Chapter One
The city had burned an internal invisible flame that soaked in fear like gasoline and licked hungrily away at hope and decency.
People will die he warned Batman; you can stop this, he snickered once before – before the death and madness that had cast an endless night, but not a night, it seemed, Batman could protect.
Watch them punish at your expense, he seemed to speak drawly, not hiding a smile; never hiding a smile.
It had been months now since he had rode from the night, bathing in its cold – the cold he now felt so familiar to – an old friend.
They had hunted them, but they didn't see him as a protector or guardian, no.
Nothing had changed – the months of brutally trying to piece down the mob but with every face he saw that snickering lunatic and with every swing with all his might, The Joker in his head seemed to laugh his evil maddening laugh.
There was a fresh slit into the sky, a hazy image of a vivid light piercing the cold bitter night and he would come – to his own shame he would beckon like a lap dog – a thought which made him miserable.
No more would die at his arrogance – and this could at the least prove to himself he was trying, a thought that had been harder to conjure the last months.
The Batman was only feet away now from its pale white surface that illuminated the sky – he could almost see the ghostly face of that smiling madman in its surface – but he turned quickly away as not to give Joker the advantage over his mind.
Commissioner Gordon had earned his hierarchy as commissioner during the previous madness and the Dark Knight couldn't help to ponder the burden that lay upon Gordon every time someone read his title.
The time had dwindled little on Gordon except for the image that he had not slept in weeks and probably would continue this tradition a few more nights.
"I – I didn't think for a second you would come, we - … you have a problem -."
His voice was hard to think as soothing – its subtle confidence was not of one who held a gun.
"I came because I needed to come – to know that we have held strong since.
His voice was hard and gruff – it felt as if he had not spoken like this in years, originally he thought of it a way to hide his voice and in relation his real self but now he knew it to hide the fear and lack of hope he had held recently.
"Harleen Quinnzel, a psychologist harbored recently at Arkham Asylum; her most recent and most focused patient is the smiling bastard, Joker"
Gordon's voice could have trembled but it would not have mattered to Gordon to show his fear – but rather to stop here with the stories end being the joker "tragically" dying.
The batman mixed in perfect to the darkness above the solemn streets of Gotham tonight and his cape fluttered quietly, dancing in the wind.
" I ordered for update every four hours on the giggling trash that he is – the last check up came with news of an empty cell and the identification card of one Harleen Quinnzel used twice!"
Gotham felt that feeling again, that feeling of tasting metal, that impossibly forgetful feeling or taste, the air felt colder and instinctively Batman heard for sirens in the distance, screams of this…Harleen Quinnzel, he thought the worst had come, or even in the night he listened, straining to hear a bitter, cold chilling laugh.