The Undiscovered Country (2/4)
Title: The Undiscovered Country (2/4)
Continuity: The Dark Knight Rises
Pairing/Characters: Jim Gordon/Bruce Wayne
Warnings: None
Summary: Jim and Bruce arrive at a cabin on the lake and start to re-orient themselves.
Rating: G this chapter, up to light PG-13 overall
Word Count: 2300
"--Hey. Hey." An urgent hand was shaking his shoulder, and Jim Gordon jolted awake, stifling a gasp. Outside the car window, a long dark line of pines hedged the night sky, and the tires sang on the highway.
"You were having a nightmare."
Jim looked away from Bruce Wayne's profile. "Nothing new there," he muttered. Fragments from the dream skittered through his mind. "Did I...say anything?"
"Not much." The shadowy pines outside inched along. A trailer truck went by on the other side, its headlights a sudden sweep of light that made Jim squint as if into an interrogator's light. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
Bruce snorted once, a grudging laugh. "Fair enough."
They drove on in silence as Jim sat up and rubbed his eyes, gazing blearily out the window. He hadn't even realized he was dozing off; he must have been more tired than he realized. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his cell phone to check his mail: three messages already, but only one had to be dealt with right now. The others could wait until the morning.
"This is supposed to be a vacation," Bruce said as Jim tapped at the screen.
Jim grunted. "As if you don't have a phone on you."
"I don't, actually." Bruce raised an eyebrow at Jim's look. "I'm on vacation. I wrapped up my last project before I left and am off the grid from now."
Jim finished the mail and tapped "send." "Well, you didn't get shanghaied without warning by a dead man," he grumbled. "Some of us still have work to do."
He didn't realize until the words were out how they might sound. They hung in the air between the two men and it was impossible to call them back. Bruce said nothing, and the silence stretched on. Jim fumbled for words until it was clearly too late to say anything graceful; finally he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep again, a sense of dislocated unreality creeping over him. Was it actually possible that he was in a car driving north with Batman? Maybe this was just another dream--he'd had dreams like this one before, ones where the Dark Knight stood before him with his own old coat draped around his armored shoulders and put out his hand and said--
--Well, not exactly like this one, he supposed.
He slitted his eyes open just enough to look at Bruce Wayne's profile, lit by passing headlights. He was watching the road, his face impassive and alert. A cool, collected face: a face that had looked at death without blinking and moved on past it, beyond its reach. A man who had moved on.
So why had he come back to Gotham?
Lost in thought, Jim nearly missed it when Bruce Wayne's eyes flicked briefly to the passenger side of the seat, his brows drawn together for a moment. Bruce looked away again immediately, his eyes back on the road, but that for that one instant...
He has no idea what to say to me either, Jim realized. Somehow the thought made him feel better. He opened his eyes and stretched, blinking out the window. "We're almost there," he said as a sign flashed by. "Pull over at the next rest stop and I'll take over the driving."
However, it was after midnight by the time they turned into the rutted, pine-needle-strewn driveway of the Gordon lake camp--even later than Jim had expected, because it had taken him nearly an extra hour to find the camp among the maze of winding dirt roads that honeycombed the shores of the lake. The screen door creaked open and a dusty light bulb illuminated a kitchen with an ancient, rust-stained porcelain sink. The floorboards made weary noises under their feet as they went into the living room, slipcovered furniture like crouching animals in the dark. Jim stood in the middle of the living room and closed his eyes, hearing the hushed sound of the lake and the susurration of the wind in the trees. No sirens, no explosions, no chopping of helicopter blades.
He stood there, unsure what to do.
"It's quiet." Bruce's voice was muted as well; Jim turned his head to see him looking around the dark room, his head almost brushing the low ceiling.
"There are a couple of bedrooms upstairs," Jim said, reaching over and grabbing Bruce's meagre backpack. "We'd better hit the hay, I'd like to get up early tomorrow and see what needs fixing around here."
The March air was still brisk, and Jim stopped at the top of the rickety stairs to open the eaves and pull out a plastic bin. The pungent scent of mothballs wafted from the wool blanket he extricated and tossed to Bruce. "Let me know if you're still cold," he said, pointing to the tiny room with the double bed in it and opening the door to enter the even smaller room with the twin cot.
He changed into flannel pajamas, shivering a little, listening to the sounds of the man who had been Batman moving around the room just a few feet from him. An owl hooted softly in the pine trees. The sheets were cold, with a lingering clamminess that made his skin break out in gooseflesh. Rubbing his arms, he curled up on the cot, waiting for warmth to creep into his body.
"Good night, Jim," came a voice from beyond the wall, a few feet away.
Jim felt his lips twitch slightly. "Good night, John-Boy," he said.
"It's Evan now. But I'd rather you called me Bruce." Bruce's voice was completely serious, and Jim supposed he'd probably never had much time to watch The Waltons anyway.
"Good night, Bruce," he corrected himself.
He wasn't sure how he could sleep with that vast silence hissing around him, but eventually he drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep, broken by fragments of nightmares, familiar and unnerving as old friends arriving without warning.
: : :
He woke, disoriented, to the sound of a harsh metallic cry outside the window and flecks of sunlight glinting in his eyes. Rubbing at his face, he pulled open the curtain the rest of the way and caught sight of a bright wing flashing, another sharp shriek. Blue jay.
Jim Gordon blinked at the morning sunlight for several minutes.
He avoided the creaky steps on the stairs through some long-forgotten muscle memory from childhood summers spent running up and down to the lake. The opened refrigerator door revealed an expanse of blank whiteness. "Note to self: pick up provisions before going to camp," he muttered. Getting down on his hands and knees, he rummaged for the power cord and eventually got it into the wall. The refrigerator coughed, then hummed into life.
"Coffee, coffee," he muttered, going through cabinets. His search eventually produced a sealed tin of instant coffee and a battered teakettle. The sink sputtered and ran rusty water for a few minutes before eventually clearing enough to fill the kettle and get it onto the stove. As the water heated, Jim looked at his phone.
No signal. Of course.
He snagged the kettle before it started to whistle and moved it to a different burner. A spoonful of instant coffee in a chipped mug that read "Fryeburg Fair 1985" on the side: Jim took a sip and grimaced.
"Do I smell coffee?" Jim looked up the stairs to see Bruce's sneakers descending. He looked away when he realized that the steep, narrow stairs were giving him some trouble, one leg thumping stiff and unwieldy, and focused on the light on the lake outside the window until Bruce was standing next to him.
"Well, it's something close to coffee," Jim said, pouring him another mug. "The tap water won't be delicious, but it'll be okay for any pills you have."
"Pills?"
"You know, painkillers and stuff."
Bruce took a mouthful of coffee, swallowed. "Don't take any."
Jim stared. "You're joking."
A wry smile. "I've been reliably informed that I don't have much of a sense of humor. No, I don't take any. Don't trust them."
"All right, you're crazy. Or a masochist."
Bruce raised his eyebrows and pointed at him, a "eureka" gesture. "Now, those I have been called." He shook his head and took another mouthful of coffee. "The amount I'd need to dull the pain isn't worth the risk of addiction," he said matter-of-factly. "I meditate, most mornings. It helps."
"You meditate."
A nod.
"Jesus Christ," Jim said with feeling, walking into the living room with his mug. He looked at his phone again. Still no signal. "I'm going down to the lake. Want to come?"
"Love to."
The morning was cool. Winter was still in the air, little piles of snow lingering in sheltered spots. The air smelled of lake water and pine needles. Jim glanced at his phone as they walked, but only at the edge of the water did he get even a weak signal. "Damn," he muttered. "Maybe at the end of the dock."
By the time they reached the end of the dock, their footsteps loud across the water, the signal had improved enough that he was able to download his email. He sat down cross-legged on the wooden planks to look it over and figure out what to answer.
Beside him, Bruce Wayne gingerly lowered himself into the lotus position and closed his eyes.
After answering two emails (a question about the entertainment for the policeman's ball and a querulous message from the city council chair) Jim sneaked a glance at Bruce, still motionless on the dock. His dark hair was falling in his closed eyes; he was wearing a black polo shirt and jeans. He looked entirely innocuous, but every now and then the slightest twinge of pain ghosted across his face.
Jim shifted his position until he was back to back with Bruce, letting their spines touch just a little. After a moment, Bruce relaxed slightly against him, letting Jim take a little of his weight.
They sat like that for a while, as the morning fog lifted off the lake. Two ducks drifted past, eyeing them with mild curiosity, and on the far shore Jim saw a fox slip down to the water's edge, then wend its way back into the brush. His phone buzzed briefly: another email from Councilman Watson reminding him he had to make his mind up soon about the election. He suppressed a sigh and started to compose a suitably vague response.
The spring morning brightened slowly around the two men, back to back, fighting their quiet personal battles.
: : :
Jim dodged a rotting plank as they walked back up the dock, looking up at the little cabin with its peeling red paint.
"This place is beautiful," said Bruce from behind him. "I didn't even know you had it."
"I've let it go," Jim muttered. "No time, I guess."
Inside, Bruce prowled around the cabin like a cat getting a feel for an unfamiliar and potentially hostile place, then settled onto the couch. He looked up at Jim. "Now what?"
"Now you...do whatever you like to do in your free time," Jim said, shrugging.
"Well," Bruce cast his eyes upward in thought. "For the last eight years, I mostly was working on cold fusion. Have you got some palladium and deuterium on hand?"
"Bruce, I don't even have chips and beer on hand." Jim sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Don't you have any idea what you like to do for fun?"
"What do you usually do for fun?"
Jim blinked at him. Opened his mouth and closed it again. "Well, there's some books in storage," he said, opening up a plastic bin in the corner and scooping out an armful. "Dickens, Austen, Camus, Dante, the complete works of Shakespeare--hey, it's my Tolkien," he said, lifting out the hardcovers with reverence and putting them on the empty bookcase.
"Never read them."
"You've never read Lord of the Rings?"
"I've never read any of those authors. Well, I had to read some Camus in high school, but after that I took classes mostly in applied engineering, physics, metallurgy. I skipped the extraneous stuff."
"Shakespeare isn't extraneous," Jim huffed.
"If you recommend him, I'll read it," Bruce said easily. "What have you read recently?"
"Do you like to work with your hands? I need to fix the dock and it would go faster with two people."
If Bruce noticed that he had dodged the question, he didn't show it. "I'd be happy to help, of course." He looked neither happy nor unhappy: there was an anticipatory air about him that might have been pleased or merely resigned.
"We'll need some materials: my grandfather's toolkit should be in the boathouse, but we'll need lumber, nails and stuff. Plus we need food. No take-out Chinese out here."
"Cooking." Bruce looked dubious. "I suppose it's necessary." He blinked like an owl, doubtful in the morning light, and Jim bit down on a sudden urge to laugh at the image of Batman--hard to believe he was truly the Dark Knight, this mortal man in jeans--so daunted by the idea of cooking.
"Yes," Jim said. "It is necessary." He clapped Bruce on the back without thinking and Bruce--didn't flinch, but all of his attention focused on Jim in one instant, the quick unconscious movement of a wild animal touched suddenly.
Jim removed his hand and watched Bruce's shoulders relax.
"All right," he said, keeping his voice low and calm as if speaking to a restive horse. "Let's go."
"Where are we going?"
Jim felt his mouth twitch in something close to a smile. "Walmart."
( Part 3)
Continuity: The Dark Knight Rises
Pairing/Characters: Jim Gordon/Bruce Wayne
Warnings: None
Summary: Jim and Bruce arrive at a cabin on the lake and start to re-orient themselves.
Rating: G this chapter, up to light PG-13 overall
Word Count: 2300
"--Hey. Hey." An urgent hand was shaking his shoulder, and Jim Gordon jolted awake, stifling a gasp. Outside the car window, a long dark line of pines hedged the night sky, and the tires sang on the highway.
"You were having a nightmare."
Jim looked away from Bruce Wayne's profile. "Nothing new there," he muttered. Fragments from the dream skittered through his mind. "Did I...say anything?"
"Not much." The shadowy pines outside inched along. A trailer truck went by on the other side, its headlights a sudden sweep of light that made Jim squint as if into an interrogator's light. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
Bruce snorted once, a grudging laugh. "Fair enough."
They drove on in silence as Jim sat up and rubbed his eyes, gazing blearily out the window. He hadn't even realized he was dozing off; he must have been more tired than he realized. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his cell phone to check his mail: three messages already, but only one had to be dealt with right now. The others could wait until the morning.
"This is supposed to be a vacation," Bruce said as Jim tapped at the screen.
Jim grunted. "As if you don't have a phone on you."
"I don't, actually." Bruce raised an eyebrow at Jim's look. "I'm on vacation. I wrapped up my last project before I left and am off the grid from now."
Jim finished the mail and tapped "send." "Well, you didn't get shanghaied without warning by a dead man," he grumbled. "Some of us still have work to do."
He didn't realize until the words were out how they might sound. They hung in the air between the two men and it was impossible to call them back. Bruce said nothing, and the silence stretched on. Jim fumbled for words until it was clearly too late to say anything graceful; finally he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep again, a sense of dislocated unreality creeping over him. Was it actually possible that he was in a car driving north with Batman? Maybe this was just another dream--he'd had dreams like this one before, ones where the Dark Knight stood before him with his own old coat draped around his armored shoulders and put out his hand and said--
--Well, not exactly like this one, he supposed.
He slitted his eyes open just enough to look at Bruce Wayne's profile, lit by passing headlights. He was watching the road, his face impassive and alert. A cool, collected face: a face that had looked at death without blinking and moved on past it, beyond its reach. A man who had moved on.
So why had he come back to Gotham?
Lost in thought, Jim nearly missed it when Bruce Wayne's eyes flicked briefly to the passenger side of the seat, his brows drawn together for a moment. Bruce looked away again immediately, his eyes back on the road, but that for that one instant...
He has no idea what to say to me either, Jim realized. Somehow the thought made him feel better. He opened his eyes and stretched, blinking out the window. "We're almost there," he said as a sign flashed by. "Pull over at the next rest stop and I'll take over the driving."
However, it was after midnight by the time they turned into the rutted, pine-needle-strewn driveway of the Gordon lake camp--even later than Jim had expected, because it had taken him nearly an extra hour to find the camp among the maze of winding dirt roads that honeycombed the shores of the lake. The screen door creaked open and a dusty light bulb illuminated a kitchen with an ancient, rust-stained porcelain sink. The floorboards made weary noises under their feet as they went into the living room, slipcovered furniture like crouching animals in the dark. Jim stood in the middle of the living room and closed his eyes, hearing the hushed sound of the lake and the susurration of the wind in the trees. No sirens, no explosions, no chopping of helicopter blades.
He stood there, unsure what to do.
"It's quiet." Bruce's voice was muted as well; Jim turned his head to see him looking around the dark room, his head almost brushing the low ceiling.
"There are a couple of bedrooms upstairs," Jim said, reaching over and grabbing Bruce's meagre backpack. "We'd better hit the hay, I'd like to get up early tomorrow and see what needs fixing around here."
The March air was still brisk, and Jim stopped at the top of the rickety stairs to open the eaves and pull out a plastic bin. The pungent scent of mothballs wafted from the wool blanket he extricated and tossed to Bruce. "Let me know if you're still cold," he said, pointing to the tiny room with the double bed in it and opening the door to enter the even smaller room with the twin cot.
He changed into flannel pajamas, shivering a little, listening to the sounds of the man who had been Batman moving around the room just a few feet from him. An owl hooted softly in the pine trees. The sheets were cold, with a lingering clamminess that made his skin break out in gooseflesh. Rubbing his arms, he curled up on the cot, waiting for warmth to creep into his body.
"Good night, Jim," came a voice from beyond the wall, a few feet away.
Jim felt his lips twitch slightly. "Good night, John-Boy," he said.
"It's Evan now. But I'd rather you called me Bruce." Bruce's voice was completely serious, and Jim supposed he'd probably never had much time to watch The Waltons anyway.
"Good night, Bruce," he corrected himself.
He wasn't sure how he could sleep with that vast silence hissing around him, but eventually he drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep, broken by fragments of nightmares, familiar and unnerving as old friends arriving without warning.
: : :
He woke, disoriented, to the sound of a harsh metallic cry outside the window and flecks of sunlight glinting in his eyes. Rubbing at his face, he pulled open the curtain the rest of the way and caught sight of a bright wing flashing, another sharp shriek. Blue jay.
Jim Gordon blinked at the morning sunlight for several minutes.
He avoided the creaky steps on the stairs through some long-forgotten muscle memory from childhood summers spent running up and down to the lake. The opened refrigerator door revealed an expanse of blank whiteness. "Note to self: pick up provisions before going to camp," he muttered. Getting down on his hands and knees, he rummaged for the power cord and eventually got it into the wall. The refrigerator coughed, then hummed into life.
"Coffee, coffee," he muttered, going through cabinets. His search eventually produced a sealed tin of instant coffee and a battered teakettle. The sink sputtered and ran rusty water for a few minutes before eventually clearing enough to fill the kettle and get it onto the stove. As the water heated, Jim looked at his phone.
No signal. Of course.
He snagged the kettle before it started to whistle and moved it to a different burner. A spoonful of instant coffee in a chipped mug that read "Fryeburg Fair 1985" on the side: Jim took a sip and grimaced.
"Do I smell coffee?" Jim looked up the stairs to see Bruce's sneakers descending. He looked away when he realized that the steep, narrow stairs were giving him some trouble, one leg thumping stiff and unwieldy, and focused on the light on the lake outside the window until Bruce was standing next to him.
"Well, it's something close to coffee," Jim said, pouring him another mug. "The tap water won't be delicious, but it'll be okay for any pills you have."
"Pills?"
"You know, painkillers and stuff."
Bruce took a mouthful of coffee, swallowed. "Don't take any."
Jim stared. "You're joking."
A wry smile. "I've been reliably informed that I don't have much of a sense of humor. No, I don't take any. Don't trust them."
"All right, you're crazy. Or a masochist."
Bruce raised his eyebrows and pointed at him, a "eureka" gesture. "Now, those I have been called." He shook his head and took another mouthful of coffee. "The amount I'd need to dull the pain isn't worth the risk of addiction," he said matter-of-factly. "I meditate, most mornings. It helps."
"You meditate."
A nod.
"Jesus Christ," Jim said with feeling, walking into the living room with his mug. He looked at his phone again. Still no signal. "I'm going down to the lake. Want to come?"
"Love to."
The morning was cool. Winter was still in the air, little piles of snow lingering in sheltered spots. The air smelled of lake water and pine needles. Jim glanced at his phone as they walked, but only at the edge of the water did he get even a weak signal. "Damn," he muttered. "Maybe at the end of the dock."
By the time they reached the end of the dock, their footsteps loud across the water, the signal had improved enough that he was able to download his email. He sat down cross-legged on the wooden planks to look it over and figure out what to answer.
Beside him, Bruce Wayne gingerly lowered himself into the lotus position and closed his eyes.
After answering two emails (a question about the entertainment for the policeman's ball and a querulous message from the city council chair) Jim sneaked a glance at Bruce, still motionless on the dock. His dark hair was falling in his closed eyes; he was wearing a black polo shirt and jeans. He looked entirely innocuous, but every now and then the slightest twinge of pain ghosted across his face.
Jim shifted his position until he was back to back with Bruce, letting their spines touch just a little. After a moment, Bruce relaxed slightly against him, letting Jim take a little of his weight.
They sat like that for a while, as the morning fog lifted off the lake. Two ducks drifted past, eyeing them with mild curiosity, and on the far shore Jim saw a fox slip down to the water's edge, then wend its way back into the brush. His phone buzzed briefly: another email from Councilman Watson reminding him he had to make his mind up soon about the election. He suppressed a sigh and started to compose a suitably vague response.
The spring morning brightened slowly around the two men, back to back, fighting their quiet personal battles.
: : :
Jim dodged a rotting plank as they walked back up the dock, looking up at the little cabin with its peeling red paint.
"This place is beautiful," said Bruce from behind him. "I didn't even know you had it."
"I've let it go," Jim muttered. "No time, I guess."
Inside, Bruce prowled around the cabin like a cat getting a feel for an unfamiliar and potentially hostile place, then settled onto the couch. He looked up at Jim. "Now what?"
"Now you...do whatever you like to do in your free time," Jim said, shrugging.
"Well," Bruce cast his eyes upward in thought. "For the last eight years, I mostly was working on cold fusion. Have you got some palladium and deuterium on hand?"
"Bruce, I don't even have chips and beer on hand." Jim sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Don't you have any idea what you like to do for fun?"
"What do you usually do for fun?"
Jim blinked at him. Opened his mouth and closed it again. "Well, there's some books in storage," he said, opening up a plastic bin in the corner and scooping out an armful. "Dickens, Austen, Camus, Dante, the complete works of Shakespeare--hey, it's my Tolkien," he said, lifting out the hardcovers with reverence and putting them on the empty bookcase.
"Never read them."
"You've never read Lord of the Rings?"
"I've never read any of those authors. Well, I had to read some Camus in high school, but after that I took classes mostly in applied engineering, physics, metallurgy. I skipped the extraneous stuff."
"Shakespeare isn't extraneous," Jim huffed.
"If you recommend him, I'll read it," Bruce said easily. "What have you read recently?"
"Do you like to work with your hands? I need to fix the dock and it would go faster with two people."
If Bruce noticed that he had dodged the question, he didn't show it. "I'd be happy to help, of course." He looked neither happy nor unhappy: there was an anticipatory air about him that might have been pleased or merely resigned.
"We'll need some materials: my grandfather's toolkit should be in the boathouse, but we'll need lumber, nails and stuff. Plus we need food. No take-out Chinese out here."
"Cooking." Bruce looked dubious. "I suppose it's necessary." He blinked like an owl, doubtful in the morning light, and Jim bit down on a sudden urge to laugh at the image of Batman--hard to believe he was truly the Dark Knight, this mortal man in jeans--so daunted by the idea of cooking.
"Yes," Jim said. "It is necessary." He clapped Bruce on the back without thinking and Bruce--didn't flinch, but all of his attention focused on Jim in one instant, the quick unconscious movement of a wild animal touched suddenly.
Jim removed his hand and watched Bruce's shoulders relax.
"All right," he said, keeping his voice low and calm as if speaking to a restive horse. "Let's go."
"Where are we going?"
Jim felt his mouth twitch in something close to a smile. "Walmart."
( Part 3)