Devil's Playground • Gotham Fanfiction •

XXVI - Our Little Secret

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." - Joseph Conrad

•••

Now clad in a ringmaster costume, Jerome moved to the center of the arena with a megaphone in his hand.

"Here ye, here ye. Gather around. The show is about to begin!"
His voice boomed through the speaker, echoing around the entire Boardwalk Circus.

Strutting back and forth, he cupped a hand behind his ear to show he didn't think the crowd was being loud enough.

The volume of the cheers increased tenfold and Bird grabbed onto the side of her head with a feeling like her skull was going to crack ad crumble.

After their game of Russian Roulette, Bird had tried to intervene and stop Jerome from taking her brother off to be killed as the main attraction of the night.

He'd pushed her into a crowd of people and told them to keep her occupied.

The next thing she knew, she was crowd surfing against her will and spent what felt like an eternity trying to break free.

In the struggle, the split skin on her forehead had reopened and her vision from her right eye was blurred with blood and sweat. Stinging like a bee.

Trying to fight her way through the ones gathered around to see the live murder of Bruce Wayne, Bird stumbled and grasped onto strangers to keep standing.

It felt like the ground was uneven.
She'd been flipped and spun around so much in the air that she was dizzy.

One voice seemed to be ringing about above all others, jeering and hollering until a single gunshot rang out.

When Bird heard Jerome's voice echo, "Shut up!"
She figured he'd killed the other guy for trying to be the center of attention.

Jerome continued to put on a show and rile up the crowd and Bird had nearly made it to the front row when someone grabbed onto her arm and tried to pull her back again, without looking she brought her elbow back in an upward motion and got them right in the face.

With a groan of the pain, the person stumbled backwards and fell over.

A few people nearby who'd witnessed it started laughing. Mimicking the laugh of the one they'd based their cult around.

"Well, I think we can all agree that tonight was a rousing success. We brought this miserable city to it's knees!"

Coming to a stop, Bird reached up, trying to clear the blood from her eye and working to form a plan.

•••

Bird had weaved through the crowd and was just starting to make her way to the front of the circle, still trying to formulate a plan on how to get Bruce out of the danger zone when a series of gunshots rang out.

Cutting through the crowds excitement like a crack of lightening against a pitch black sky.

All the commotion and chatter along with the cheers came to an abrupt stop.

Everyone looked back to see Jim standing with a handgun pointed up in the air from where he'd fired the shots.

"Detective Gordon!" Jerome called out from where he was sitting on top of the canon, "You're just in time for the big finish!"

A wide smile spread across Bird's face as she caught sight of him.
He was alive -and just as she'd predicted, if she bought them enough time he'd show up with the strike force and they could get Bruce out of there.