Work Text:
Batman kills the Joker.
Batman kills the Joker.
Batman kills the Joker.
Batman kills the Joker.
Batman kills the Joker.
Batman kills the Joker.
Batman kills the –
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The Joker beats him back to Gotham. And then Bruce Wayne is busy burying a child, organizing a funeral, failing to call his eldest and failing to survive in any way that matters, and perhaps it thinks it is safe, because it looks surprised when Batman steps out of the shadows.
The Joker smiles, broad and welcoming, and it is the last smile it ever makes.
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Three days later the Joker gasses a kindergarten.
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The Joker smiles, wide and unhinged, and it is the last smile it ever makes.
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A week, and the Joker attacks the Mayor’s charity gala.
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The Joker smiles, teeth bloody and cracked, and it is the last smile it ever makes.
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The sixth one is female; the fourth unconcerned with the Bat.
The tenth’s obsession burns far greater than the first’s ever had.
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The ultimate irony of Batman’s crusade is that Gotham abhors change; that Gotham does love its children – too much to let them go.
So much that it names them.
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It doesn’t need its children’s permission for that.
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Batman kills the Joker.
Batman kills the Joker.
Batman kills the Joker.
Batman kills –
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When Batman vanishes, it is the Bats and Birds of Gotham that panic, not its people. That struggle, frantic, to sacrifice one of their own lest one of their own be taken from them – to make a decision before Gotham makes one for them.
His return is always too great a relief to warrant much more than weeping.
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When Jason Todd returns to Gotham, he returns nameless. He returns with a mission.
Gotham thrills too deeply over his return to lay claim to him immediately, and this is its mistake.
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The nature of names, of course, is that they must be given, or taken, or made, and regardless of their origin – there is an origin.
Before the Joker warranted Gotham’s own love, own attention, own protection – he went by another moniker.
And there is a chance, however small –
Tim Drake took on the mantle of Robin willingly, for fear that Gotham would demonstrate its love for its bird at the cost of an identity not yet settled enough to belong, and it worked. He retained himself, his being, did not become a faceless child at Bruce Wayne’s side or a marionette with panicked eyes.
By the time Jason Todd returns to Gotham, everyone has seen the horror of those who do not choose –
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The seventeenth Joker is a child.
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The current Joker is better than most. It prefers entertainment to massacre, spectacle to devastation. It tends to leave the children alone.
There is a cycle to these things.
There is no better time to try.
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Batman kills the Joker.
Batman kills the Joker.
Batman –
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“Who do you think you are?”
The snarl reverberates; Something is listening. Intent, adoring.
Batman is on his knees, keening.
He could save himself. Make himself anew, protect himself with a title unsullied with history, fall into the arms his father and go home.
“The original.” Jason snarls back, and fires.
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The Red Hood kills the Joker.