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seriousficTitle: Duality
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7,307
Characters/Pairings: Bruce Wayne, the Joker, Tim Drake, Harvey Dent, Barbara Gordon.
Previous Part: Chapter 9
Next Part: Chapter 11
Summary: Bruce was expecting a nice, quiet soiree. The most excitement at that costume party would be Tim Drake showing up in a Batman suit. Then he saw the woman dressed up like a cat.
Haley’s Circus cast a shadow.
When the show ended and the magic was gone, there was a place where the freaks went. A place where they weren’t outsiders. They smoked cheap cigars and drank bootleg liquor, played dirty pool and danced rowdy jigs in Slaughter Swamp, where the air ran hot.
Just a ways beyond the buildings that skirted the boundary between man and nature was a hut that had stood over Slaughter Swamp like a warning ever since a Dutch fur trader had put it there. Legend had it that long since spider-webs had replaced the animal hides stretched out on the front porch, runaway slaves had used the stilt-supported house as a way station. Maybe they had left the voodoo objects that dotted the house, linked together by dust and creepers like particularly juicy flies in a web. Or maybe it was just Gotham teens trying to scare each other with Halloween decorations. The Joker liked the ambiance either way, but it had no personality. It was just dark and gloomy. Kinda like Gotham. Both needed a big smile.
There was an ax outside, stuck in a tree stump. Joker hacked at a wall with it. Each pair of hits formed a tooth in a big toothy grin. Then he used the blunt end of the ax to hammer in eyes and left the ax hanging out of the wall to form a nose. That was a start. Mentally, Joker began to draw up blueprints for a Ha-Ha-hacienda. He’d rule Gotham from there. Maybe have an oval office. An ovoid office? Oblong?
The Joker dusted some wood fragments off his dressing gown.
One of the gorillas Penguin had hired for him came in through one of the walls that a tree had grown through, rattling the floorboards with each step. The Joker pivoted to greet him.
“Got your suit from the dry cleaners, boss.” He held up a pressed purple tuxedo inside plastic.
The Joker observed it, canting his head to one side and putting his eyeball out to stare at it closer. “Hmm… needs a little something.” He snatched a swamp flower out of a vase and held it up to the lapel. “Perfection! Moe, you’ve done it again!”
“My name’s Artie.”
Joker mussed his hair, close-cropped with male pattern baldness. “It’s Moe now. Find two of your best men and put ‘em in the wigs. And make sure it’s Curly and Larry! I can’t abide Curly-Joe!”
“Sure thing, boss.”
Joker snatched the dry cleaning from him. “Hmmm…” He held the suit over himself. “Think it brings out my eyes?” His wildly dilated eyes blinked at Moe.
“Uh… sure thing, boss.”
“Not a very wide vocabulary, eh?” Joker did a swirl, swinging the tuxedo around like a dance partner. “Oh, it’s gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight, my friend! Hand me my make-up.”
Moe blinked in confusion. Cobblepot paid him enough to put up with one of the… eccentrics, but hell, with a mug like that, what would anyone need with make-up? Then he saw a thin round table topped with chintz. There was a circular saw, a handgun, and a make-up case on top of it. The circular saw was dripping blood off the tabletop and down to the floor.
“Extracurricular activities,” Joker said, off the drip-drip-drip of the blood.
Moe smiled back, queasily. He handed the make-up case to the Joker who unzipped it and pulled out a compact. He examined himself in its mirror. “Oh, oh, this will never do at all. I look ghastly. I’m gonna wind up on Go Fug Yourself.” He ground a powderpuff into his cheeks until they were even paler than before.
Moe felt strangely invasive, like he had compromised the Joker’s privacy. He stood there, uncomfortable, as the Joker plucked his eyelashes.
“So, what are your thoughts on the Batman?”
Moe, disturbed, looked around to see if the boss might be talking to someone else. “Uhh… I don’t like him, I guess. Puts a lotta mooks in jail. Can’t bribe him, can’t reason with him. Oughta mind his own business, ya ask me.”
“And that’s why nobody asks you. Batman has a destiny, you see. He’s fated to fight for law and order, good and righteousness, Ma and apple pie, truth, justice, and the Starbucks way…” Joker pursed his lips to apply lipstick. “Or maybe he’s just a whackjob that gets off on beating people up in oh-so-tight leather. Hard to tell these days. Does my hair look alright? Not too chlorine-y? I was going for caesar salad.”
“It looks fine, boss. But why we gotta dress up as the Three Stooges?”
“Dress up?” Joker’s expression soured melodramatically. “I’m going to forgive that slip. Even the greatest method actor needs time to get into character. Do that in front of my adoring public and I’ll have you sodomized by wild animals.”
“Oh-okay.”
“Glad we understand each other. You believe in God, Moe?”
Moe didn’t much like where this conversation was going. “…guess so.”
Joker wound an arm around Moe, leading him around the room. “Me too. Who else could tell a joke as big as life? You get up, you go to work, and if you’re lucky enough to dodge drunk drivers, crooked cops, and falling anvils for fifty-odd years, you get to wait around to die in luxury! But that’s just the warm-up act. I’m the punchline… and Batsy is my straight man. All that talk of legacy, charity, doing good… that’s poppycock, my good man, poppycock! The only thing that really matters in life is… was it done with style? That’s why we’ve gotta have a theme! It counts a lot more than the swimsuit competition, believe you me!”
“So your theme is… being funny?”
Joker suddenly scowled, his mercurial mood going down fifty degrees. “No, you nincompoop, funny comes naturally to me! My theme is killing people! Comedy is just my hobby. After all, in Gotham,” he affected a lisp, “nothing ith ath it themes!”
He laughed uproariously at his own joke. Sensing what was good for him, Moe laughed along with him.
***
James Jr. was already asleep, lullabied by the quieted hum of the television. It was mainly background noise for Barbara; she was absorbed in a stitching project. Her parents emerged from their bedroom, dressed in their costumes. Father as a knight, mother as a maiden. She gave them both a smile.
“You guys look great.”
“Thank you, sweetie.” Sarah gestured Gordon onward, then bent down next to where Barbara was slouched on the love seat. “You sure you’ll be alright on your own? We could stay home, play a card game, or fix some nice buttery popcorn and watch a movie.”
“No, you guys go on ahead. I’ll be fine on my own.” She gestured to James Jr., who was softly drooling in his sleep. “I’ve got the spud to watch out for me.”
Frowning in motherly disapproval, Sarah shut James Jr’s mouth. “And you’re positive you don’t want to come with us?”
“Mom, I don’t even have a costume. I just want to laze around the house.”
“If you’re sure...”
“I am.”
Gordon returned, his coat on, with Sarah’s coat folded over his arm. “Come on, Sarah. Barbara, call us if you need anything, anything at all.”
“Well, there is one thing…”
They both seemed to move onto the balls of their feet. “Yes?”
“Could Dinah come over? We’ll be real quiet and it’ll be just us, no boys.”
Gordon laughed good-naturedly as he patted his wife on the arm. “Sure, sure. In fact, tell her she can spend the night if she likes.” His voice dropped. “But if she doesn’t, call a cab for her. It’s a long way from her place to ours.”
Barbara knew he was disguising it as courtesy, but it was caution. There’s a whole three blocks of suburbia between our houses. How would she survive?
Apparently, Dinah’s mom thought the same, because Mrs. Drake dropped Dinah off in an SUV a few minutes after Barbara called (which she did a few minutes after her parents left). Dinah found the front door unlocked and open a crack, the house unlit except for the staccato flares from the muted television set. Drawn to that, she rounded the corner into the living room…
“Boo!”
Dinah whirled. Coming out of the shadows was some terrible black beast with yellow markings on its fur. She screamed and kicked at the monster.
“Oww!” Barbara said, falling down.
Dinah blinked, not being used to monsters that said ouch.
Then she turned on the lights.
“You bitch,” she said to Barbara.
“Do I get a hand-up?”
“Whores don’t get hands up.”
Barbara leaped to her feet. “Scary costume, huh?”
“Halloween’s not for five months yet, you psycho!”
Barbara adjusted her cowl, which Dinah had unhinged. “This isn’t for Halloween, this is for the party at Wayne’s.”
“The party you’re skipping out on?”
“A-ha! But Batwoman isn’t skipping out on it!”
“Batwoman,” Dinah repeated. “A little butch, don’t you think? Kinda dykey?”
“You’ve overthinking it.”
“You’re the one with a cape.”
“It gives me coverage in the back. This shit is mercilessly revealing.”
Dinah gave her the Tyra Banks treatment. Looked her over, circled her, even pulled back the cape like she was a mechanic looking under the hood. Barbara struck a superhero pose, chest out, arms at her waist like bullets bounced off her.
“So, what do you think?”
Dinah put a finger to her lips. “Well, it’s not sluttastic, which means it’s definitely not a proper Halloween costume. Except for the high heels. Very do-me-riffic.”
Barbara stuck out her tongue. “Not all of us can pull off fishnets,” she returned after she pulled it back in. “Besides, I’ve been waiting for an ensemble to use those canary-yellow shoes you gave me.”
“Aww, that’s sweet of you. Although I was kind of hoping you’d regift them to me.”
“Trollop, I knew it!” Barbara finger-combed the hair spilling from her cowl. “Okay, here’s the deal. I need you to watch James Jr. while I go to the party. Also, I need to borrow your motorcycle.”
Dinah was aghast. “Do you want a kidney while you’re at it?”
“No, but the night is young. Come on, Dinah, you owe me.”
Dinah crossed her arms, sighed, and gave in. She always did, when Barbara asked. “How long do I have to watch the brat?”
“Just a few hours. I’ll just mingle a little, show the ‘rents they shouldn’t be treating me with kid gloves, and come back.” Dinah looked at her uncertainly. At last, Barbara put a gloved hand on her shoulder. “I want to show them I’m not afraid. That’s what I want to show everyone.”
With another sigh, Dinah took a set of keys from her pocket and dropped them in Barbara’s hand. “Bring it back with a full tank of gas. And if you wreck it, your ass is mine.”
Barbara kissed her on the cheek. “If you want my ass that bad, you could just ask.”
Dinah shoved her playfully. “G’wan, get. And bring me back some high-society stories to live vicariously through!”
“Will do, Elizabeth Bennet. I’ll tell you all about what it was like to dance with Lord Heathcliff,” Barbara shouted as she left.
“Write a crossover fanfic about it, geek!”
***
Tim’s father was looking at him with murder in his eyes. The costume was a provocation calculated to get a specific response, and this was it. It wasn’t that Tim liked the attention. In fact, he would rather do without it. But as long as it was foisted upon him against his will, it was virtually his duty to make it negative.
His costume was a simple gray body suit with a satin cape, stockings to cover the legs, calf-length leather boots, a leather utility boot painted yellow, and, of course, a cowl. It wasn’t sculpted like the real Batman’s, just a leather hood pulled tight with a matte black hockey mask under it, cut in half so it didn’t cover his jaw, like the Phantom of the Opera’s mask. Tim suspected he looked faintly ridiculous (especially with black make-up around his eyes like he was a raccoon), but hey, Superman wore his goddamn underwear on the outside.
“Who are you going as?” Jack Drake asked caustically, adjusting his own gentleman pirate cravat. “Batman Jr.?”
“Lay off him, it’s all in good fun,” said, surprising them both, Tim’s stepmother Dana.
Tim grunted at her, possibly in thanks.
They piled into the car.
***
The Joker fluffed his bowtie. The moment his fingers left it, it spun like an airplane propeller. An oldie, but a goodie.
“Not wearing a costume to a costume party,” he said to his grisly reflection in the mirror. “How gauche am I?”
***
Bruce looked at his costume. It was black satin, smooth and glossy. Dubiously, he looked to Alfred for confirmation.
“Am I supposed to wear this, or cover up the windows with it?”
Alfred seamlessly produced a black fedora to go with it. “I recalled you always enjoyed the adventures of a certain Zorro as a child, Master Wayne, and now… well, a masked avenger who masquerades as a foppish dandy of the idle rich set… how could I be expected to resist the irony?”
“Sounds more like metafiction to me.” Bruce took the hat and tried it on. Grimly, he said “I’ll need a sword and bullwhip for this to be accurate.”
“Very good, sir.”
A few minutes later, Bruce Wayne made a fashionably late entrance to his own party. He knew that there were swords hanging above several mantelpieces, but had no idea where Alfred got the bullwhip. And part of him didn’t want to know.
He boozed (ginger ale), schmoozed, and pretended not to know who everyone was behind their masks. Harvey Dent was too hard even for his playboy act. He was dressed as Superman, maskless, his musculature obvious even through the somewhat baggy costume. Gilda was dressed in what had to be a caricature of Lois Lane, judging by the porkpie hat with a press card sticking out of it. Bruce reminded himself very strongly not to mention this to Clark, ever.
“Ah, Harv.” Bruce toasted him with the martini glass in his hand. “They tell me you had a little run-in with the Batman. Tell me, did he drink your blood?”
Gilda squeezed her husband. “Haven’t found any bite marks yet… not for lack of trying.”
“Well, at least now you know you can trust him,” Bruce reasoned. “That’s one good thing to come out of all this.”
“I’m… not that sure.”
Gilda elbowed him in the ribs. “Honey, the Batman saved your life.”
“I know. But seeing him gave me the impression of an attack dog. Sure, he’s being sicced on the other guy, but he’s driven by rage. And that anger could swing against the innocent as easily as the guilty. That’s the problem with vigilante justice. It’s a black and white solution to problems with shades of gray.”
“You wanna do a stump speech?” Gilda asked him.
“No, I’d rather get some more of those spinach puffs. Speaking of which, Bruce, your spread is fantastic.”
Bruce smiled, not letting out a hint of the turmoil he felt boiling inside him. He’d saved Harvey’s life and the man still doubted him. It was vexing, all the more so because what if Harvey was right? Bruce regarded the Batman as a tool, a mask to wear against the wrongful… not the virtuous. But what if there was more to mask than man? What if he was a monster, just one that happened to fight on the side of law and order? They were questions with no easy answer and Bruce hated grappling with them.
“Hey, Bruce,” Harvey said lightly. Bruce started. He must’ve drifted off, brooded a bit, let the mask slip… on or off, he found it hard to tell. “In all likelihood, you’re right and I’m just being paranoid. But I’m an attorney. It’s my job to split hairs on this kind of thing. You millionaire playboys are allowed to ignore my half-baked philosophizing.”
“Well, now that I have your permission.”
They laughed, joining the chorus that ringed the rebuilt ballroom of Wayne manor. The room was built of imposing marble and stone, warmed by Alfred’s impeccable decorating. Bruce had been worried it would come off as either the second coming of the McMansion or a Tim Burton grotesquerie, but it actually looked like the house he’d remembered spending his childhood in. And it was alive again. Gotham was coming back to life.
“If you’ll excuse me, Harv, I can’t let you monopolize all my time. Gilda, try to stop getting lovelier. You are married now, after all, no need to rub it in the face of Gotham’s single male population.”
He strolled the party. Being seen. Making small talk. There was so much talked about and so little said. He’d hoped to pick up some information as sort of a salve for the wasted evening, but it seemed all the party would be good for was establishing his social persona.
“Having fun, sir?” Alfred asked, passing with a tray of drinks.
Bruce shook his martini glass. Empty. Alfred pulled a flask from his jacket pocket and refilled Bruce’s glass with ginger ale.
“We’ve established one thing for certain, Alfred.” Bruce was talking in that low voice that had unfortunately become synonymous in Alfred’s mind with the ‘real’ Bruce Wayne. “I don’t fit in here. I don’t belong.”
“Give it time, Master Wayne. Rome wasn’t built in a day. You’ve got, in this very room, your brothers and sisters in polite society. Surely, there must be someone you have something in common with.”
“Look at these people,” Bruce said. “They’ve never lost anything. They don’t have a mission in life, except to have fun and leech off their trust funds.”
“You sound like you detest them.”
“Part of me wishes I could be like them. In a world without crime, maybe I would be.” Bruce forced a smile. “Don’t worry about me, Alfred. I’ll get by.”
His smile metamorphosed into a social chameleon grin as he went to rejoin the party.
“And while you’re getting by, try and have a little fun.”
Bruce made a gesture of agreement over his shoulder.
***
Commissioner Gordon was trying to figure out how to drink his rum and cola through the visor of his armor when he heard a grim, familiar voice growl “Commissioner.”
He whirled around. At first glance, it was Batman. At second glance, it was Batman if he were 5’4, costumed on a budget, and eating from a bowl of peanuts in one hand.
“Any progress with the Cobblepot case? Rumor has it that he was behind the assassination attempt on Harvey Dent.”
Gordon scowled. “Are those dishwashing gloves?”
Tim paused, a handful of peanuts halfway to his mouth. “No.”
“Are those dishwashing gloves painted black? I’m not sure it’s safe to be eating with those on.”
“Focus on the investigation, Commissioner. Follow the money. Who would benefit from Harvey Dent dead?”
Jim Gordon mused on the surrealism of life.
“The Penguin, obviously, but who’s behind his meteoric rise to power? After Carmine Falcone’s untimely death, a high-society outcast returns to Gotham and takes the underworld’s reins. Where did he go? And more importantly, where did he get the money to start his Iceberg Lounge?”
Ten years ago, this might’ve seemed weird. Since then, Jim Gordon had driven a rocket-car with a manual transmission. Now the only thing in life that was inexplicable to him was the popularity of that Deal Or No Deal show.
“Young man, I can assure you that the Gotham City Police Department is doing everything in our power to find the criminals responsible for the attempt on District Attorney Dent’s life, and if the trail leads to Oswald Cobblepot, he will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the…” Gordon turned. His miniature conversational partner had disappeared. Jim sighed. Back in Chicago, he never had to put up with this.
***
Bruce did a double-take as a Batboy stalked past him. Alfred, on his way to deliver a bendy straw to Gordon (and thus allow him to drink through his visor), gave Bruce a knowing glance.
“I have heard of an inner child,” the butler said, sotto voce, “but having an external one seems quite avant-garde on your part, Master Wayne.”
“You know me, Alfred, always the height of fashion. Get rid of him if he causes any trouble.”
“I’ll find a flashlight with a bat painted on the bulb. That should suffice for distracting him.”
Bruce would’ve given Alfred an unimpressed glare. The butler’s needling of his employer’s habit of breaking engagements in favor of serving Gotham was an unending antagonism between the two men, one of the few real sticking points of their relationship that they would never see eye to eye on. He would’ve perpetuated the mini-feud, but a woman stopped him short.
He’d never had much of a problem with sexual tension. There were always women –beautiful, athletic, and, in the end, disposable – who were more than happy to take Bruce Wayne and his millions for a joy ride and part amicably. No commitments, no teary goodbyes, no strings attached. Sex was just another exercise, a tool he used to hone himself. It had proven benefits, and alleviating sexual tension made him a more efficient vigilante. Now and then there came a woman with whom there might be a more… sentimental attachment, but he always managed to drive them away. Lust, he had time for. Love, never.
Then she entered the room.
His nostrils filled. Her scent had hit him first, a perfume from one of the Italian provinces, had to be. He’d spent a little time there on a winery, stomping grapes and learning from a retired detective of some renown. It was an orgasmic aroma, one he’d thought he’d never encounter again. And yet here it was, ensnaring him and enrapturing his senses. For a moment, he considered resisting the urge to seek out its source. It would be an interesting test of will, albeit one he knew he could overcome. But it would be pointless and, as Alfred always told him, indulgences were de rigueur for men of his stature.
She was beautiful. His own age, though her eyes spoke of wisdom behind her years (I’m getting sappy). Dark hair with an ebony sheen, like a starless night sky (this isn’t like me). Eyes the color of emeralds, dusky skin that still paled in comparison to that blackest of hair, full ruby lips, and an angular face that would’ve been cruel if it weren’t off-set by a come-hither smile that made his heart quicken (I’ve seen her somewhere before). The dress was purple, its fabric lush and clinging. Slits ran all the way up both thighs, allowing movement and revealing slices of tanned flesh. A pair of go-go boots, eccentrically enough, ended her long legs. If only the line of her face wasn’t ruined by her cowl, purple like her dress, with cat ears springing from its top. A short green cape completed the ensemble.
“And you are?” he asked, drawing closer to her.
“A cat, handsome fellow.” She extended her hand. “Just a cat.”
He kissed her hand through the opera glove that sheathed it. Looked up at her over the gentle highlands of her knuckles and up the smooth strait of skin that veiled her arm. “Do cats dance?”
“Cats never stop dancing. Unfortunately for you, though, I hear no music.”
Bruce snapped his fingers. “Mr. Bandman, something jazzy.”
Almost imperceptibly, the background noise of the great ballroom shifted from chatter to the strains of an old big band standard. Bobby Darrin, maybe, although it wasn’t Bruce’s area of expertise. The woman pulled him tight enough for the whiskers of her cowl to traipse over his face. He locked one hand with hers, put the other daringly at the small of her back. She smiled and swayed him out onto the clearing dance floor.
“Don’t you feel vaguely ridiculous, dancing in costumes?”
“Miss Kitty, I imagine I’d feel a lot more ridiculous dancing without a costume.”
“Miss Kitty? How irreverent.”
“That’s America for you.” He leaned in closer. “Your accent… Egyptian? You speak English very well.”
“Amesegënallô.”
“You’re welcome.”
Other couples were venturing out onto the dance floor. Harvey and Gilda, trying not to step on his red cape. The Commissioner and his wife. Other couples Bruce recognized from the local gossip mags, which Alfred boiled down into a cheat sheet for him each evening. As Batman, he knew the rot behind their glossy sheen. Which ones propped their businesses up with crime, or cheated on their wives with professional sex workers, or just had a taste for nose candy. His face was set, lips a tight line of disapproval, eyes narrowing in Clint Eastwood fashion. The woman placed a hand at his chin and forced his gaze back onto her, into the deep pools of her eyes.
“You seem upset. Does something trouble you?”
“…Gotham,” he concluded after a moment’s thought.
“Don’t you like it here?”
“At times. When I think of what it could be,” Bruce said, surprised at his own candidness.
“If you don’t like it, why not leave?”
“Because this is my home.”
“It must be nice.” Her smile was sad. Like it was raining somewhere. “I never had a home, growing up. Or when grown up, really. I made few friends, I took no lovers… my father wouldn’t allow it.” Her hand coiled at the side of his neck. “Do you have any idea what it’s like, being defined by your parents?”
“A little,” he confessed. “Did you ever get free?”
“I guess…”
He looked into her for clarification.
“My father died.”
“I’m sorry. And your mother?”
“She died, shortly after I was born. I think that’s why my father was so protective of me. Still, I suppose I shouldn’t compare sob stories with you.”
“I had wealth… friends…” Bruce looked at Alfred, flittering around with always a kind word and a trays of hors d'oeuvre for his guests. “A family, in a way.”
“Did that make it better?”
“No,” he answered immediately. “Nothing makes it better.”
“Not even revenge?”
He looked at her oddly.
“A disease killed my mother. I hope to find a cure for it.”
As if the sadness of it were pushing her, she drifted deeper into his embrace until her head was resting against his broad chest. Bruce wondered if she could hear his heart beating faster.
“A noble goal. So, you’re a scientist then?”
“No. Don’t have the brains for it, I’m afraid. I’m only a humble museum curator.”
“Ah. My neighbor Jackson Drake is an archaeologist. Have you met?”
“I’m afraid I’ve only recently arrived in Gotham. Unfinished business, you might say.”
“How fortunate.”
She made a quizzical noise.
“For me, at least.”
“I must confess to a personal interest in your fair city,” she said as she was spun in and out of a smoke-smooth pirouette. “So much crime, and yet so much hope. It’s emblematic of… something. Like a societal microcosm for America in the new millennium. Especially your Batman.”
“I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… the man clearly has issues.” Bruce raised an eyebrow spookily. “If he even is a man.”
“He’s a man, alright.” She ran a finger down the chest-baring, cross-stitched neckline of his shirt. “All man.”
“My dear, you could drive a soul to jealousy.”
“It’s not my intent, I assure you. Who needs the Batman when I have you right here…?”
He dipped her, letting her hair fall nearly to the ground. And held her that way, gazing into her eyes like there was never anything else he needed to look at.
“It might be embarrassing to keep calling you Miss Kitty. Do you have something more… formal?”
She licked her lips. Then moved in, so slow it might have been a kiss, but instead she passed over him, the side of her face rubbing against his cheek until her lips were at his ear. “Talia,” she whispered. “My name is Talia.”
There was laughter all around and for a single, phobic moment Bruce thought it was directed at him and his sudden interest in romance. But then he lifted Talia… Talia up to see that a trio of Three Stooges wannabes were spraying each other with seltzer bottles. Alfred’s eyes bulged at the annoying behavior. Bruce sympathized.
The grandfather clock chimed and as one, the stooges blew on kazoos in fanfare. To that zippy theme, the doors spread open to reveal a man in a purple tuxedo. His face was bleached white, his hair was a shock of toxic green, and his eyes were yellow-tinged with bloodshot-redness. He walked forward on fashionable wingtips, surveying the entire room like a king would scrutinize his kingdom.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages! A party? For me? You shouldn’t have.” He did a little soft-shoes routine down the stairs and off the landing. “But it is appropriate. A good coming-out deserves a bash. But don’t think I’m being greedy! No, no, no, no! I’m here to spread the joy! When I look at all your slack-jawed, pasty, wrinkled, and/or beady-eyed faces, I just want to carve a smile into each and every one of you!”
He grabbed the nearest partier by the cheeks and pulled his face up into a smile. “See? Isn’t that better? You can turn the world on with a smile…”
“I love clowns,” Talia said, giggling behind a petite hand.
“I don’t,” Bruce replied.
With a zippy spin, he hustled his way over to a painting of Thomas and Martha Wayne, a young Bruce sitting in his father’s lamp. Bruce remembered holding still for the photographer to take the picture, then visiting the painter as he reworked that image into a work of art that seemed to understand all the things the photograph merely depicted.
The clown’s white-gloved hands pushed the framed painting up from its place of honor and took it down. A rustle went through the crowd. Sensing danger, Bruce waited… but his jaw twitched.
“Hmmm…” the clown pulled reading glasses from his pocket and set the painting down to examine it more closely. “Interesting blend of styles! A dash of sophistication… some later-period entitlement, a hint of noblesse oblige, just a touch of martyr complex, wouldn’t you say?” He tucked his glasses away. “Well, you know what they say… it ain’t a party till something gets broke!”
With that, he drove his fist through the painting, vandalizing the face of Thomas Wayne. A collective gasp went through the crowd. The clown tittered. Then, the guests parted as the son of Thomas Wayne stepped forward. Their eyes darted between Bruce and the party crasher like the people of an Old West town might’ve watched a showdown commence.
Bruce trembled with anger. “Whoever you are, I don’t think you’re very funny.”
The man in the purple tuxedo wheeled on him, his mirthful smile wiped from his face, leaving the simple blank expression of the psychopath. Then it returned, twitching up at the corners of his red, red lips like a corpse’s death throes, then into a smug smirk. He made a show of cleaning out his ear with his pinky finger.
“What was that?”
“I said, you’re not funny.”
The clown walked up to him. “That’s what I thought you said.”
With the same shocking violence that had defaced the painting, he backhanded Bruce. The billionaire hit the ground, a trickle of blood oozing from his split lip.
“I’m the Joker. And I say what’s funny.” The crowd shrieked as he reached down into his pants and pulled out a gun. “For instance, this?” He aimed at Bruce’s head. “High-larious!”
He pulled the trigger.
A flagpole extended from the barrel of the gun. Then a small flag reading “BOOM!” unraveled from that pole, hanging in the air with a slight wibble.
There were a few nervous chuckles. Joker waved the gun at his audience, provoking gales of shocked, head-shaking laughter. He ended up pointing it at Talia, who was still as a statue.
“You’re not laughing.”
“It’s not funny,” she replied.
“Oh, women! You wouldn’t know a good joke if penetrated into your chest cavity, causing massive bleeding and tissue damage!” He pulled the trigger again. The flagpole shot from the gun like a spear and impaled her between the breasts. The outrageous laughter turned quickly into screams. Joker closes his eyes and orgasmically breathed in the terror as Talia collapsed, like an exhausted dancer, to the ground. “Case in point.”
The clowns sprouted weapons out of concealment and fired into the air, driving the Gothamites by primordial instinct to huddle in fear on the ground. Only Bruce was in motion, belly-crawling over to Talia. He reached the pool of blood rippling away from her before he reached her.
“Hoo-ie, that was loud!” The Joker stepped over Bruce to nudge the fallen Talia. She gurgled blood. “Every party needs a pooper, that’s why I eviscerated you…” he sang. Bruce looked up at him with eyes that could kill. “Oh, simmer down, rich boy, you’ll get your turn.”
The Joker snatched a bottle of wine from an ice bucket and opened it, laughing when the cork struck a cowering man in the buttocks. He laughed harder when the man wet himself. He grabbed a glass from the bottom of a champagne pyramid, imploding the whole thing, then poured wine into the already-full glass. He guzzled it down, the precious wine dripping off his pointed chin. “Please remain calm, my dear hostages, so long as no one does anything… unfunny… no one will be harmed.” Not even breaking stride, he bashed a man’s brains in with the champagne bottle. “Except him, of course.”
He deadpan dropped the bloody bottle to the ground. “Boys, relieve our audience of their material limitations. And remember,” he cautioned the hostages. “It’s your donations that keep Joker TV on the air, so please, give generously. In fact, give till it hurts. And then give some more! HAHAHAHAHA!”
Talia was in Bruce’s arms. She had seemed so vivacious and alive earlier, but now her body seemed as hard as clay. Bruce quickly staunched the bleeding as best he could, but it was obvious she didn’t have long without medical attention. At war with his concern and urge to help was the desire for bloody retribution. This one had come into his house, mocked his father’s memory, attacked guests directly under his protection. This… he would take pleasure in. If he could just get his heart to stop pounding.
The Joker’s henchmen were moving through the ballroom as their boss continued his rant. They were ripping wallets and billfolds from the guests, taking jewelry and watches, tearing their clothes as they did so. It was a horrible, hellish cacophony of sound. Torn cloth and screams ripped from throats and the jangle of coins that spilled out and touched the floor and skimmed and skittered about on the tiles like an infestation of bugs.
A cackling, mad, lyrical voice rose above the madness. “Gentlemen, much like the ladies in your secretary pool, I’m looking for a man. A Bat-man. It’d take quite a lot of moolah to get all those wonderful toys, so one of you rich pricks must’ve thought it was funny to own your own pet vigilante. Guess having a sports team wasn’t good enough. So, I’m looking for someone to tell me who Batsy is.”
Curly whispered something in his ear. “Find Dent,” the Joker growled back. Then he spotted something that made his eyes light up with delight.
“You look familiar. Have we met before?” And he pranced off in that direction.
A henchman with hair combed into the distinctive cut of Larry from the Three Stooges grabbed Harvey Dent’s wife, ripping the pearls from her necklace. They went flying, rolling across the floor like spent bullets. One hit the mandorla of blood around the fallen Talia.
“Get your hands off of her!” Harvey screamed, getting a pistol-whipping across his face for his trouble.
Bruce straightened like an angry wolf. His sleeves and hands were soaked with blood. On all fours, Alfred crawled to join him.
“I’ll attend to her, Master Bruce. You attend to them!” He jerked his head to the clowns.
“I can’t… too many people around…” Bruce seemed on the verge of curling into a fetal position. Alfred had never seen him like this… not since he was a child. “Can’t risk a confrontation.”
“You’re going to have to or he’ll kill us all, one by one.”
Hands clasped behind his back, the Joker walked through the crowd. They split around him like sheep sensing a wolf in their midst. He weaved to and fro, enjoying the way they drew away from him every time he feinted movement in their direction. Finally, he shouted “BOO!” and everyone in earshot cringed.
On the ground, Harvey met Bruce’s eyes. And Harvey saw a change come over his friend, something gray slipping over his green eyes. Bruce’s jaw set, his lips grew tight, and his eyes were more focused than Harvey had ever seen anyone’s. They surveyed the room, penetrating it, before resting on Harvey and returning his look. Bruce gave a barely perceptible nod and Harvey realized first that the next twist in this impossible nightmare was that Bruce Wayne was taking charge. And second, that the adrenaline rush currently in the process of shaking his body like a rag doll was finally going to get expression.
He’d kept in shape since his days in the Gulf War. Never really earned that war hero title his campaign people liked to paint him with, but he hadn’t dishonored himself. And he knew his way around a gun, even if he never got time to go to the range.
With a sickening sound of flesh on flesh, Gilda crumpled, sucker-punched, gasping in air and trying not to vomit. Harvey tried to crawl over to her, got a kick in the ribs for his trouble. Larry and Curly started going to work on the Dents with his feet, the latter chanting “nyuck nyuck nyuck!” A steel-toed boot cut a gash in Harvey’s cheek.
Unnoticed by all, Bruce slipped Talia’s body into Alfred’s arms. His tuxedo front was stained crimson with blood. He cracked his neck once, then rose.
“No takers?” the Joker was saying. “No one has even a clue who the Batman is? I’m shocked and appalled. You people are supposed to be the crème de la crème and you’ve been outsmarted by a man who dresses up for Halloween all year round! What’s society coming to? It’s enough to make a soul lose faith in social Darwinism! You there!”
He strode up to Jack Drake, adding some variety to his walk with a hop and a skip in the middle. Jack was hugging his wife and son to him, but as the Joker approached he broke free of their grasp to stand between them and the clown.
“You got something there,” Joker said, poking his finger into Jack’s chest.
Jack looked down.
Joker raised his finger quickly, bopping Jack’s nose, then swung his other hand around in a roundhouse punch that sent Jack Drake to the ground.
“Gotta love the old punchlines!” Joker cackled, shaking off his bruised knuckles.
Tim knew then and there that he wasn’t a hero. All the schoolboy fantasies didn’t make him one, and no amount of training montages in his future would make him one either. He wasn’t even a proper victim. Dana was crouched down, shaking Jack in an attempt to rouse him. Tim was just standing there, trying not to wet himself. He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t have a witty comeback or some inspiring speech. He was no hero.
The Joker, squatting down on his haunches, slapped his purple-clad thighs in rapid sequence, finished his drum solo by slapping his hands together over Tim’s cheeks.
“And what do we have here? Batman Junior?” Like a hairdresser, Joker teased and preened Tim’s cowl. “What’s your name?”
”Tim,” he said in a voice like air leaking from something.
Joker’s smile was wide, his eyes alive. With a horrible zest he pulled a Desert Eagle from the folds of his coat. Its metal finish shone brightly, large and angular and cruel in his hand. “You like guns, Timmy?”
What passed for Tim’s voice dried out his mouth, teared up his eyes. “No.”
“Come on, every boy likes guns. They’re cool or hot or whatever it is you kids call ‘em these days. Here. Wanna touch it?”
“No,” Tim whimpered.
“You’ve a very contrary lad.” Joker twirled the gun so that he was holding it by the barrel, offering the butt to Tim. “Come on, now, don’t be shy, give it a go.”
“No, thank you,” Tim said. Ice water was running through his veins. It started as his chest, which breathed in sporadic bursts, then traveled down his extremities. Soon, he couldn’t stop shaking, no matter how hard he balled his hands into fists of effort.
Joker fell to his knees, spinning Tim around and hugging him from behind. His lips ran up and down the shell of Tim’s ear. “You ever kill anybody, Tim?”
“N-n-no.” A fat tear left Tim’s eye and rolled down his cheek. Tim knew, with the certainty of nightmare logic, that if the Joker saw it, something bad would happen.
The Joker forced his gun into Tim’s hands, wrapped the small fingers around the handle and then crushing them within his own spidery digits. The Joker forced Tim’s index finger through the trigger guard.
“No? Those schools, they do such an awful job of preparing you for the real world.”
Jack Drake spoke up from where he was sprawled on the ground, blood gracing his chin. “Leave him alone, you son of a bitch!”
Joker spun himself and his young hostage around, aiming the gun in the son’s hands at the father. Tim cringed; the only reason he didn’t scream was because he had no voice.
”Ah, no need to worry. I’m good with kids. Got one of my own. Had, rather.” The Joker took a hand off the gun and turned out his pocket. “Can’t remember where I put him!”
Tim’s arm was twitching, driving his aim away from Jack Drake. The Joker forcibly steadied his aim, both hands back on Tim’s.
“Intoxicating, isn’t it?” he breathed over Tim’s shoulder. “The power of life and death. With one curl of your finger, and all those hopes and dreams and little imaginary worlds go bye-bye. Funny, isn’t it? If I didn’t laugh, I’d cry.” Like a dance partner taking the lead, he twisted Tim so that the gun was aiming out into the crowd. He bounced the sight of the gun from innocent to innocent, drawing arches in the air. “Eeny. Meeny.”
A storm of fear brewed among the crowd. Some started weeping openly, all cowered, with those who weren’t driven to catatonia shying away from the gun’s barrel.
“Miney.”
Like a baseball catcher sending a signal to his pitcher, Bruce flashed three fingers to Harvey. Then he counted down to two.
Harvey nodded curtly. Brushed Gilda’s fingers from his arm.
“Mo.”
The gun stopped with Commissioner Gordon under its sight.
Bruce’s countdown reached one.
The Joker smiled. “Evening, Commish. Consider this the first round of your twenty-one gun salute.”
And then everything went to hell.
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7,307
Characters/Pairings: Bruce Wayne, the Joker, Tim Drake, Harvey Dent, Barbara Gordon.
Previous Part: Chapter 9
Next Part: Chapter 11
Summary: Bruce was expecting a nice, quiet soiree. The most excitement at that costume party would be Tim Drake showing up in a Batman suit. Then he saw the woman dressed up like a cat.
Haley’s Circus cast a shadow.
When the show ended and the magic was gone, there was a place where the freaks went. A place where they weren’t outsiders. They smoked cheap cigars and drank bootleg liquor, played dirty pool and danced rowdy jigs in Slaughter Swamp, where the air ran hot.
Just a ways beyond the buildings that skirted the boundary between man and nature was a hut that had stood over Slaughter Swamp like a warning ever since a Dutch fur trader had put it there. Legend had it that long since spider-webs had replaced the animal hides stretched out on the front porch, runaway slaves had used the stilt-supported house as a way station. Maybe they had left the voodoo objects that dotted the house, linked together by dust and creepers like particularly juicy flies in a web. Or maybe it was just Gotham teens trying to scare each other with Halloween decorations. The Joker liked the ambiance either way, but it had no personality. It was just dark and gloomy. Kinda like Gotham. Both needed a big smile.
There was an ax outside, stuck in a tree stump. Joker hacked at a wall with it. Each pair of hits formed a tooth in a big toothy grin. Then he used the blunt end of the ax to hammer in eyes and left the ax hanging out of the wall to form a nose. That was a start. Mentally, Joker began to draw up blueprints for a Ha-Ha-hacienda. He’d rule Gotham from there. Maybe have an oval office. An ovoid office? Oblong?
The Joker dusted some wood fragments off his dressing gown.
One of the gorillas Penguin had hired for him came in through one of the walls that a tree had grown through, rattling the floorboards with each step. The Joker pivoted to greet him.
“Got your suit from the dry cleaners, boss.” He held up a pressed purple tuxedo inside plastic.
The Joker observed it, canting his head to one side and putting his eyeball out to stare at it closer. “Hmm… needs a little something.” He snatched a swamp flower out of a vase and held it up to the lapel. “Perfection! Moe, you’ve done it again!”
“My name’s Artie.”
Joker mussed his hair, close-cropped with male pattern baldness. “It’s Moe now. Find two of your best men and put ‘em in the wigs. And make sure it’s Curly and Larry! I can’t abide Curly-Joe!”
“Sure thing, boss.”
Joker snatched the dry cleaning from him. “Hmmm…” He held the suit over himself. “Think it brings out my eyes?” His wildly dilated eyes blinked at Moe.
“Uh… sure thing, boss.”
“Not a very wide vocabulary, eh?” Joker did a swirl, swinging the tuxedo around like a dance partner. “Oh, it’s gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight, my friend! Hand me my make-up.”
Moe blinked in confusion. Cobblepot paid him enough to put up with one of the… eccentrics, but hell, with a mug like that, what would anyone need with make-up? Then he saw a thin round table topped with chintz. There was a circular saw, a handgun, and a make-up case on top of it. The circular saw was dripping blood off the tabletop and down to the floor.
“Extracurricular activities,” Joker said, off the drip-drip-drip of the blood.
Moe smiled back, queasily. He handed the make-up case to the Joker who unzipped it and pulled out a compact. He examined himself in its mirror. “Oh, oh, this will never do at all. I look ghastly. I’m gonna wind up on Go Fug Yourself.” He ground a powderpuff into his cheeks until they were even paler than before.
Moe felt strangely invasive, like he had compromised the Joker’s privacy. He stood there, uncomfortable, as the Joker plucked his eyelashes.
“So, what are your thoughts on the Batman?”
Moe, disturbed, looked around to see if the boss might be talking to someone else. “Uhh… I don’t like him, I guess. Puts a lotta mooks in jail. Can’t bribe him, can’t reason with him. Oughta mind his own business, ya ask me.”
“And that’s why nobody asks you. Batman has a destiny, you see. He’s fated to fight for law and order, good and righteousness, Ma and apple pie, truth, justice, and the Starbucks way…” Joker pursed his lips to apply lipstick. “Or maybe he’s just a whackjob that gets off on beating people up in oh-so-tight leather. Hard to tell these days. Does my hair look alright? Not too chlorine-y? I was going for caesar salad.”
“It looks fine, boss. But why we gotta dress up as the Three Stooges?”
“Dress up?” Joker’s expression soured melodramatically. “I’m going to forgive that slip. Even the greatest method actor needs time to get into character. Do that in front of my adoring public and I’ll have you sodomized by wild animals.”
“Oh-okay.”
“Glad we understand each other. You believe in God, Moe?”
Moe didn’t much like where this conversation was going. “…guess so.”
Joker wound an arm around Moe, leading him around the room. “Me too. Who else could tell a joke as big as life? You get up, you go to work, and if you’re lucky enough to dodge drunk drivers, crooked cops, and falling anvils for fifty-odd years, you get to wait around to die in luxury! But that’s just the warm-up act. I’m the punchline… and Batsy is my straight man. All that talk of legacy, charity, doing good… that’s poppycock, my good man, poppycock! The only thing that really matters in life is… was it done with style? That’s why we’ve gotta have a theme! It counts a lot more than the swimsuit competition, believe you me!”
“So your theme is… being funny?”
Joker suddenly scowled, his mercurial mood going down fifty degrees. “No, you nincompoop, funny comes naturally to me! My theme is killing people! Comedy is just my hobby. After all, in Gotham,” he affected a lisp, “nothing ith ath it themes!”
He laughed uproariously at his own joke. Sensing what was good for him, Moe laughed along with him.
***
James Jr. was already asleep, lullabied by the quieted hum of the television. It was mainly background noise for Barbara; she was absorbed in a stitching project. Her parents emerged from their bedroom, dressed in their costumes. Father as a knight, mother as a maiden. She gave them both a smile.
“You guys look great.”
“Thank you, sweetie.” Sarah gestured Gordon onward, then bent down next to where Barbara was slouched on the love seat. “You sure you’ll be alright on your own? We could stay home, play a card game, or fix some nice buttery popcorn and watch a movie.”
“No, you guys go on ahead. I’ll be fine on my own.” She gestured to James Jr., who was softly drooling in his sleep. “I’ve got the spud to watch out for me.”
Frowning in motherly disapproval, Sarah shut James Jr’s mouth. “And you’re positive you don’t want to come with us?”
“Mom, I don’t even have a costume. I just want to laze around the house.”
“If you’re sure...”
“I am.”
Gordon returned, his coat on, with Sarah’s coat folded over his arm. “Come on, Sarah. Barbara, call us if you need anything, anything at all.”
“Well, there is one thing…”
They both seemed to move onto the balls of their feet. “Yes?”
“Could Dinah come over? We’ll be real quiet and it’ll be just us, no boys.”
Gordon laughed good-naturedly as he patted his wife on the arm. “Sure, sure. In fact, tell her she can spend the night if she likes.” His voice dropped. “But if she doesn’t, call a cab for her. It’s a long way from her place to ours.”
Barbara knew he was disguising it as courtesy, but it was caution. There’s a whole three blocks of suburbia between our houses. How would she survive?
Apparently, Dinah’s mom thought the same, because Mrs. Drake dropped Dinah off in an SUV a few minutes after Barbara called (which she did a few minutes after her parents left). Dinah found the front door unlocked and open a crack, the house unlit except for the staccato flares from the muted television set. Drawn to that, she rounded the corner into the living room…
“Boo!”
Dinah whirled. Coming out of the shadows was some terrible black beast with yellow markings on its fur. She screamed and kicked at the monster.
“Oww!” Barbara said, falling down.
Dinah blinked, not being used to monsters that said ouch.
Then she turned on the lights.
“You bitch,” she said to Barbara.
“Do I get a hand-up?”
“Whores don’t get hands up.”
Barbara leaped to her feet. “Scary costume, huh?”
“Halloween’s not for five months yet, you psycho!”
Barbara adjusted her cowl, which Dinah had unhinged. “This isn’t for Halloween, this is for the party at Wayne’s.”
“The party you’re skipping out on?”
“A-ha! But Batwoman isn’t skipping out on it!”
“Batwoman,” Dinah repeated. “A little butch, don’t you think? Kinda dykey?”
“You’ve overthinking it.”
“You’re the one with a cape.”
“It gives me coverage in the back. This shit is mercilessly revealing.”
Dinah gave her the Tyra Banks treatment. Looked her over, circled her, even pulled back the cape like she was a mechanic looking under the hood. Barbara struck a superhero pose, chest out, arms at her waist like bullets bounced off her.
“So, what do you think?”
Dinah put a finger to her lips. “Well, it’s not sluttastic, which means it’s definitely not a proper Halloween costume. Except for the high heels. Very do-me-riffic.”
Barbara stuck out her tongue. “Not all of us can pull off fishnets,” she returned after she pulled it back in. “Besides, I’ve been waiting for an ensemble to use those canary-yellow shoes you gave me.”
“Aww, that’s sweet of you. Although I was kind of hoping you’d regift them to me.”
“Trollop, I knew it!” Barbara finger-combed the hair spilling from her cowl. “Okay, here’s the deal. I need you to watch James Jr. while I go to the party. Also, I need to borrow your motorcycle.”
Dinah was aghast. “Do you want a kidney while you’re at it?”
“No, but the night is young. Come on, Dinah, you owe me.”
Dinah crossed her arms, sighed, and gave in. She always did, when Barbara asked. “How long do I have to watch the brat?”
“Just a few hours. I’ll just mingle a little, show the ‘rents they shouldn’t be treating me with kid gloves, and come back.” Dinah looked at her uncertainly. At last, Barbara put a gloved hand on her shoulder. “I want to show them I’m not afraid. That’s what I want to show everyone.”
With another sigh, Dinah took a set of keys from her pocket and dropped them in Barbara’s hand. “Bring it back with a full tank of gas. And if you wreck it, your ass is mine.”
Barbara kissed her on the cheek. “If you want my ass that bad, you could just ask.”
Dinah shoved her playfully. “G’wan, get. And bring me back some high-society stories to live vicariously through!”
“Will do, Elizabeth Bennet. I’ll tell you all about what it was like to dance with Lord Heathcliff,” Barbara shouted as she left.
“Write a crossover fanfic about it, geek!”
***
Tim’s father was looking at him with murder in his eyes. The costume was a provocation calculated to get a specific response, and this was it. It wasn’t that Tim liked the attention. In fact, he would rather do without it. But as long as it was foisted upon him against his will, it was virtually his duty to make it negative.
His costume was a simple gray body suit with a satin cape, stockings to cover the legs, calf-length leather boots, a leather utility boot painted yellow, and, of course, a cowl. It wasn’t sculpted like the real Batman’s, just a leather hood pulled tight with a matte black hockey mask under it, cut in half so it didn’t cover his jaw, like the Phantom of the Opera’s mask. Tim suspected he looked faintly ridiculous (especially with black make-up around his eyes like he was a raccoon), but hey, Superman wore his goddamn underwear on the outside.
“Who are you going as?” Jack Drake asked caustically, adjusting his own gentleman pirate cravat. “Batman Jr.?”
“Lay off him, it’s all in good fun,” said, surprising them both, Tim’s stepmother Dana.
Tim grunted at her, possibly in thanks.
They piled into the car.
***
The Joker fluffed his bowtie. The moment his fingers left it, it spun like an airplane propeller. An oldie, but a goodie.
“Not wearing a costume to a costume party,” he said to his grisly reflection in the mirror. “How gauche am I?”
***
Bruce looked at his costume. It was black satin, smooth and glossy. Dubiously, he looked to Alfred for confirmation.
“Am I supposed to wear this, or cover up the windows with it?”
Alfred seamlessly produced a black fedora to go with it. “I recalled you always enjoyed the adventures of a certain Zorro as a child, Master Wayne, and now… well, a masked avenger who masquerades as a foppish dandy of the idle rich set… how could I be expected to resist the irony?”
“Sounds more like metafiction to me.” Bruce took the hat and tried it on. Grimly, he said “I’ll need a sword and bullwhip for this to be accurate.”
“Very good, sir.”
A few minutes later, Bruce Wayne made a fashionably late entrance to his own party. He knew that there were swords hanging above several mantelpieces, but had no idea where Alfred got the bullwhip. And part of him didn’t want to know.
He boozed (ginger ale), schmoozed, and pretended not to know who everyone was behind their masks. Harvey Dent was too hard even for his playboy act. He was dressed as Superman, maskless, his musculature obvious even through the somewhat baggy costume. Gilda was dressed in what had to be a caricature of Lois Lane, judging by the porkpie hat with a press card sticking out of it. Bruce reminded himself very strongly not to mention this to Clark, ever.
“Ah, Harv.” Bruce toasted him with the martini glass in his hand. “They tell me you had a little run-in with the Batman. Tell me, did he drink your blood?”
Gilda squeezed her husband. “Haven’t found any bite marks yet… not for lack of trying.”
“Well, at least now you know you can trust him,” Bruce reasoned. “That’s one good thing to come out of all this.”
“I’m… not that sure.”
Gilda elbowed him in the ribs. “Honey, the Batman saved your life.”
“I know. But seeing him gave me the impression of an attack dog. Sure, he’s being sicced on the other guy, but he’s driven by rage. And that anger could swing against the innocent as easily as the guilty. That’s the problem with vigilante justice. It’s a black and white solution to problems with shades of gray.”
“You wanna do a stump speech?” Gilda asked him.
“No, I’d rather get some more of those spinach puffs. Speaking of which, Bruce, your spread is fantastic.”
Bruce smiled, not letting out a hint of the turmoil he felt boiling inside him. He’d saved Harvey’s life and the man still doubted him. It was vexing, all the more so because what if Harvey was right? Bruce regarded the Batman as a tool, a mask to wear against the wrongful… not the virtuous. But what if there was more to mask than man? What if he was a monster, just one that happened to fight on the side of law and order? They were questions with no easy answer and Bruce hated grappling with them.
“Hey, Bruce,” Harvey said lightly. Bruce started. He must’ve drifted off, brooded a bit, let the mask slip… on or off, he found it hard to tell. “In all likelihood, you’re right and I’m just being paranoid. But I’m an attorney. It’s my job to split hairs on this kind of thing. You millionaire playboys are allowed to ignore my half-baked philosophizing.”
“Well, now that I have your permission.”
They laughed, joining the chorus that ringed the rebuilt ballroom of Wayne manor. The room was built of imposing marble and stone, warmed by Alfred’s impeccable decorating. Bruce had been worried it would come off as either the second coming of the McMansion or a Tim Burton grotesquerie, but it actually looked like the house he’d remembered spending his childhood in. And it was alive again. Gotham was coming back to life.
“If you’ll excuse me, Harv, I can’t let you monopolize all my time. Gilda, try to stop getting lovelier. You are married now, after all, no need to rub it in the face of Gotham’s single male population.”
He strolled the party. Being seen. Making small talk. There was so much talked about and so little said. He’d hoped to pick up some information as sort of a salve for the wasted evening, but it seemed all the party would be good for was establishing his social persona.
“Having fun, sir?” Alfred asked, passing with a tray of drinks.
Bruce shook his martini glass. Empty. Alfred pulled a flask from his jacket pocket and refilled Bruce’s glass with ginger ale.
“We’ve established one thing for certain, Alfred.” Bruce was talking in that low voice that had unfortunately become synonymous in Alfred’s mind with the ‘real’ Bruce Wayne. “I don’t fit in here. I don’t belong.”
“Give it time, Master Wayne. Rome wasn’t built in a day. You’ve got, in this very room, your brothers and sisters in polite society. Surely, there must be someone you have something in common with.”
“Look at these people,” Bruce said. “They’ve never lost anything. They don’t have a mission in life, except to have fun and leech off their trust funds.”
“You sound like you detest them.”
“Part of me wishes I could be like them. In a world without crime, maybe I would be.” Bruce forced a smile. “Don’t worry about me, Alfred. I’ll get by.”
His smile metamorphosed into a social chameleon grin as he went to rejoin the party.
“And while you’re getting by, try and have a little fun.”
Bruce made a gesture of agreement over his shoulder.
***
Commissioner Gordon was trying to figure out how to drink his rum and cola through the visor of his armor when he heard a grim, familiar voice growl “Commissioner.”
He whirled around. At first glance, it was Batman. At second glance, it was Batman if he were 5’4, costumed on a budget, and eating from a bowl of peanuts in one hand.
“Any progress with the Cobblepot case? Rumor has it that he was behind the assassination attempt on Harvey Dent.”
Gordon scowled. “Are those dishwashing gloves?”
Tim paused, a handful of peanuts halfway to his mouth. “No.”
“Are those dishwashing gloves painted black? I’m not sure it’s safe to be eating with those on.”
“Focus on the investigation, Commissioner. Follow the money. Who would benefit from Harvey Dent dead?”
Jim Gordon mused on the surrealism of life.
“The Penguin, obviously, but who’s behind his meteoric rise to power? After Carmine Falcone’s untimely death, a high-society outcast returns to Gotham and takes the underworld’s reins. Where did he go? And more importantly, where did he get the money to start his Iceberg Lounge?”
Ten years ago, this might’ve seemed weird. Since then, Jim Gordon had driven a rocket-car with a manual transmission. Now the only thing in life that was inexplicable to him was the popularity of that Deal Or No Deal show.
“Young man, I can assure you that the Gotham City Police Department is doing everything in our power to find the criminals responsible for the attempt on District Attorney Dent’s life, and if the trail leads to Oswald Cobblepot, he will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the…” Gordon turned. His miniature conversational partner had disappeared. Jim sighed. Back in Chicago, he never had to put up with this.
***
Bruce did a double-take as a Batboy stalked past him. Alfred, on his way to deliver a bendy straw to Gordon (and thus allow him to drink through his visor), gave Bruce a knowing glance.
“I have heard of an inner child,” the butler said, sotto voce, “but having an external one seems quite avant-garde on your part, Master Wayne.”
“You know me, Alfred, always the height of fashion. Get rid of him if he causes any trouble.”
“I’ll find a flashlight with a bat painted on the bulb. That should suffice for distracting him.”
Bruce would’ve given Alfred an unimpressed glare. The butler’s needling of his employer’s habit of breaking engagements in favor of serving Gotham was an unending antagonism between the two men, one of the few real sticking points of their relationship that they would never see eye to eye on. He would’ve perpetuated the mini-feud, but a woman stopped him short.
He’d never had much of a problem with sexual tension. There were always women –beautiful, athletic, and, in the end, disposable – who were more than happy to take Bruce Wayne and his millions for a joy ride and part amicably. No commitments, no teary goodbyes, no strings attached. Sex was just another exercise, a tool he used to hone himself. It had proven benefits, and alleviating sexual tension made him a more efficient vigilante. Now and then there came a woman with whom there might be a more… sentimental attachment, but he always managed to drive them away. Lust, he had time for. Love, never.
Then she entered the room.
His nostrils filled. Her scent had hit him first, a perfume from one of the Italian provinces, had to be. He’d spent a little time there on a winery, stomping grapes and learning from a retired detective of some renown. It was an orgasmic aroma, one he’d thought he’d never encounter again. And yet here it was, ensnaring him and enrapturing his senses. For a moment, he considered resisting the urge to seek out its source. It would be an interesting test of will, albeit one he knew he could overcome. But it would be pointless and, as Alfred always told him, indulgences were de rigueur for men of his stature.
She was beautiful. His own age, though her eyes spoke of wisdom behind her years (I’m getting sappy). Dark hair with an ebony sheen, like a starless night sky (this isn’t like me). Eyes the color of emeralds, dusky skin that still paled in comparison to that blackest of hair, full ruby lips, and an angular face that would’ve been cruel if it weren’t off-set by a come-hither smile that made his heart quicken (I’ve seen her somewhere before). The dress was purple, its fabric lush and clinging. Slits ran all the way up both thighs, allowing movement and revealing slices of tanned flesh. A pair of go-go boots, eccentrically enough, ended her long legs. If only the line of her face wasn’t ruined by her cowl, purple like her dress, with cat ears springing from its top. A short green cape completed the ensemble.
“And you are?” he asked, drawing closer to her.
“A cat, handsome fellow.” She extended her hand. “Just a cat.”
He kissed her hand through the opera glove that sheathed it. Looked up at her over the gentle highlands of her knuckles and up the smooth strait of skin that veiled her arm. “Do cats dance?”
“Cats never stop dancing. Unfortunately for you, though, I hear no music.”
Bruce snapped his fingers. “Mr. Bandman, something jazzy.”
Almost imperceptibly, the background noise of the great ballroom shifted from chatter to the strains of an old big band standard. Bobby Darrin, maybe, although it wasn’t Bruce’s area of expertise. The woman pulled him tight enough for the whiskers of her cowl to traipse over his face. He locked one hand with hers, put the other daringly at the small of her back. She smiled and swayed him out onto the clearing dance floor.
“Don’t you feel vaguely ridiculous, dancing in costumes?”
“Miss Kitty, I imagine I’d feel a lot more ridiculous dancing without a costume.”
“Miss Kitty? How irreverent.”
“That’s America for you.” He leaned in closer. “Your accent… Egyptian? You speak English very well.”
“Amesegënallô.”
“You’re welcome.”
Other couples were venturing out onto the dance floor. Harvey and Gilda, trying not to step on his red cape. The Commissioner and his wife. Other couples Bruce recognized from the local gossip mags, which Alfred boiled down into a cheat sheet for him each evening. As Batman, he knew the rot behind their glossy sheen. Which ones propped their businesses up with crime, or cheated on their wives with professional sex workers, or just had a taste for nose candy. His face was set, lips a tight line of disapproval, eyes narrowing in Clint Eastwood fashion. The woman placed a hand at his chin and forced his gaze back onto her, into the deep pools of her eyes.
“You seem upset. Does something trouble you?”
“…Gotham,” he concluded after a moment’s thought.
“Don’t you like it here?”
“At times. When I think of what it could be,” Bruce said, surprised at his own candidness.
“If you don’t like it, why not leave?”
“Because this is my home.”
“It must be nice.” Her smile was sad. Like it was raining somewhere. “I never had a home, growing up. Or when grown up, really. I made few friends, I took no lovers… my father wouldn’t allow it.” Her hand coiled at the side of his neck. “Do you have any idea what it’s like, being defined by your parents?”
“A little,” he confessed. “Did you ever get free?”
“I guess…”
He looked into her for clarification.
“My father died.”
“I’m sorry. And your mother?”
“She died, shortly after I was born. I think that’s why my father was so protective of me. Still, I suppose I shouldn’t compare sob stories with you.”
“I had wealth… friends…” Bruce looked at Alfred, flittering around with always a kind word and a trays of hors d'oeuvre for his guests. “A family, in a way.”
“Did that make it better?”
“No,” he answered immediately. “Nothing makes it better.”
“Not even revenge?”
He looked at her oddly.
“A disease killed my mother. I hope to find a cure for it.”
As if the sadness of it were pushing her, she drifted deeper into his embrace until her head was resting against his broad chest. Bruce wondered if she could hear his heart beating faster.
“A noble goal. So, you’re a scientist then?”
“No. Don’t have the brains for it, I’m afraid. I’m only a humble museum curator.”
“Ah. My neighbor Jackson Drake is an archaeologist. Have you met?”
“I’m afraid I’ve only recently arrived in Gotham. Unfinished business, you might say.”
“How fortunate.”
She made a quizzical noise.
“For me, at least.”
“I must confess to a personal interest in your fair city,” she said as she was spun in and out of a smoke-smooth pirouette. “So much crime, and yet so much hope. It’s emblematic of… something. Like a societal microcosm for America in the new millennium. Especially your Batman.”
“I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… the man clearly has issues.” Bruce raised an eyebrow spookily. “If he even is a man.”
“He’s a man, alright.” She ran a finger down the chest-baring, cross-stitched neckline of his shirt. “All man.”
“My dear, you could drive a soul to jealousy.”
“It’s not my intent, I assure you. Who needs the Batman when I have you right here…?”
He dipped her, letting her hair fall nearly to the ground. And held her that way, gazing into her eyes like there was never anything else he needed to look at.
“It might be embarrassing to keep calling you Miss Kitty. Do you have something more… formal?”
She licked her lips. Then moved in, so slow it might have been a kiss, but instead she passed over him, the side of her face rubbing against his cheek until her lips were at his ear. “Talia,” she whispered. “My name is Talia.”
There was laughter all around and for a single, phobic moment Bruce thought it was directed at him and his sudden interest in romance. But then he lifted Talia… Talia up to see that a trio of Three Stooges wannabes were spraying each other with seltzer bottles. Alfred’s eyes bulged at the annoying behavior. Bruce sympathized.
The grandfather clock chimed and as one, the stooges blew on kazoos in fanfare. To that zippy theme, the doors spread open to reveal a man in a purple tuxedo. His face was bleached white, his hair was a shock of toxic green, and his eyes were yellow-tinged with bloodshot-redness. He walked forward on fashionable wingtips, surveying the entire room like a king would scrutinize his kingdom.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages! A party? For me? You shouldn’t have.” He did a little soft-shoes routine down the stairs and off the landing. “But it is appropriate. A good coming-out deserves a bash. But don’t think I’m being greedy! No, no, no, no! I’m here to spread the joy! When I look at all your slack-jawed, pasty, wrinkled, and/or beady-eyed faces, I just want to carve a smile into each and every one of you!”
He grabbed the nearest partier by the cheeks and pulled his face up into a smile. “See? Isn’t that better? You can turn the world on with a smile…”
“I love clowns,” Talia said, giggling behind a petite hand.
“I don’t,” Bruce replied.
With a zippy spin, he hustled his way over to a painting of Thomas and Martha Wayne, a young Bruce sitting in his father’s lamp. Bruce remembered holding still for the photographer to take the picture, then visiting the painter as he reworked that image into a work of art that seemed to understand all the things the photograph merely depicted.
The clown’s white-gloved hands pushed the framed painting up from its place of honor and took it down. A rustle went through the crowd. Sensing danger, Bruce waited… but his jaw twitched.
“Hmmm…” the clown pulled reading glasses from his pocket and set the painting down to examine it more closely. “Interesting blend of styles! A dash of sophistication… some later-period entitlement, a hint of noblesse oblige, just a touch of martyr complex, wouldn’t you say?” He tucked his glasses away. “Well, you know what they say… it ain’t a party till something gets broke!”
With that, he drove his fist through the painting, vandalizing the face of Thomas Wayne. A collective gasp went through the crowd. The clown tittered. Then, the guests parted as the son of Thomas Wayne stepped forward. Their eyes darted between Bruce and the party crasher like the people of an Old West town might’ve watched a showdown commence.
Bruce trembled with anger. “Whoever you are, I don’t think you’re very funny.”
The man in the purple tuxedo wheeled on him, his mirthful smile wiped from his face, leaving the simple blank expression of the psychopath. Then it returned, twitching up at the corners of his red, red lips like a corpse’s death throes, then into a smug smirk. He made a show of cleaning out his ear with his pinky finger.
“What was that?”
“I said, you’re not funny.”
The clown walked up to him. “That’s what I thought you said.”
With the same shocking violence that had defaced the painting, he backhanded Bruce. The billionaire hit the ground, a trickle of blood oozing from his split lip.
“I’m the Joker. And I say what’s funny.” The crowd shrieked as he reached down into his pants and pulled out a gun. “For instance, this?” He aimed at Bruce’s head. “High-larious!”
He pulled the trigger.
A flagpole extended from the barrel of the gun. Then a small flag reading “BOOM!” unraveled from that pole, hanging in the air with a slight wibble.
There were a few nervous chuckles. Joker waved the gun at his audience, provoking gales of shocked, head-shaking laughter. He ended up pointing it at Talia, who was still as a statue.
“You’re not laughing.”
“It’s not funny,” she replied.
“Oh, women! You wouldn’t know a good joke if penetrated into your chest cavity, causing massive bleeding and tissue damage!” He pulled the trigger again. The flagpole shot from the gun like a spear and impaled her between the breasts. The outrageous laughter turned quickly into screams. Joker closes his eyes and orgasmically breathed in the terror as Talia collapsed, like an exhausted dancer, to the ground. “Case in point.”
The clowns sprouted weapons out of concealment and fired into the air, driving the Gothamites by primordial instinct to huddle in fear on the ground. Only Bruce was in motion, belly-crawling over to Talia. He reached the pool of blood rippling away from her before he reached her.
“Hoo-ie, that was loud!” The Joker stepped over Bruce to nudge the fallen Talia. She gurgled blood. “Every party needs a pooper, that’s why I eviscerated you…” he sang. Bruce looked up at him with eyes that could kill. “Oh, simmer down, rich boy, you’ll get your turn.”
The Joker snatched a bottle of wine from an ice bucket and opened it, laughing when the cork struck a cowering man in the buttocks. He laughed harder when the man wet himself. He grabbed a glass from the bottom of a champagne pyramid, imploding the whole thing, then poured wine into the already-full glass. He guzzled it down, the precious wine dripping off his pointed chin. “Please remain calm, my dear hostages, so long as no one does anything… unfunny… no one will be harmed.” Not even breaking stride, he bashed a man’s brains in with the champagne bottle. “Except him, of course.”
He deadpan dropped the bloody bottle to the ground. “Boys, relieve our audience of their material limitations. And remember,” he cautioned the hostages. “It’s your donations that keep Joker TV on the air, so please, give generously. In fact, give till it hurts. And then give some more! HAHAHAHAHA!”
Talia was in Bruce’s arms. She had seemed so vivacious and alive earlier, but now her body seemed as hard as clay. Bruce quickly staunched the bleeding as best he could, but it was obvious she didn’t have long without medical attention. At war with his concern and urge to help was the desire for bloody retribution. This one had come into his house, mocked his father’s memory, attacked guests directly under his protection. This… he would take pleasure in. If he could just get his heart to stop pounding.
The Joker’s henchmen were moving through the ballroom as their boss continued his rant. They were ripping wallets and billfolds from the guests, taking jewelry and watches, tearing their clothes as they did so. It was a horrible, hellish cacophony of sound. Torn cloth and screams ripped from throats and the jangle of coins that spilled out and touched the floor and skimmed and skittered about on the tiles like an infestation of bugs.
A cackling, mad, lyrical voice rose above the madness. “Gentlemen, much like the ladies in your secretary pool, I’m looking for a man. A Bat-man. It’d take quite a lot of moolah to get all those wonderful toys, so one of you rich pricks must’ve thought it was funny to own your own pet vigilante. Guess having a sports team wasn’t good enough. So, I’m looking for someone to tell me who Batsy is.”
Curly whispered something in his ear. “Find Dent,” the Joker growled back. Then he spotted something that made his eyes light up with delight.
“You look familiar. Have we met before?” And he pranced off in that direction.
A henchman with hair combed into the distinctive cut of Larry from the Three Stooges grabbed Harvey Dent’s wife, ripping the pearls from her necklace. They went flying, rolling across the floor like spent bullets. One hit the mandorla of blood around the fallen Talia.
“Get your hands off of her!” Harvey screamed, getting a pistol-whipping across his face for his trouble.
Bruce straightened like an angry wolf. His sleeves and hands were soaked with blood. On all fours, Alfred crawled to join him.
“I’ll attend to her, Master Bruce. You attend to them!” He jerked his head to the clowns.
“I can’t… too many people around…” Bruce seemed on the verge of curling into a fetal position. Alfred had never seen him like this… not since he was a child. “Can’t risk a confrontation.”
“You’re going to have to or he’ll kill us all, one by one.”
Hands clasped behind his back, the Joker walked through the crowd. They split around him like sheep sensing a wolf in their midst. He weaved to and fro, enjoying the way they drew away from him every time he feinted movement in their direction. Finally, he shouted “BOO!” and everyone in earshot cringed.
On the ground, Harvey met Bruce’s eyes. And Harvey saw a change come over his friend, something gray slipping over his green eyes. Bruce’s jaw set, his lips grew tight, and his eyes were more focused than Harvey had ever seen anyone’s. They surveyed the room, penetrating it, before resting on Harvey and returning his look. Bruce gave a barely perceptible nod and Harvey realized first that the next twist in this impossible nightmare was that Bruce Wayne was taking charge. And second, that the adrenaline rush currently in the process of shaking his body like a rag doll was finally going to get expression.
He’d kept in shape since his days in the Gulf War. Never really earned that war hero title his campaign people liked to paint him with, but he hadn’t dishonored himself. And he knew his way around a gun, even if he never got time to go to the range.
With a sickening sound of flesh on flesh, Gilda crumpled, sucker-punched, gasping in air and trying not to vomit. Harvey tried to crawl over to her, got a kick in the ribs for his trouble. Larry and Curly started going to work on the Dents with his feet, the latter chanting “nyuck nyuck nyuck!” A steel-toed boot cut a gash in Harvey’s cheek.
Unnoticed by all, Bruce slipped Talia’s body into Alfred’s arms. His tuxedo front was stained crimson with blood. He cracked his neck once, then rose.
“No takers?” the Joker was saying. “No one has even a clue who the Batman is? I’m shocked and appalled. You people are supposed to be the crème de la crème and you’ve been outsmarted by a man who dresses up for Halloween all year round! What’s society coming to? It’s enough to make a soul lose faith in social Darwinism! You there!”
He strode up to Jack Drake, adding some variety to his walk with a hop and a skip in the middle. Jack was hugging his wife and son to him, but as the Joker approached he broke free of their grasp to stand between them and the clown.
“You got something there,” Joker said, poking his finger into Jack’s chest.
Jack looked down.
Joker raised his finger quickly, bopping Jack’s nose, then swung his other hand around in a roundhouse punch that sent Jack Drake to the ground.
“Gotta love the old punchlines!” Joker cackled, shaking off his bruised knuckles.
Tim knew then and there that he wasn’t a hero. All the schoolboy fantasies didn’t make him one, and no amount of training montages in his future would make him one either. He wasn’t even a proper victim. Dana was crouched down, shaking Jack in an attempt to rouse him. Tim was just standing there, trying not to wet himself. He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t have a witty comeback or some inspiring speech. He was no hero.
The Joker, squatting down on his haunches, slapped his purple-clad thighs in rapid sequence, finished his drum solo by slapping his hands together over Tim’s cheeks.
“And what do we have here? Batman Junior?” Like a hairdresser, Joker teased and preened Tim’s cowl. “What’s your name?”
”Tim,” he said in a voice like air leaking from something.
Joker’s smile was wide, his eyes alive. With a horrible zest he pulled a Desert Eagle from the folds of his coat. Its metal finish shone brightly, large and angular and cruel in his hand. “You like guns, Timmy?”
What passed for Tim’s voice dried out his mouth, teared up his eyes. “No.”
“Come on, every boy likes guns. They’re cool or hot or whatever it is you kids call ‘em these days. Here. Wanna touch it?”
“No,” Tim whimpered.
“You’ve a very contrary lad.” Joker twirled the gun so that he was holding it by the barrel, offering the butt to Tim. “Come on, now, don’t be shy, give it a go.”
“No, thank you,” Tim said. Ice water was running through his veins. It started as his chest, which breathed in sporadic bursts, then traveled down his extremities. Soon, he couldn’t stop shaking, no matter how hard he balled his hands into fists of effort.
Joker fell to his knees, spinning Tim around and hugging him from behind. His lips ran up and down the shell of Tim’s ear. “You ever kill anybody, Tim?”
“N-n-no.” A fat tear left Tim’s eye and rolled down his cheek. Tim knew, with the certainty of nightmare logic, that if the Joker saw it, something bad would happen.
The Joker forced his gun into Tim’s hands, wrapped the small fingers around the handle and then crushing them within his own spidery digits. The Joker forced Tim’s index finger through the trigger guard.
“No? Those schools, they do such an awful job of preparing you for the real world.”
Jack Drake spoke up from where he was sprawled on the ground, blood gracing his chin. “Leave him alone, you son of a bitch!”
Joker spun himself and his young hostage around, aiming the gun in the son’s hands at the father. Tim cringed; the only reason he didn’t scream was because he had no voice.
”Ah, no need to worry. I’m good with kids. Got one of my own. Had, rather.” The Joker took a hand off the gun and turned out his pocket. “Can’t remember where I put him!”
Tim’s arm was twitching, driving his aim away from Jack Drake. The Joker forcibly steadied his aim, both hands back on Tim’s.
“Intoxicating, isn’t it?” he breathed over Tim’s shoulder. “The power of life and death. With one curl of your finger, and all those hopes and dreams and little imaginary worlds go bye-bye. Funny, isn’t it? If I didn’t laugh, I’d cry.” Like a dance partner taking the lead, he twisted Tim so that the gun was aiming out into the crowd. He bounced the sight of the gun from innocent to innocent, drawing arches in the air. “Eeny. Meeny.”
A storm of fear brewed among the crowd. Some started weeping openly, all cowered, with those who weren’t driven to catatonia shying away from the gun’s barrel.
“Miney.”
Like a baseball catcher sending a signal to his pitcher, Bruce flashed three fingers to Harvey. Then he counted down to two.
Harvey nodded curtly. Brushed Gilda’s fingers from his arm.
“Mo.”
The gun stopped with Commissioner Gordon under its sight.
Bruce’s countdown reached one.
The Joker smiled. “Evening, Commish. Consider this the first round of your twenty-one gun salute.”
And then everything went to hell.
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Date: 2008-09-08 09:31 pm (UTC)But it's not. Hamill's Joker voice works as a contradiction to Nolan's hypertealism, which is themeatically consistent with who the Joker IS anyway. Almost like Deadpool, he's comfortable knowing he's a fictional character.
And poor Tim, so hard on himself when he's already halfway there just facing the Joker at all. Heroism is a matter of degrees, and it can be cultivated. But a very honest internal moment for him to have- particularly at his age. "Who was I kidding?" creeps so insidiously through your head when you have so little real life experience.
In other words, I like.
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Date: 2008-09-10 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-09 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-09 04:02 am (UTC)Also, the Joker didn't sell his wife to the Devil to save his elderly aunt. That we know of.
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Date: 2008-09-09 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-10 07:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-09 05:55 am (UTC)Can't deny feeling a bit cheated that it was Talia and not Selina, but the suspense overrides that petty reaction quite easily.
Tim knew then and there that he wasn’t a hero.
It's a punch to the gut here, since we've gotten so familiar with comic Tim who choose to be a hero. And the thought of him being the one to possible kill his dad? That's some evil, awesome work right there!
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Date: 2008-09-10 07:59 pm (UTC)Well, ya know, keep reading. There are only two characters I'm saving for a possible sequel, Kon and Cass, so who knows when who knows who will pop up?
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Date: 2008-09-09 02:36 pm (UTC)Cliff-hangers, I really hate cliffhangers...
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Date: 2008-12-17 08:47 pm (UTC)And then the end... so much suspense! I can only hope it's Babs making her grand entrance.