keep holding your ground (ap)

“You come here often?”

“Can I offer you a drink?”

“So.. You expecting someone?”

“Do you need a place to stay for tonight?”

“I gotta tell you… you look incredibly hot.”

“Do you want to dance with me?”

“Look at us… we are basically a couple already.”

“I bet you would look even better without your clothes on.”

“Are you single? Just asking.”

“You’re the most beautiful person I have ever encountered.”

“What would you say if you and me would go somewhere else?”

“I love the way you’re dressed.”

“Do I have any chances with you?”

“Do you have anything better to do later?”

“Can I get your phone number?”

“You seem like a bad boy/girl/person type.”

“I can do whatever you want, babe.”

“You have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.”

“I bet guys/gals/people are all over you.”

“You should be a model.”

“Are you… trying to flirt with me?”

“Maybe if I get a free drink I can consider talking to you.”

“That won’t work. Try again.”

“Oh my god, did you just say that out loud?”

“I’m waiting for someone. However, you can amuse me in the meanwhile.”

“You don’t look so bad yourself.”

“I thought you were taken.”

“So, have you flirted with every girl/boy/one in this bar yet?”

“Do I look like someone who seems interested in you?”

“You’re so helpful with your words." 

"I think maybe this is our fault." 

"We have failed so many times at so many tasks, but at this, we will not fail." 

"Seems uninteresting and human." 

"Gently talking solves a lot of things." 

"I’m pretty sure I didn’t ask for your feedback." 

"You do not scare me." 

"I feel as though the universe is unraveling." 

"I haven’t seen you in weeks!" 

"We should go." 

"I will do my best. Or, well, actually maybe not my best, but some level of effort." 

"Probably that’s bad news." 

"How did you get in here?" 

"That was really gross! Do it again." 

"Our time and space finally, finally meet again." 

"Do not be defined by how you can die, but how you can live." 

"As far as the laws of the universe are concerned, it is not where I belong." 

"And that is—well, I think that’s a good thing." 

"Do they not like me?" 

"Once again, it’s just you and me." 

"Be proud of your place in the cosmos. It is small, and yet it is." 

"We all take what we can get in this life, you know?" 

"I hope that we all find something—or someone—that can keep the light on a little longer against the endless, pressing dark." 

"Why did you make a big fuss about it and call us here?" 

"Are you safe? Is everything okay?" 

"Where did they get that photo of you?" 

"I, too, am starting to feel scared." 

"Choose something quieter than a gun." 

"Do you believe in ghosts?" 

"You should hear what they’re saying about you." 

"Perhaps take up drinking while crying in a quiet room." 

"I don’t think it’s safe there." 

"Nothing and nowhere is safe." 

"We can still do things together—even in absence." 

"Happiness is a fool’s daydream." 

"I thought it would be different than this." 

"I’m not saying it will definitely be fun; it probably won’t be." 

"Even if you could, you would wish you hadn’t." 

"Won’t that be dangerous. And probably illegal!" 

"Worry less about the person you once were or the person you dream you someday will be." 

"Worry about the person you are now. Or, don’t even worry. Just be that person. Be the best version of that person you can be." 

"Is this how you want to live your life? Shuffling from one trivial moment to the next, never letting anything add up to anything else?" 

"Do not think that you are going to be able to keep anything from me." 

"If you opened your eyes, I’m sure it would upset you." 

"This is me as a part of your life, trying to understand that life." 

"This is you, and I’m trying to understand." 

"Words can’t capture it, but I have only words." 

"Very little of what I have to say is true." 

"No, don’t. I don’t trust you to make anything good." 

"I hate myself, is what I’m trying to say. We have that in common." 

"It will all be over soon. And then something else will take its place." 

"No one listens when I talk. They hear, but—they don’t listen." 

"We all—all of us—so often fail at what we want to do. That’s okay." 

"People could die for knowing these things." 

"It’s not like knowing has made my life easier. Quite the opposite." 

"What more is there to say?" 

"The secret to a long life lies in how acutely you perceive time." 

"I am sometimes more doubt than man." 

"I know what this is, and it is not good." 

"I don’t think we’ll get much help from them." 

"When I think only of myself, I am scared. But knowing I am with you, I am not scared." 

"Where the hell are we?" 

"Please. Tell me. Everything." 

"We are not one person. How lonely that would be!" 

                  he sets his coffee down on the desk and reaches, pale fingers trembling in the slightest as they grip the other’s firmly, the shake lingering a moment before he retracts himself completely. how reclusive of him, though he cannot help it – the dying light in the middle of darkness is a shy thing ; a wavering whim of fire that is FRIGHTENED by its own shadow. 

                  “ please, sir, the pleasure is mine. ” honored ? he was but one man of course, and he would not be anything less than modest and humble about it. thin lips CURL ; his skin his cold but his heart is warm and he welcomes the other. they were in this for JUSTICE after all – he will ensure that justice is served. 

There is atrophy here, he thinks sometime after, in the shaking, quaking weight of the city. It’s any wonder the sky-scrapers don’t collapse under the weight of the turmoil that coats the air like oil, the toxins churning to a low simmer of green and reds and violets.

A bruised sky, the heavens are battered perhaps, because of some war of angels and devils?

And what of man?

“Arthur,” he repeats, correcting himself. “I’ll remember that; favorite legend when I was a kid. Can’t remember too many now that is, but that one was cherished.” And his smile is less tense and more playful, his shoulders loosen and he looks forward, his eyes shining with the mirth that comes upon the promise of motivation, of someone from the outside helping.

A godsend, as it is called.

“Now then, please, have a seat; I wish there wasn’t so much to go over, but this city’s fallen into some sort of cesspool of crime lately, no one’s really sure where it’s coming from, but we’re working to improve.”

Because, you couldn’t just say you were trying, you couldn’t just wish, you had to do something about it.

“Also, if anyone looks at you funny, just ignore them; in this house, no one really likes people from the outside – I used to be given those same looks but sadly, all the focus is on you. You’re like a new toy, something to play with until you’re left alone.”

Jim really hopes that doesn’t come out sounding wrong, but he doesn’t mean for it to sound as dark as it does.

“How morbid, I’m sorry – or, let them stare. Once, I did this small little hop-skip dance in front of a group of people who looked at me and they stopped caring; gotta prove to them there’s nothing to look at, that you’re not interesting.”

Though Arthur was the furthest thing from boring, he saw it in the man’s eyes, there was the fierce need to help, some sort of red-white spark against the darkness of his gaze.

        Legs would cross at the man’s arrival to the room, attempting to conceal the length of her skirt but only adding to the problem by causing the material to ride up her thigh further. She’d uncross them and allow her fingers to play with the holes in her shredded tinted pantyhose — shredded by choice AND wear, not either or. He looked like the type you’d see from the crime dramas on the shows she’d watch at home, like any minute a camera crew would follow him in the room and huddle in a corner to record their interaction as though they were ANIMALS to be studied.

But there’s so much he wants to change, there’s so much he aims to help appease, and he looks at this young lady with concern, nodding once at her inquiry, for it’s fair.

“Someone thought you were…well. A worker for hire…not that I would think that, miss, no. We can’t charge you with anything, we’re just waiting on some paper-work, I’m very sorry for this confusion.”

And there’s a red scrawl on the front of his neck now because, every young woman who was dressed a certain way wasn’t a hooker, what were his fellow officers thinking?

“If you’re cold, here’s my jacket,” Jim says, setting the material to the young woman’s left. “If anyone gives you any trouble, tell them you know me, I’m James Gordon and I’ll make sure you get home tonight, okay?”

He bites the tip of his tongue and he wonders how many people thought she made money in such a way.

      Her main reason for offering is because she has been in a similar position herself. It is always a pain when she is hungry but the restaurant is absolutely packed. Add a cranky toddler to the mix and the forty-five minutes she has to wait for a table feels more like hours. For that reason when she sees someone in a similar position she likes to lend a hand.     

❝It’s nothing really. I’m sure this one would prefer to sit on my lap anyways.❞ The cherub certainly does not seem discontent. Much to his mother’s delight, he still enjoyed cuddling with her. She figures she has several more years before she has to worry about him being reluctant to have her show affections to him.

His heart aches and he hopes that ache will never become frost; he never wants to be desensitized to his own work, and on that day, he knows he will never be able to look at his own reflection without feeling immediate self-repulsion.

He wants to believe in the best of people, even in a city known for its crime and sin. The Gotham River might as well be colored red.

But in this moment, he is sitting with a lovely lady and her precious child and something paternal cleaves his bones in two and he wonders, oh he wonders what it would be like to one day, have a child of his own, maybe a few.

“Simon,” he says, in the highest voice he can manage without breaking character. “What’s your name?” And Jim makes the puppet tilt its head and he mirrors it as he looks from the toddler to the woman.