The Joker always thought that his death would be the moment he won. Perhaps it was, only not in a way either of us could have imagined. He thought I would kill him, and in doing so, validate and give final purpose to his life. I… I knew someone would die. Someone would have to. If you'd asked me who I thought would have killed the other, I wouldn't have answered. It was certainly a possibility that in one of his murderous schemes the Joker would succeed. But with him, logic was never the foundations of reality. God forbid our deaths had nothing to do with each other. And in his own way, he was as compelling as the tale he presented: it was hard to think in terms of mere logic with this creature, this monster from beyond the limits of human understanding, (this man, infatuated) telling you of your destiny, spinning tales of greatness wreathed in blood.
So perhaps I believed him. I would kill him, because that was the only way the game could end. And it was that inevitability that in turn bolstered my resolve to keep it going past all point of reason.
It turns out we were both wrong. He died by accident, and by his own hand. He died trying not to die, but to live. And the greatest irony is that I would have saved him. Still. After everything.
I don't care about the Joker. I never did. He was a parasite, a leech sinking teeth into my blood; a murderer who cloaked violence and betrayal in the form of affection, a physical manifestation of my guilt. It's incredible that this darkness, this stain upon Gotham could ever be wiped out. You can't kill a force of nature, you can't kill a legend.
The glass broke, and the cure broke with it.
Do you remember the first time we met? Of course you do. You're the one who immortalized it, who turned it from an accident of fate into the first act of a play meant to span our lives. The Batman was just starting out, getting his footing under him. (I say this not because it explains what happens next, but because this was to be his first failure; at least, so it goes.) A man in a red hood trips and falls, a splash into acid-green. But that was only when you met me, and I met you. When I met you (and you met me)—that was a whole different story.
The Joker was just a man who needed help, and I could never give him that. Maybe no one could. I tried, or maybe I only wanted to try, but all we could ever give each other was violence. We both laughed, but it was a tragedy.
I never laughed. I never fell, I never followed him down into the dark, and that should count for something, shouldn't it? But it doesn't. I said he sunk his teeth into me and never let go, and drowned us both. No. It was my fault. I never helped him, I never even tried. I turned off the light and let him fall. (I was always happiest in darkness.)
Do you know why the Joker loved me? (He didn't.)
No one does. He wouldn't tell, even if he knew. It was because I saved him. I saved him from falling, but the truth is, that's not enough, and it never has been. No beam, no matter how strong, can stop a man if he wants to jump. And that's all I've ever tried to do—for him, for all of them. To give them an option, a way out of the maze, if they want to take it. I can't do it for them. I can't guide them out myself. The way is different for everyone.
He sank his teeth into me and drew blood. The Joker was dying of an insatiable disease and he corrupted me. Did he want me to save him? (He said so, but he must have known I would—). Did he want to kill me? (Yes.) Did he want to ruin me, pull me down into the filth with him—he wants nothing else. He still does.
He came back, you see. And that's the problem. Because you didn't come back.
He came back, smiling and dead, pulling me into his madness. (Or maybe it was uniquely my own.) Is it madder to think he might have locked a code somewhere in all the poison he filled me with? A switch to flip, just like all the other Joker clones? Or is it a subtler horror: was he never there at all? What if I was only a man on a stage, playing pretend with myself? I don't know which disturbs me greater: that the Joker's consciousness had invaded me, or that I had resurrected him as a cruel ally, a thorn in my side, my memories of his love just as present as his cruelty.
The worst thing is this: I locked him away in the darkness of my mind, with all the other monsters, and promised never to think of him again.
I was so careful, all along, never to talk to him.
But I did, in the end. I answered him. I spoke. And that made him real.
And no matter how much I forget him, I will always know that for one moment, I joined him. I disregarded the fact that the Joker was dead, that this figment, no matter how created, was a phantom. I stepped beyond the logic of the world: looked at the door marked exit and walked across. And I told a dead man that he would suffer for eternity, as if there was a consciousness that could be angered and betrayed just as he betrayed me, and I believed it.
No matter how much I forget him, I will always know that for one moment, I missed the Joker so much that I promised him I would never think of him again.
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