We had no internet all day yesterday, so I wrote offline and in between whiny phone calls to AT&T. Note: if you want actual help from AT&T, skip their phone tree entirely and use Twitter. Their Twitter team kicks ass.

Here, have a tiny bit of fan fiction.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Gotham. I’m not sure I’d want to. But it’s an interesting place to visit from time to time.

Fear comes in the oddest forms.

Sometimes it comes in your subordinate looking at you with her dark brown eyes, the ones that pierce your soul, and can no doubt read every single wrong you’ve done.

Sometimes it comes in the form of a gun, pointed at your head, or words hurled at your feet, each a declaration of its own kind: I’ll do anything to take you down.

Sometimes it comes in the near miss of a car zooming past as you step off the curb, or in a phone call you answer in the middle of the night, the voice on the other end of the line filtered beyond recognition.

And sometimes, one time, fear is waiting for you in your own darkened kitchen.

Surprisingly, it’s not the mook holding your bodyguard’s head, blood from the severed neck dripping on the cold tile.

No, the true form of fear, the form you never expect to make you shiver, to make your hands sweat and your breath catch in your throat…that form is wrapped in a dapper suit, and speaks to you in a voice as dusty as the top of the cabinet he’s leaning against.

“Do you have any peanut butter?”

Notes: I met Robin Lord Taylor at Dallas Fan-Expo last summer; he’s the sweetest person ever, as well as being kind and accessible. His line in Commissioner Loeb’s kitchen in the season two opener was delivered with JUST the right blend of menace and innocence…something only he can do. I had to do something with it.