"The past, boxed up and stacked out of sight. But never too far away" ― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls
•••
"Morning, sleepyhead." Ivy greeted Bird with a broad smile as she entered the kitchen. The redhead was standing at a counter, steeping a tea bag in a steaming mug.
"Morning."
Bird stepped a little closer and craned her neck to try and see what kind of tea Ivy was making.
"Want some?" Ivy asked.
"Ivy..." Bird's groggy voice cracked seeing the unappealing yellowish tint the water was taking on. "What the hell is that?"
"Ooh!" She exclaimed with sudden wide eyes, "It's this herbal blend I found at a little shop that grows-"
"Never mind," Bird cut her off.
She needed something stronger than whatever herbs Ivy was trying to blend into a tea to shake the grogginess draped over her like a heavy blanket.
There was a scowl on Ivy's face when she turned back to focus on her morning drink. If Bird had just let her explain what was in the tea along with the benefits of the plants, then she'd have been interested in it; she was sure of that.
Bird rolled her neck to the side, trying to ease the tension that had developed in her shoulders during the few hours she'd actually managed to sleep.
Images of Oswald filled her mind whenever she closed her eyes. Twisted visions of him, his hair impossibly black, caused a sickening contrast against his dull, pale skin.
Lifeless. A corpse with wide open, vacant eyes.
She thought about how close she'd been to killing him. Not during one of their arguments that had turned violent either, no - instead, she was about to put him down like a sick animal.
Her fingers folded into a fist at her side, memory bringing back to life the feeling of the vial of medicine the doctor had left her with, the leather case it was in, along with the syringe to administer the lethal dose.
How easy the idea of starting anew had seemed when he was missing as if he were the single thing holding her back from the changes she wanted to make and the person she thought herself capable of becoming.
Oswald wasn't going to let her go; she knew that.
And just like she'd said to Ivy, perhaps the scariest thought was that she couldn't let him go either.
He had been her best friend, her only real friend for a significant number of years, and they'd spent that time so twisted up with one another that it was impossible to see one ended and the other began.
She was trying to focus more on the present, more on the future and not get so caught up in the past.
Broken people break people, that was what she'd told Jim, followed by the raw admission that she didn't want to keep living like that.
More so, she couldn't keep living that way - spinning her wheels stuck in the same painful cycles.
If it weren't for Oswald, so many years ago, when she was just a teenager physically pulling her from the edge of the roof to safety, she'd be dead.
That was first, but far from the last time he'd been there to pull her back from the ledge, figuratively and literally speaking.
And she'd returned the favor countless times.
Bird felt like it should be easy to part ways with him, a clean break, knowing they were both alive today because of the other one.
No one owed a debt to the other.
It should be so easy to just walk away and leave the past exactly where it should stay.
No harm, no foul.
She knew then why she'd been so close to using the solution, the doctor had left her, how much simpler the break would be if he were dead, and she could just mourn and move on.
Keep all of the good parts of their friendship intact in her mind and leave out all the rest,
If she were the only one left, then she'd get to choose the parts that she'd carry along with her instead of having a living tether to her darkness.
She also considered that he might try kill her one day, he'd come close to it before; she'd seen the traces of intent in his eyes the day he held a knife to her throat.
The same thing she'd sworn to have caught flickers of in the past, that he looked like he wanted to kill her.
More like a compulsion, a need to do so.
He might have been the one to save her in the past, but he was also the one constantly pushing her to the brink. Taking and taking until she was empty.
A deep ocean wave carrying her out to the vast dark waters, so he could turn aroun and be the tide to bring her back to shore.
Rubbing her hands over her face, Bird sighed and tried to steady her tone, "Have you checked on Oswald this morning?"
Ivy hummed against the edge of her cup with a nod while taking a drink.
Judging from the look on her face, Bird imagined the tea must have been hotter than she had expected it to have been.
Once she recovered from the burn in her mouth and throat, Ivy rasped, "Still sleeping."
"Okay, well, I'm going out for coffee." Bird patted her jacket to ensure her phone and keys were still on her.
She left Ivy in the kitchen, calling after her to bring some snacks back with her.
•••
Since leaving Ivy's, Bird had been lingering in a small cafe long after her morning coffee was finished, if for no other reason than to avoid returning to the house.
The longer she was away from there -away from Oswald's unconscious body, the more at ease she was feeling.
It felt like the version of her that had entertained the idea of killing her best friend was much further in the past, far more separated from her present state than it actually was.
Her attention was drawn to the front of the store, where a small group of customers had gathered just inside the large glass windows to observe multiple police cars filling the street and alleyway in front of the building across the street.
Rising to her feet, Bird threw away her empty cup and then went to see what they were looking at.
Her eyebrows lowered as she watched more than a dozen uniformed officers enter through a side door of the building.
Today was the police academy graduation, and she knew Bullock was going to give a speech.
In truth, she was surprised when she got to the coffee house that it wasn't busier than it was with such a ceremony happening just across the way.
Something was off.
Something was wrong.
The way the cops had run into the building didn't look like they were showing up to honor a new class of graduates; no, they flocked inside like they were on a rescue mission.
Muttering an "excuse me" under her breath, Bird pushed through the small crowd and out of the coffee shop. She headed down the far alleyway to get around the police barricade that the newest officers on the scene were setting up, she slipped in through an unlocked side entrance of the building.
Once inside, she followed the sounds of voices until she found several members of the GCPD in a central hallway surrounding what looked like a blueprint of the building on a table.
"Alvarez!" Bird called out to the first mostly friendly face she saw. "What's going on?"
"How did you get in here?" He asked in surprised.
She motioned over towards the way she'd walked in nonchalantly.
As if strolling through an active crime scene wasn't a big deal.
With a heavy sigh, Alvarez nudged the officer in uniform nearest to him and told him to make sure the building was locked down.
"You really shouldn't be here." He looked at her from under his brows.
"What's going on?" She repeated, about to ask if this had anything to do with the attack during a chess tournament the day before. She'd caught part of the news coverage of that on her drive into the city that morning.
She noticed someone who most defiantly should have been there was missing from the crowd of officers. .
"Where's Bullock?"
"That freak gassed the whole room of cadets."
"They never should have let him out of Arkham after what he did to Gordon."
Bird overheard a couple of officers talking among themselves and asked, "Edward Nygma?"
Moving closer to Alvarez, she repeated, "Where's Bullock?"
She could feel the static in the air from several members of the police force. More than likely thinking she was friends with Nygma due to them both working on Oswald mayoral campaign.
"Bird, you need to go-"
Alvarez started to reach a hand out to grab onto her arm, intending to lead her from the building, but she smacked him away.
"He's in trouble, isn't he?" She guessed about Bullock than offered, "Let me help."
She heard someone snort a laugh behind her but continued to ignore them.
Alvarez took a deep breath and looked around.
The smart thing to do would be have her removed from the building. It was bad enough that she;d been able to just breeze right by the permit er the police force had set up.
There was enough about this scene that they didn't have under control, and she was a wild card.
"You can't be here." He took hold of her arm and started to lead her away, despite her protests.
Once they made it into a side hall away from everyone else's eyes and ears, he stopped walking and turned to face her, breathing, "Hell of a time for Gordon to have taken time off of work."
"Well, I can tell you that Jim certainly wouldn't be standing around doing nothing to help save Bullock." Her head cocked to the side as she spoke.
He bit down on the inside of his cheek, feeling the sting from her words.
"It's not that simple. He threatened that if Lucius didn't go upstairs alone, then he'd kill Bullock, and we'd lose the antidote to whatever he gassed the cadets with. There are so many lives at stake right now. Whatever move we make has to be well thought out. No room for errors."
She blinked.
How many people over the years have died because GCPD was too busy trying to work out a plan?
It only takes minutes, sometimes mere seconds, until it's too late to save someone.
Death can show up in the blink of an eye, she should know, she had dealt that final blow many times.
"Where are they at?" She pushed.
"We're not sure. Upstairs somewhere. The problem is that any noise in the stairwell could tip him off. We've been surveying the blueprints, trying to find a way around it, but there is no good vantage point to give us the upper hand. He'll hear us coming before we're there." He pointed out the problems they faced.
Bird looked around, trying to formulate a plan of her own.
This was a historical building with only one set of stairs that led to all the floors.
"What about the elevator?" She asked, "He wouldn't expect someone to be coming from the upper floors if you can get up above him."
"It's risky." He said, "If he hears us coming, it's too late-"
"If you wait much longer, it might already be too late for Bullock and Lucius." She argued.
His eyes cut over to the elevator sign just before an alcove in the hall.
Standing around not making a move to rescue a fellow detective didn't sit quite right with him either, but his hands were tied.
He had to follow protocol, Bird did not.
"GCPD can't authorize a move like that and risk setting the suspect off if he hears anything." He said, his eyes cut back over to the elevator sign once more before he turned and walked back towards the room he'd come from to meet up with the rest of the backup the city was sending.
Bird's eyes squinted as she watched him go.
She darted for the elevator the second he was out of sight and smacked the button to call it to the first floor.
She understood with how he'd looked at the sign and then left her there, that he was saying the police couldn't make a move like that, but that he wouldn't stop her from doing so.
It got under her skin how they all looked at her like she was just adding a criminal element to every room she entered, but then turned a blind eye when it could help them.
The very least he could have done was give her a gun.
On the lift up to the highest floor, she pulled her phone from her jacket pocked at silenced it, not wanting Ivy to call and give her location away.
Once she started her descent, it wasn't hard to tell that they were only a few floors down with their voices echoing through the open stairwell.
"I can be a member of a group but can never blend in. What an I?"
Nygma's voice echoed as she quickly moved towards the stairs just above the landing they were on.
"A snowflake." Lucius sounded confident in his answer.
"A snow-" Nygma yelled out in disbelief, "No, no, no! Wrong answer. The correct answer is an individual!"
Bird crept further down the wooden stairs as Lucius argued that his answer was also a suitable one to the riddle.
That no two snowflakes are identical, making them each individuals.
Once Bird made it onto the landing, she could see the horror of the scene in front of her.
Bullock was tied to a chair, the legs of which were hooked over the stair railing, and there were only one of three ropes in tact still holding the chair up and keeping the detective from free falling to his death.
"Oh, god!" Bullock yelled out as the chair creaked from the strain, and he thought he'd fall. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" He cried out.
Bird was struck with how common it was in someone's final moments to start spilling apologies for anything and everything.
As if that would change their fate.
"Okay, final riddle!" Ed held a knife to cut the last rope in one hand and a small gun in the other to keep Lucius from getting any ideas about moving closer.
"I feel your every move,I know your every thought, I'm with you from birth and I'll see you rot, What am I?"
By the looks of it, Lucius had already missed two riddles; which didn't make this last one look promising.
Bird's eyes darted around, trying to devise a plan, but she didn't have one.
Any move was too much of a risk.
He could cut that rope before she got to him and send Bullock plummeting to his death, or he could shoot Lucius.
She didn't see a way in which she could make a move to attack him that wouldn't get one of the others killed.
"I feel your every move,I know your every thought, I'm with you from birth and I'll see you rot, What am I?"
Nygma repeated quicker this time.
He rubbed his eyes from under his glasses, and Bird could see the sweat running down the back of his neck from where she was standing.
He was mumbling something she couldn't understand and it was then she relaized just how undone he'd become.
A man who had not only lost the most important person to him but had also been the one to cause it.
Like recognizes like.
It was just the night before she'd let the darkest corners of her mind wander to what a life without Oswald in it would look like if she were to kill him.
She realized in that moment how much doing so would have changed her,
How that one act would be the absolute worst thing she had ever done.
She'd told Oswald in the aftermath of him holding a knife to her throat when he'd asked her why she didn't stop him, that she'd have let him kill her because the act of doing so would eat him alive. And there's no coming back from that.
Something was eating away at Edward Nygma like acid dissolving him from the inside out.
If nothing else, maybe she could buy time for the police force to actually get a plan together and make a move.
"Hi, Ed." Bird kept her voice soft, not wanting to risk startling him too much,
With a gasp, he stepped tp the side to get a better look at her and to make sure she was alone.
While his head was turned, Lucius managed to make it up a couple stairs higher but still nowhere close enough to save Bullock.
"Stay back!" He warned the arm with the gun flailing from side to side between her and Lucius.
"Is that it?" Bird asked, nodding to the gun, "Is that the gun you killed Oswald with?"
Not wanting to give away that he was still alive and that she actually knew anything about what happened, she nodded to the knife in his other hand, "Is that the knife you stabbed him with? Slit his throat?"
His breathing grew shallow, he took a few stumbling steps back.
Further unraveling.
"What did you do to Penguin?" Lucius asked him.
The look on his face was close to shock, as if it hadn't entered his mind that Ed would have done that to his best friend.
Bird wondered what he'd have thought of her for entertaining those same thoughts,
Nygma stammered, clumsy mouth unable to form words.
He'd wondered what would happen when he crossed paths with Bird again.
Had accepted that he'd probably have to kill her too if she figured out what he'd done.
He'd expected blood-red rage. Her screaming and throwing things, having an absolute meltdown down and looking at him with nothing but pure hate for killing her best friend.
But he didn't know how to cope with the way she was looking at him with something edging on understanding and commiseration.
Something human.
"You know..." Bird shook her head, surprised by the emotion in her own voice, when she admitted, "I've been having panic attacks for weeks now since he disappeared, Damnedest thing. Haven't had one in years and years before then."
"At first, I didn't realize how it correlated with Oswald going missing... or I guess we can say dying since we know that's what happened. But I get it now. I don't think I know how to function in a world without him."
She stepped closer and motioned between them, "Much like how you appear to be having trouble doing the same thing."
His breathing hastened, but a smile crept across his lips despite the panic setting in.
"You-you almost got me." He laughed a hopeless laugh and guessed, "Trying to stall for more time?"
"Three riddles, three answers!" His voice rose, and he hit the side of his head with the back of the hand holding the gun, like he could shake something loose that was stuck in his mind. "Those are the rules!"
"I feel your every move,I know your every thought, I'm with you from birth and I'll see you rot, what am I?" He was yelling now in a voice that was half despair, half fury.
"What am I?"
He shouted again.
Bullock stared wide-eyed at Lucius on the level down he was standing on.
This was his last shot. His one and only chance to survive the day was in someone else's hands.
He prayed to God that Lucius would get this one right; he spent agonizing seconds trying to beg and barter with a higher power for a little more time.
"WHAT AM I?"
"A reflection." Bird answered.
"Oh, God, No!" Bullock cried, "Why does it have to be three answers, wny can't there be four? Come on! You weren't even asking her!"
He seemed so sure that Bird had just shown up and ruined everything.
Nygma's smile grew wider.
He tucked the knife away in his pocket and gave her a thumbs up, "Correct."
"Of course it is." Bird stared him down, "Meeting Oswald was like looking in a mirror for me, too."
Before he could say anything back to her, Bullock let out a scream as the last remaining rope holding him started to give way.
The legs of the chair that had been the support behind the banister snapped off of the chair, and it was too much strain for the single rope to support.
Nygma used the chaos to disappear; Bird ran for the railing, but she wasn't fast enough, the rope securing him let go, and Bullock went tumbling.
Luckily, fate was on his side, and the angle he fell at sent him flying towards the set of stairs below that Lucius was standing on instead of straight down.
Bird rushed to their aide, and they managed to pull him up to safety.
"Thanks!" He was out of breath as he looked between them, his entire body still trembling. " Never doubted either of you." He lied.
Lucius grabbed the vial from the string around Bullock's neck, Nygma had told them it was a cure for the poison gas he'd released on the cadets.
"Probably don't need that!" Bird called after him, "I'm sure it was just knock-out gas."
He'd tried the same tired trick on Lucius and Bruce in Arkham.
Slowing to a stop, Lucius unscrewed the lid to the antidote and sniffed the contents.
He shook his head and said, "It's just grape juice."
•••
"What's with you and all of the plants?"
"They're my friends. Plants make better friends than most people, and you know, some of them helped save your life."
Bird pulled her coat off and tossed it onto a dusty chair as she approached the voices in the house Ivy had taken over.
Oswald was awake, and from the tone of his voice, it seemed he wasn't very appreciative of Ivy's efforts in nursing him back to health.
He wouldn't be alive right now if it wasn't for her, but the lack of gratitude didn't surprise Bird; after all, he'd have wound up dead ten times over if it wasn't for her actions on multiple occasions, but you wouldn't know that from the way he treated her.
She paused outside of the door to the built-in greenhouse. She'd followed the voices while checking her phone again, but still nothing from Jim.
Her last update was from much earlier that morning, letting her know he'd be heading home that evening. Apparently, his uncle had cut the trip short and left without letting Jim know.
He hadn't gone into much detail, and Bird was getting anxious for him to return to the city and find out what he'd learned.
The sound of glass shattering drew her attention back to the greenhouse. She flipped the phone closed and returned it to her pocket as she walked into the room with Ivy and Oswald.
"What is wrong with you?" Ivy angrily yelled, her eyes focused on the broken mug on the floor containing broth with white willow extract to help keep his fever down. Oswald had angrily slapped the glass mug from her hand onto the floor when she offered it to him.
"For the millionth time I need to get back to Gotham!" Oswald shouted.
His voice dripped with all the petulance of a spoiled little brat, and Bird couldn't help but get a kick out of how much the pair looked like a couple of children engaged in an intense staring contest.
"What's the rush?"
Limping forward, Oswald stuck a finger in Ivy's face, and his voice lowered as he explained, "I was betrayed and shot! I should be planning my revenge and building an army, not drinking pine cone juice with the crazy plant lady."
"Her name is Ivy."Bird chimed in.
"Oh! Bird!" Oswald's tone immediately melted into utter relief, his attention focused on her as he bumped into Ivy on his way past her, like the redhead was nothing more than a piece of furniture.
Grasping onto Bird's arms, he smiled, "Thank God you're here! There is much to be done. We need to call Gabe and-"
"Hey!" Ivy called out, "I was the one who saved your life! I dragged you out of that smelly river! She's only here because I called her."
"Shush!" Oswald hissed over is shoulder, his entire body jolted from the outburst.
With green eyes narrowed, Ivy fired a shot, "You're only alive because of me. She wanted to kill you."
Oswald slowly turned his head until his gaze landed back on the person he'd trusted above all others for the last several years. The was the one who'd always had his back, who'd taken a bullet for him.
Bird's eyes cut over to where Ivy's face was now twisted up in a shocked and regretful expression.
She knew saying that was a mistake, but it had slid out before she could help it.
For a moment, jealousy flared as brilliant green as the plants surrounding them at how Oswald was treating her so badly when she'd been the one who'd saved his life-not Bird.
"Bird?" Her name came out with a strangle sound as Oswald stared at her.
"I told you that I was done." Bird didn't look him in the eyes as she spoke, "You probably don't even remember it now or you didn't take me seriously, but I meant it this time... that we're over."
There was truth in what she'd said to Nygma earlier that day. Looking at Oswald often revealed a reflection of her own soul.
His mouth hung dumbly open, eyes set in a blank stare to match.
Like he truly could not comprehend what she was saying.
Ivy's eyes bounced between them; she'd expected a screaming match, maybe even a physical fight, but somehow, the silence the room had settled into felt worse.
The urge to fill the space overwhelmed her; she cleared her throat, "I could make us some more tea-"
"Shut up, Ivy!" Bird yelled at the same time Oswald shushed her.
In response, she silently took a couple steps away from the pair and started to look around for the water mister she'd been using to give her plants some humidity before Oswald had woken up earlier.
"What is that girl talking about, Bird?"
Ivy sighed at his inability to remember her name.
"I've got to get off this ride." Her posture slouched at the tail end of a shrug and she finally looked him in the eyes, "All we do is hurt each other anymore, Oswald. It's this sick contest to see who can deal the sharpest blow and I cannot keep doing that -not with you."
"No." He shook his head with a bitter chuckle, "Y-you..." He shook a finger at her, "You're overreacting. I will admit I've been a little distracted lately, but I can see things much clearer now."
His heart picked up speed, and for a second, he thought his legs would buckle with how weak he was from still recovering from his gunshot wound, but he fought to stand as strong as possible.
"For your sake, I hope that's true, but that doesn't change anything."
"Everything has changed!" He yelled, one of his hands landing over the place the bullet had ripped into him, "I was shot, Bird! Ed betrayed me; he was working with Barbara and-"
"I was shot too, Oswald. Took the bullet for you, remember that? And then you later told me I should have died!"
Angrily shaking her head, she ran her tongue over her dry lips and added, "See? There is too much damage done here that we can't undo."
His eyes darted around the room. He didn't know what he was looking for, but was sure he could feel the blood leaving his limbs through shriveling veins.
When he went into the river, the bite of the ice-cold water against his skin couldn't compare to the freeze he felt now.
"You are my oldest and best friend." He reminded her.
"I know." She swallowed, "But I think if we going keep going like this, it's not going to stop until one of us dead at the other's hands."
"Oswald-" She took a step forward and grasped onto the sleeve of the sweater Ivy had put him in, "You've pressed a knife to my neck. Used my name and family ties for your own gain even though it put me in danger time and time again. I really almost injected you with something the doctor gave me to 'end your suffering' when you were unconscious."
She'd told herself she didn't care how this played out, tried to convince herself that this was best even if he didn't see it that way.
But now she was desperately clutching onto his arm, begging for a shred of understanding on this, for him to stop fighting and making it that much more painful.
He'd told her once, right to her face, that she was a terrible person and despite now believing that more than ever, it didn't change anything. He still wanted her by his side. He had to have her in his life.
"Oh, Bird..." He finally breathed, shaking his head, "You'll come back to me; you always do."
With a head tilt, her defiant expression silently told him that this time was different.
"You're mine." His words were followed by an unhinged laugh.
Her hand dropped back to her side from where she'd been grasping onto his arm and she took a step back with a heavy sigh, the realization setting in that standing there trying to explain that she was really done with him was futile.
She'd have to show him through her actions, by continuing to ignore his calls and texts, refusing to come running when he inevitably wound up in trouble again.
Leaving him still chuckling and now muttering to himself, Bird walked over to where Ivy was doing a terrible job at pretending to tend to the plants and not have been watching them.
"I'm gonna head out. Jim should be back soon." Looking back over her shoulder at Oswald, who hadn't moved from where she'd left him, Bird offered a warning, "Be careful, Ivy."
"Psh!" Her glossed lips curved into a smile, "I'm not afraid of him."
"You should be." Bird pointed out, "We're capable of monstrous things."
Ivy side-eyed her, and Bird looked stunned for a second before recovering, "H-he is capable of monstrous things. Even to the people he'd call a friend."
Not referring to herself and Oswald as one in the same would take some getting used to.
"If people find out he's alive and that he's here, that would be very bad for you too." She added.
Nodding, Ivy turned back to a hanging plant and gave it another spritz of water. "Fine. I'll be careful."
"Call me if you need me." Bird said in just above a whisper so only she could hear.
•••
"Jim?" Bird called out from where she stood in the doorway of their sitting room, where she'd been waiting for him to notice her for several seconds.
But he'd been too lost in his thoughts to notice she was home.
If what his Uncle Frank had told him about the clandestine organization pulling strings in Gotham was the truth and they had ordered the death of his father, then he had to get to the bottom of it.
"Jim?" Bird repeated, eyebrows lowering in concern.
"Hey," He finally looked up at her, "Sorry, I waa just..." His voice trailed off.
He wasn't sure what to say; he wasn't sure anything Frank told him was the truth. And he didn't know how to explain the Court of Owls to her. If that was even a real thing.
Bird walked over and sat beside him. Immediately noticing the old black-and-white photo on the coffee table in front of them, she swooped it up.
"Aw, look at you!" She cooed as she looked at the picture of Peter and Frank Gordon standing next to each other, both of them with a hand on the shoulders of a young Jim posing in front of them for the picture.
Bird ran her thumb around the bent and tattered edges of the picture before she turned it over in her hand and saw a message scribbled on the back in black marker: 'Help me honor his memory!'
Her eyes cut to Jim, awaiting an explanation.
Deciding it would be much easier to start with that part and that it wasn't the right time to bring up the court until he'd been able to look into it more, Jim took a deep breath and said, "I was in the car with my father the night we were hit by a drunk driver. I watched him die."
Laying the photo back down on the table, Bird quietly waited for him to open up.
"I was right there." He repeated, "Couldn't forget a second of it even if I'd tried too. I remember the trial and the guy who hit us being sentenced to time in prison. Finding out he'd been killed on the inside less than a year after that. My whole life, I thought I knew exactly what happened... only now I'm not so sure."
Bird's gaze fell back to the picture on the table. A side effect of being deceptive by nature was being able to almost always know when someone wasn't being honest with her.
She didn't think he was lying about what he'd said, but she knew he was at least holding something back.
"What do you mean?" She asked when he didn't take it upon himself to elaborate further.
"My uncle seems to think it wasn't an accident." Jim answered.
"Frank thinks someone ordered a hit on your dad?" Bird gathered, "Who?"
"I don't know," Jim said. "I'm going to dig into the files at work tomorrow and see what I can find out."
"If it's true, then someone not only aimed to kill him but was fine with a child being collateral damage." Bird pointed out that even Matches Malone, who'd carried out the hit on her parents, had a rule against killing kids.
"And why now... after all this time, is Frank telling you this?" Bird pushed.
"Not sure." Jim answered.
Bird stared at him; that was definitely a lie.
"Do you trust him?" She asked
"Not sure." Jim repeated with a tired shrug. He ran his hands over his face and let out a sigh.
His head hurt; he couldn't think about this anymore for the night if he planned on being able to sleep at all before work tomorrow morning.
"Anyways, " He reached out, taking her hand in his with a gentle squeeze, "I'm just glad to be home. So, how was your day."
"Busy." Bird replied.
Jim didn't miss the skeptical expression on her face and figured that she knew he wasn't giving her the whole story, but he would soon enough. Once he checked into it further and knew fact from fiction.
"That's all I get?" He asked with a smile, trying to lighten the tense mood.
Bird chuckled, "Just busy. Started the day dealing with Ivy, then went out for coffee, saved Bullock's life-"
"Wait, what?" He cut her off.
"Did you not see or hear the news at all today?" Bird asked, then added,, "Also, Aubrey James was reinstated as mayor, how wild is that?"
He opened his mouth and then paused as he thought back to a news broadcast he'd heard on the radio while driving back into the city. There had been an attack on the police cadet graduation ceremony, but all the cadets had survived, and they were looking for a suspect in a green suit.
"I don't understand." Jim shook his head.
"GCPD wouldn't move in without a plan first." Bird smiled mischievously as she spoke, "Someone needed to make a move. You weren't here to save the day, so I did."
Her lips curved into a wide smile at the look of utter confusion on his face as he stumbled over his words, trying to ask what she was even doing there, to begin with.
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A/N - Thank you so much for reading! I really hope you all enjoyed the chapter!