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gothamflatfootThe flowers arrived as ordered and now rest against the headstone in Gotham Cemetery. Roses, two dozen and blood red. He should have brought them himself. Not the first mistake he has made with her, probably not the last, even in death.
Her death.
Crouching down in the gathering twilight of a waning Saturday, he lifts one rose, studies it, returns it to the other twenty-three. Two dozen roses to mark...what? Mother's Day? They never had children, though he knows she had cared for his daughter. So why the flowers, why today?
Guilt. Always, ever the guilt. He knows she would be alive if she had remained only another police officer, only a face in the crowd. If she had been anything other than his wife. She died for no reason other than to give him pain. He knows this; he was shown it plain as day by her killer, the madman clown bent on hurting him.
He squeezes his eyes closed, willing away any tears. Because the madman did give him pain with his wife and daughter, pain worse than any physical wound, pain that only death would end. And here, only here, would he allow himself to feel two emotions too powerful for the common day: grief for the murder of his wife and the pain suffered by his daughter; and regret that his code, his honor, allowed their assailant to live.
Standing, he places his hand on the tombstone that reads SARAH ESSEN GORDON and then walks into the night. Into the shadows, which he has come to understand.
Maybe that's why he and the Batman remain allies to this day.
(Originally posted: May 7, 2005)
Her death.
Crouching down in the gathering twilight of a waning Saturday, he lifts one rose, studies it, returns it to the other twenty-three. Two dozen roses to mark...what? Mother's Day? They never had children, though he knows she had cared for his daughter. So why the flowers, why today?
Guilt. Always, ever the guilt. He knows she would be alive if she had remained only another police officer, only a face in the crowd. If she had been anything other than his wife. She died for no reason other than to give him pain. He knows this; he was shown it plain as day by her killer, the madman clown bent on hurting him.
He squeezes his eyes closed, willing away any tears. Because the madman did give him pain with his wife and daughter, pain worse than any physical wound, pain that only death would end. And here, only here, would he allow himself to feel two emotions too powerful for the common day: grief for the murder of his wife and the pain suffered by his daughter; and regret that his code, his honor, allowed their assailant to live.
Standing, he places his hand on the tombstone that reads SARAH ESSEN GORDON and then walks into the night. Into the shadows, which he has come to understand.
Maybe that's why he and the Batman remain allies to this day.
(Originally posted: May 7, 2005)
