We Were Born Sick • Gotham Fanfiction •

XLII: Pretty Little Broken Things

"I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it."- Mae West

~()~

Bird was in the middle of pulling some crumpled up cash from her pocket to pay for the fruit smoothie she'd ordered from the truck vendor on the street when her phone started to ring from her other pocket.

Blowing out a sigh, she handed the balled up money to the vendor before pulling her phone out to see who was calling her. When she saw the incoming call, was yet again, from Jim Gordon –she clicked the ignore button.

After getting her smoothie, she dropped her change into the tip jar and turned around to head back to where she'd left her car parked when her phone started to ring again.

She reached into her pocket and started to hit one of the buttons on the side of her phone to silence the call, until she considered that maybe it was her brother or someone other than Jim. But when she took it from her pocket to check, she groaned at seeing it was Jim calling again.

Just as she ignored the call and was internally swearing that if he called her one more time she was going to either silence or turn her phone off –she looked up and saw Jim leaned against his car watching her with his own phone in his hand.

He started walking in her direction and stated, "I've been trying to call you for the last few days."

"Really?" Bird questioned, letting out a breath and shrugging as she lied, "That's funny; my phone hasn't rang."

With that, she turned and started walking in a brisk pace in the opposite direction, forcing Jim to jog after her.

"Why are you always walking away from me?" He asked, as he closed in on her and reached out to grab her arm and bring her to a stop, "I'm just trying to talk to you."

"I'm busy." She complained, shrugging his grip off and trying to walk away again –but this time he got in front of her and blocked her path.

"Busy doing what?" He asked, with raised brows.

"What do you want, Jim?" She questioned, ignoring what he'd asked her.

"We need you to come down to the station. I left you a message-" He started to explain, but Bird shushed him as she let out a loud, dramatic sigh and finished, "Essen needs a statement from me about what happened in the room with Jerome. Yeah, I got your message. I'm not interested."

"It doesn't work like that." He argued, "You agreed to help with the interrogation, now you have to sign some papers and give a statement."

"What's the point?" Bird asked, "I mean you got everything you need from him, he admitted to killing his mom –in graphic detail. He's practically a shoo-in for Arkham, clearly he's crazy." A smile spread over her lips as she added, "He's funny, pretty much hilarious –but he's nuts."

"Funny?" He exclaimed, "What part of what happened in that room was funny to you?"

Taking a drink from her smoothie, Bird paused before laughing, "How about all of it?"

"How about none of it." He argued back, "We're talking about an eighteen year old kid who murdered his own mother."

"Well, according to that eighteen year old kid; she had it coming." Bird reminded him.

Jim bit down on the side of his tongue to keep from arguing with her, knowing it would get them nowhere and Bird always seemed ready to argue with him about anything and everything.
Though, he had to admit that her complete lack of emotion on the subject was a bit disturbing –even more so if she was telling the truth about finding Jerome's antics entertaining.