Work Text:
"Everyone I've killed. Everyone I've hurt. It's all been for you. To get you. Now that I have you... I can stop, if you want."
Bruce's eyes flicked away.
"Or I can keep going." Jack offered slowly.
"No." Bruce cut him off sharply. "Why would you even..."
"I've always said we complete each other, Brucey." He murmured, resting a pale hand against Bruce's bare cheek, taking advantage of the fact that, for once, the man wasn't wearing his cowl "If you need our game to continue..."
"I don't want anyone else to die." Bruce whispered horsely, voice somewhere in between that of the growling vigilante and the chipper playboy.
"You can change the rules and still play." Jack whispered back.
"But you said you didn't need to play anymore." Bruce countered.
"Doesn't mean I don't like to." A grin split his face, a glimmer of old madness swimming to the surface. At certain times, like now, it was muted. Controlled. But that didn't mean it was gone. Quite the contrary. His madness was always there. Lurking. Waiting. It always had been, before. He never really went insane. He had dammed the madness, held it back, walled it up behind stones and mortar in the crypts of his mind where it stood, screams concussing the grey matter of his skull.
Then, he had become it.
Batman had freed him, freed it, let slip the hyenas of war.
Bruce studied the other man's face, so familiar and yet so strange, genuine happiness in his usually manic and angry green eyes, calm where there once was chaos. He had made peace with his madness. It no longer weighted him down, twisted his bones, hollowed his face, sharpened his teeth until they made his own lips bleed.
"You would kill for me." He said lowly.
"Fill graveyards, my darling." Jack breathed. "I have and I would again. Just say the word."
"You would die for me." Bruce continued, even softer.
"As long as it was by your hand." The declaration slid out in a leaking breath of honesty.
"Would you live for me?" He asked sharply.
At that, Jack paused.
"Why do you think I'm still around?" He finally answered, all of his previous humor gone, leaving nothing but exposed nerves. "I live for you, Batman."
"Bruce." He corrected. "It's Bruce now."
"I'm still Joker." Jack informed him, surprisingly cautious in manner and speech. "Call me what you want but I'm still me. And you're still you."
"I know." Bruce nodded, closing his eyes. "We can be all of ourselves together."
"We live for each other and our other selves die for us too." Jack agreed.
Bruce listened to their hearts beat in an asynchronus tattoo for a while, mixing with the sound of rain on the warehouse roof.
"Do you think they'll miss me?" He asked.
"Yes." Jack replied simply. "But they'll live."
Bruce nodded. "And so will we."
Jack laughed quietly. "And so will we."