"When truth is buried underground it grows, it chokes, it gathers such an explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it."- Émile Zola

•••

"Jim!" Bird called out as she jumped up from where she'd been sitting on the bench against the wall in one of the holding cell rooms at the jail.

It was just earlier that morning that the judge had denied bail and set the trial date for Officer Pinkney's homicide case to kick off the following week.

"Bird?" Jim walked over to the cell bars to meet here where she stood and questioned, "How did you get back here?"

He wasn't allowed any visitors.

"Jim, please." Bird's replied with one her perfectly sculpted eyebrows climbing up into an arch, "I can toss around the Wayne and Falcone names, and if that doesn't work enough money usually seals the deal."

"What happened?" She demanded to know, her eyes darting back and forth over his exhausted expression.

"I'm being framed-"

"Yeah, I know that much." She cut him off, and made sure none of the guards were lingering in the room before adding, "You feel bad over what happened with Galavan. I know there is no way you woke up and decided one day to kill a fellow cop."

Jim let out a small sigh, he wasn't sure how much time her money had bought them, but he had no doubt it wouldn't be near long enough for him to explain everything that had happened.

There was a bomb threat at a local art gallery and he'd used a crowbar to open a locker there.

Later that night, Bullock had called to tell him that the bomb had been remotely denoted and they'd lucked out on being able to trace the number used to a pay phone in an apartment building.

Not being able to sleep, Jim had went to the building to see the phone that had been used and if there were any cameras nearby that might have caught the person responsible.

Only when he got there one of the apartment doors was standing wide open, worried that someone may have been hurt or in need of help, Jim announced his title went inside -to find Pinkney dead on the floor with the side of his head bashed in.

As if that wasn't bad enough, he'd only been there a few minutes when Barnes showed up.

He said he'd gotten a message that Pinkney needed to talk to him outside of work because of some information he'd uncovered about Jim.

The final nails in the coffin was when the crowbar used to bludgeon Pinkney was found under the couch in the apartment, with Jim's fingerprints on the murder weapon.

Then the document that had showed the traced number from the bomb caller disappeared and the only one to back Jim's story of why he was at the apartment was Bullock.

The entire thing was elaborately planned out.

Just the idea alone that someone lifted the crowbar he'd touched at a crime scene, used it to kill someone and then was able to lock down every other detail to make him look guilty was madness.

"Talk to me." Bird pleaded, stepping closer and holding onto the bars with his silence leaving her more concerned with every passing second, "How bad is it?"

"Bad." Jim finally answered, raising his head to face her again as she stared at him through the bars, "All the evidence against me is solid."

If he weren't at the center of the investigation and was instead working it, there would be no doubt in his mind with all of the evidence.

"Okay, but it's all wrong." Bird was quick to answer, "So there has to be a way out of this. Just..." Seeming flustered she shook her head, "Tell me what we do now."

"Do you need a lawyer? Or maybe I can-"

"No, I've got council already." He admitted.

"One of the union reps?" She scoffed, "Jim, those guys are used to fighting trials about evidence tampering or police brutality. This is way bigger than that-"

"I have to trust the system." He argued with her.

This was the very justice system that he'd made a career out of upholding and now he needed to put his faith in it, hope that the truth would somehow come out and he'd be cleared of all charges.

"The system is broken!" Bird cried out with her face contorted in anger.

It wasn't all that long ago that she, herself, had been framed for a crime, but at least she had sense enough to hire a good lawyer.

Whatever reasoning Jim and Oswald both had for refusing her offer of help fell somewhere far beyond her realm of understanding.

"Fine. No lawyer then." She shook her head, "Tell me what to do then."

"Nothing." Jim answered with a broken expression, "There isn't anything you can do."

"I don't think you're thinking straight..." She accused, "I know that given our... history, this probably is a little strange coming from me. But you're engaged, Jim. Lee is pregnant. So how can you just be standing here willing to spend the rest of your life behind bars for something you didn't even do?"

Jim closed his eyes as his head hung forward in shame.

She wasn't saying anything that hadn't been keeping his stomach tied in knots, but there wasn't much he could do.

The thoughts had also crossed his mind that maybe Lee and their unborn child would be better off without him.

He devoted his life and career into trying to make Gotham a safer place and in the midst of that he'd lost himself.

Turned to criminals for help in taking down bigger players in the crime game.

He may not have killed Carl Pinkney, but he'd certainly committed crimes in the name and notion of a greater good and maybe he did deserve to be punished for that.

He was nowhere near innocent.

"I saw the interview you did." He changed the subject with small nod to the side, "On the news."

Bird's expression scrunched up even more as she stared back at him.

He'd been so preoccupied with finding Bruce and stopping him from killing Malone that he hadn't even noticed Bird's change in appearance when they saw each other again.

In fact, it wasn't until he was watching her on TV that he noticed the change; not just in her hair and clothes, but in the way she carried herself.

The way her smile grew far closer to lighting up her entire face than it used to.

She was already an adult when they'd first crossed paths, but she'd done more growing up over the last few years than she'd accomplished in almost all of her life.

"I thought you were great." He added, somehow pulling his lips up into an attempt a smile through the sadness and weight crushing down on him, "I like this new you."

"I'm still me."

Her voice was so quite he could hardly hear her, "Just in shiny new packaging."

"No." He shook his head and cleared his throat, "You've come a long way."

In many ways she was the same and in just as many ways she was someone other than the Bird he'd known.

Maybe in another life he could have gotten to know this Bird better, but the only life he had was the one crumbling apart around him.

He felt like she was also better off without him in her life.

Ironic, that her life was starting to come together at the same time his was in shambles.

"Uh-uh." Bird protested, "I don't like this, because this is starting to sound a hell of a lot like goodbye and I don't handle those so well."

"You've got the chance to change things in Gotham." Jim said out loud the very thing he'd thought when he watched her interview on T.V, "I hope you use it for good."

Both of their attention was drawn back to the door opening to hallway back behind the visiting cell, leading back further into the jail.

When one of the guards stepped into sight and nodded at him, letting him know it was time to go back to his own cell, Jim turned and started to walk towards the door.

"Jim!" Bird yelled, practically smashing herself against the bars with a helpless expression on her face as she watched him leave without turning back around.

With a sigh, she dropped her head forward where it hit heavily with a metal bar pressed to the center of her forehead with a somber revelation; you can't help someone who won't help themselves.

•••

"Lady Wayne!"

Bird appeared at the top of the stairs mere moments after hearing her name called, "Yeah?"

"I think you'd better come down here." Alfred said as he stepped into view and nodded with his head towards the door.

"What's going on?" She asked as her bare feet lightly padded against the stairs on her way down.

It wasn't until she was on the first floor that she caught sight of who was at the door.

"Oswald?"

"Bird!" He exclaimed.

His entire face lit up the moment he laid eyes on his best friend again.

She'd heard that he'd been released from Arkham early that morning, but she'd had no way to contact him.

"Oswald..." She breathed stepping closer and looking him over.

He was dressed in the same ill fitting clothes he'd been wearing from when he was hiding out on the streets and running from the police when he was wanted for Galavan's murder.

Most troubling of all though, was how he was splattered in a dark sticky substance and then covered from his hat to shoes in white puffy feathers.

"Yes." He nervously laughed as he looked down at his clothes and felt his cheeks darken from embarrassment, "I hope you'll excuse my disheveled state. I would have cleaned up before coming to see you, but... I didn't have anywhere to go for that."

Bird looked over to Alfred who gave a small shrug and keep his posture straight with his arms behind his back as he suspiciously eyed the defeated crime lord.

"I would hug you." Oswald continued to speak and fill up the silence when his friend was at a loss for words, "But I wouldn't want to ruin your dress-"

His sentence ended in a pained groan as Bird lunged forward and tightly wrapped her arms around him.

The smile on his lips grew and his eyes slowly shut as he held onto her just as tightly.

For the first time in what felt like years he was finally able to get a deep breath; one filled with the all too familiar scent of her favorite shampoo.

Alfred let out a audible sigh to show his distaste for the scene in front of him as the friends clutched onto each other as if they were aboard a raft that was quickly sinking.

When he'd answered the door and saw Oswald, his first thought was to say Bird wasn't there and shoo him off before she saw him.

But he knew all too well that there would hell to pay from the eldest Wayne when she'd found out. That and he was happy to have her back home at Wayne Manor and didn't want to give her cause to take off again.

So, just like he'd trusted in Bruce to make the right decisions; he was trusting that the return of her longtime best friend wouldn't completely derail all of the choices she'd been making.

She was on the path to becoming a public figure and was doing a remarkable job of picking up all the pieces her life had been reduced to.

The trust he was trying to place in her didn't ease his nerves when it came to her reunion with Oswald at all though and if her parents were still living, they would have never let him into the house.

Thomas Wayne had made his negative feelings towards Oswald well known.

Alfred couldn't even begin to count the number of times Thomas had vented to him about the blame he placed on Oswald for Bird's change in behavior.

He'd went to his grave entirely convinced that if his daughter had never crossed paths with Cobblepot then she'd have set out on an entirely different course in life.

Martha felt the same way, but she was quieter in her disdain for him and their friendship for fear of driving a bigger wedge between herself and Bird.

"Who did this to you?" She demanded to know when she finally stepped back and got another look at him.

"Butch and Tabitha." Oswald admitted, flinching when Bird reached up and plucked a feather off of the side of his face, "Pretty nice of them, considering."

"Considering?" She immediately jumped to anger, "Considering what?"

"Well, you know, everything I've done to them." He reasoned.

Bird's mouth hung open and she looked back over to Alfred, who again gave another shrug.

"I got off easy, really." Oswald continued, trying to calm Bird down and ease her mind, "They could have killed me, but Butch said we'd all lost something and they let me go."

Bird's eyebrows furrowed, she remembered saying the exact same thing to Butch the day she went there and agreed to let them both live.

"Right, very well." Alfred cleared his throat and spoke up when Bird still couldn't locate her words, "Last I heard, Mr. Cobblepot, you were locked away in Arkham. What's happened to that, hmm?"

"I'm sane!" Oswald beamed another smile and quickly got to work on pulling a folded up paper from his pocket and proudly presented it, "I have a certificate to prove it."

"A piece of paper doesn't exactly prove your eggs aren't scrambled, now does it?" Alfred argued and earned himself a glare from Bird that could have melted the flesh from his bones.

"See?" He cheerfully said, adjusting his stance to alleviate some of the pressure off of his bad leg and held the paper out for Bird to see.

"I see..." Speaking in an unsure tone, she nodded, "That's, uh... that's really great..."

"Congratulations on your sanity." Alfred said, "But I think it'll be for the best if you just take your leave now-"

"Alfred!" Bird snapped.

"No, it's alright." Oswald was quick to say, "I'm sorry to intrude. I just wanted to see you."

Pulling in a deep breath, he continued, "I'm a changed man. Changed for the better and I'm here to tell you that you can change too, Bird."

"Change?" She repeated back, her eyes darting over to Alfred for a moment before she looked back at Oswald and asked, "Are you feeling okay?"

"A little tired." He admitted, "Hungry; I haven't eaten since yesterday, aside from that I'm feeling very well, thank you for asking, Bird."

"You're welcome?" Her response came out sounding like a question and for one of the very first times she found herself at a loss for words in his presence.

Dismissing the uncomfortableness of the situation and trying to push aside her fears of what they may have done to his mind inside Arkham, Bird did her best to focus on the present time and the problems in front of her that she could fix, "Let's get you cleaned up, huh? And some food."

With an arm around his shoulders she started to lead him inside of the house until Alfred stopped her, standing in their way as he sternly said, "Lady Wayne, I hardly think this is appropriate."

"Why?" Bird asked nearly immediately copping an attitude with him, "It's not like Bruce is here right now."

"Sorry, but I'm going to have to put my foot down." Alfred cleared his throat and glanced to Oswald before looking back to Bird and pointing out, "This is your parents' house, is it not? And I think we both know they never would have allowed this."

"Very well." Bird agreed a little too quickly.

Her reasoning soon became clear as she turned to Oswald and offered him a reassuring smile, "Wait for me outside. I'm going to grab a few things and I'll meet you out there."

"You're running off?" Alfred questioned just as Oswald walked outside and he was left alone with Bird again.

"You don't want Oswald here, fine. But I'm not leaving him to his own devices in the shape he's in. So if he can't stay here then I'm leaving." She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, very familiar to the tone in which she'd use to try and get her way as a teenager.

"Lady Wayne-"

"Save it, Alfred. There isn't any way you're going to talk me out of this or guilt trip me over my parents memory." Bird called over her shoulder as she headed up the stairs to gather a few things and a set of keys to one of the cars at the house.

Alfred's head hung heavily forward as she disappeared from sight.

He wasn't entirely sure how much of Bird's behavior could be blamed on her friendship with Penguin, but he was positive the man was responsible for a good bit of it.

When she was a teenager, they could ground her and take her car keys away, check on her every few hours to make sure she hadn't sneaked off to run into the city.

But she was an adult, had been for years and there wasn't much he could other than hope she wouldn't let their friendship drag her back down into the depths of darkness.

•••

"Thank you for bringing me some of my clothes." Oswald gratefully said as he looked at Bird in the reflection of the extra tall mirror against the wall in the large hotel suite.

"I know there isn't much there, but when Victor and I went to see Butch, it was all I could find. I gathered up everything I could find still at the house that belonged to you and me. Most of it was already gone though." Bird answered with her pale glossed lips angling down into a frown.

"He's done well for himself." Oswald smiled, as he adjusted his bow tie and reached to where his hair was still drying from the bath he'd taken.

"Done well for himself." Bird nearly chocked on the words, "He stole from you -from both of us. He took your throne and now he's shacked up with Galavan's sister and-"

"He's our friend, Bird." Oswald finally turned to face where Bird was laying on one of the beds propped up on an elbow reading over the room service menu that she'd already ordered dinner from.

"We should be happy for him and all he's accomplished." He added.

Looking up to where he stood, Bird's face contorted, "Our friend? Maybe a year ago. But let's not forget how he practically handed me over to Galavan gift wrapped before leading you right into a trap where your mother was killed! How can be happy for his success after that?"

"By acknowledging the bad we've done to him." Oswald confidently replied, "Mainly what I've done to him."

Standing up and dropping the menu onto the bedside table, Bird hesitated to step closer as she stared at him. Feeling like the person she'd considered to be her best friend was now a complete stranger.

"How are you going to take back the city with an attitude like that?" She was barely able to whisper.

"I don't want to. Power corrupts and I had more than anyone should."

"So..." She breathed, "You're just going to let Butch play king?"

With an unstable laugh sliding from her lips, Bird looked up towards the ceiling and with wild arm movements exclaimed, "I took Victor with me and we cleaned house there. Killed every one of the men who'd once swore loyalty to you and then turned around and pledged it again to Butch. I cleared out the traitors and swore that you were going to take your throne back-"

"You shouldn't have done that, Bird." Oswald's voice was soft with a somber and disappointed look on his freshly washed face, "I... I can't judge you for what you've done because I was a violent creature once too, Bird. But I've been shown a different path and I've changed."

"What did Strange do to you..." Her voice trailed off and the expression on her face fell somewhere between utter disbelief and horror.

"Therapy." Oswald tried to smile, but the corners of mouth started to twitch nearly uncontrollably and he pinned his eyes shut as his mind was flooded with the horrifying images of him killing his own mother, images that Strange that forced him to live through as one of the various treatments he called therapy; but which felt far more like torture, "Professor Strange..."

Oswald stuttered, "He... h-he fixed me. I- I'm cured now, Bird."

Bird's face fell even further as she watched him.

She had no idea what this doctor did him, but for someone who was claiming to be fixed, Oswald looked far more broken than she remembered.

"Bird?" He asked, his eyes growing wide at the emotion displayed on her face, "What... what's wrong? You look..."

Walking up to where she stood he looked at her with such an inquisitive look that it resembled the wonder on a child's face as they begin to try and understand the world around them, he realized, "You look so sad."

"I am sad." Bird blinked, avoiding eye contact with him.

The longer she looked at him and spoke to him, the more she realized he wasn't at all the person she'd shared her deepest bond with.

She didn't know him anymore and that hurt deeper than she could have ever imagined.

"Why?" Oswald asked as he reached down and gently took her hands in his, "We're together once again. What's there to be sad about?"

Pulling her hands from his grip, Bird turned and put her back to him while she pulled in a shaky breath and stammered out, "I... I don't know what to do here. Oswald? Should I try and find someone to reverse what Strange has done? Is this just how you are now -forever? I just... I don't know."

Spinning back around, her voice grew hoarse, "Are you happier like this?"

"I'm better." He offered up with a small shrug.

"But are you happy?" She repeated.

"You're standing here in front of me, how could I not be happy?" He gently answered with an almost sheepish smile, before his expression fell and he asked, "You don't feel the same?"

"I am happy to see you." She quickly answered, "I'm happy that you're out of Arkham and free once again. But right now, I am more scared than anything."

"Of me?" His eyebrows furrowed and he quickly took a step backwards.

When he'd stopped by to see Edward Nygma, someone else he'd considered a friend, he'd been met with a less than friendly reception.

'To be honest the new you is kind of freaking me out.' Were Nygma's exact words to him just before he'd led him out the door and sent him on his way.

The last thing on earth Oswald had wanted to do was freak his friends out, especially Bird.

"No." Bird's forehead wrinkled, "I'm scared for you, Oswald. You still have countless enemies out there and when they find out you're an easy target now...us being violent creatures, as you said, is what keeps them at bay."

"I'm scared that someone is going to come after you when I'm not here to protect you."

"Oh, Bird." Oswald's cheeks darkened, "My sweet Bird, always trying to keep me safe."

"But you need not worry." He hand his hand up, "If someone I've wronged comes looking for me then I'll be the voice of reason. I'll make things right."

"There is no reasoning with most of them!" She unintentionally yelled and caused him to jump at her sudden outburst, "They won't care that your certificate says your sane. They won't care about any of it, they will simply be out for their pound of flesh and if your only tactic to fight back is trying to reason with them, then you're going to pay in blood. Blood, Oswald, your blood!"

"I don't believe that." He argued with her, "If I can change then anyone can."

"Oh my god..." She rubbed her forehead and finally dropped her arm back to her side as she said, "Not everyone wants to change."

"You do -you, you did." Oswald stammered with a look of pain and guilt washing out his sharp features, "You wanted so much to change and I was angry with you for that. I was wrong, Bird. I should have been happy for you. That's what friends do, they should be happy to see each other getting the things they wanted and deserved. Instead of acting like a true friend, I resented you."

"Truth be told." Oswald's voice grew even more unsteady as he admitted, "I was jealous. I felt as though Harvey Dent was getting everything I wanted-"

"Oswald." Bird warned, her head tilted to the side as she shook it from side-to-side in an attempt to get him to stop talking.

"It's the truth." Oswald spoke up with his voice growing more nasally than usual, "I'd often times look at you as my most prized possession; something to own and that was wrong. I couldn't accept your relationship and new life with Harvey Dent because I loved you then and I love you now-"

"Shh!" Bird cupped a hand over his mouth as if she had the ability to push the confession back between his lips, "We don't have to talk about that now. It's irrelevant. Things didn't work out with Harvey, so..."

Realizing how uncomfortable she seemed to be getting, Oswald gave a nod and waited until Bird cautiously removed her hand from his mouth before he tried to speak again, "I just wanted to apologize for how I treated you when you said you wanted a life outside of crime."

"Noted." Bird blew out a breath and gave a sharp nod, "But for the record, you were right. You tried to tell me that he didn't love me for everything that I was and that he wanted to change me, but I didn't want to see it back then. For whatever reason, I was more than willing to bend until I broke rather than admit the truth and I won't do that again -for anyone."

With his eyebrows lowering upon realizing that last line was aimed directly at him, Oswald questioned, "But you will try to see how you can change for the better, as I have?"

"We've done some bad things, Oswald." Bird paused, "But we were never the worst of the worst."

"We've been ruthless." He argued.

"We had to be." She reasoned, "If we were anything less than that neither of us would be alive today."

"Maybe." Oswald softly answered, "But I've seen the error of my ways and it is my hope that you will too."

"Room service."

A voice called through the door after a quick knock.

"There's dinner." Bird almost tripped over her own feet to go answer the door, "Let's just bench this conversation topic for now, okay?"

"As you wish, Bird." Oswald nodded in defeat as he struggled to smile when she turned back to look at him.

•••weeks later•••

"Care for a spot of tea?"

Bird looked over her shoulder from where she'd just folded up one of her mother's sweaters and placed it in the donation box.

"No thank you, Alfred." Bird quietly answered, before she stepped back into her parent's large walk in closet and returned with another arm full of clothes and dropped them on the bed.

"Very well." Alfred said as he poured himself a cup of tea from the tray he'd carried into the master bedroom.

"Would you like some help then?" He offered.

"No." She answered, as she held up a beige blouse with gold beading around the neckline before pulling it off the hanger and beginning to fold it up before placing it in the same box as the sweater.

Alfred pulled in a deep breath and leaned against the wall when it started to feel like the tea was souring on his stomach.

Over the course of the last few weeks she'd barely said more than a handful of words to him, which usually wasn't cause for concern when she was angry at him.

But this was different, she didn't seem to be mad at him.

She's was upset about something, only instead of talking about what was bothering her, she'd been keeping everything in.

She hadn't left the house in over a week and had been beating him to the kitchen to cook their meals and he'd even caught her cleaning to fill up her time and keep her mind off of whatever was bothering her.

Now, she'd started the task of cleaning out her parent's bedroom and he hadn't seen or heard from her in the last ten hours.

"Want to tell me whats on your mind?" He asked.

Bird didn't look over at him as she folded up a pair of her mom's dress pants and dropped them into the donation box.

She didn't have the slightest clue of where to begin with everything that was currently wrong in her life.

"Lady Wayne?" Alfred asked with concern flooding his tone.

Looking over to him her mouth hung slightly open while she tried to locate the correct words, only it wasn't happening for her.

With a weak shrug, glanced over to the television set that was on the news station awaiting to hear the verdict in Jim's court case, before she picked up another shirt from the bed.

"Please talk to me." Alfred pleaded, as he grew more worried about her by the second, "What's happened?"

After she'd been sexually assaulted and nearly killed as a teenager, she'd been so traumatized that she couldn't speak a word for months after the fact.

Ever since, when life started to get too heavy a burden to carry she seemed to retreat into silence and fold in on her self.

"If you don't talk to me..." His voice trailed off when he realized he didn't have anything to finish it off with.

There wasn't anyone he could call.

Bruce had run off to the city weeks ago, Jim Gordon was currently on trial for murder and she hadn't mentioned Oswald since the day he'd showed up at Wayne Manor -not that he'd have any idea how to contact him anyways.

"Are you threatening me?" Bird's voice came out so monotone and defeated that it sounded alien to both of them.

"No, not at all, Lady Wayne." Alfred assured her, "I was going to offer to call someone for you, only I..."

"Realized there isn't anyone to call." Bird finished for him, before she disappeared back into the closet again.

It had been nearly two weeks since she'd last spoken to Oswald.

After putting him up in one of Gotham's five star hotels, she'd gotten a call from him one day that he'd no longer be needing he hotel because he'd met his father and was going to live with him.

The news came as quite a shock considering that Oswald had told her his father had died before he was born -which was apparently a lie that his mother had told him.

Either way, her friend sounded genuinely happy and so she graciously wished him well and reminded him that she was only a phone call away if he needed anything at all.

He'd made her promise that she'd come for dinner to meet his father, Elijah Van Dahl, but so far Bird hadn't gotten around to it.

The last she'd heard from her eyes on the street was that Bruce and Selina had tried to steal money from Butch's nephew, Sonny Gilzean, and apparently Bruce had gotten the crap beat out of him for doing so.

Her first instinct was to go have Sonny beaten to within nearly an inch of his life to teach him a lesson.

After all, she'd never much cared for him anyways. Not since he'd came by Fish's club when she was working there and tried to hit on her and quickly went from charming to world class jerk within a matter of seconds when she rejected him.

But she'd stopped herself from reacting so quickly and so violently.

For one, Bruce had stolen and if you're going to do the crime you got to be willing to accept the consequences.

Secondly, she couldn't forget the look on Oswald's face when he'd spoke of them being violent creatures.

She'd been to a few days of Jim's trial, but the entire ordeal was so draining that she couldn't bring herself to keep going back.

The evidence was stacked up in mountains against him and his union rep was a fish out of water in such a high profile case. Then there was the matter of seeing Lee sitting there crying from the beginning up until the very end of when they'd adjourn court for the day.

Worst of all, she felt like she'd let herself down.

After nearly losing her life months ago, she was so sure she'd find something to live for. A cause to pour her all into.

A prospect which seemed promising at the beginning, especially after her interview had went so well with channel 82. But that was a dream that seemed to burn bright and die fast when she hadn't taken any other steps to do anything.

She'd received many offers of local organizations wanting her to be their public face and had even gotten offers to have a chair on community committees that she'd never even heard of before.

But when she'd found out the details, she'd learned that was really all they wanted her for, just for her Wayne name and face; and she wanted something more hands on.

She'd even considered trying to spearhead one of the many charities still bearing the Falcone name, but she wanted to be a part of something from the ground up.

Not jump into someone's shadow.

Only, instead of putting in the work in to create something of her own, she'd had many days where the energy to begin such a process felt impossibly out of reach.

Alfred manged to choke down another small sip of tea and then set his cup back down on the tray and began to prepare Bird a cup intending to insist upon her drinking something, but before he could stir in the sugar there was a loud crash from the closet followed by a stream of profanities.

"Are you alright?" Alfred yelled as he darted into the closet to find Bird sitting on the floor with various papers and folder scattered on the floor and some broken glass by her legs.

"I'm fine." Bird answered, "I was trying to pull some boxes off the shelf and they were heavier than I expected..."

Her voice trailed off as she got to her knees and picked up the glass aquarium that now had a side busted out of it and her breath caught in her throat.

It was her old fish tank.

The same one that she'd seen in the dream when she was fighting for her life and had gotten to speak to her dad again.

"I'll get the broom." Alfred said, before cautioning her to watch where she stepped in her socked feet.

But Bird was so lost in her head and thoughts that she didn't even hear him.

She hadn't seen that tank since she was a little kid, she had no idea her parents had even kept it.

It was then that she spotted her mother's hand writing on a manila folder under the broken pieces of glass.

Brushing them to the side, she picked the folder up and began to read the contents inside.

"I told you not to touch anything." Alfred sighed as he returned with the small hand-held broom and dust pan.

He knelt down and started to sweep up the mess she'd made when he saw she was still reading the folder, "What you got there?"

"It's..." Bird skimmed through the pages, "It's a proposal for several women and children centers and shelters to be put up around the city."

"I remember that." Alfred said, looking at Bird as he recalled, "Your mum and dad were working on that not too long before they died. If I remember right, it was nearly ready to be pitched to the board."

"This would help a lot of people." Bird thought out loud as she continued to read over the plans.

"Indeed it would, Lady Wayne." Alfred agreed with a smile forming on his lips.

"When Bruce comes home we should show him this. He could take it to the board." Bird suggested.

"Or, you could take it yourself."

"Yeah." Bird scoffed, "Remember that day I signed my shares of the company over to Bruce?"

"You're still a Wayne." He reminded her, "And due to your recent success in the news, I think you'd be just the person to push a plan like that through the right channels."

He didn't say it out loud, but he was also hoping that a huge project such as that might help keep her distracted and busy versus wandering through life as aimlessly as she seemed to be the recent weeks.

Both she and Bruce always seemed to stumble and lose their way when they weren't busy and working towards a goal.

"You really think so?" Bird asked, looking up to him as he got to his feet.

"Yes, I do." He answered honestly before extending his hand to her.

Once she let him help her to her feet, she walked out into the room and laid the folder on the dresser as she thought of how soon she'd have to call Erin and get her legal opinion on the proposal and see if she had any advice on what to do next.

"The four week murder trail of Detective James Gordon concluded just minutes ago."

Coming to a stop, Bird whirled around to face the T. V screen where she saw Jim being led down the courthouse stairs in cuffs by uniformed officers as cameras flashed like lightening from all around.

"With the jury returning a unanimous verdict of guilty, the judge handed down the maximum sentence of forty years to be served at Blackgate Penitentury. The Jury was unanimous in their decision after deliberating less than twenty-four hours. District Attorney Harvey Dent was not available for comment."

"Forty years..." Bird repeated back to the T.V screen before realizing under breath, "He'll be in his seventies before he gets out."

It was then that Bullock's words echoed around in her head, that the only way Jim would leave Blackgate would be in a body bag.

Stepping forward, Bird shut the T.V off, unable to stomach another minute of the reporters going back over the evidence presented against him a trial.

"Care for that tea now?" Alfred asked, with a somber expression of his own.

"No." Bird shook her head back and forth.

"I, um, I should finish with the closet. There's, uh..." She sniffed and rubbed her nose, "There's this organization that gathers men and women's dress clothes to help dress the homeless for job interviews and I think that's what mom and dad would have wanted."

"Very well." Alfred agreed. Standing for a moment with his hands behind his back before calling out, "I'll just start on your dad's side of the closet then."

"You don't have to-" Bird started to say, but he didn't give her a chance, "Might as well, eh? Better than having them sitting here taking up dust."

It was nearly a half hour later that the land line started to ring and Alfred excused himself to answer the call.

Appearing back in the doorway of the room with the portable phone held to his chest he announced, "It's Detective Gordon."

Bird dropped the dress she'd been inspecting onto the bed and quickly walked over to take the phone from him.

"Jim? I just saw the news..." She breathed as she clutched the phone to the side of her face.

•••

Lee stood with a hand over her stomach and looked around the chipped white paint in the hallway before glancing back over to where Bird was finishing up with bribing a few of the guards from the local jail where Jim was being held while his transport of Blackgate was being secured.

The time that had passed since the guilty verdict had been handed down hadn't felt real to her.

It was as though time was standing still and yet somehow racing at the same time.

This wasn't supposed to be how it turned out.

Jim didn't kill Officer Pinkney and yet here he was sentenced to serve the next forty years of his life behind bars for that very crime.

"Come on." Bird said as she turned back to face Lee, but the other woman didn't respond; just stared at her like she couldn't process the English language anymore.

Lee had barely gotten in the door of her apartment and took her coat off after the sentencing, when there was a knock.

She wasn't sure who she had expected to be waiting on the other side, but she sure didn't expect to see Bird standing there.

From there she'd explained that Jim had called her and asked her to get Lee in to see him.

It wasn't until they'd reached the jail and Bird started to pay people off that it finally made sense why out of everyone Jim had called her.

Lee looked down when she realized she was moving, her legs felt wobbly and like they weren't even connected to the rest of her body. She wasn't even sure how she was moving on her own until she looked over to see Bird had a hold on her coat sleeve was quite literally pulling her down the hallway.

They walked into a room with a large red sign on the wall just inside of a cell that read 'holding cell 2' and Lee pulled her sleeve away from Bird.

"How did you know that would work?" Lee questioned, eyeing her as she slowly lowered herself down into a seat on the metal bench against the wall.

"They're guards at a county jail." Bird reasoned, "You know how many hours they'd have to put in to come close to making what I just offered?"

"Sure." Lee nodded, rubbing her cold hands over her legs as she nervously watched the empty cell waiting for when they'd bring Jim out. Pulling in a breath she questioned, "You've been before haven't you?"

When Bird didn't answer, Lee furthered her one sided guessing game, "To see Jim?"

It was then that the loud buzzer sounded and the door at the back of the cell opened and they led Jim inside with cuffs around his wrists and chains down to where they were attached around his ankles.

Bird stood in place and swallowed hard as she watched him while Lee jumped to her feet as quickly as possible and darted to the bars.

"Thank you." Jim cleared his throat as he looked to Bird with an appreciative nod.

Biting down on her lip, she nodded back, before turning to leave the room and give them some privacy, though she could still hear everything from where she stood leaned against the wall just outside of the doorway.

"Lee..." Jim started to say, but she was quick to assure him, "We're gonna fight this."

When he didn't second the testament, she repeated, "Did you hear me? We're going to fight this? No matter what it takes."

Running his tongue over his lips, Jim pointed out, "The evidence isn't going to change."

"You're innocent." She nearly yelled in an out burst.

"I'm far from innocent. We both know that."

"So, what? We just give up?"

"We move on." Jim said, each word beating his heart down deeper into hell with a sledge hammer force.

"How?" Lee asked, "Move on? Move onto what?"

Seeing the look on his face she realized, "You mean...me? You mean I move on."

Bird's eyebrows lowered and she glanced down the hallway to where the guards she'd just paid were standing a group taking amongst themselves.

"I've thought long and hard about this." Jim continued, but Lee protested.

"You have to listen to me." He pleaded.

"I'm tired of listening!" She yelled.

All she'd done was trust in and listen to him and every single time she did it felt like she'd broken her own heart.

He'd promised her time and time again that things would change, that they'd get better, but they never did.

His last promise to her was that now that Galavan was dead, they could finally move one and start the life together that he'd promised when he'd given her a ring and asked for her hand.

Only now here they stood, staring at each other through a set of bars with just minutes on the clock until the time Bird had paid for would run out and he'd been bused away to Blackgate; and she'd be left to try and clean up the mess he'd left for her and their unborn child.

"It's not fair!" Lee cried, her devastating sliding into anger that he wasn't willing to keep fighting.

He looked broken. Completely done in and he was simply lying down to take the beating instead of fighting for her and their baby.

Tears poured down her cheeks and Lee asked, "How can you not be with us?"

Reaching through the bars she grabbed onto his cuffed wrists and forced him to lay his palm against her swollen stomach, as she fought to speak, "Birthdays and first steps and skinned knees and everything..."

"What, what, visits through bars and-and not knowing when the phone is gonna ring in the middle of the night to tell me when you're..." She stopped herself from saying what she couldn't even bring herself to think.

"I don't want that for either of you. You still have a chance at happiness. You need to go somewhere. Far away from here. Somewhere fit to raise our child. Start a new life. Forget I exist. It's the only way either one of us survives this." He said, making a life changing decision for them both without her say in the matter.

"No, Jim!" Lee cried, her body shook and she strained trying to reach for him again through the bars, but he moved to the back of the cell where the guards had opened the door to remove him.

"Don't try to contact me again. I won't reply. I'm sorry, Lee." He said, taking one last look at her before letting the guards lead him away, "I'm so, so sorry."

"No. Don't do this. Jim, don't do this! I love you!" Lee screamed out, her pain and sobs seeming to echo through the whole building.

Bird looked up to the harsh ceiling lighting and blinked back some tears of her own.

The sounds of Lee's earthshaking sobs were still pouring out of the room and Bird needed to get her self under complete control before she could even begin to go into the room and get Lee out of there to drive her back to her apartment.

She understood why Jim had called her, but she found herself wishing she hadn't taken the call or been so willing to jump and help him when he'd asked her to bring Lee there.

•••

Bullock let out a sigh as he opened the door to his apartment building and saw a nearly empty bottle of alcohol laying just inside the threshold.

From the looks of it, someone just might be having a worse night than him.

Even so, if he hadn't been looking where he was going then he could have tripped and broken his neck. He started to lean over to pick the glass bottle up, but then ended up just kicking it over to the side against the wall instead.

He was far too tired to deal with that.

After riding with Jim on the transport to Blackgate, he'd felt broken.

Torn to shreds by the kind of wounds that even stopping at the corner bar couldn't begin to patch up.

Taking his hat off, he rubbed his forehead and turned the corner leading to the hallway where his apartment was located.

He came to an abrupt stop when he saw someone on the floor leaned against his apartment door.

"Ah, hell..." Bullock breathed when he squinted in the lighting to see it was Bird who was sitting there waiting on him.

"I can't deal with this." He continued to speak to himself as he continued on the trek to his door.

He had no idea what kind of crazy she was there to unleash, but he was still trying to figure out how the hell he was going to find it in him to roll out of bed and go to work the next morning.

His steps slowed when he noticed another bottle of the exact same kind of alcohol he'd nearly tripped over clutched in her hand. Apparently, she'd been the one having a worse night than him.

Leaning down some he observed that her eyes appeared to be closed; she'd possibly already passed out.

Good riddance, he thought to himself, it didn't feel like all that long ago Jim was telling him how he'd gone off in the middle of the night to pick her up when she'd had too much to drink and had been a complete nightmare. Up to and including trying to jump from the moving car.

Whatever mess she'd brought to his doorstep was something he sure didn't need, especially on a night like this.

The idea of a hotel room started to sound better by the minute. Clean sheets, a fully stocked mini bar and premium cable.

It was practically calling his name.

"I see you."

"Damn it." He grumbled as he heard Bird's slurred words right as he turned to leave.

"Just going to leave me here, Bullock?" Bird complained with a whine in her tone that irked him like nails down a chalkboard, "You're a cop. Don't you know how dangerous this city is at night for a female."

"You seem like the type who can handle yourself." He remarked while he watched her struggle to get to her feet, but all she was succeeding in doing was splashing liquor from her open bottle all over the carpeted hallway.

"What the hell are you doing here?" He questioned before his forehead lined and his nose wrinkled, "How do you even know where I live?"

"I know lots of things." She practically yelled with a grunt as she finally managed to get to her feet only to have the hallway morph into something comparable to looking in a fun-house mirror.

Pinning her eyes shut she gripped onto the wall and did her best to stay standing.

"I don't know how to help him." She admitted, taking another swig from what was left in the bottle and in her sloppy movements some ran from the corners of her mouth.

Roughly using the back of her hand she wiped her mouth and repeated, "I don't know how to help him."

"Who?" Bullock questioned, keeping a eye on her as he took his keys from his pocket and got to work on unlocking his apartment door.

"Jim. Oswald. My brother." She motioned with her free hand through the air before jabbing a finger into his shoulder and accusing, "You... men... you're all a mess."

"Says the girl who's camped outside of my apartment with a bottle of Jack." Bullock accused back as he swatted her hand away from his shoulder where he was sure he was going to wake up with a bruise in the perfect shape of her fingerprint.

"You're all soooo proud!" She yelled, "Can't accept help-"

"Hey!" He yelled mirroring how loud she'd gotten, "Get outa here, crazy eyes. I don't know what's gotten into you, but my partner just got a forty year sentence and I'm not sure how this ended up being a 'poor you' situation, but Jim's the one I'm worried about. Okay? So scram."

With that he opened his apartment door and quickly maneuvered inside to shut the door behind him before she had the chance to stumble inside.

Bird's mouth hung open as she stared at the dark wooden door that had just been slammed in her face, just mere inches in front of her nose.

"Hey!" She shrieked, slamming her open palms against the door, "That was rude!"

"Bullock!" She continued to try and wake everyone up in the entire building while resorting to now beating on the door with the sides of her fists, "Harvey, don't leave me out here!"

"I just wanna...I...I just wanna know how he is. You saw him off to Blackgate, right? Harvey!"

The door to the apartment opened so quick that Bird was barely able to catch herself against the frame to keep from falling inside.

"Keep it down, would you?" He gruffly said, "I got neighbors, you know."

Lazily nodding and moving her lips around as if she couldn't feel them for a few seconds, Bird placed a hand to the side of her mouth as if she was about to tell a secret and loudly whispered, "Sorry."

"Yeah. Yeah." Bullock sighed, "Of course you are."

"How is he?" She slurred, still clutching onto the open door frame for balance.

"How is he-" He repeated the question back with a scoff, "He's not good, Bird. He's not good."

"I tried to help him." She admitted, pushing off the wall to help propel her over to where she saw an old plaid print couch, "He wouldn't let me. I... I tried to tell him that union lawyer couldn't hack it, but nooooo."

Bullock shut the door behind her and looked over to where she was now sitting on the end of the couch as if she had been a welcomed guest.

He shook his head.

This girl didn't wouldn't know a boundary if it slapped her in the face.

"Yeah, well, I get the impression he thinks this is karma or something. He didn't kill Pinkney, but the boy scout has a lot he does feel guilty for." Bullock said as he crossed the living room and sat down in one of the worn recliners across the coffee table from the couch.

"Galavan had it coming." Bird stated.

She'd stood by that decision since the night it happened and even quite a while before then.

"I'm not saying he didn't." Bullock simply replied.

In fact, the only thing that bothered him about Galavan's death was finding out that it had been Jim who'd pulled the trigger.

Some people in the world could handle something like that, but he'd watched it eat away at his partner.

Even so, he couldn't say he was surprised when Jim finally fessed up about what really happened that night.

Not after Galavan had been arrested and let go once already. A man like that, with his influence and means would be impossible to keep incarcerated in a city as corrupt as Gotham.

But no matter how many times Jim toted the tag line of how he couldn't risk Galavan going free again, Bullock knew there was more to it.

Revenge.

One of the oldest motives in the book.

Jim had been different since the night they'd all thought Bird had died.

After all, she'd tried to tell him that Galavan was the one behind it all and he didn't listen. He'd turned his back on her when she needed him, or anyone at all the most.

It had burned like acid eating him alive from the inside out that he'd stood there protecting Galavan while Bird had been shot.

"What do we do now? How are we supposed to him now?" Bird asked, leaning forward and resting her head in her hands.

Bullock raised a brow at how suddenly this had turned into a 'we' problem.

"I don't know." He sighed, leaning further back into the aged fabric of the chair and resting his head, "Find the person -or group responsible."

"I don't know how." Bird angrily snapped.

As if she hadn't already thought that herself.

"Yeah. Me either."

Since the night Jim had been arrested, Bullock had poured everything he had into trying to clear Jim's name and had quickly seen what an unachievable task it would be.

The way all of the evidence was air tight and quickly piling up seemed like something from a movie and not real life.

Whoever was behind it had to have been a genius; that was the only thing he was sure of; well, that and his partner was innocent.

"Forty years..." Bird breathed, her voice coming out muffled against her hands while she rubbed her face, "Is a very, very, very long time."

With a nod, Bullock pulled the flask from his pocket and downed a swig.

Forty years was indeed a very long time.

But this was Blackgate and Jim had put a good number of the inmates away in there.

News had probably already spread that -that's where he'd be serving his time, which meant the other prisoners were already smelling blood in the water.

No, there was no way Jim was actually going to serve that forty years.

If he couldn't find a way to get his partner out of there then as he told Bird before, Jim would be leaving that place in a body bag.

Rubbing her fingers through her hair, Bird groaned.

It wasn't just her head that hurt; it was her brain that was aching too.

Her mind hadn't shut off in what felt like forever and all she'd wanted was a break.

Just a moment of silence, but everything was too loud.

Considering all that had happened and up until Bird made it to the corner liquor store, she thought she'd been doing good.

That she'd been handling her situations well.

Every minute of every day she was worried about the trouble her brother might end up getting into on the streets. Even hanging around Selina, he still didn't posses even a quarter of the street smarts he'd need to survive in a city like Gotham.

She still wasn't sure what Professor Strange did to Oswald, but she was left feeling like she'd lost her best friend. That and how he was now trying to tell her she needed to turn her life around when he'd been so opposed to it in the past.

He, who probably had more skeletons in his closet than she did.

Now, Jim was in prison and she knew he didn't stand much of a chance inside those gates.

Still, even feeling like she'd drowning in life all over again, she'd done her best to hold it together.

Tried to keep her mind as busy as her hands. She'd been cooking and cleaning to help the minute hand speed up.

In the nearly two years since their parents had been killed, Bruce hadn't been able to start cleaning out the master bedroom and so that became Bird's new project.

If she didn't leave Wayne Manor than she had less chance of getting herself into trouble.

Not to mention it avoided the situations where people had been coming up to her on the streets to strike up conversations and tell her how they loved her interview with channel 82.

That only served as a reminder that even though everything was supposed to be different now; deep down she was starting to feel as just as lost as she'd been before Galavan ever entered her life.

All things considered, she'd been doing better than she'd even expected out of herself.

That was until Jim called and asked her to get Lee into see him.

Always ready to help him, she'd agreed and then was left to stand outside of the room while he shattered Lee's heart.

As if that wasn't bad enough, she then had to drive Lee back to her apartment -which was quiet. Even if awkwardly so.

But it was after Bird made sure Lee made it back inside her apartment that things took a turn.

The doctor blew up at her.

Letting out every ounce of anger she hadn't gotten to express to Jim for how their love and life together had failed -every ounce of that land on Bird's shoulders.

Going so far as blaming her for nearly everything that had gone sour in her relationship.

In truth, Lee had never been entirely comfortable with how close Bird and Jim seemed to be -but she loved and trusted him. So it wasn't something she'd push or choose to fight about.

But then Bird was framed and ended up in Arkham and Lee found herself eating more meals by herself while Jim chose to spend time signing into the visitors log at the asylum.

She'd thought that had interrupted their lives and distracted him; but it was nothing compared to the change in him when they'd all thought Bird was dead.

Countless sleepless nights and his being overwhelmed by such a deep sense of failure; nearly obsessing over the need to bring Galavan to justice.

As if it could have brought her back.

The truth was that their relationship had been rocky for quite some time. On a course headed to disaster and deep down she knew that wasn't Bird's fault.

But she was the one standing there when the floodgates opened and so she got the worst of it.

Bird didn't even remember leaving Lee's apartment really.

She just knew she had to get out of there fast.

Very few people could have gotten away with talking to her in that manner.

But seeing as how Lee was pregnant and clearly going through one of the worst nights of her entire life, Bird had taken the high road and simply walked away.

From there she'd intended on picking some more boxes and tape up from the store to continue cleaning out her parent's bedroom and give it a few hours before she'd planned on calling Bullock and asking how Jim's transfer went.

But she ended up trading in the home improvement store for a small liquor store on the corner and somewhere along the line realized she was in no condition to drive and ended up waiting for Bullock at his apartment.

Just another disastrous night in Gotham -where things never go as planned.

•••