Disclaimer: I don't own Batman. I just plain don't.
I have thought so many times over the years of just how easy it would be. How easy to forget that I could break a bone without putting forth my full effort, that the smart ones run away because they know I'm too much bigger and stronger for them to fight man to man, that I'm faster, that I'm a better judge of the distance of a jump, that they may not have the reflexes to avoid a killing blow that would never have touched someone with my training, that most swimmers or runners would falter before I even noticed my fatigue, that most men fighting underwater would drown long before I needed to breathe, that I am constantly, subconsciously aware of simple dangers in my surroundings that others would miss, that the human body is a fragile thing and life is not as tenacious as we'd like to think.
There were a hundred different ways I could have killed them, and left the world no worse than it was before, just by forgetting that most of them were not my equals.
And it would be so easy.
So easy to forget that I was supposed to be on the side of good.
All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy…
One very bad day, I told myself, "He's death personified. I've lost track of how many he's murdered over the years. But it all ends tonight. No more killings. No more Joker." And I tried to forget that there was a line I had never crossed.
But the Joker lived. I couldn't forget what I was that day.
Easier—far too easy—to say, "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you."
And then just watch him fall.
Knowing full well that no body would ever be found.
If only we could all go out that way, to a nice, impermanent rest.
Dying to live another day.
It would be so easy.
.
Author's note: I found this in a notebook just now. It's from an old, not very well written story in which a chase goes badly and Batman fails to catch an enemy who falls from a rooftop. This scene came after the "SPLAT" but before the hospital releases any confirmation on the life or death of our dear villain. I post this now because, while Bat-angst and the blurring of the lines between good and evil is always nice, I don't feel I did it justice with this story.
But I do like this scene.
-3.0