Chapter 79: Chapter 79 | A heat like a rock II
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Gordon and Barbara had a fight when they returned home. Barbara waited for him until very late. She sat alone in the dark room with the dinner that had already gone cold. It was carefully prepared by Barbara to celebrate their upcoming purchase of their first home, but unfortunately, the most important character was missing from this dinner.
Barbara knew that Gordon was busy, but she also knew that Gordon was so busy not because he was incapable of completing his work, but because his workplace didn't really need a policeman.
Accompanied by Gordon all the way, Barbara knew very well that with Gordon's abilities, he wouldn't have been so exhausted in any city other than Gotham. More importantly, Barbara also knew that even if Gordon worked so hard, it was meaningless because he couldn't save this place.
When Gordon came back, Barbara was sitting on the sofa, caressing a photo they took after their internship. Both Gordon and she were very young, even children in that photo.
At that time, they were both under 20 years old, and had just started their relationship for less than two months. They drank too much at the party and talked about their aspirations together.
Barbara's family situation was very bad. She wanted to earn money to improve the lives of her parents and brothers. Gordon was born in a middle-class family with some property. Because the police had saved his family before, he had dreamed of becoming a police officer who upholds justice since he was a child.
Although their aspirations were different, they still fell in love. Even the long-distance relationship that lasted for several years didn't make their relationship fade.
But on this evening, as if the emotions that had been building up for a long time erupted all at once, Barbara sat on the sofa silently crying, while Gordon stood at the door without saying a word.
It wasn't that he didn't want to comfort Barbara, nor was he indifferent to seeing his beloved fiancée crying alone.
But he knew, he knew what Barbara was going to say, and he also knew that he couldn't answer Barbara's question—why did he have to stay in Gotham?
Gordon isn't a native of Gotham. He was born in Chicago, and he didn't come from a poor background. Instead, he grew up in a fairly affluent middle-class family. He's not a super genius, and most of his achievements came from his hard work.
From his teachers to his classmates, to his fiancée whom he spent his days and nights with, nobody understood why Gordon gave up his bright future in the Chicago Police Department to come to this ghost town called Gotham, and even stayed here for years.
Gordon hasn't achieved anything significant in the Gotham Police Department.
His promotion has been very slow, and after several years, he's still just the leader of a small team. He hasn't solved any major cases or made any significant contributions. Even if he did contribute to certain cases, he never got the credit he deserved, let alone change Gotham and uphold justice.
But Gordon was obsessed with staying here, as if he was possessed by a ghost. Whenever his former teachers and classmates mention him, they always look regretful. In their eyes, if Gordon knew how to be more flexible, he could have achieved much more than he has now.
Gordon walks over and hugs Barbara, who's been crying. She doesn't ask anything because she knows the question she wants to ask the most, Gordon has never answered.
When facing the choice between his badge and his lover, Gordon always remains silent.
The nights in Gotham were never short of cries, but Barbara's tears were special. Few people here would shed tears for lovers, as the warmth in their chests was barely enough to warm themselves. They would not cry loudly for something as elusive as love.
Having seen too many cries in Gotham nights, Barbara's sadness and tears made Gordon even more distressed. He felt like he had become a worse killer than those criminals.
He thought that when he decided to live in this abyss, he should not expect people on the surface to look at him more, even if there were such people, her ultimate fate would only be to shed tears for him, like the cold rain that fell on him in the late nights of Gotham. But these tears were ultimately shed in vain, as countless lovers' tears were like countless drizzles, unable to change this unchanging stubborn stone.
The next day, Harvey visited Schiller again, which surprised Schiller, as this lawyer was always very mindful of etiquette and rarely visited without an appointment.
Harvey said, "Gordon came to me yesterday, hoping I could find a legal advisor job for his fiancée, preferably in Metropolis or other southern cities."
"I think his mental state is off, so I came to you. I feel like he and his fiancée had more than just a fight. They had bought a house together, even planned to have kids, but now Gordon seems to want to break up with Barbara, something doesn't seem right..."
Schiller believed Harvey's intuition, but when he tried to call Gordon, his phone went unanswered. When he called Gordon's precinct, his colleagues told Schiller that the hardworking detective who had been working overtime for years hadn't shown up for work that afternoon.
Schiller had a bad feeling and quickly contacted Gordon's partner, Batman.
The previous night, Gordon had been contemplating all night, and in the early morning of the next day, he broke up with Barbara.
In order to help Barbara leave Gotham as soon as possible, he asked Harvey, the prominent lawyer, to find her a new job, preferably as far away from Gotham as possible.
Gordon was just an ordinary person, and the emotional impact of breaking up with his longtime girlfriend almost made him collapse.
At the precinct, he couldn't focus on work all morning, feeling numb and lost. By noon, everyone had gone out for lunch, and the empty office made Gordon unable to stay any longer.
He walked out of the precinct in a daze, just wanting to find a place with more people to distract himself from the overwhelming sadness.
But things didn't go as planned. Just as he had anticipated, his troubles were far from over.
He hadn't walked far when he realized someone was following him. Gordon regained some clarity and tried to quickly return to the precinct, where there were guards with heavy weapons and it wouldn't be easy for someone to invade.
But the person tailing him was cunning. When Gordon saw a few hostile faces staring at him on the road ahead, he knew that continuing to move forward would not result in anything good.
He carried only one gun with him, and although the magazine was full, the handgun had limited killing power. He could only rely on his familiarity with the terrain, turn right into the alley with the handgun in his hand, and then hide in a blind spot of the field of view at a corner.
This behavior did not work. The people who were tracking him obviously understood the terrain here very well. When they saw Gordon turn right, they immediately followed him.
The footsteps outside the alley became closer and closer, and the sky gradually darkened. Gordon silently calculated the time. When the footsteps appeared at the entrance of the alley, he shot at the entrance of the alley during the moment when the sky was dimming to black, which was the worst time for human vision.
Seeing that his bullets did not hit anyone, Gordon immediately gave up the first plan. He knew that the people on the other side were undoubtedly well-trained assassins who would not be affected by the field of vision.
He immediately put away the gun and ran backwards. Two gunshots came from behind him. What surprised Gordon was that these gunshots had a muffled sound with a silencer. Gordon immediately understood that these people were not locals from Gotham.
Assassins from Gotham would not use silencers on their guns. It would be meaningless, as no one in Gotham would make any additional response to the sound of the gun. It was like putting earplugs on a deaf person.
Thinking of this, Gordon formulated a new plan in his mind.
The people behind him were getting closer and closer, obviously with better stamina and explosive power than Gordon. Gordon ran to the end of the alley and quickly climbed up a wall along the exterior.
When he climbed to the top of the wall, the people chasing him arrived. At that moment, Gordon stopped moving. With a bang, he was shot and he rolled down the wall, falling into the yard.
The bullet hit his arm and did not cause a fatal injury. Gordon covered his arm and continued to run forward, shouting, "The Black Tower gang attacked me! They fired! They fired!"
This yard was the backyard of a nightclub. Upon hearing this, someone rushed out, and the person who was following Gordon was surrounded by gangsters. At that moment, when he just climbed to the top of the wall, he was hit by three or four bullets from the gangsters due to his temporary inability to move.
The Gotham code of conduct is to shoot first and talk later, regardless of whether or not the opponent is visible or who they are.
However, Gordon's crisis was not resolved. Obviously, he was being chased by a group of people. The first person he shook off was just an appetizer. Soon, when he ran through the alley and onto the road, he saw a car rushing towards him.
It seemed that they had several plans, or rather, they had intended to use that person to drive Gordon onto the road and then hit him with the car.
Gordon rolled to the right, and the car did not hit him, but a black hole-like gun was extended from the car.
As soon as Gordon stood up, he was shot again. This time, the bullet hit his back and he let out a scream.
However, because the gun was fired while the car was driving at high speed, the bullet did not hit any vital organs, but the intense pain overwhelmed Gordon. However, his will to survive kept him running forward.
The more pain he felt, the clearer Gordon's mind became. He knew that if he continued to run like this, he would be caught in just a few minutes. He endured the intense pain, holding his chest tightly with one arm, while the other arm bled profusely from the gunshot wound.
Following the route in his memory, Gordon ran to the back door of an apartment building. The lock on this back door was broken and always loose, so he used one arm to pull the door lock hard. The wound on his chest made every movement unbearable, and Gordon's breathing became heavier and heavier.
Soon, the door was opened a crack. Gordon was not tall, and his body was not sturdy, but he just managed to squeeze through that gap.
After entering, he did not stop but climbed up a small section of stairs in three steps, pulled open the window of the nearest corridor, and climbed up desperately. Then he closed the window and hid on the eaves protruding from the outside of the second floor.
Hearing the sound of the door being slammed downstairs, Gordon gritted his teeth, slid down the eaves, and fell straight onto a canopy. Fortunately, when he slid down on his back, no trace of blood was left behind.
After falling onto the canopy, Gordon used his last bit of strength to flip over and cover himself with the garbage bags below. After a while, he heard the footsteps inside the building disappear, and it seemed like they didn't find him and had left.
Gordon lay among the pile of garbage, feeling the heavy scent of blood in every breath. The bullet had pierced his lung.
His arm was numb from the loss of blood, but he could still feel the engagement ring on his ring finger, gradually merging with the cold metal of the ring.
He remembered breaking up with Barbara, her incredulous and heartbroken expression.
He thought, Barbara was right. He was a fool, a hopeless fool who would never learn to adapt, a fool who deserved to die alone in loneliness.
Gordon felt an irresistible chill followed by a warm surge from within his body. Blood trickled down from the cut on his forehead, flowing into his eyes, staining his vision red and shrouding it in darkness.
Soon, Gotham started raining again. Today's rain was nothing special, just like every other rainy night in Gotham - fine and icy.
Gordon's consciousness gradually faded, like a trapped beast lying in the abyss. The tears of a lover falling from the heights couldn't save his dwindling life, but it reminded him of the rain of tears from his loved one, stirring a stronger emotion in his heart. He thought,
If he was inherently a foolish person who couldn't learn to adapt, he would rather exhaust all his vitality in this quagmire, with a heart as hard as unyielding stone.
Let him die alone here, with the putrid wind blowing over his dry bones, erasing all traces of his existence, and then, facing the endless darkness, his last bit of soul would still resist, refusing to kneel.
Gordon thought -
Then let him stay here, standing against all odds, until dawn.
.....
[ShaneFreak: These chapter are getting too long, this one was 2300 words, should I divide them in two parts? At this rate I can only upload 2-3 chapters a day....]
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