Devil's Playground • Gotham Fanfiction •

XVI - Dear Sister

"And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

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Sitting in the open doorway of the back of an ambulance, Bird stared out across broken up paved parking lot of the old foundry.

It had been at least thirty minutes since they'd hauled a heavily sedated Captain Barnes away from the scene for medical attention, but the area around the crime scene was still draped in chaos.

It looked like every officer in the city was there. Some were taking statements from the bystanders who'd witnessed part of what had happened, but it seemed like the majority of them were standing in groups talking amongst themselves.

Her sight on focused Jim, who she spotted across the lot speaking with some of the higher ranking detectives on scene. He was badly roughed up, himself.

There were barely a few minutes time between when Bird had brought Barnes down to when GCPD arrived.
Everything was so hectic and crowded that she hadn't gotten much of a chance to talk to Jim at all.

It had mostly been a blur, she vaguely remembered Jim trying to talk to her, the warmth of his arms through her clothes as he held onto her while leading her over to an ambulance, insisting she at least let the paramedics check her out since she'd refused to go to the hospital.

Once she'd sat down on the metal ledge of the emergency vehicle, Jim had said something to her that her ears couldn't decipher above all the other voices and noise around them.

He'd kissed her on the forehead and that was the first time she'd gotten a real look at him.
She remembered thinking he needed to be checked out too, but couldn't remember if she'd voiced her concern out loud.

There was too much noise in her head; disabling her ability to think straight and rendering her mute.

She'd done some bad things in her life; top of that list would be taking other lives.

She had killed people and aside from the times of self-defense and when she'd been forced to work under Falcone alongside Victor Zsasz, she'd been able to excuse the violence by telling herself the world was better off without certain people in it.

And this was far from the first time someone had tried to kill her; but this was the first time she was aware of that someone wanted her dead because they believed the world would be a better place without her in it.

Sure, Barnes was infected with the Tetch virus, but when Jervis had gotten inside Jim's head he'd amplified what was already in there.

What if the blood did the same? Just brought everything to the surface.

If so, then that meant every exchange she'd had with Nathaniel Barnes -both polite and otherwise, he'd been sitting there thinking her very presence lessened the lives of those around her.

"How you holding up?"

Bird didn't look up to where Bullock was now standing beside her, leaning against the ambulance and waiting on an answer.

She just kept staring across the way to where Jim was; wondering if he was okay.
She also wasn't sure if he was still mad at her for taking off again or where they even stood with their relationship after the way they'd left things the night before she'd fled.

"Bird?" Bullock's voice raised.

When she still didn't even acknowledge his presence, he took his hat off and rubbed a hand over his head, "We doing the silence thing again?"