hood’s guns, but mostly uncomfortable at getting caught up in a family quarrel. Jim wished he hadn’t quit smoking in public.

Nightwing was pressing his point. “—want to go in there as much as you but we can’t—”

“Yeah? Where’s the baby?” Hood interrupted.

Nightwing and Jim both whipped around to look for Robin, both with differing degrees of success at pushing their gaze past the ambulance without stopping.

Shit. There were only three kids silhouetted in the doorway. An empty shock blanket lay crumpled next to them.

Ulcers. This family was gonna give him ulcers with ulcers of their own.

“Like I said,” Hood finished, voice grim instead of triumphant, “I’m going in.”

Nightwing was no longer arguing, instead pushing past the people gathered around to beat Hood inside.

“Sir, should we…?” the sergeant began, then faltered, neither of them knowing how she would finish. Stop them? Go in with them?

Jim didn’t know either. There was no time to answer, though, because movement on the screens caught his attention like a fish hook through the lip.

“Boys!” he snapped, and both Nightwing and Hood jerked to a halt to look over their shoulders. “Something’s happening.”

They didn’t get back in time to see what Jim saw—slender fingers raised in front of the lens, counting down silently, a thin silver bracelet winking with the movement.

Five.

Four.

Three.

On two, the fingers disappeared, and Jim realized that the stillness was what had been bothering him. There were no jitters to the view, not the shaking of adrenaline or adjusting to hide more fully under the table. It was like the phone—because that’s what it had to be, a camera phone—was propped against one of the table legs.

On one, the view went black.

Those watching cried out in surprise or frustration, even as echoing cries rose from the larger crowd.

“Sir!” SWAT called over the radio. “Power just cut out.”

Nightwing and Hood, both of whom had sprinted back to arrive at three, exchanged glances.

“Hold your positions,” Jim barked back, then reluctantly asked, “What’s your eye in the sky telling you?”

Nightwing already had a hand to his ear, listening to his coordinator, the mysterious Oracle. Jim waited, hand on his hips, wishing more than ever for a cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

“Commissioner?” SWAT tried again.

“I said hold,” Jim snarled.

There was more gunfire, echoing from the screen and from the building itself. Jim could feel his own adrenaline about to crest and counted down in his head to when he could wait no longer.

Before he could give SWAT the go ahead, though, Nightwing and Hood both took off like runners off the block, sprinting full tilt toward a building that lit back up all at once.

“MOVE!” Jim bellowed into the radio even as he and the command team took off after the vigilantes. “Bats on the move, do not get in their way, but get your asses in there.”

There was no keeping up with the young bucks, especially not the two with a head start. Jim gave it his best, though. No one knew what was in that room, but whatever they found, Commissioner Gordon would be there to see everyone through.

Getting in turned out to be harder than anticipated. Before anyone outside reached the marble steps, the two wrought-iron front doors up top swung open and spat out a flood of panicked partygoers, pushing back masks, officers, and EMTs alike.

“Let ‘em out, let ‘em out,” Jim directed, trusting the team behind him to net everyone and triage them, be they victim or invader.

It was absolute chaos and Jim paused to catch his breath and keep his footing in the flow. As he did, he listened to the backdoor breach by SWAT, their path clearer and much more straightforward. He was sure Nightwing and Hood were being fed the same feed, though they hadn’t stopped trying to push their way in.

“Nightwing!” Jim called, then tried again, putting the force of twenty years of Little League coaching into it. That caught the shorter man’s attention, yanking his head around on a swivel.

Jim lifted his hands above his head, gesturing as he called, “EMTs! Clear a path!”

Nightwing turned back and called for Hood. The two of them, supported by GCPD, formed a kind of human sluice, shunting people to either side down the front steps so EMTs could charge straight up the middle. Jim followed in their wake, like riding in the traffic void left by an ambulance, and in so doing hit the ballroom ahead of both the bats and his own officers.

Good. Let him see it first.

The smell of blood was unmistakable, mixed with the acrid tang of gunpowder. It was on the floor, in streaks and splatters, trailed by the shoes of the people who continued to stream past and mixed with spilled punch and trailing tablecloths from overturned tables.

Six bodies lay on the ground, not moving, though some groaned weakly, as SWAT swarmed over them.

“Sir? Sir!”

Jim’s attention whipped toward the strident tones of the EMTs, but they weren’t talking to him. Three EMTs surrounded a pale and trembling but upright Bruce Wayne, one hand pressed to a wadded cloth held over a blood-soaked stomach.

“Sir, let us treat you. You’re in shock and we need—”

“My—My children.” Jim couldn’t hear him over the crowd, his voice too quiet, but he could see Bruce’s lips move, could guess what he was saying. “Please, are my kids okay? Have you seen my kids?”

Jim opened his mouth to call out, but was beat to it.

“Bruce!” a thin boy, collar undone to unveil a throat full of Adam’s apple, shirt untucked and flecked with blood at the hem, pushed his way from the other side of the crowd. “Bruce!”

Bruce Wayne whirled, only just managing to keep his feet, and called back, “TIM!”

He caught the boy with his free arm, both of them steadied by increasingly agitated EMTs.

From the other direction, a dark-haired girl sprinted in bare feet across the slick floor to appear by their side, only to be engulfed in a hug as well.

“Father!” Damian Wayne, the boy from the ambulance, appeared as if by magic, ignoring everyone in his way.

Jim could feel two bodies come up behind him, staring, as he did, at the little family tableau. Bruce Wayne stood surrounded by three of his four living children, pressing kisses into each of their scalps as he leaned for support on the elder of the two boys. Someone let out a quiet sigh of relief. Jim wasn’t sure who, and he pretended not to have heard anyways.

Thank God, he thought again, for the second time that night, and meant it. He would still be popping antacids for days after this.

Without looking back, Jim gestured forward at the gurney that the EMTs were trying and currently failing to load their patient onto. “Make sure they’ve got a clear path out of here. I’ve got a mess to tend to.”

“Sir,” Nightwing responded for the both of them.

Jim had enough to keep him occupied that it wasn’t hard to keep his eyes off Bruce Wayne. There were perps to secure and wheel out, all unconscious or sporting multiple broken bones from attackers they couldn’t name. Triage was still in effect, sorting through panic attacks, concussions, and a sprained ankle or two, though Bruce Wayne took the gold with his through-and-through bullet wound, and the girl he had saved, a foreign diplomat’s daughter, took silver with her bruised throat. Taking statements would take all night, and Jim was already craving a cup of coffee.

Bruce Wayne finally consented to being wheeled out, bloodstained shirt covered by a blanket thrown around his shoulders, his children trailing along behind him like so many half-grown ducklings. Jim was glad he didn’t have any young shoulders to wrap his jacket around tonight.

There were things a person needed to know to navigate Gotham, and then there were things a person couldn’t afford to know. As police commissioner, Jim’s box of the former tended to be deeper than the Average Joe’s, by necessity, and the latter he kept under padlock. They stayed with him, sometimes an easy burden, but more often a weight he bore because someone had to, because the city needed someone to.

A flicker of movement caught the corner of his eye, and Jim half-turned before he could catch himself, watching as the Wayne girl, Cassandra, doubled back and paused at a table to pluck her shoes from beneath the tablecloth. His attention caught her own, and she met his gaze with an unflinching solemnity too heavy for one so young. Jim lifted a hand, as if to wave her off, but tapped the inside of his own wrist quickly as he did so. The little Wayne girl stared for only a heartbeat longer, then unclasped the identifiable silver bracelet from her arm and tucked it into her skirt, along with her phone.

She smirked, winked, and hurried after the rest of her family.

Jim sighed.

Ulcers.

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