Minute of Angle by David Hines, PG

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Fandom: DC COMICS
Characters/Pairing[s]: Jim Gordon; Barbara Gordon, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Alfred Pennyworth
Author on LJ: hradzka
Author Website: http://hradzka.livejournal.com/
Why this must be read:

Because you will love Jim Gordon even more by the time you're done. And if you get along with your father you'll call him, and if you don't you'll feel hopeful that families can be made as well as born, and if you don't have him anymore you'll think of him fondly, and smile.

This rec is all about the emotional reactions this story will engender, mostly because I think I've run out of adjectives superlative enough to praise hradzka's writing, but also because, well, this story will do your heart good.

"I'm sorry," his daughter -- niece -- said again. "I really thought it wasn't loaded."

Jim smoothed her hair. "All guns are loaded," he said. "Always." He frowned. "I guess I should teach you this stuff, huh?"

"You don't have to," she said. "I won't touch your gun again. I promise."

"You're old enough," he said. "You should know."

That she didn't was his fault, Jim knew. He should have taught her the basics when she'd first arrived, but he'd put it off. For all his time in the military and as a cop, he'd never developed the love of guns that so many of his fellow uniforms -- both uniforms -- had. He kept up his target shooting; sometimes he enjoyed the precision of the exercise. Then he looked at the ragged silhouettes and thought of dead men.

Harvey Bullock reduced target after target to shreds -- holes in heart, in head, in crotch -- and then, whistling, drove home in a beat-up Dodge sporting a bumper sticker that read, "Good gun control is a two-inch group."

Jim didn't want to take Barbara to the police range.

He didn't know what else to do.

"Don't worry about it," said Jim, more to himself than to her. "I'll figure something out."

Minute of Angle