Land where I land
It’s unusual for Jim to call him at the Police Station for anything. Even during the worst of cases, the officer has always tried to not get him involved or to come to him once everything was settled.
So, when he calls late at night, Bruce knows that something isn’t right. No villain attacks, no escapee from Arkham, no robberies, and no bomb threats: does Jason need to get bailed out of jail again?
Jim Gordon’s voice is somewhat sarcastic as he speaks over his desk’s phone. “You’ll find out when you see it.”
Bruce is not looking forward to it.
It’s late, too late for any sane and law-abiding citizen to be out at such an hour. What could’ve possibly happened to cause such a mess that he needed to get involved? Couldn’t Jim just have used the Batsignal if things were that bad?
Instead, when he enters the building, the old commissioner is snickering. Bruce is definitely not good with emotions, but he thinks he’s making fun of him. He doesn’t find it funny.
“What's going on?”
Bruce Wayne is confused, confused as to why the officer is so cheerful, confused about why he would call him here in the first place. Did he find his job that amusing?
“We’ve found this girl… well, let’s just say that she basically landed right on the back of an officer, and seemed to be confused, likely she’s an immigrant.”
Bruce was stunned.
“You called me here… for a kid who’s lost?”
James Gordon places a hand on top of his shoulder. “Do you know any French?”
This was going to be a long night.
There is a woman in the interrogation room, talking to what looks like a girl not older than fifteen, at least from her height. From behind the glass, he can’t see very well.
“Sophie, come out for now,” says Jim on the interphone, and the CPS worker obliges, waving tenderly at the girl she’s been interrogating.
Sophie Dallway comes to the other side of the interrogation room and fixes her skirt. Bruce notices that she must’ve dressed up in a hurry, but he understands: it’s quite late in the night.
“Did she tell us something?” asks Jim with a small amused smile under his mustache. Bruce’s on the verge of exploding.
“Not much, to be honest. She keeps telling the same story, she has no idea how she got here and what happened. She insists on letting her go, that she’ll find a way.”
“We can’t do that,”
“I told her that, she just started shaking.”
Jim looks down. “Good,” he says, sarcastically. Then he turns around to face Bruce, “Your turn now.”
“What?”
“Go in there and talk to her, Wayne.”
“But why?”
Jim shoves him out of the room with a half-hearted pat on the back. “You’ll guess soon enough.”
The interrogation room is surprisingly dark. The small yellow lamp hasn’t been changed since probably the 1960s and the empty metal chair doesn’t help to give a welcoming environment to a child. He can barely make out her silhouette, but he trusts Jim, he has to.
He opens up the folder on the metal, icy-cold table, and starts reading. “So, your name is…”
“Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” she completes the sentence for him, hesitantly.
Bruce is already lost, he doesn’t know what to say anymore. “You’re from Paris, is that correct?”
"Yes," she replies softly, "but I don't know how I ended up here in... Gotham, is it?" Her voice is tinged with confusion and a hint of fear, well hidden behind her thick, native French accent. He doesn’t fail to notice the urgency in her hand movements.
He scans the document one more time. Everything she has said to the CPS worker seems rather unfamiliar, he can’t for the life of him understand why he’s been involved in this case. He closes the folder and looks up sternly.
At that moment, it finally clicks. The teen is here, sitting in front of him, and she has two dark black pigtails that look almost blue under the light. Her eyes are two perfect sapphires with the tint of a calm sea. Her lips are in the shape of his mother’s, small and heart-shaped, and don’t hide the small pointy canines that Damian has. Despite the dark and gloomy atmosphere, the girl brightens the room, even with the terror easily readable in her pupils.
Bruce feels like fainting.
Marinette is rambling about needing to go back to Paris, but her words don’t fully reach his ears, it’s all rumbling background noise. The only thing he can hear is his racing heart, threatening to dig a hole and come out of his chest.
“Who are your parents?” he asks, with a stoic face, interrupting her quite abruptly. Bruce immediately notices his faux pas: he can’t let this overwhelm him, he can’t afford to be emotional anymore.
“Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng,” she answers, her eyes low on the ground. “They’re bakers…” she whispers. Bruce manages to catch it. The names are unknown to him.
“Do you have a number we can call?” he asks, but she shakes her head.
“No, I have their numbers saved on my phone, which is… back in Paris.”
This feels like a joke. He wants to turn around and ask Jim if it was Clark’s idea, but he realizes that whatever this ordeal is about, this poor girl, who looks so much like a carbon copy of himself, is disoriented and scared.
Bruce has a sympathetic look in his eyes. “Do you remember what happened right before you got here?”
Her voice is soft, it reminds him of someone.“I was in my room, getting up for school when I just… there was a blue light and I was here.”
He notices immediately that she is lying: her eyes look at her right, and she instinctively starts touching her face, her earrings, her neck. But why would she? Wouldn’t it be better for her to give the entire truth so that they can just send her home?
“That’s… peculiar,” he comments, trying to indicate that he doesn’t believe her. Not that he doesn’t believe she has just popped out of nowhere, which would be nothing compared to the sheer amount of strange things that happen in Gotham, but that she’s not telling the whole truth.
Her smile contorts into an embarrassed expression. “I know but… I can’t tell you much more.”
“Why?”
Marinette awkwardly fixes her posture. He can’t believe that such a petite girl, who wears pink ribbons and a pastel t-shirt for school, looks actually so much like him. “We… can’t really talk about what’s happening in Paris. Mayor’s decree. Technically, it’s the former mayor’s decree, but it’s still valid.”
That’s concerning, to say the least. He turns around to gesture to Jim that this is something they have to discuss. But what could possibly be happening in Paris that needs to be hidden from the rest of the world?
“I understand your fear, Marinette. But why is there an information block in there in the first place?”
The girl freezes. “I can… I can’t tell you,” she murmurs. His heart contorts at seeing the expression on her face, the same of a small puppy who has been abandoned. The irony of it doesn’t go unnoticed.
“You can. You’re not in Paris right now, so any decree doesn’t affect you. I’ll make sure to protect you, don’t worry,” he says, trying his best to reassure her. Bruce is very good at faking confidence and charisma; but at real compassion and genuine affection? He’s hopeless.
Marinette still looks like she is being tortured, like she has seen a ghost. Yet, she starts explaining what exactly happened in the last two years. He understands her hesitance: magical jewelry, possessed people, domestic terrorism. This city is in dire need of help, and he knows what he will be talking about at the next Justice League meeting.
As he hears the girl explain and analyze the villain in detail, every doubt clears from his mind. That is certainly his daughter. If her overall look wasn’t enough, the way she describes accurately every move and every action taken by the villains to terrorize her city would convince anyone that this is his long-lost kid. From the way Hawkmoth lured in citizens using complex schemes, to the way Mariposa’s attacks are far more well-organized and diligently planned.
His mind starts wandering as the girl keeps on telling Paris’s story. Her skin is pale and reveals on her arms burn marks, old cuts, and bruises. She’s incredibly small and thin despite being the daughter of a baker, and it makes a lot of questions pop up in his head. She doesn’t have the body of a hero, but she sure has the mind of one.
The papers that the CPS worker gave him tell him that she’s fifteen. He tries to think who the mother of this girl could be. It was too early for both Talia and Selina, and the timeline doesn’t match with Vicky Vale either. He looks at her once more, and it hits him like a brick.
It couldn’t be. But also, it is the only possibility. He doesn’t want to believe his own mind, but logically he already knows who it is. Zatanna Zatara. It is impossible to ignore now: she looks exactly like her. A drop of sweat runs down his spine. Why didn’t she ever tell him?
Come to think of it, he hasn’t heard from the woman for fifteen years. His head hurt. Does that mean that Marinette has… No, it’s best to think about this later.
“Sir, are you okay?” she asks, seeing that he doesn’t seem responsive to her story. The sweet tone of her voice makes him feel another gut of pain in his chest.
He shakes his head. At that moment he realizes he hasn’t even told her his name. He wants nothing more than to dig a hole, crawl in it and die. He thankfully can’t hear Jim Gordon laughing his ass off in the other room, or else he would try to jump out of a window, no gear on.
“Yes, sorry. Call me Bruce, by the way. There’s no need for such formalities, I’m here to help.” He offers her a smile that looks so forced it could make her vomit.
She doesn’t look any better. “Can you help me go home, Bruce?” she pleads, eyes filled with tears and determination. Her voice, however, betrays her.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he replies. He needs to get out of here and fast. Bruce doesn’t know whether to strangle Jim Gordon or kiss him.
The contents of his stomach threaten to come out, and he quickly comes out of the room, trying to keep up his usual stoic demeanor. As he reaches Jim’s office, his eyes look bloodshot, and he has to consciously stop himself from trembling.
The old man is smiling smugly from his desk, and as he looks up from the paperwork he’s throwing around, he says: “So?”
Bruce tries his best to not scream, not yell at him ‘What the actual fuck, Jim?’, not throw the entire paper bin on the ground. His voice isn’t as cold as usual.
“Can we get a DNA test done?”
Jim’s laugh echoes in his ears, and it feels like mockery. Bruce desperately wishes he slept that night.
Sophie Dallway downs her coffee and makes her way to the room, a tad bit more awake than she was before. She looks at the necessary paperwork, and this looks like a complicated case, judging by how much she has to sign.
But as she pushes open the door, she’s met with silence. No one is there, Marinette Dupain-Cheng is gone. Bruce has already lost any trace of his daughter, mere minutes after meeting her.
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