Author's Note: I have never read the comics, so forgive me my mistakes. However, considering that Ledger took his Joker a step away from what could be considered comic-canon, I guess I have more leeway to accurately portray him. I also can't remember whether people refer to Det. Lt. Gordon as 'James' or 'Jim' so… I'll make my mind up later.

This is Joker/Batman/Rachael/Gordon-centric fic. These are the main characters, not the pairings haha.

Disclaimer: I disclaim.

Warnings: Swearing and violence. It's not really relevant to either Begins or Dark Knight, though I guess it should take place before, or perhaps during Knight… I dunno. This is a sort of Alternate Universe fic, drawing from several other movie inspirations but most notably 28 Days Later. The dimension hopping… well, that happens in a lot of movies. Let's see if I can pull it off, shall we?

Summary: "This is a delicate, dangerous situation. We are no longer in Gotham, gentlemen – this is the end of the world." The Joker's web of insanity is spun by many spiders and the alternate world that he and his foes find themselves in is just one of them. AU

Chapter One

The End of The World

'Fucking Bat!' he screeched out of the window, its glass shattered and long gone. 'You're scratching the paintwork!' He recoiled back into his seat and placed both of his hands on the wheel once more, cackling hysterically as he welcomed throbbing waves of adrenaline again and again, each pleasurably pounding through his innards. He gripped the wheel even tighter and shook his greasy, green head about, thoroughly enjoying himself. He twisted around in his seat to stare into the back, causing his fellow clown in the front passenger seat to yell and grip the dashboard as they swerved madly over both sides of the road. The Batman thundered on the roof above them, trying to break in using his barbs to cut the metal open.

'How are you doing, gorgeous?' The Joker shrieked. He grinned wildly as a shark would at Rachael Dawes, bound and gagged in the back of their stolen car, two more clowns on either side of her with fierce, long barreled guns trained to her temples. As they veered all over the road she was periodically thumped in the head by the cold guns. Tears streamed from her eyes and rolled over the silver tape covering her mouth. She squirmed and squeaked as Batman finally made an opening in the roof.

'Oh for fuck's sake,' shouted The Joker. 'You're spoiling all the fun!' He turned back to the road for a split second to make sure they were heading in the right direction. He rounded upon one of the clowns in the back and growled deeply. 'Get rid of him.' The clown nodded and seemingly on a half-asleep autopilot he lazily fired his gun several times into the roof. The thumping and snarling ceased. Rachael screamed into the thick tape.

'I don't want to play today, Batman,' The Joker mumbled to no one. 'My schedule–' (he made a tricky swerve into a small side road) '– is. Fully. Booked…'

As the car streaked towards the end of the narrow street a stocky, black police van rolled across to block their exit. The Joker snarled as he caught a glimpse of James Gordon's spectacles and moustache. He accelerated and pushed the car to its limit, fully intent on ploughing through the vehicle attempting to block their way. Policemen in heavy armour and helmets leapt from the van; one of them held a weapon that The Joker recognised immediately. Gordon had left the vehicle also and The Joker saw him raise his arm, preparing to give the order to fire.

'Oh shit–'

'NO!' The Joker jumped a little at the hoarse bellow. Batman leapt from where he had apparently been riding stealthily on the roof and crashed down onto the bonnet, one hand steadying himself and the other outstretched before him. 'NO! Rachael is inside!'

Gordon staggered and cut his order off. He and his men scattered as The Joker came ever closer, swerving all about and ricocheting off the buildings either side to shake The Batman from his nose. The Joker sneered, the threat of the bazooka gone thanks to both his unwilling passenger in the back and the limpet on his bonnet.

Using the barbs of his gauntlets Batman anchored himself into the metal, now facing The Joker who gnashed his browning teeth and wagged his tongue from behind the steering wheel. As he stared deeply into the steely eyes of his rival The Joker suddenly found himself blinking away the blindness from a brief flash of light, as though someone had set a camera off in front of his face. There it was again; he flinched. Once more and his blood turned into a cold sludge, his breath got lost on the way to his lungs and every thought, comprehensive or otherwise, left his mind. He clung to wheel desperately, bracing himself for something that he knew nobody around him could ever be prepared for.

In those split seconds The Batman saw the change in the madman. He saw the harsh lines of his face fall slack behind his flaking make-up and his dark, oaken eyes go blank. Time felt slow. He heard Gordon shouting for him to let go as the car tore towards the police van, Rachael screaming from behind the tape and the other clowns panicking. As the world around them was lost in a terrible, blinding light Batman had just enough time to see The Joker scrunch his eyes tightly shut and grimace in expectant fear.

When he had finally mustered the strength to crack a blacked out eyelid Batman expected to see fire and distress. He expected to see the van and the car upturned, each ablaze and with tyres and twisted metalwork scattered around the place. He expect to see lifeless bodies, he expected that Rachael might not have survived.

When he saw a blue sky clear of imposing buildings that had been constructed too close together, he wondered if he himself had died. Why wouldn't he have died? He had been on the bonnet of a car that had charged headlong at top speed into a police van. He turned his heavy head to the side, aware of tarmac beneath him. He saw the nondescript car that The Joker had been driving and Gordon's black van, but neither were smashed or smoldering. The front bumper of The Joker's vehicle sat mere inches from the armour-plated flank of the van. There were no signs of a high speed collision.

Batman sprang up from the ground and dashed towards the car, jumping over the bodies of the policemen. He ripped open the back door. One clown toppled out and landed in a spluttering heap on the road. Batman grabbed him by the nape of his thin neck and hurled him out of the way. Snarling, he leant into the back of the car and saw Rachael, coiled in on herself as best she could with her ankles and wrists bound and her eyes shut as though she was still bracing for the impact. Batman reached out and brushed his gloved fingertips softly over her quivering shoulder. She flinched and snapped her eyes open. Batman spoke without disguise, letting Bruce step in for the briefest of moments.

'Rachael, you're safe.'

He pulled her gently from the car, carefully peeling the tape from her mouth and slicing through her binds with one of his bat shaped blades. A low grunt wafted through the empty window frame of the driver's door. A shaking, purple-gloved hand stretched slowly out, strumming the air. Rachael gasped and clung to the front of Batman's suit, both of them carefully watching what the hand would do next. Eventually, after searching through the air like a blind snake it latched onto the door frame and the sounds of heavy, panicked gasping met their ears. Batman snorted. Inside he wondered if and almost wished that The Joker was dying of internal bleeding.

Tugging Rachael lightly by the sleeve he headed towards Gordon's van. The policemen he had seen on the floor a moment ago, all of whom he had assumed to be dead, were now coming around, muttering and confused. At that moment Gordon stumbled out from behind the van, clutching his head and looking entirely dazed. His glasses were hanging off one ear and his hair was more tousled than usual. He caught sight of Batman and Rachael and choked.

'Batman! Rachael! Thank God you're safe… thank God we're safe – what the Hell happened? How did… how did this…' He stared around him, his brows knitted tightly together. 'This is… not Gotham…'

Batman, Rachael and the now conscious policemen followed Gordon's gaze towards a familiar clock tower looming over the water, a long, old building of a similar ilk to the tower stretching out to the left beyond the river bank. One of the policemen darted to the edge of the bridge, crying out.

'London?'

As he called out another sound from behind them caught their attention. The Joker had managed to extricate himself from his car and all but flopped out of the door, staggering awkwardly over the wide bridge road. He stumbled and fell, snarling as his head hit the ground with an awful crack. In an instant all five of the policemen as well as Gordon had their weapons pointing directly at The Joker and his three clowns. Batman had shoved Rachael behind him and stood in a defensive stance, ready to make a move. There was a momentary stalemate as The Joker hunched over, clutching his knees in an attempt to steady himself, panting and grunting like a mad, exhausted dog. Gordon's men shifted, uneasy by what they knew to be peculiar behaviour for the lunatic. Gordon spoke in a low, steady tone.

'Don't lose focus… he could be bluffing…'

They saw The Joker shake his green head frantically. He convulsed violently and lurched unseeingly to one side. Gordon's men all shouted as one for him to freeze; three leapt forward to apprehend the dazed clowns; the remaining two along with Gordon and Batman followed The Joker whilst Rachael was left shivering and bewildered beside the black van.

The Joker eventually met with the thick balustrade of the bridge, bumping his head against it before throwing himself on all fours and spilling the contents of his stomach. The two policemen turned away, complete repulsion on their faces, but Gordon and Batman watched in sinister fascination, as one would watch a cat messily eating a mouse. It was clear that The Joker had not eaten in a while and after a moment all that dribbled from his gaping, scarred mouth was bright, stinking bile. When he was done he rose unsteadily to his feet, glaring with hard eyes at everyone around him. His next outburst drew a jolt of shock from nearly everyone present.

'FUCK!' he screamed into the sky. His arms were rigid and his fingers curled into claws. He bared his teeth at the clouds. 'FUCK! FUCK! NO!' He bellowed and shrieked with what appeared to be every ounce of a hundred lunatics' energy, sounding every bit the wild, untamable beast that the world took him to be. He leapt around the road in a feral frenzy, stamping his feet and screeching at anyone and everything, pulling knives from his pockets and flinging them haphazardly at the painted lines on the ground. Soon he had come to the front of his car and began pounding the bonnet with twin fists, bringing them down simultaneously and shouting furious incoherent words as he did so. Everyone gazed at him, too stunned by the display to do anything to stop it. After a moment he swapped his fists for his head. Blood flung up every time he slung his head back, staining the white face-paint, the car and the unfortunate clowns and policemen behind him.

'This is enough,' Batman snarled in his gravelly tone. He marched purposefully over to The Joker, who in his moment of extreme insanity seemed unaware of the entire world around him. His face was completely marred with his own blood. Batman grabbed a handful of oily hair at the back of his head and threw him bodily over the bonnet of the car, pinning him down with one large hand wrapped around his neck and one fisted at the lapel of the purple coat. The Joker looked stunned for a moment, blinking through eyefuls of blood before spitting a mouthful of it into The Batman's eyes.

Batman growled and his grip tightened around the neck in his hand. The Joker let out a guttural choke, blood bubbling out of the corner of his mouth. He licked it away.

'What's going on?'

The Joker bared his teeth at Batman but did not answer the roughly growled question. He received an almighty backhand. Batman half expected him to explode into a fit of manic laughter as he had done on the receiving end of his rage many times before, but he seemed unnervingly resigned. Batman asked him once more.

'I've been here before,' he said vaguely, as though he was speaking to himself as he remembered old memories. He coughed another mouthful of thick blood over himself, grimacing.

'You've been to London before? Do you have connections here? Targets?' He slammed The Joker into the car and further tightened his crushing hold around his neck. 'Tell me!'

'Not… London…!' he managed to choke out. Batman faltered for a moment, wondering how The Joker managed to come to the conclusion that they were not in London, despite the famous landmarks looming over the river nearby.

'What do you mean?' he hissed, inches from The Joker's bloody face. The Joker snarled, wriggling in Batman's grasp.

'Looks like… London,' he ground out from behind yellow, clenched teeth, struggling to speak with the hand around his neck. 'Not really London… Not real…'

'You're lying–'

'I AM NOT–' he suddenly screamed, his face twisted and almost wounded '–LYING!' With that he lunged upwards and sank his teeth into the soft flesh of Batman's cheek and bit hard. Batman howled and staggered backwards. Gordon leapt forward but before he could reach the pair Batman had landed a heavy punch into The Joker's stomach, winding him before flinging him across the road where he landed in a bundle, crumpled like a stringless puppet. He didn't spring back up immediately as everyone expected him to, but instead he slowly pushed himself up as if he was really feeling the pain that so many had witnessed him relishing and giggling at during previous encounters. He did not rise to his feet but chose to stay on his knees, leaning back to sit on his heels. His entire fanatical, bouncing, unhinged demeanor seemed completely deflated. Gordon's men shifted nervously, uncomfortable to be witnessing these human things in such a beastly man when everyone was quite content to assume that he was no more than a monster that had sprung up from the filthy bogs of foreign lands, fully formed and intent on wickedness from the very beginning.

'Sir–' one of Gordon's men spoke up, his voice a little reedy. 'I – that is – I mean, we've been here for about twenty minutes… it's rush hour. We're the only people here.' Everyone including Batman and the three clowns turned to him. They blinked and all turned to the face of Big Ben. It was 6.25pm.

As Rachael edged towards him, away from the van which The Joker had slumped quite close to, Batman stared hard down either end of Westminster Bridge, frowning. London was notorious for its terrible traffic, and here he and the others were in the middle of rush hour and not a single car had passed them or was approaching them from either end. He spied a red double-decker bus towards the very end of the bridge near the Palace of Westminster but it remained motionless and it seemed to be empty.

A metallic clattering caught his attention. Once more every gun and Batman's stony glare were on The Joker. He had risen to his feet undetected and it seemed that he had been stalking around as they wondered about the lack of traffic, gathering all of the knives that he had thrown to the ground during his fit. He noticed their attention and nonchalantly explained that he was definitely going to need them later.

'Why?' spluttered one of the policemen. 'So you can st-st-stab us all later and run off with your - your clowns?'

The Joker became still and stared hard at the man who had blurted out at him. His creased face bore an unfathomable expression, his once white painted skin, now completely red with blood, obscured his look even further. He wagged his little potato peeler at the man in a condescending manner and six fingers hovered desperately around the triggers of six guns.

'No,' he said slowly, a patronizing edge to his voice. 'Because…' His voice drifted off and he moved to the edge of the bridge and looked out over the Thames. He ignored the guns.

For a moment The Joker appeared to be staring at nothing. From where Rachael was standing she could see his profile. She gazed in wonder at the slackness in his usually furrowed brow and the wistful puckering of his blemished lips. The expression departed as swiftly as it had arrived to be replaced by the usual frown and curl of disdain at the corners of his ruined mouth. As he turned to face the men again he caught Rachael's eye and winked. She shuddered and quickly averted her gaze. Batman made a jerky motion as though he was either going to rush over to her or over to The Joker to punch him, but she couldn't be sure.

The Joker spoke in his thin, calculating voice.

'This is a delicate, dangerous situation. We are no longer in Gotham, gentlemen – this is the end of the world.'

Author's Note: Well I dunno. I always imagine in my head how The Joker would act in really weird situations, like Rage ridden London or an Alien infested spaceship… lost at sea or in the Sahara. We don't really get to see what truly frightens him in Dark Knight. His apprehensions are subtle in the film. I like the idea of putting him somewhere that he can't handle.

I really hope this was okay, feedback is most welcome. I'd like to continue but I need to know what you think!! Thanks :)