Gordon and Barbara had a row when they got home, with Barbara waiting up for him until late. She sat alone in a dark room, a cold dinner laid out on the table - a meal Barbara had painstakingly prepared to celebrate their soon-to-be new home. Regrettably, the most important character was missing from this celebration dinner.
Barbara knew Gordon was busy, but she knew even better that Gordon's busyness was not due to his incapability to do his job, but because his workplace didn't actually need a policeman.
Having accompanied Gordon all this way, Barbara was well aware that with Gordon's capabilities, he wouldn't have had such a tough time in any other city besides Gotham. More importantly, Barbara also knew that even with Gordon's hard work, all was in vain. He couldn't save this place.
When Gordon came back, Barbara was sitting on the sofa, stroking a photo. It was a picture of them taken after the end of their internship. They were both very young in it, still practically children.
At that time, they were both not yet 20, their relationship having just been confirmed for two months. They got obscenely drunk at a party and shared their aspirations together.
Barbara came from a poor family; she wanted to earn money to improve the lives of her parents and siblings. Gordon was born into a lower-middle-class family with a small fortune. He had dreamt of being a righteous policeman since his family was saved by a cop when he was just a child.
Although their ambitions differed, they fell in love anyway and even years of long-distance relationship did not lessen their feelings for each other.
However, on this night, as if all the accumulated emotions erupted all at once, Barbara sat on the sofa silently crying, while Gordon was standing at the entrance, not uttering a word.
It wasn't that he didn't want to comfort Barbara, or that he was indifferent to the sight of his beloved fiancee crying alone.
But he knew, he knew what Barbara was about to say. He also knew that he wouldn't be able to answer her question — why must he insist on staying in Gotham?
Gordon was not a native of Gotham; he was born in Chicago. He wasn't born into poverty, he was a child of the middle class, who lived a relatively comfortable life. He was not a super genius; most of his achievements came from his hard work.
From his teachers to his classmates, to his fiancee who was with him day and night, none could understand why Gordon would give up a promising future at the Chicago Police Department, to come to this hellhole called Gotham, and stay for years.
Gordon never achieved anything at the Gotham Police Department.
His promotion was extremely slow; he remained a team leader even after all these years. He hadn't solved any significant cases either, and even when he contributed to a case, he never got the credit, let alone achieving any justice or changing Gotham.
Gordon was like a man possessed — he just had to stay here. All his former teachers and classmates always sighed regretfully when they mentioned him. In their eyes, even a bit more flexibility would allow Gordon to achieve much more than he was now.
Gordon went over and held Barbara. She kept crying but did not ask anything because she knew that Gordon had never given her the answer to her most burning question.
When faced with the choice between his badge and his love, Gordon had always responded with silence.
Gotham's nights were never lacking in cries, but Barbara's weeping must have been special. Very few people here would shed tears for their lovers – with just enough fire in their chest to warm themselves, they couldn't afford to cry for something as ethereal as love.
Because he had witnessed too many cries of Gotham's nights, Barbara's grief and tears made Gordon feel even worse. He didn't feel like a cop; he felt more like a worse kind of criminal.
He thought when he decided to live in this abyss, he shouldn't expect people above to give him another glance. Flooding tears might fall upon him, like Gotham's cold rain in the dead of night. Yet, these tears were in vain. The tears of thousands of lovers like a heavy rain, didn't change this inflexible rock.
The next day, Harvey visited Shiller again, which surprised Shiller because this lawyer was always very observant of etiquette and rarely showed up unannounced.
Harvey said, "Gordon came to see me yesterday, hoping I could find a legal advisor job for his fiancee, preferably in Metropolis or other cities in the south."
"I noticed that his mental state was a bit off, so I came to see you. I think his situation with his fiancée is more than just a simple quarrel. They had bought a house and were even planning on having children. But now it appears as though Gordon wants to break up with Barbara, which doesn't seem right..."
Shiller trusted Harvey's intuition, but when he called Gordon, his number was unanswered. When he called Gordon's precinct, his colleagues told Shiller that the diligent detective who had been doing overtime for years hadn't come into work that afternoon.
Shiller had a bad feeling. He quickly contacted Gordon's partner, Batman.
Last night, Gordon thought about everything, and come morning, he broke up with Barbara.