Part of the Night: The Wayne Legacy
Jim Gordon stared at the Bat as it disappeared behind the skyscrapers. He had noted that Batman appeared when Bruce Wayne returned from the dead nearly a decade ago, but he fell for the playboy antics like the rest of the city, until Wayne protected the police SUV from the desperate man obeying the Joker. Coleman Reese developed amnesia on Batman's identity after that. And then there was Wayne's reaction to Dent and Dawes' deaths.
It was obvious if you looked deep enough, but Gordon decided then he wouldn't pry for the sake of their friendship. And he would hide Batman's identity for their friendship too.
Summary: Batman is dead and everyone else must pick up the pieces of Gotham City.
The sequel to the One Rule. The Part of the Night series started way back in 2013 and while my muse was happily skipping along with this happens next and that leads to this scene, the nuts 'n bolts part of my brain realized in the outlining stage that chopping in half was the best way to go. End the first novel with the bomb's detonation and the second novel would cover the reconstruction of Gotham. The outline was deceptively simply with that metric. With hindsight of having finished the rough draft and edits, if I had followed my normal practice of write-edit-post, I would have made Part of the Night a trilogy instead of a duology. I hope you enjoy this take on the Nolanverse.
