Disclaimer: I do not own anything from The Dark Knight, or Batman in general.
Smile
His smile reeked of death and chaos. It was written in every line of his face, every subtle curve of his lips. His painted face was a gruesome mask of intelligence, and insanity. His laughter could, and did, draw shudders of fear and revulsion from the most hardened criminals. It was never spoken of, but he was the unofficial ruler of the criminal underworld. Occasionally there were dissenters, crime bosses who didn't want to except that their jobs were practically obsolete, their cries of protest were quickly silenced, after all, it's rather difficult to talk of anything with a slit throat or when you're body parts are scattered across the street.
When he first surfaced, it was with a small wave, a wave that grew and grew until it overshadowed everyone else. He was a destructive force with all the power of a hurricane stuffed into a tiny human shell and it was ready to explode, so explode it did. Within a single week his name was a thing that inspired terror in citizens and criminals alike. Not even his henchmen always escaped his insane urges to slaughter and maim and laugh.
He danced his way through victim after victim, his bloody smile never left his painted lips. Some thought, or maybe they hoped, that the white and red of his face was a mask he used to hide himself away from the world. A mask that, if it could only be removed, would reveal a human being capable of redemption, of remorse, but they were fools. The mask, the paint, was his face and the flesh behind it merely supported his true self. There was no room for remorse in his soul for it has become a twisted thing and certainly no longer human. He was chaos given form, a sick parody of humanity.
He was unstoppable and those unlucky few who tried were crushed or blown apart as if they were mere gnats and barely worth the energy it took to raise a hand to swat them. It seemed that there was nothing capable of slowing him down, let alone halting his destructive path. Then he made the mistake of crushing one gnat too many. That final gnat who revealed itself to be a butterfly finally pushed him into an immovable object. He gnashed his teeth and screamed in fury, but he had finally met his match, his antithesis, his nemesis.
Perhaps he should have been filled with wrath when he tripped and fell from his pedestal. Perhaps he should have done more, tried harder, to kill his other half. Maybe he would have succeeded, but where would be the fun in that? No, instead of wrath he was filled with joy already thinking of all the fun he could have playing with his new toy. No, not a toy, an opponent who could finally keep up, one who he couldn't destroy, one who he would have such fun with as soon as he climbed back out of the pit he had been cast into. His ever-present smile broadened and his cackle bounced off the dark walls of his prison cell. Yes, when he finally crawled out they would have so much fun together.