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[did]

I'm thrilled.

[ Gordon's tone of voice, however, suggests the exact opposite. ]

ooc: warnings for spoilers in threads should castmates tag in!

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[did]

[ It's a smile he doesn't return; misplaced trust isn't the sort of thing one forgets all too quickly. ]

I'll figure it out as I go along.

[convictions]

[ Misplaced trust. Just like the slow knife, that is the one thing that cuts the deepest. She's not so unfamiliar. ]

Oh, I sincerely hope you do. [ He won't; she's convinced of that. Try and try as the commissioner might, he is fighting an uphill battle, one that he cannot win. (The brighter a light burns, the bigger a shadow it ultimately casts.) ] Leave man to his own devices and he will accomplish terrible things.

[did]

[ (Jim Gordon knows all about the slow knife. Not just when it comes to her betrayal, but the slow knife as in eight years of suffering under a weight only he could carry, eight years in which he'd lived out a lie, and lost those he'd cared about as a result.

She's right, of course. It's the slow knife that cuts the deepest. And there's no one in Gotham who's unfamiliar with that pain. It just happens that it's Gotham that's managed to survive it, and the light, as unlikely as it is, has always managed to fend off the dark.) ]

Terrible things. But sometimes great things, too.

[convictions]

Exercises in vanity and self-importance. You forget, Commissioner — I have seen the true face of Gotham's charity.

[ All of those fundraisers spent as Miranda Tate, all of those charity balls and $1000-a-plate dinners, spent with self-proclaimed philanthropists still not yet sick with their own entitlement, not yet choking on their hubris. ]

[did]

[ To much of the world outside, Gotham is a hellhole. Yes, some of its population thrives on decadence, gluts itself with its own riches. Yes, it has seen some of the worst crime known to man.

But it is Gotham that produced the Batman, and it is Gotham that has also produced some truly good men. It is Gotham that stands as the true example that something great can indeed rise from the ashes and rubble. The city's face has never been handsome, but it endures, beating back defeat after defeat.

There is hope, here. And it's that knowledge that has kept Jim Gordon alive. ]

I don't forget much— [ the sentence breaks off awkwardly, the name Ms. Tate on his lips, held back only at the last moment. ] We're not all good people, I know that. But we've got a hell of a lot more than that going for us.