overlithe (overlithe) wrote in batmanjoker, @ 2011-01-25 21:48:00 |
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Original poster: kitcatitalica
Title: You're Gonna Go Far, Kid
Chapter 3/3: It Was Really Only You
Word Count: 6,334
Pairings: none
Disclaimer: I don't own TDK or its characters, just this weird, twisted, AU, time-traveling, cracked-up plot.
Rating: PG this chapter
Warnings: language, references to violence, some angst, some inexplicable magic time-travel again
Fic Summary: Joker picks up an eight-year-old kid named Bruce as his protégée, and Batman makes a deal with six-year-old Jack to train him by his side. AU
A/N: This bit gets a bit angsty/philosophical towards the end, but then again, it's Batman and Joker - what else could you expect? That's also what tends to happen when you listen to Evanescence too much, I suppose. Ah well.
"But I wanna come too, Bruce!" Jack whined as he plodded after the billionaire into the Batcave. "You promised I could help on this one!"
"Not tonight," Bruce shot back through gritted teeth for the fifteenth time. "In case you forgot, you blew that chance when you set off a smoke bomb in an elementary school after starting a riot on the playground. And don't," he shot a glare back at the kid, "get me started on the pencil."
Jack huffed through his nose, pouting overdramatically as he watched the Batman pull on his gauntlets. "You are intolerable," he fumed.
"And you," Bruce answered as he slid his cape on over his shoulders, "are not setting one foot outside the door tonight. Now get yourself back upstairs before I – "
Suddenly he realized Jack was no longer paying attention to his stern orders, but rather to the array of monitors on the wall that he had planted himself in front of. His eyes rounder than saucers, he stood at attention, transfixed at the incoming news report on the screens before him. Bruce silently crept up beside him, reaching to turn up the volume.
"…and there appears to be no sign of what exactly set off the tear gas," Mike Engel continued over the roar of the chopper circling the gas-emitting, rotten warehouse, "but police encourage everyone to remain calm and stay inside with all doors and windows secured shut. I repeat, DO NOT go outside; conditions are becoming more and more hazardous, although we strongly urge everyone not to panic and remain calm. Police units and SWAT teams are currently on the way in an effort to contain the fumes, so we'd like to remind everyone once again to stay calm and stay indoors, the situation is under control. Remember, do not leave your home until further notice and please remain calm…"
"That's it," Jack breathed.
Bruce snapped out of his intense focus on the TV and turned to stare even more intently at the child. "…what's it?"
"That warehouse," Jack whispered, mesmerized by the sight of the building. "That's where…he is. Where I told you he was. All his plans…all his weapons…"
But at the mention of the certain "he", Bruce had made a beeline for the Batpod, and, donning his pointy-eared cowl, roared off into the night. Jack's sentence trailed off into stillness as his eyes slowly regained their silent inferno. His lips pursed tight with quivering rage, he departed for his armor, his mind racing a mile a minute with the feverish fantasies of the night to come.
xxx
Joker was beside himself with delight. He could barely contain his pride for the little devil that had come up with the idea to release tear gas into the city. He had been wondering for quite some time as to what exactly Bruce had been experimenting with in his room, and had one day walked in to find him mixing up a fresh batch of bromoacetone. An innocent science experiment, Bruce had proclaimed, but Joker knew he had prepared far more sinister plans for his concoction. So they had continued together, brewing more and more until they finally had enough to infect the entire city with the toxic lachrymator. Now it stormed through the air, while the maniac perched himself on the roof of the warehouse, listening to the symphony of screams below.
Bruce, however, was not at the side of the clown as per usual. Instead, Joker had decided to reward the kid for his first original crime spree. The boy was somewhere in the fray, stalking the streets, a gas mask on his face and his long-anticipated AK in hand. He had worked hard the past two weeks, sometimes going without sleep or more than a bag of chips each day while absorbed in his work. That, and the successful riot at the elementary school, had definitely earned him the adrenaline romp he was no doubt enjoying at the moment.
Although he had to question the kid's tastes, Joker thought. Tear gas…it wasn't really his style. Now laughing gas, that would have been fucking hilarious; Joker let a laugh escape his throat at the thought. Yet, as much as he hated to admit it, he had grown more and more attached to the kid in the last three weeks, and had even developed a grudging respect for him. He could be an intolerable little asshole sometimes, and turned a tad bit squeamish around actually hurting people, but…to his credit, he certainly had been a wonderful asset to the clown's endeavors. His brilliance, his sheer genius, never failed to surprise him; one day, he could very well measure up as his equal. Well, maybe not, he reasoned. He would only ever have one true equal in his eyes.
Suddenly, he perked up his ears to the ever-familiar roar of engines. Looking up, the small speck of the Batpod swam into view, the Batman riding on top of it. Joker nimbly leapt to his feet. It was about time his equal had come to join him, and this was a matter he was not willing to let the kid take care of himself. It was time to go. Time to fight.
Time to meet his Bat.
xxx
Jack weaved through the screaming crowd of Gothamites like a wraith in the shadows. In the mass panic, no one even noticed the little black-armored six-year-old with the gas mask to hide the enraged expression on his face. So Batman thought he was just a little lost puppy who could be trained to sit and stay while there was work to be done? Well, he'd show him just how dangerous this little puppy could be.
Once he reached the warehouse, he kicked down the door and tore past the parked Batpod he found inside. The room was huge, but that didn't stop him; he raced after the flapping black cape he spotted in the distance. Where Batman was going, there was sure to be a fight, and finally he'd be able to show the knight a thing or two about what he was really capable of…
Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted by the rattle of heavy gunfire, aimed directly at the caped crusader. Most of the bullets glanced off his armor, yet two lodged themselves deep in the cracks, and he fell to the ground. His still form soon disappeared into the thickening tear gas, leaving Jack frozen in shock. The Batman had just been gunned down? No, no he couldn't have, he couldn't…no…NO!
Jack silently sprinted after the criminal who now dragged his guardian up the stairs, to the roof of the building.
xxx
Bruce met the leering grin of the Joker, triumph shining in his eyes as the unconscious body of the Batman lay between them. He knew that he should have let his guardian deal with the Bat himself, yet when he had spotted him making his way distractedly through the warehouse…it had just been too easy! Now, though, he wasn't sure he could read his mentor's delirious expression as congratulatory or…menacing. He knew he had been asking for it when he had taken care of the Batman without consulting the clown, yet now at least the Joker could do what he wanted with his enemy, thanks to him. But regardless of whatever treatment Bruce was about to receive, he wasn't going to let his apprehension show through, not in the slightest. So it was with complete and utter confidence that he met the Joker's gaze as the madman delightfully took a step towards him, and –
– was suddenly knocked to the ground next to his adversary, a large lump swelling from the back of his head where the chunk of gravel had hit its mark. Bruce stared, dumbfounded at the prone form of the Joker crumpled next the vigilante. There was something fundamentally perverse with the image of his role model so powerless, and Bruce could barely process what his eyes were seeing. It was so wrong, it couldn't have just happened…never…no…
Sickened, he forced his eyes away from the sight, only to be confronted with a sight far worse. Standing on the edge of the roof across from him was a little blonde boy, clad in black armor quite similar to the Batman's, a slingshot in his right hand. His eyes were fixed on the machine gun clutched in Bruce's fist, and realization suddenly dawned over his gas-mask-obscured face. A quite similar expression spread over Bruce's facial features, and almost in unison they raised their eyes to meet each other's glare, the same thought echoing through their minds:
You.
The culprit behind the attack on my mentor. The one responsible for my guardian's defeat. The bastard who thinks he can spit in the good name of my idol.
Well, it ends here. NOW.
The two children launched themselves at each other, slingshot and AK forgotten. All of Jack's martial arts training left his memory as he let his all-consuming rage take control of his body. The concept of extra munitions stored in the building beneath him fled Bruce's mind, for all he needed to power his fight was the pure brutality of his reckless emotions. If there was one thing the boys had learned from their mentors, it was to use their instincts, and they kicked them into full gear as the two minigods collided in the wrestling match of the century.
The two clawed and shoved at each other viciously, neither one gaining an upper hand until Jack landed a punch right between Bruce's eyes. Bruce doubled back, yet before Jack could hit him again he grabbed Jack's wrist and kneed him in the stomach. Jack gagged as Bruce twisted his hold on his wrist, sending spurts of pain shooting up his arm. With a scream Jack lashed out with his free arm and yanked Bruce's hair, eliciting a cry of rage from the brunette. Snarling, they struggled in vain to wrestle themselves free from each other's grasp without slacking their own grips, until they couldn't stand the intense pain any longer and threw their weight against each other, tumbling to the rooftop in a mess of fierce blows and feral yells.
Neither one finding an advantage, they rolled around on the roof, biting and beating at each other wildly, until Bruce had Jack pinned against the edge of the ten-story drop below. He grinned as he pressed his forearm against the younger boy's neck, his sweet revenge achieved at last, when Jack returned the nasty sneer on his rival's face and flipped them both over, sending them over the edge as their gas masks went flying off their faces.
Jack clung to the ledge with his right hand fiercely, feeling the jagged concrete slide painfully from his clawing fingers, when he suddenly felt a weight tug at his left leg, lurching him downward a precious two inches. Bruce had locked his arms around the six-year-old's ankle, and refused to let go as the gaseous cloud obscured the ground below, blowing the distance of the drop wildly out of proportion. The foot he was strangling began to kick violently, but he maintained his desperate constriction of Jack's blood flow to his leg, making the boy in black armor woozy and causing the pair to slip millimeters closer to their deaths. Maybe this hadn't been the best idea in the world, Jack concluded sarcastically, sweat building up in his gloved palm.
A gloved palm that was suddenly grasped as a hand hefted the two boys back to the safety of the roof – and violently pulled Jack to meet the fury of his disapproving mentor.
"What the HELL do you think you're doing?" Batman roared in the child's face.
Bruce smirked at his enemy's humiliation, until he, too, was snatched toward his own enraged guardian.
"And just what do you think you're up to?" Joker snapped at the eight-year-old.
"I was just – "
" – going straight back home! I told you that you were not to set one FOOT outside the door tonight!"
"But – "
"But nothing! This is the last of the outside of the warehouse you're going to see for a long while, so – "
Suddenly, both adults stopped could in their scolding tirades towards their sidekicks. Bewildered, Jack and Bruce swiveled around to follow their mentors' gazes, only to meet each other's eyes. Blinking in confusion, they faced each other awkwardly, not quite sure what exactly was going on. Jack then shifted his eyes behind Bruce, towards the eyes of the Joker, the man he had learned from Batman to hate with all his being, the man who stood against everything Batman fought for.
The man who was staring right at him, looking more shocked than Jack had thought it possible for someone to look.
In front of the rigid form of the Joker, Bruce felt dark eyes burning on him, and raised his eyes to the face of the Batman, whom he had loathed and despised every second of his stay with the Joker, who stood in the way of everything Joker worked to achieve.
Who was drinking in the sight of his young face, eyes frozen in his head as his mind refused to fully comprehend the familiar sight before him.
Feeling more and more ill at ease by the second, Bruce and Jack twisted their unmasked faces into looks of total confusion.
"…what?" they asked.
xxx
Batman slammed and bolted the door behind him. All he was sure of at the moment was that he needed. To. Keep. The. Two. Kids. Separated. Whatever was going on, he couldn't have his arch-nemesis and…himself…
…himself…
…him...
…Bruce Wayne before the night at the opera…
…he couldn't let them interact. Not now. Not anymore. Not ever. EVER again. It was wrong on so many levels.
So wrong.
What the hell was happening.
He realized he had been leaning against the door behind him with his eyes closed for the past thirty seconds, the picture of total stress. And that the Joker had been leeringly staring at him the entire time from his perch on a barrel of trinitrotoluene. Meeting his gaze, he was greeted with a knowing, face-splitting smile. A smile he definitely couldn't handle at the moment. He broke the eye contact and prowled over towards a window.
Noticing his counterpart's unease, Joker followed the knight's movements with his eyes, chin resting on his fist and propped up on an elbow. "Well, this has certainly been quite the interesting day for you, eh…Bruce?" He sneered out the last word, delighted to finally have a name to match the masked face. A first name, anyway.
And to top it all off, the Joker knew his name. Great. Just the icing on the cake. Perfect. Yet…he wasn't the only one with a new weapon.
"I could say the same for you, Jack."
Joker's lip curled as he bristled at the long-forgotten echo of his old name. However, he recovered quickly, and the smile leapt back into position as he changed tactics.
"So, while you have the two of them locked up in solitary confinement, what exactly is it you plan on doing?"
"Where did you find him?" Batman cut across his words. He had given up on patience; it was time to be direct.
Joker furrowed his brow at the odd question. "Why does that matter?"
Batman sighed deeply. It did no good hiding his intentions from the villain anymore; he needed his help. At this point, any nugget of information might hold the key to the horrible situation at hand, and if that meant working with his worst enemy to set things right, so be it.
"I'm going to try to figure this mess out and fix it," he answered.
He should have foreseen the laughter that issued from the clown at his admission, but it still didn't help his current aggravated state.
"Well, good for you then!" Joker squealed out, his mirth and abandon towards the entire situation grating at the dark knight's temper more and more. "Since you seem to have the situation sooo under control, why would I want to interfere?" His laughter eventually diminished, and he continued with his probing question. "Honestly, why should I help you out with your own little time-space continuum dilemma?"
"Because it concerns yours, too."
That the Joker certainly did not expect, yet the answer rang with truth, he realized. As fantastic as the predicament was, is still posed the question as to how to return the eight-year-old Batman and six-year-old Joker back to their appropriate time, so that history could take its course. Suddenly the status quo didn't seem quite so quo anymore, Joker thought.
"The subway station," he answered finally.
"What were you doing?" Batman pressed further, hoping some insight would be gained.
Joker huffed in frustration at his enemy's pointless queries. "What, like that would make a difference?" he asked. "Look, there I was, committing those who'd given their lives for my cause to their final resting place," he smirked at the glorious memory, "when he dropped into my life." Suddenly, he sniggered in reminiscence. "Actually, he kinda jumped me. Tried to kill me. Almost did, believe it or not," he added, raising his eyebrows as he flicked his eyes toward Batman, reading his stunned reaction with triumph. "Who knew that, once upon a time, little Batsy had such guts?"
Batman was taken aback. He had actually tried to kill. Not like when he had tried to murder Chill, which had been different, but that he had tried to take a life for no reason...not that one needed much of a reason with the Joker, he admitted, but still, it unnerved him. Yet what puzzled him further was that he had lived to tell the tale. That was a miracle he had never actually heard of until now. Searching for an explanation to the conundrum, he asked, "Why didn't you just kill him right off when you had the chance?"
"Because he's a little fucking genius."
Batman snapped his head around toward the Joker at the reply. The quiet admission from the psycho was definitely not what he had been expecting to hear. That the Joker had spared the life of a child – his life, no less – on account of respect for his mind was unheard of. Meeting his old enemy's eyes, Joker shrugged in resignation.
"I guess he kinda reminded me of someone I know."
The look Batman found himself confronted with took him by surprise even further, if that were possible. Instead of the maddening gleams that normally issued from the murderer's eyes, a softer glow shone through. A glow of respect. He hadn't just spared Bruce because of his intelligence, but because deep down he had sensed something. Something of Batman. The thing that eternally bound them together, no matter what age they knew each other at. Perhaps, Batman reflected, that had been the very reason he had agreed to let Jack join him in his crusade. The glow in his eyes, that sometimes mirrored his own perfectly…whatever it was, it always brought them together, one way or another. He found his eyes issuing the same glow, reflecting the gaze of his other half, emitting the same toughened respect that had brought him to take Jack home with him to train him by his side.
"Well, that makes two of us," he murmured.
Joker burst out laughing, falling off the barrel of TNT in his mirth-filled convulsions.
Batman scowled, all respect vanishing from his face. "What is so funny?"
Joker could barely gasp out the words in between breathless giggles.
"THERE ARE TWO OF US!"
xxx
Bruce quietly closed the door behind him, lest he alert the two adults to his lock-picking activities. Being barricaded in his room was not an option at this point. Not with what had just happened. What they had just told him…told them…what he had seen and done…
Now, as he heard the familiar sound of his boss's hysterical laughter fill the room next to him, he took the opportunity to covertly slip through the side door into the room in which they had locked…the other one. He had heard him called Jack, but he refused to give him a proper name until he had figured a few things out for himself. It was time to know the truth.
Jack sat in the corner, facing the wall with his back to Bruce. Despite his stony silence, his body language spoke for him:
No.
Bruce ignored his obvious request for solitude, and gingerly made his way over to the kid, setting down his lock-picking knife on a table where a few whiffs of the tear gas still escaped from their container. Jack still did not acknowledge his presence. Bruce cleared his throat, hoping to elicit a response.
"What do you want," Jack finally let out.
Bruce exhaled quickly. No sense in beating around the bush.
"I want you to look at me."
Although he still couldn't see his expression, Bruce could sense Jack's eyebrows knit together.
"Why?"
Bruce's lips tightened. He hadn't expected this to be easy, but his curiosity was sapping at his patience.
"I need to see it for myself," he answered quietly.
Jack's jaw clenched, his eyes rolling towards the rotting ceiling as he fumed at Bruce's response. "Believe what they said all you want," he growled, "it's not true."
It took all of Bruce's willpower not to clench into fists. Why was the little brat being so overly difficult? "Just look at me," he pleaded.
"No."
"Jack, look at me!" he commanded, blood pounding in his ears. He couldn't stand to hear his mouth betray his promise to not call the blonde by a name, yet his patience was running dry. Jack shook his head violently, unable to form words in his state of churning denial.
"LOOK AT ME!" Bruce screamed, and clapped a hand on Jack's shoulder to swivel him around, shoving his face in his own.
Both boys, blinded by seething rage, failed to initially register the sight before them. Then, slowly, their faces morphed into realization as the truth seeped into their minds, infecting every tendril of their thoughts. The shape of his nose; the angle of his cheekbones; the texture of his hair; the way his mouth twitched when emotions swirled in his head; the shape and color of his eyes…his eyes with all their murky, boiling depths…that glinted with that same familiar, terrible light…it was all there. All the same. The miniature forms of their Bat and Clown stared back at them, reeling in shock at their discovery.
"It really is you," Bruce breathed. And it was true. Give him a few years, some makeup, and a pair of scars, and he would have himself a Joker.
At those words, Jack set his expression in steel, his eyes flowing into pure defiance. "No, it's not," he gritted out. "I'm not him." If words alone could alter time, his would have turned the planets upside down. And with that, he returned to his previous staring contest with the wall.
"The hell you are," Bruce answered back, shooting down the flat denouncement of the world. "At least," he added quietly, resentment building up in his voice, "one day you'll be." His jealously threatening to get the best of him, he stood up to leave.
"Did it ever occur to you that maybe I don't WANT to grow up to be the Joker?" Jack snapped to the wall, stopping Bruce in his tracks. He turned back to Jack, his train of thought violently derailed, and all he could come up with in reply was:
"...why?"
Jack was flabbergasted by the question. Why did he need to answer something like that? Nevertheless, he tried.
"He's a…" he struggled, unable to find a word strong enough to describe his feelings for the Joker.
"…a genius," Bruce finished his sentence, admiration dripping from his voice. If Jack weren't so disgusted he might have laughed out loud.
"A psycho," he corrected.
"A god," Bruce shot back in defense.
"A freak," Jack spit out scathingly. How could the prick idolize the psychopath so much? It was so…unnatural. So inhuman.
His pride in jeopardy, Bruce bit back with a remark of his own. "You think he's a freak, yet you aspire to one day be the guy who wears pointy ears on his head to scare people?"
"Better than the guy who cuts his face open and kills people for no reason!" Jack yelled back, his sullen vow of silence evaporating as he stood up and faced his rival.
Bruce immediately came to the defense of his beliefs. "He lives without rules," he said matter-of-factly.
"Everything's funny to him. Who wouldn't want that life?"
"I don't," Jack retorted to the brunette, his reserve and self-control bursting at the seams as he slowly advanced on Bruce, barraging him with his pent-up frustrations. "You've got it made. You're filthy rich, you've got someone to take care of you till the day you die, you've got all the women in the world at your feet to pick and choose from, and to top it all off you get to spend your nights flying around the city, showing people that they don't have to be afraid by letting the creeps know what they need to be afraid of." His eyes shining brightly, he panted at the end of his accusation that had quickly escalated into an all-out rant of his inward jealousy for the eight-year-old. The one who got to be who he dreamed of becoming. Quietly, he choked out his last envious admission: "You're the most powerful person in Gotham."
Bruce, at first intimidated and terrified by the tidal wave of wrath that Jack had just let loose, now focused his eyes on Jack's with a new, softer light. He was certainly surprised by the blonde's confession of near-total worship for his future self.
"You really…think that much of me?" he inquired incredulously.
Jack shrugged slightly in reply. "Who you're going to be," he answered.
Bruce scanned his future enemy's face for signs of sarcasm, but found none. The kid was telling the truth. He wanted to fill Bruce's shoes at that moment. But, Bruce realized, you can't always get what you want. "I still don't want it," he protested, sighing deeply in resignation. "Something seriously messed him up to make him that way. I don't want any part of it." He turned and made for the door.
Jack watched his slow progress towards the door, resentment building up in him again. "Oh, and you blame ME for not wanting the future?" he asked. "You think I want to live through whatever gave him the scars?"
That stopped Bruce cold. Although his envy of Jack's exciting future still burned in his chest, he realized he had overlooked that little detail. The scars. How selfish was he, to hate Jack for what he was going to be able to experience, when that experience was, indeed, life-scarring and tragic?
Yet, wishful thinking would get them nowhere, wouldn't change the facts. "We've still got to live through it," he replied with a heavy heart, "whether we want to or not."
"…what if we don't?"
The softly-posed question came to Bruce from a voice right behind him, and he turned in shock to bring himself nose to nose with Jack, whose eyes pulsed with the new idea that had just taken hold of his mind.
"What if we didn't have to take what fate threw at us?" he asked again, head spinning with mounting excitement. "What if we just…switched? Became the opposite side, what we wanted to be?"
Bruce started with the notion, and peered into Jack's eyes as Jack locked his focus on Bruce. The two drank up the other's gaze, searching for hope. Their visions swam with a paint-smeared Bruce and a cowl-covered Jack, tearing through the night with wild abandon, still keeping the universe in balance with their coexistence but in the identities that they chose to inhabit, from their own decisions, living the life they yearned for, and chose to yearn for…
But yet, all the hope Bruce found in the wild eyes of the young clown-to-be was false. Fake. It would never live on as more than a hope. They couldn't fight their fate. "You know it doesn't work that way," he submitted softly, lowering his gaze and turning around to leave.
As he slowly turned the doorknob so as not to make any sound, the room behind him filled with oppressive silence. A silence following the death of dreams. The stillness bored holes in Bruce as he opened the door to escape into his own room, to be alone with his thoughts.
"Not if I can help it."
His eyes widened, and he spun his head around, but the blonde was nowhere in view.
And the knife had vanished from sight.
xxx
Jack staggered half-blind in the pouring rain. With what little he could see, it made no difference; his eyes, when focused, portrayed an ugly, gray world to him, sodden and damp with crushing reality. As it was, his eyes did not see the sheet of water in front of his face, but rather a scarred ruby smile suspended in midair. Charcoal-ringed eyes gloated at his pitiful state, and a chalk-white face laughed with mockery at his futile attempts to run away from it.
Bruce couldn't have been right. He may be content to wait around on his lonesome until a cape and cowl fell out of the sky, but Jack sure wasn't. He didn't want this, at all. The sheer intensity of his un-desire was surely enough to scare the black doors of fate away from him, to leave him free to become that which he thirsted for. But the eyes and smile wouldn't leave him alone. They haunted him as he made his way through alleys and back roads, unsure and uncaring where exactly he was headed, so long as it carried him as far away from the…freak…as possible.
But the face kept coming back.
Jack shoved his stolen knife at the leering apparition, but it just cracked its smile wider and laughed louder as the rain pounded harder.
Oh, the stories. The stories that now reverberated through his conscience as he recalled each one with his steel trap of memory. His murderous, drunken father. His heartbroken wife. His sweat-dripping school bullies. His tyrannical boss. The unfeeling mafia. He had heard them all as he had studied Arkham video footage at Batman's request, to familiarize himself with the enemy.
With himself.
Yet he had come to the conclusion that none of the stories were true, or all of them were, each demon in his life widening the Glasgow grin further and further. It was always multiple choice with the clown. Always guessing.
And he didn't want to guess anymore.
Wielding the knife, meeting the glare of the eyes blacker than night that hung before him, he brought the blade up to his mouth. The face laughed louder at his weak attempt to change his fate, yet he didn't care, didn't care about what the face thought anymore, and he found himself laughing too, laughing at the face, with the face, for the face, because of the face, as sweet euphoria dribbled down his chin.
When it was over, Jack found he had achieved the impossible. He had altered time! The Joker was no more, slashed down as he cut the laughter away! For he wasn't laughing anymore. It hurt too much. But the face was gone. That was all that mattered to him at the moment, that the gleeful tormenting specter would terrorize him no longer. Exhausted, he sank to his knees and found himself gazing into a puddle of rainwater –
– only to find the face staring back at him.
The makeup was absent, but its effects lingered: the black eyes he had sustained from his rooftop fight with Bruce, with undercurrents of dark circles of pure mental exhaustion; the blood-red grin stretching over his entire face up to his ears as crimson liquid flowed from the fresh wounds; the pale white face that had been drained of all blood and emotion. His own eyes gleamed up at him, as if to say, "HELLO! I'M STILL HERE!"
What had he DONE.
Squelching footsteps approached him from behind as a lone figure made its way towards the soaked, kneeling six-year-old. Jack felt a warm hand on his shoulder, asking for answers.
"…Jack?"
But Jack had no answers anymore. His eyes closed with brimming tears, and he fell back into the eight-year-old arms of Bruce Wayne, as they both shuddered violently against the rain and the world.
As they huddled on the ground in the dark alleyway, the rain abruptly subsided, melting into nothingness as if it had never been. Voices sprang up all around them, swirling together as a strange batter of unfinished thoughts. Their minds reeling with the sensation, Bruce and Jack suddenly found themselves slipping out of focus, unable to quite recall what they had just been doing thirty seconds ago. Thirty seconds turned into a minute, two minutes, an hour, two days, three weeks…
"Bruce!" a woman's voice called out from the confusion.
Bruce Wayne's eyes snapped open as he returned from the strange otherworldly feeling. He suddenly realized he was hugging a shabby-looking kid off the streets. The kid snapped his head up without looking at Bruce, then leapt to his feet and ran off down the alleyway, his mind foggy with their mutual amnesia.
"Bruce!" the voice called again, materializing into the form of a very worried looking Martha Wayne, who rushed over to her son.
"Bruce, where on earth have you been?" she asked, relief poking its way through her scolding tone. "And you're soaking wet! What have you been doing, young man?"
Bruce blinked in confusion. What had he just been doing?
"I…don't know…" he trailed off.
His mother took his shaky reply to be one of concealment, and smiled as all mothers do when they have caught their children in a lie. "Well, whenever you're ready to tell me, you just let me know, okay?"
"Yeah…" Bruce mumbled, his eyes never leaving the deserted alleyway as his mother dragged him by the hand to where his father was waiting.
"I found him, Thomas," his mother announced to her husband. "We can go now."
"Oh, thank God!" Thomas Wayne exclaimed, quite relieved himself. "I thought we'd have to miss the opera! Now we wouldn't want that, would we?" He winked at Bruce playfully.
Bruce, quite distracted and disoriented, nodded absently as the Waynes made their way to the doors of Gotham's Opera House.
xxx
Batman stared out into the night atop Wayne Tower. It had been eight nights since the kids had disappeared into the torrential rain, eight nights of frantically scouring the streets, trying to find them to no avail. The search was hopeless, he knew, but that had sure as hell never stopped him before. Besides, this was important. If the two prodigies were out there, he had to find them and contain them before they messed with the order of time any further.
"Still haven't given up yet?" purred a metallic voice behind him. He had been so immersed in his thoughts he hadn't noticed the Joker's arrival. Normally, he wouldn't have tolerated his enemy being loose on the streets and not stashed away in Arkham, but the past week had been an exception; the Joker was as instrumental to finding the young duo as he was himself, so for now he had to allow him to remain free to help with the search. Lot of good it did him, however, for lately Joker hadn't shown up to help, which hardly surprised Batman. Yet he hadn't given up. Yet.
"They're out there somewhere," he murmured to the conglomeration of skyscrapers at their feet.
"Oh, I don't disagree with that," Joker said, padding forward to stand by the Bat's side. "They're definitely out there. Just…not in a place you'll ever be able to reach again."
If his bat ears could have swiveled, they would have turned to his left in the Joker's direction, puzzled at his words. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well," Joker began, "I don't pretend to know much about these sorts of things, but my guess is they…moved on."
"To where?"
"To where they're supposed to be," Joker stated solemnly, and turned to leave.
Batman stood in shocked silence for a split second, before blurting out, "What are you playing at?"
Joker stopped mid-stride, and twirled around on his heel to rotate back towards the dark knight, nearly losing his balance in the process. "What on earth could you mean by that, Batsy?" he asked innocently, feigning hurt feelings.
Batman set his jaw at the madman's mock naivety. "Since when do you start wanting things the way they're supposed to be?" he accused. "You never want things the way they are. You'd jump at the chance to alter time, tip over the world, just for the hell of it. Who's to say you didn't do something with them, just to change things?"
As Joker listened to his adversary's words, he gradually lowered his leg from its ballerina pose, and walked over to the edge of the building, hands folded behind his back in quiet pensiveness. There was a long pause in which he seemed to take in the words, pondering the best way to respond.
"Has it ever occurred to you, Bruce," he finally spoke, all joking and laughter drained from his manner, "that there are some things in this world that I don't want to change?"
He turned his head back towards the caped crusader, his piercing gaze deathly serious. Batman stared back, as the lightning in their eyes meshed together, completing the whole of their beings.