He made the rounds.
Commissioner Gordon was at his desk surrounded by case files when Jude arrived, grabbed the snack bag out of his hands before he'd finished saying hello, told him he was being too polite, and physically escorted him back to the entrance of the precinct. The door closed. Gordon was already on his phone before it had finished swinging shut.
Harvey Dent was processing case files at a rate that suggested he'd installed some kind of internal assembly line. Jude sat across from him for approximately ten minutes. Harvey did not look up. When Jude stood to leave, Harvey's pen continued moving at the same pace. It wasn't clear he'd registered the visit at all.
The prison was, if anything, worse. Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy had both developed what could charitably be called a professional focus and less charitably be called workaholism of a kind usually only seen in people who have recently discovered that working was the only reliable alternative to thinking. They responded to Jude's conversational attempts with "mm" and "haha" at rhythmically appropriate intervals while their eyes stayed fixed elsewhere.
Jude ended up in Wayne Manor, at Alfred's desk, with a cup of tea he hadn't asked for and a melancholy that he felt was reasonable given the circumstances.
"No friendship," he informed Alfred, "can withstand the test of time."
Alfred continued working.
"I've been gone for weeks," Jude said. "Weeks. I killed a demon. I nearly died. Multiple times. Doesn't that warrant a conversation?"
"Mr. Jude," Alfred said, without looking up, "may I offer a small suggestion?"
"Please."
"Go home. Find something worthwhile to do."
Jude was standing outside the front door of Wayne Manor thirty seconds later, still holding the teacup. The tea hadn't even cooled.
He went back to the kids that evening. They, at least, were pleased to see the snacks.
Gotham was in an odd interlude — the reconstruction still ongoing, but the immediate crises resolved, the city in the particular state of provisional calm that followed one of its periodic disasters. No active gang operations. No major villain incidents on the scanner. The crime rate was doing what the crime rate always did, but at a manageable frequency rather than an emergency one.
I should find some work, Jude thought. Something productive.
He was still thinking this, half a minute later, when the system notification arrived.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
Assets received: $28,500
First payment and partial bonus — Gotham Renovation Project.
Jude stared at this for a long moment.
"Where did that come from? I haven't done anything yet."
[Upon verification: this reflects your contribution to date on the Gotham Renovation Project.]
He lay back on his bed and looked at the ceiling with the warm, uncomplicated satisfaction of someone who has discovered that the work was already being credited.
Redistribute from the rich, he thought contentedly. Those gang leaders and corrupt officials were simply sitting on too much money. This is correct. This is justice. Keep going, pointy-headed brother.
He decided he'd earned a few days off. He rolled over to get comfortable, discovered the charging cable was too short, and rolled back.
What's the hurry anyway. It's past three. Have some tea first.
Across the city, in the study of Wayne Manor, Bruce Wayne was writing reports at his desk when the television caught his attention.
"— scientists have identified a previously unknown cactus species in an arid region of Sudan. The growth rate appears anomalous; the plants are spreading through the desert at a rate that local authorities describe as unprecedented. Residents of several tribal communities in the affected area have begun cultivating the species as a supplementary water source—"
Bruce set down his pen.
The television showed satellite imagery: a spread of green cutting across the desert in a pattern that looked, from above, nothing like any natural growth distribution. It looked deliberate.
"Alfred."
"The cactus sample has been acquired, Master Bruce. The compost bin—" a slight pause — "the shaman declined to sell it."
"Look at that map." Bruce nodded at the screen. The green was expanding outward from a central point at tens of metres per day. "The chain reaction from that alone will take years to fully understand. The woodland regeneration around that settlement—" He stopped. "He has the ability to change things at a scale we won't recognise until it's already happened."
Alfred regarded him with the particular patience of someone who has worked for this family long enough to find most things unremarkable.
"Are we very concerned, Master Bruce?"
"We're attentive," Bruce said. "There's a difference." He turned back to his papers. "Keep an eye on things."
Two days later, Jude got up early and walked to the gold shop.
The problem had occurred to him in London: the golden pumpkin headgear he'd crafted was technically functional but practically inconvenient. The system could store it, but any actual use required carving a piece off, which removed it from the system's cataloguing. The item was too large and oddly shaped to be practical as currency.
The solution was straightforward: commission the gold shop to melt it down and recast it as a series of smaller pumpkins. Same material, same total value, much more manageable inventory. Each small pumpkin could be stored and retrieved individually.
And frankly, Jude thought, walking down the block toward his small garage and the car inside it, no one in this city is going to try anything with my gold. Not with my reputation.
The "reputation" in question was largely accidental, but it had proven useful in ways he hadn't anticipated. There were benefits to being known as someone that bad things happened around — at least when the bad things happened to people who were already doing bad things.
He hummed something while walking, reached the mailbox, opened it out of habit, and stopped.
An envelope. With a stamp on it, which meant it had arrived through the actual postal system rather than being hand-delivered, which was already unusual enough — Jude had received exactly one letter since arriving in Gotham City, and that had been Harvey's Christmas message, and someone had physically put that in his hands rather than the box.
He turned it over. The handwriting on the front was familiar in a way he couldn't immediately place, and then he could.
He opened it on the spot.
Jude — it's been a while, and I haven't heard from you. I hope things are going well in Gotham.
I told Camilla I was planning to move back to Metropolis, to pick up where I left off. So if you were thinking of visiting — don't come to Metropolis. It's worse than Gotham right now.
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