AN: This is setting during season 3 episode 12 of Batman: The Animated Series, in which the villains of Gotham kidnap Batman and the District attorney (who thinks Batman was the cause of all of the villains in Gotham) and hold a Trial for Batman to see if he is "guilty."

I recommend watching that episode before reading this, or you might be confused!

Them is all of the Themed Batman villains. (Joker, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, The ventriloquist, Two-Face, The Mad Hatter, Killer Croc, Esc.)

He or Him is Batman.

Batman was a nuisance. He got in the way, He foiled Their plans. Sometime along the way, He became a part of what They do, what They are. They escape; They form impossibly complex, perfect, airtight plans. They revel in their victory. And Batman appears. He always, always appears. He comes from the shadows, they never quite know how he got there, how He found them, but He does and He won't ever not show up. Because He is batman, and where They are, He is. He stops them, and oh how They hate Him. Oh how They want to kill, to maim, to hurt Him.

But They have earned the right to hurt Him. No one else knows Him. No one else can possibly predict just how He might react. How He might try and stop Them. The reason why He stopped them was blocked even to them. But do They want to know who is under the mask? No, because whoever is under the mask, the cowl, is not Batman.

Whoever is under the mask is human, not a part of Themselves, not the one that made up Their eternal shadow. They will try; oh they will never stop trying to learn more about Their shadow. But learning something about yourself is never easy, and always hard to accept. And so He is Theirs, even if he doesn't know it. It burns Them, but they don't acknowledge that it burns, when he goes after others. When he isn't fighting Them because He is fighting someone who doesn't deserve His attention, who never will deserve His attention.

Janice Porter wants to blame Batman for Their existence. But can the shadow be blamed for existing if the one who casts if purposely stands in the light? A shadow cannot exist in the darkness, and if they stayed down, didn't pick Themselves up and cast that shadow again, it wouldn't exist. The Batman would be dead. In all ways that matter, They had the way to finally kill the Batman. All They had to do was stay in the shadows, stay in the dark. Never again to step in the light and cast that looming shadow.

But to do that They would lose a part of themselves. They could never do that. They could never give up what was Theirs. But what was Theirs didn't, couldn't be Theirs if he was chained to the light. Even the darkest shadow can be cast away with enough light. So They escape. They plan. And Batman shows up. Always there, always on time. Always their eternal shadow.

So They all escaped this time. This time, it wasn't Their time, their turn, to step into the light and cast that shadow once again. It was time for that shadow to be bathed in light and shown to those that doubt he would always be there, ready and waiting and willing to drag Them back to the shadows. Janice Porter thought that Batman created Them. She wanted to show the world that Batman isn't able to do this, isn't able to handle the madness that caused Him to exist (even if she doesn't know that) without going mad Himself.

So they take her. They take her and they want to show her, they want her to understand. They know the hardest part of this is getting her. To get Their shadow, all They have to do is call and He will come. And so They call. A simple message, but one that baffles others. But He knows, as He always knows, what to do. He always gets the message.

They take Him. They don't fight like they normally do. They hate Him, yes, they hate Him. They want to see Him burn. But the burning will be done by them. They know They would never admit it. They will try to kill Him every chance they got. But he was Theirs because he never let them. He stayed. He was still there even when they want Him gone, burned, maimed, mangled.

He fights Them, he hurts Them, but this is normal, this is Batman. They expected nothing less. But they got Him. They took his belt that they had seen so many times, had loathed so much every time his hand went towards it for something to stop Them. They brought Him, and He fought, and He tried to get away. This is not how they normally do things. They don't tie Him up and put Him in a cell. An extravagant trap, a shark tank over a bat of lava with a thread of rope holding Him up is how They do things. That is not what you do with your favorite toy. You don't toss it somewhere and forget about it.

They smiled when the trial began. He was back in his element. Back to where he understands and can be Him. He calms Janice. He coaches her. She doesn't understand, never can and never will. But He can and he gets her to see. He gets her to see that He can never be in the light. It's all one game for them, all leading up for one more chance to get rid of the hated Batman. And so she finally understood. They declare that He is not guilty, and they freely admit that while He is not guilty, They are. They have the chance to finally, once and for all get rid of Him. But just like every other time, He just doesn't go away. He stays, and while that is an odd choice of words to use as he runs and jumps and flips to simply get away from Them, he stays. He is always there, always watching, always waiting, for that light to shine in the sky. The light that casts a shadow.

Disclaimer: I own nothing! *runs away crying*