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The Batcomputer hummed softly in the background, casting its familiar blue glow across the cave. Jason was mid-sentence, gesturing at something on the main screen, when the world tilted sideways—as it often did when Terry McGinnis dropped in unannounced.
"It goes right there and—" Jason stopped. Squinted at the figure that had materialized near the medical bay. "Oh, great. Look, it's Future Batman again."
"You know, I hate that that's my name in your guys' heads," Terry said, brushing bat-dust off his sleeves. Actual bat dust. From bats. The cave had bats. It was a whole thing.
"It's not even a name in our heads," Dick said cheerfully from his perch on a workstation. "Bruce wrote it on a sticky note on our Bat-computer."
Bruce didn't look up from his reports. "Terry. What are you doing here again?"
"I'm, uh—"
"You don't have to say it." Jason crossed his arms, already bored. "We know you're here for the Joker."
"It's so predictable every time," Damian muttered from where he was sharpening a sword. His sword. The one he wasn't supposed to have in the cave, but Bruce had given up on that fight approximately three years ago.
"Dude, this is starting to become like a hobby for you," Tim added, not looking up from his own tablet. He was tracking something. He was always tracking something.
"I'm not visiting for fun," Terry protested. "I'm just checking in."
"You're checking in on the Joker?" Jason raised an eyebrow.
"Yes."
"Literally the same sentence," Damian said flatly.
"Listen." Terry held up both hands, the universal sign for I know how this sounds but please hear me out. "I'm here for a particular purpose, okay? I'm here to make sure the Joker stays the Joker."
Silence.
The kind of silence that usually preceded something terrible.
"Huh?" Jason said eloquently.
"What do you mean, 'the Joker stays the Joker'?" Dick's head tilted like a confused golden retriever.
"Like, in my future, right." Terry started pacing, which was never a good sign. "Joker is not like a guy. He's like a disease."
"Okay, so why don't you handle him in your time?" Jason asked, which was a perfectly reasonable question that deserved a perfectly reasonable answer.
It did not get one.
"Because…" Terry winced. "Because something happens… and… someone becomes the Joker."
"Oh, that's horrible." Dick actually looked upset about it. "And I feel horrible for the guy who has to become the Joker."
Tim paused his tablet-scrolling, Damian beat him to it in speech. "Father. What seems to be the issue?"
"Nothing, nothing." Bruce's voice had gone into that careful, measured tone that meant I am currently doing the math on how many years this will take off my life.
"Okay, well." Tim shrugged, already moving on. "If you have to come to our time, it means that your Joker is either monologuing too much or he's just annoying."
"Yeah, he does really talk a lot," Terry admitted.
"He sounds like the worst," Dick said sympathetically.
"Yeah, why do you keep doing that?" Jason interrupted, frowning.
"Why do I keep doing what?"
"Why do you keep coughing?"
Terry blinked. "Sorry, it's the bat dust in here. I'm allergic to it."
"The bat dust?" Tim finally looked up from his tablet, expression caught somewhere between disbelief and genuine concern for the future of humanity.
"Are you hearing yourself?" Dick added.
"Can we just get back on with the Joker?" Terry pleaded.
"I'm just confused how that works." Dick gestured vaguely at the walls, at the cave, at the concept of time itself. "Like, how do we go from this kind of crime boss, the Joker to this, like—what was he?"
Terry's eyes narrowed. That was never good. "Tim, I really don't wanna talk about this."
"I'm getting it," Bruce said quietly.
"What is wrong?" Tim asked, now fully alert.
"And please don't encourage him," Bruce added, which was the Bat equivalent of screaming CODE RED.
"Encourage him to what?" Dick looked between them.
"What are you hiding from us, dude?" Tim demanded, standing up now.
"I'm not hiding anything. It's just—"
"What, is Joker one of us?"
Terry's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"Uh, well." He glanced around the room like he was hoping a trapdoor would open. "I know it wasn't me."
"That would be correct," Damian said. "It was not you."
"No, it wasn't my ass," Jason added helpfully.
"You don't exist," Terry said.
"...Oh." Jason's face did something complicated.
"Okay, best to be Dick then," Tim said, and then his own words caught up with him. His face went pale. "You became the Joker?"
"It's really not that funny," Dick said weakly.
"First—what? I don't get it." Tim's voice had gone high. "What is it? Like, I became the Joker or something?"
Terry said nothing.
Which was, unfortunately, a complete sentence.
"No." Tim's tablet clattered onto the workstation. "No."
Jason is considering whether to shoot with his gun or throw the crowbar that's right next to him.
"How does that even happen?" Tim demanded.
"It's a long story, but I'm just here to check in and make sure that you stay Tim." Terry said it like it was simple. Like it was reassuring.
"Stay Tim?" Dick echoed.
"What?" Tim's voice cracked.
"Wait, so you're not actually here for the Joker?" Jason tilted his head. "You're here for this Joker?"
"I'M NOT THE JOKER!"
"Yeah, somebody check his backpack for crowbars," Jason said, grinning.
"DUDE!"
"I always knew Drake was a little suspicious," Damian murmured.
"ARE YOU SERIOUS?"
The cave fell into chaos—Tim sputtering, Jason laughing, Dick trying to be the mediator but mostly just making it worse, Damian adding fuel to the fire with surgical precision, and Bruce pinching the bridge of his nose so hard his fingers left marks.
And then—
"Hey, I'm back."
Silence.
Instantaneous, complete, terrified silence.
Salix stood at the entrance to the cave, still in his civilian clothes—black sweater, dark jeans, hair slightly messy like he'd just woken up from a nap. His mismatched eyes blinked slowly at the scene before him. The way everyone had frozen mid-motion. The way Tim had gone the color of paper. The way Jason's grin had turned into something more like oh no.
"...Li?" Jason ventured.
"Uh, yes?" Salix's gaze swept across the room, cataloging. Analyzing. Calculating. "Why is everyone looking at me? And why is my Moon looking at me like I'm going to commit another massacre?"
Bruce's face was doing something complicated. "Sali, how about you just sit down?"
"Yeah, yeah, sit down, babe." Jason's voice was pitched about an octave too high.
"???" Salix's confusion was almost cute, if you ignored the fact that Tim had started backing toward the exit.
"Why is Tim backing away?" Salix asked slowly. "From me. I literally don't know what happened."
Terry, who had apparently learned nothing from the last five minutes, opened his mouth.
"Tim is going to be a Joker."
"TERRY!" Tim's shriek echoed off the cave walls.
And then—
"……..."
The sound Salix made wasn't words.
It wasn't even really a sound.
It was more like the absence of sound. Like the moment before a storm hit. Like the universe holding its breath.
"Oh no," Dick whispered.
"Salix." Bruce's voice was calm. Controlled. The voice he used for hostage negotiations and talking jumpers off ledges.
"What, I didn't say anything." Salix's voice was also calm. Which was somehow worse.
"Your hand is inside your jacket pocket."
"And I also didn't do anything right now."
"I can't see your left hand," Tim breathed.
"Oh god, he's pulling out his watch," Dick said.
"I'm not."
Salix was absolutely lying. Everyone could tell.
"Tim." Bruce didn't look away from Salix, already approaching to hold him down.
"What—I mean, yeah??"
"Run."
"I'm currently looking at him and my eyes need to blink," Jason said, which was maybe the worst possible thing to say in that moment, but Jason had never been good at self-preservation.
"Ní…" Salix's voice had gone soft. Sweet, even. The kind of sweet that came before poison. "Let me go."
"No."
"Nope, nope, I'm not getting the Jason treatment." Tim started backing faster.
"HEY—"
Jason made the fatal mistake of looking at Tim instead of Salix.
"Salix, no!—"
Bruce's grip loosened for exactly half a second—half a second too long, half a second that would haunt him for the rest of his natural life, and Salix moved.
One moment he was standing next to Bruce.
The next, he was transformed: sleek black suit, red jacket, domino mask, hat somehow already on his head, and lunging across the cave with the kind of speed that made Damian's eyes go wide.
Tim screamed.
Not a manly scream. Not a vigilante scream. A genuine scream, the kind that came from somewhere deep in the soul.
"COME BACK HERE."
"DUKE CASS STEPH I NEED YOUR HELP—" Tim was already running, already scrambling up the stairs, already calculating how many seconds he had before—
"I'm getting Toksa," Salix announced, and that was when Tim started running faster.
"Oh no, he's getting my treatment," Dick said, watching the chase with something approaching awe.
"I just want to check!" Salix's voice echoed from somewhere near the garage.
"No, you're going to beat me up down like you did to Jason—"
"In his defense," Jason called after them, "he beat the insanity out of me—"
"Yeah, that's why you're the only one who got your ass whooped," Dick said.
The cave fell silent except for the distant sounds of Tim's screaming and Salix's terrifyingly cheerful "I JUST WANT TO TALK."
Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose.
Then he pinched it again, just to be sure.
"I'm too old for this," he muttered.
"You're literally not even fifty," Damian pointed out.
"I'm emotionally too old for this."
And somewhere above them, Tim Drake, the future Joker, current terrified vigilante, let out another scream as Tostada's shadow passed over the skylight.