Work Text:
You're walking home from work late at night when you spot the pigeon chick in the gutter. A bedraggled little thing, fluffed up in the way that birds get when they are very sick. You look around for its parents, but you know they're not here- a baby bird would not be alone on the street after dark unless it's been abandoned. It doesn't move away when you bend down to inspect it, only gapes its mouth open desperately. Whether it's dying of thirst, or starvation, or disease, you don't know, but it's dying.
The local wildlife rehabilitation center is closed until the morning, and you don't know if this chick will last until then. You don't even know if they'll take pigeons anyway. But maybe, just maybe, the local bird-themed crime lord might help, if he doesn’t kill you instead. So you hedge your bets, pick up the baby dove in your sweater, and go to the Iceberg Lounge.
No admittance, says the bouncer. You beg and beg him just to call his boss and mention the bird, which remains discomfortingly motionless aside from its shallow breathing. After a few excruciating minutes, you finally get ushered indoors, up to a table on the balcony overlooking the iceberg. The Penguin is there, having a smoke while the waiters clear away the remains of his meal. You haven’t been this close to a real Gotham rogue since the Riddler hijacked your art history lecture in college and tried to murder your professor with a death trap that hinged on encyclopedic knowledge of Magritte paintings.
Show me, the Penguin says, cigarette smoke curling out of his mouth, and you unwrap your sweater to reveal the baby bird there, fluffy with down and too weak even to cheep. He gently scoops up the chick in one gloved, flipperlike hand, and leaves the table without a further word to you.
You sit there by yourself for a while, watching penguins dive off the iceberg and picking nervously at the cocktail shrimp which a nice waitress brought you. Finally the Penguin reappears. He tells you the dove is being looked to. It is quite sick, but with sufficient care, it may yet live. You did the right thing in bringing it here. It’s raining outside, would you like a car to drive you home?
No, you say hastily. You'll take the subway, it’s fine, it’s just a short walk. You do not say that you’d rather not give your address to a supervillain.
The Penguin smiles, as if he knows what you’re thinking, and says, well then, at least take an umbrella.
You still have the umbrella. You’re not sure if it does anything other than keep you dry. But it can be dangerous to be alone out late at night in Gotham, and you figure it can’t hurt to have the umbrella on you, just in case.
You’re carrying it a few weeks later on your walk home when a pigeon flutters down and lands on your shoulder. It’s almost fully grown, though there is still some down clinging to its feathers.
You pet it tentatively. It nuzzles your cheek.
Tied to its leg is a scroll, which you carefully extract. Rolled up inside is a check for the exact amount of all your remaining student loan debt, as well as a handwritten note:
For your service in saving a life.
Oswald Cobblepot