Disclaimer: I don't own Batman or Commissioner Gordon or anything else.

Just me wondering what the rest of the Gotham City Police are thinking about Batman and the Commissioner after the events of Dark Knight.

Thanks to Puzzled Cactus for beta-ing.

Gordon's Shadow

This happened a couple of months after it all went down, the stuff with the Joker, and Harvey Dent dying and everything.

Things had gotten quieter, and Commissioner Gordon was settling into his new position just fine. I was working desk duty on the late shift one night when my boss, Lieutenant Murphy, looked up from the report he had just finished, glanced at the clock, and cursed.

"Something wrong, Lieut?"

The lieutenant sighed. "Just realized how late it is. The Commissioner must have left hours ago." He looked down at his report again. "Guess this isn't important enough to bother him at home with, but he should see it first thing in the morning. Can you run it up to his office and leave it on his desk?"

"Sure thing, Lieut," I said. It was no problem. I was always glad to get out of the squad room, for one thing. And for another thing, I know it's kinda' silly, and I sure wouldn't let any of the other guys know, but I was always happy to go up to the commissioner's office.

See, not all of us in the Gotham PD bought into that whole "Harvey Dent, the best of us" thing that the press and the politicos and everyone were pushing then. Oh, sure, Harvey Dent was a good guy and all, don't get me wrong, but the best? He was too into the sound of his own voice and the shape of his own face for that. Grandstanding, you know what I mean?

No, in the humble opinion of this cop, and not a few others, the real "best of us", the real "White Knight of Gotham", was none other than our own Jim Gordon. The man who'd stayed honest and clean even when the whole damn city was headed for the toilet, and been a role-model for us when we started pulling ourselves out of it. And so I liked going up to his office, even if there wasn't any chance I would see him, just to, I don't know, sort of remind myself of what he was, and what I should be, and everything. Just to keep myself going when it got bad out there.

I took the report and headed upstairs. When I got there, the door was shut and the lights were out, so I figured that the lieutenant was right, and he'd gone home.

But when I opened the door and went in, I could see by the streetlights through the window that there was a figure slumped at the desk.

"Sir?" I whispered, a little worried. It's Gotham, after all. You never know.

There was a gentle snore, and I breathed easier. Apparently, the poor guy had stayed late and fallen asleep at his desk. Not the first time, from what I'd heard. He was really overworking himself. I decided it wasn't my position to wake him up.

I tiptoed quietly in, and laid the report folder on the desk corner. Just as I turned to go, there was a small sound, and I realized that we weren't alone.

Now, I'm not any kind of super-hero, but I think I must have set some sort of record for how fast I had my gun out and pointing towards where I'd heard that noise.

There was a husky chuckle and a figure stepped out into the center of the room. "Relax, officer. If I'd wanted to hurt him, he'd have been dead already." It was Batman.

OK, so I know what you're thinking now. Here it was right in the middle of the whole "Batman the evil madman killed Saint Harvey" campaign, when he was the single most wanted criminal in Gotham City. So why didn't I, you know, do something?

A thousand things ran around my mind. No one ever acts for only one reason, but I swear, one of the first things that hit me was, I didn't want to wake the commissioner up. No, seriously! He needed his sleep so badly, and he looked so peaceful there.

And another thing, realistically, there wasn't anything one guy alone could do about the Bat anyway. All I could have done was shoot up the office, create an incident, and maybe get myself or the commissioner hurt, or worse.

And I didn't think he wanted to do anything to Gordon. Like he said, if he'd wanted to, he could have, and been gone long before I got there.

Besides, just like not all of us bought into the "Saint Harvey" thing, not all of us were buying into the sudden change of Batman from civic benefactor to bloodthirsty killer so easily.

So anyway, while I didn't lower my gun, I didn't start anything else either. "What are you doing here?" I muttered quietly, trying not to disturb the commissioner.

"Waiting to talk to him," the Bat said.

"Yeah? Then why didn't you wake him up?"

"He needs his sleep." Well, I couldn't argue with that, not when it was exactly what I'd been thinking myself. Slowly I lowered my gun, watching for him to make any sudden moves, but he stayed as still as if he were a statue. What the hell was I going to do now?

As if he were reading my mind he said "Now what, officer? I don't suppose you'd consider leaving quietly and forgetting you saw me here?"

"What, and leave the commissioner alone with you? Not a chance." I sounded braver than I felt, I admit.

"Loyalty. Very commendable," he said dryly. "Well, then, why aren't you trying to take me into custody, if you're so devoted to duty?"

"Because," I said slowly, thinking as fast as I could, "I'm not sure if Commissioner Gordon would want me to try and take you down."

His voice betrayed no emotion. "Really? Why would you say that?"

I needed to sort my own thoughts out. There was so much I could answer to that. "Everyone knows," I began, "That you and the commissioner were working together before Harvey Dent was killed."

"Before I killed Harvey, don't you mean? And those other five people that day. Some of them your fellow officers," he said, completely cold.

"I don't believe that," I said firmly. It was one of the few things I was sure of.

For the first time since this whole strange confrontation had begun he showed an emotion, or at least, I think he did, though I couldn't tell what. "You don't? Why not?" he asked.

"You didn't kill anyone before that. You haven't killed anyone since then, or we'd have heard. Why would you just kill six people one day, and threaten the commissioner's family? It doesn't make sense. " I hadn't really thought it all out clearly myself before this, but as I said it, I got more certain.

"No," I said more confidently, "Whatever happened that day must have been pretty bad to make it seem that blaming you was better than letting the public know the real story. But I don't believe that's how it went down. I saw the commissioner's face after he held those press conferences and smashed his signal light. He didn't do that because he wanted to, or liked doing it. Not like he would if you'd really tried to hurt his wife and kids. He was pretty upset about the whole thing." Pretty upset was an understatement, actually, devastated would have been more like it, but I didn't say that. It wouldn't have sounded right.

The masked head tilted quizzically. "So now are you going to tell the world that Batman's been innocent all along?"

"Of course not! This is what Commissioner Gordon wants, and I'm sure he has his reasons. I don't need to know what they are, and I don't think I want to know." I considered that for a moment, then added, "Scratch that, I'm sure I don't want to know. But I'm not going to argue with them. Or him." Or you, I didn't say, though I was thinking it.

Batman nodded, as though he approved. "Then what are you going to do now? Since you've decided that I'm innocent, aren't you supposed to be somewhere else?"

I'd been thinking about that myself. "I'm still not leaving you alone with him asleep."

He made a noise of exasperation. "You just decided I'm not a killer."

I had an answer for that too. "You never know, I might be wrong about you. I'm not willing to take that much of a risk. Not with him."

"That's… good." I was surprised to hear what sounded like a note of approval in his harsh tone. "He's important to Gotham City. He has to be kept safe."

Well, that was true enough, and I couldn't argue. Not that I would want to. But I heard something else in his voice that I didn't expect. Could it be that he actually cared about Gordon in some personal way? Like a friend? I couldn't help myself. I was so startled that I blurted out, "He's important to you too, isn't he?" Could Batman actually feel friendship for anyone?

Well, why not? There was a man inside that suit. At least, we all assumed there was.

He was suddenly back to that total stillness again, and I was afraid I'd gone too far. Innocent of Harvey Dent's murder or not, this was still The Bat, not a safe or sane person at the best of times, by all accounts. I was getting pretty uncomfortable being stared at, but I was afraid to say anything at all that might make things worse.

Finally he said, in that harsh whisper of his, "How important is he to you?" Turning my own question back at me.

By then I was so rattled by that cold stare that I guess I started babbling a little bit. "Well, uh... see, my dad was a cop, too, and he always told me that Jim Gordon was someone in the department that he could trust, no matter what. So I always looked up to him because I didn't know anyone else around here that I was sure was really honest."

"What about your father?"

I swallowed. That brought the old pain up to light again. "Dad died when I was a kid."

I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but his stillness got even more frozen, like he was only waiting for something to trigger him. I couldn't help it, I took a step backwards, and my hand tightened on my gun, though I didn't raise it again.

But he just said, "So Gordon is something of a father-figure to you?"

"Well, yeah, I guess in a way, you could say that. I remember him from my dad's funeral, he was so…" I trailed off. I had the feeling that I'd stepped sideways out of the real world into some sort of crazy dream. This whole confrontation had been strange enough before, but now I was having a discussion about my feelings on my father, and the commissioner, with Batman! What could he know about losing your dad as a kid, and how much it hurt? This was just too. . . weird. I had to get it back into a more normal place. "But it's not just that. I mean, it's not just what I think about him. We all need him. He's… he's the hero that Gotham needs right now."

Either I was crazy (and I mighta' been by then) or else there was a tiny thaw in The Bat's tension. Maybe he had been as uncomfortable with the previous subject as I was.

"Does the rest of the department feel that way about him?" Cool and calm again, simply a request for information.

I shrugged. "There's still a lot of dirty cops we haven't dug out yet. Still hard to know who to trust." Ramirez had come as a big shock to most of us. I heard that finding out she was bad had cut Gordon nearly as much as losing Dent. But if Batman didn't know that, I wasn't going to tell him. "But the rest of us, yeah. We'd go to hell and back if he led us."

"It may come to that before it gets better. Can you protect him on the way?"

That stung. I wanted to say, "Yeah, sure we can!" But reality pulled me up short. I thought about Ramirez and how no one had had a clue she'd been bought by the Joker until it was too late. Who knew how many others like her were still out there?

"I'll do my best," I whispered finally. "All of us will. But," I had to admit it, "I don't know if we can do it. Maybe we need…" I paused, almost afraid to say it, but I had to go on, "Your help?"

There was silence for a few moments. It dragged out so long that I wondered if I had said something so wrong that he'd just decided to ignore me until I did something else or went away.

Just then there was a louder snore from the commissioner's desk, and he shifted his position restlessly.

"It's too cold in here," Batman said. In a move almost faster than I could follow, he had taken the commissioner's jacket from where it was hanging and stepped over to the desk. That's when I really got some idea of the size difference between them. Gordon's tall, but he's not too big, if you know what I mean. Pretty small for someone so ballsy. He's wiry and strong, though.

The Bat, on the other hand... maybe it's just that suit, and who knows what the real guy inside would look like, but standing there with the coat, he loomed over Gordon. I reached for my gun again, but I didn't really think he was going to do anything harmful.

He wrapped the jacket around Gordon's shoulders, and muttered something. I couldn't quite make it out, but it sounded like, "My turn this time." Don't ask me what that was about. When the hell could Commissioner Gordon have wrapped a coat around Batman?

The commissioner shifted, and opened his eyes. He blinked, then seemed to wake more fully.

He spotted me. "Officer, uh, Martin, isn't it? What is it?" He ran his hand through his hair.

"Sir, I brought a report up from Lieutenant Murphy, but you were asleep, so I was just going to leave it..."

"He ran into something he didn't expect," Batman broke in.

Gordon turned around. I guess he hadn't noticed Batman before, but he didn't seem too surprised to see him, just concerned. "So I see. That could be a problem."

"He's trustworthy," Batman said flatly.

I was so surprised by that I couldn't say anything. Commissioner Gordon looked at me more closely. "Is he right? Are you going to tell anyone who you saw here tonight?"

"No sir!" I said earnestly. "I think it's great that Batman's still on our side, but if you want it a secret, then it's a secret."

"Martin..." he said thoughtfully. "Wasn't your father George Martin? He was a good man."

"Yes, sir. Thank you sir."

"All right, you'd better get back to the squad room. Murphy will be wondering where you've gotten to."

"Yes sir, if you're sure..." I eyed Batman warily. Truthfully, I was hoping, just a little, to be included in whatever they were talking about.

"I'm sure, Martin." He yawned. "God, what time is it? Barbara's going to kill me for being this late."

"This will only take a few minutes. Just let me see Officer Martin out," Batman said.

Nervously I let him walk me to the door. Just outside he leaned over and said, in an even lower whisper than usual, "Martin. You asked for my help before. You have it." Then he closed the door behind me, and there was nothing for me to do but go back downstairs.

That was the last time I saw Batman close up. I've never been included in high level discussions or anything, but I've noticed that since then my name has come up for duties that it wouldn't have before. Commissioner Gordon trusts me, and that's a pretty big thing.

There was the time, for instance, when I was sent out with a squad to capture Batman. Of course we didn't even get close to him, I made sure of that. Batman saw me, though, and I'm pretty sure he recognized me. He nodded in my direction as he glided away on those wing-things he has.

And there have been times when I've been out on the streets when the commissioner was there too, and I've seen the shadows darker than they should have been, because they weren't empty. The Batman was there, too, keeping his promise, keeping Jim Gordon safe for Gotham City, and for all of us.