You hate the chase, but you won't give up and you won't be brought down. Hate spins you forward, sprinting over a fallen trash can upon making the turn into another alley. This city at night is a labyrinth and darkness has never been your ally. Hate is a strange feeling when you haven't felt something in so long, when you've closed yourself off from the ache and burn of emotions, now it is only hatred that rises through the obsession while you climb a chainlink fence and your bootheels smash onto broken beer bottles and old newspapers. This city is so polluted, it is disgusting and heartbreaking, but up ahead there's that laugh. That maniacal ha ha ha. "Don't you see the funny side, yet?" He calls back toward you with a terrorist twirl of purple and green, and his smile curdles your stomach into something worse than hate when you give yourself the half second it takes to think about what he did.
Tonight, the city isn't quiet at all. The chaos extends past the rat maze of these alleys. There are fire trucks wailing in the distance where so much of Robinson Park dances in flames. The clown runs fingers through the greaseslick green of his hair and smiles that never ending smile that says he's waiting, he doesn't have all night. He's right about that. After tonight, you don't plan on him ever having another night again. The cement at your feet begins to crack, and the split spreads up the sides of the buildings on either side of you. Bricks crumble and fall loose to shatter on the ground as the chase continues around another bend. This is probably a trap, but you don't care. You're almost there. You feel weak from the fire, but rage keeps you going, and the sound of his voice up there in the shadows. So close. "Now we're talking," he says with a cackle of a shout just before something large and black swipes into your periphery. It takes you to the ground hard, and busted asphalt bites at your back even as he draws the weight of his cape over the both of you. You fight him, even as you hear the explosion go off nearby. Heat and debris, still you fight with poison hands but he's got armor everywhere. When the cape pulls back, you can tilt your head to see the burning just ahead. More flames from some kind of tripped bomb. The clown is getting away, you can see a glimpse of his colors through the smoke and it makes you scream wordlessly. The smoke makes your throat raw, or maybe its the threat of tears. He's got the armor of that gauntlet against your throat now, and you go still while finally acknowledging him with a look. You know that he saved you, but that makes you dislike him a little more. Some things are worth dying for.
He calls you by your real name, he calls you doctor, and you don't blink when you tell him that's not who you are anymore. That's not your name. He tells you it can be, that you don't have to do this, be like this. The memory begins to blacken at the edges, and your laugh is a soft, sad thing when you say, "So says the man in the mask.."