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This time, he’s left a trail of carnage in his wake too painful to ignore. Barbara Lee Gordon—a woman now—battered and bruised. Jim Gordon—an old man—tortured and tormented.
It’s a monument to their first time, meticulously planned out to the last detail. A perfect pantomime of his first encounter with the Bat.
They’re in a cemetery, and it’s raining. His purple suit splattered with mud from tumbling to the ground.
“Jeremiah,” the Batman says.
But the voice modulator is off, and no one has called him Jeremiah in ages. And suddenly the years fall away and they’re young men again, hurtling backwards through time.
“Jeremiah...you don’t have to be alone.”
He holds out his hand, and suddenly they’re back there, and Bruce is standing at the end of a mausoleum, desperately stretching out his hand. Painfully unaware Jeremiah’s foot has already slipped off the ledge into madness.
“Let me help you.”
You can trust me because I’m your friend.
“No,” the Joker says.
But he isn’t the Joker, not now. The manic edge of the crown prince of crime has gone from his voice, leaving behind the somber tones of a lonely, bespectacled young architect.
“No, it’s far too late for that.”
Jeremiah staggers to his feet, gently pushing away Bruce’s outstretched hand. He begins to chuckle, softly, to himself.
“You know,” Jeremiah says, lips twitching in a manic, painful smile, “this reminds me of a joke.”
He looks up at Bruce, raindrops dripping down the edge of his cowl. Bruce’s mouth a thin straight line, like a slash across his face.
"Stop me if you've heard this one. An architect and a billionaire walk into a bunker.”
“Jeremiah,” Bruce says, so quietly, as he takes a step towards him.
Jeremiah sees Bruce's fingers twitching at his sides, like he’s fighting the urge to reach out again.
He keeps going, raising his voice, over the storm and the deafening ring of Bruce’s soft voice calling out to him, reverberating again and again in his head.
"And they think they can save the world, the architect and the billionaire. You see, the architect is something of an engineer, and he’s built a battery. Clean energy, he says, enough to power an entire city.”
Bruce is close now, practically toe-to-toe. He reaches out and grasps Jeremiah by the shoulders, gripping hard.
“Jeremiah,” he says, more insistent.
But Jeremiah keeps talking, louder still.
“But the battery isn't a battery at all. The battery is a bomb, just waiting to go off.”
Jeremiah lets out a broken, nervous cackle. Bruce’s hand clamps down on his shoulder so hard that it hurts, but Jeremiah doesn’t wince. He looks into Bruce’s eyes, dark and worried, peering out from the leather face of the cowl.
“That bomb had been waiting to go off a long, long time," he admits, voice quiet at last, barely more than a whisper. “Isn’t that funny?”
He releases another bitter, wet chuckle. The look Bruce gives him can only be described as heartbroken. Jeremiah’s shoulders slump, like a marionette whose strings have been cut. He leans into Bruce’s grip, and Bruce’s hand comes up to grab his other shoulder, forced to support his weight.
"You see, the joke was on both of us, Bruce," he says, "Jerome had already gotten there, long before you ever could."
The sound Bruce makes is choked, more sob than laugh.
"Jerome always was the funny one," Bruce says, and this time, Jeremiah’s laugh is sharp and manic as he slips the blade under Bruce's mask and presses it against his throat.
Bruce tugs Jeremiah closer, the blade digging into his flesh, drawing blood. Jeremiah can see it, the thin red line spilling out from under the suit as Bruce pulls him in and kisses him, frantic and bruising.
"I won't let you fall," Bruce promises, desperate, against his mouth, "I’ve got you, Jeremiah. I won’t fail you again."
The Joker laughs, the sound lost in the space between their lips.
It’s the Batman who has finally told the greatest joke of all.