"Tell me how to make you love me."
They were simple words falling on frozen ears. Summer heat boiled Gotham into a frenzy, but inside the ribcage of one Bruce Wayne, a blizzard was blowing in from the North and freezing his heart, stone-cold. Steel muscle clenched as his body turned away while his mind remained – a soldier's body, solid and ready.
Walking only sounds easy. Putting one foot in front of the other is an entirely different story – especially when you're on the edge of a very tall building, and the rest of your life. One step, and he was gone. To the Joker, it seemed like forever. Time bombs ticked, over over over again, his hands twitching with them like a crazy, swinging metronome. The twitch in his neck came next, like the second number in some horrible death ballet. Soon he was pacing, his body a slave to chaotic repetition. There was no free thought or movement – only the captivating vice of compulsion.
Hours passed. Days, maybe. Or minutes? Seconds? Hours. Dawn.
Light cracked his soul. Empty, flowing thought. Sky abounded, vast and wasteful. Even the sun, he rambled, cannot manage to grace its light upon everything. Chasms of darkness scattered the city. Ruins lit up and revealed; ruins dormant in darkness, hidden from view. A broken city, with only half of its sin hung up on display. As with the cock upon daybreak, the sun filled his lungs with sound. Screams of rage and emptiness poured fourth on the great fallen city. His knees buckled beneath the weight of guilt and suffering.
The ticking, ticking, ticking pressed on, like some small child. A war of attrition commenced, both sides determined towards victory. Hope was cannon fire. Rough shingles pressed against palms as the villain gripped the edge of the building. The soft, pink light of the morning bathed the empty streets and washed over his face like holy water. Its persistent arrogance burned through him, a painful and ironic challenge. Rise another day.
Strength – the quiet kind you'd find in some undecorated, unnoticed hero – filled him, just enough to stand. In one moment, he defied the sun, which, its might each day, rises, full of rhythm and rhyme and reason. A contradiction – living, breathing – he walked.