People think that the night is a time. The absence of light.
But the man who stood on the tall tower knows better.
He knows that the night is a state of the mind. He should know- he has let the night enfold him, he has adopted the dark. He is no ordinary man, he is the man who wears the cowl of the night's crusaders, who whip around in the dark, striking swift.
He is the Batman.
His white eyes scanned the dark mass that was Gotham. The people of Gotham are a bit like bats themselves, really- they are people of the night.
And where there are bats, there is their prey, the vermin. In the night, two things float on top. The cream and the scum.
And this bat was looking for the scum.
There. A movement. A flash of purple- a hint of white. The wall is covered in red.
The caped crusader launched off his perch, his cape spreading into magnificent wings, as he glided to where he guided himself. The crusader of the night is on the move.
He reached the spot, his cape's stiffness waning, it becoming limp once more. The red on the wall made sense now.
Blood.
There was a corpse too. The man inside the cowl, the man named Bruce Wayne, would have sickened at the stiff, mocking frame of the thing that lay before him. But the Batman swallowed the man within him, trusted the night, became the night.
He went in closer. The rancid smell of blood and ripped flesh invaded his nostrils, but he pushed on.
The corpse lay in a gruesome position, legs bent unnaturally, arms sprawled, as if grasping for some last hope of survival. He instead focused on the face.
A man's face, they say, is his story. If that is true, this man's story had been erased- for his face was a bloody mess. The thing that hit Batman was the mouth.
It's lips had been torn apart, mouth, gums and teeth exposed. The gruesome sight brought one thing to mind…
A grin.
He looked up, to his right. There stood a man. A figure slightly stooped. It wore what looked like a purple suit, and the skin that could be seen was pale.
The figure walked forward, and the crusader of the night could now see the face. The face he had seen all too often. The face he recognized all too well.
It was pale, further whitened by flaky makeup. His lips were red, red as the blood splattered around the corpse, splashed on the wall. If you saw closely, you would see it is in fact the same blood. The Batman knew this- it was another sadistic and gruesome habit of this man, to use the blood of his victims as lipstick. His long hair were black, grey bags under his eyes, which were lined in kohl.
It was expression, as always, what got to the Batman. That horrible, wide open grin. Those pure white teeth, every single one having once belonged to another victim, another sick joke for this man. The man who laughed at pain. The man who joked at suffering.
The man known as… The Joker.
"Ah, Bat! Admiring my handiwork? It isn't a masterpiece, but it's quite a nice… trinket perhaps?" He asked in a raspy, sing-song voice.
"Why did you kill him, Joker." Said the Batman, in a monotone, in the voice of the night, the voice that rose from somewhere deep inside Bruce Wayne, a remnant of that fateful night…
The Joker's grin stretched inhumanly. "To draw you out, of course. And then again, I can't help myself from… making art. It's in my nature! That and… this laugh of course!" He said, laughing like a lunatic. A lunatic that he was.
Batman's jaw clenched. "You will pay, Joker."
"Oh?" He stopped laughing.
The two stood there. Watching. Feeling the night.
"Let me tell you a story, Bat…" He said, turning away from Batman.
It would be so easy for the Batman to finish him, once and for all. To end the blight of the Mirthful Menace.
But he didn't. It was a simple step, but one you can never take back.
The Joker knew this. He was goading Batman- the ultimate goal of making the justice of the night lose control.
With his face away from Batman, the Joker's grin slipped, waning. His mad eyes grew moist.
"A little boy. Two parents.
He loves them both. Then there's an accident. Blood. Blood everywhere."
He licked his lips.
"Mommy wasn't right after that. Neither… neither was Papa. They fought. Papa went all strange… he threw mommy… and took the knife."
He licked his lips frantically.
"There was blood. Again. So much… blood. So red. And I was sitting there, with my little teddy, covered in blood… and then papa looked at me… and said…"
The Joker's face slid into a grin once more. He faced Batman, and drew a knife, pointing it at the caped crusader.
"Why… so… serious?"
The Joker fell into peals of laughter, tears running down his eyes, upsetting the kohl around his eyes, so that black seemed to drip from them.
Batman extended a hand at the Clown Prince of Crime. "You need help Joker. Come with me… I can help you."
Joker's eyes widened. "They said the same! After they took papa away… they said they could help… but no-one did… not unless I helped myself…"
He stopped, licked his lips, grinning widely enough to crack his cheeks.
"They didn't like me… so the doctor said, I should make them smile… They didn't like my jokes… so I made them smile like papa made mommy smile… still they didn't thank me… they just died…"
He was laughing crazily, falling to his knees, sobbing while laughing uncontrollably.
"None of them… Understood… None of them."
Batman neared him, and grabbed him, lifting the sad, wrenching, laughing bundle of bones that was the personification of misery… both felt and caused.
It was a long way to Arkham Asylum. But the night was still young, and the bats were only waking.