Author's Note: There will be a true, more explanatory Author's Note following the story, as anything I might say here normally may give away a bit of the plot, and I obviously don't want to do that. Please excuse any incoherency this story may possess; I stayed up past midnight last night writing this, although I've obviously edited it since then.
They had never imagined this day would come, yet it had.
Batman had finally killed the Joker.
"Bloody rodent bastard," Jonathan choked out from his refuge in the shadow of a large, green Waste Management bin; his lower lip was cracked and bleeding, and he ached on the left side from where the Caped Crusader had viciously kicked him, and the doctor was certain he had broken a couple of ribs.
At the sound of Crane's voice, the Bat looked up from the blood pooling around the deceased clown at his feet. Even from around ten feet away, the doctor could read the expression on the flying rat's face: with his wide eyes and open mouth, discernable even through the midnight darkness and the holes in his ominous cowl, Gotham's Dark Knight seemed almost… stunned.
And Jonathan hated him all the more for it.
"You haven't won, you know," Jonathan hissed. Cerulean irises blazing, burlap sack crumpled in his left hand, clothing muddy and bloody, he glared up at his enemy as he crawled shakily to his lover's side; the Caped Crusader staggered back, apparently still reeling from the shock of the second intentional murder he had committed in possibly his entire lifespan. Fucking sensitive pussy. "Tell me, Bat-man," Crane continued, his voice mocking, "how does it feel to have broken your one rule" - the resemblance to the clown's voice that slid from his throat was so realistic it was almost painful, causing Jonathan to flinch internally, while his foe's identical reaction was much more apparent - "for the second time in just four years?" Granted, Crane knew that four years would seem to be a long time for most people, including himself, but to the Bat and the enormity of those twin crimes, four years would seem entirely too short.
As expected, the Gotham Knight did not answer.
"You really think you've accomplished anything? Gotham's Finest" - Jonathan sneered the name - "will not cease to hunt you. You'll still be an outcast. You'll still be hated. Even after this." Crane began to giggle; the sound was high-pitched, unnervingly familiar. "Gotham's people will never accept you. The same as they never accepted us." His titters gradually became sobs, and he gathered the clowns upper body in his arms as the Batman disappeared into the night with a flutter of his cloak.
Jonathan cradled the Joker's head to his chest, wet salty pearls dropping onto the clown's pale cheeks as Jonathan rocked him back and forth, as if to soothe a child, though in reality Crane was unconsciously and unsuccessfully attempting to soothe himself. And as Jonathan slowly and tenderly kissed his lover's scarred lips for the last time, a dark plan formed in his cunning mind, and he knew his destiny was set.
Scarecrows were commonplace beings, dispensable.
The Joker was not.
- - -
Police Commissioner James Gordon replaced the black receiver onto the hook, stunned. It was amazing how difficult it was for him to wrap his mind around what he had just heard - and this after being in the service for well over twenty years.
He knew he would have to arrest him. There was no other way around it. The Dark Knight may have rid the city of a great evil, but the taking of a human life was still a crime, no matter whose life it was or who had ended it. Not even if the committer of the crime had himself confessed to his actions.
Gordon sighed and stood up from his desk, walking around it to the corkboard on the wall, and moved a blurry Gotham Times photograph of the Batman from the "Potential Allies" side of the board, which seemed to shrink every day, to "Wanted." He un-tacked the Joker's ever-grinning photograph and allowed it to drop from his hand into the trash.
He would enter his status of "Deceased" in the databanks tomorrow, after a night home with the wife and the kids.
"Evening, Commissioner."
Gordon whipped around and stared in shock.
The Joker stood before him, resurrected from the dead.
But no, there were too many differences in appearance. The man's hair was brown, and much too short. The familiar clothing hung off the skeletal frame as if it were a few sizes too large for the body currently inhabiting it. The smile-scars etched into his cheeks were much too fresh; the blood weeping from the deep x's of stitching mirrored the twin black lines descending from the ebony circles around his sharp blue eyes - something, possibly tears, had caused the makeup to run.
Jonathan Crane swayed slightly on his feet. "Well, don't just stand there - don't you know it's impolite to gawk?"
Gordon lunged for the pistol in the upper left-hand drawer of the bureau - one second too late.
Crane's laughter was maniacal as he slammed the Commissioner backward into the desk and gripped his jaw with his gloved left hand as he whipped out a small knife of Oriental design with his right and brought it to the policeman's lips, pinning him in place by sheer force of crazed adrenaline and terror.
"Would you like to know how I got these scars?" Dr. Crane asked in his new-but-yet-strange inflections. Gordon, of course, did not answer, so Jonathan nodded vigorously several times to simulate the man's response, and began his story. "Well, This, uh, acquaintance of mine comes into the workplace one day, drrrunk-kuh." Crane's eyes rolled upward as he envisioned the situation in his mind, his tongue flickering out to swipe at his lower lip (he understood now why the clown used to do that - it stopped the damn burning). "You know how those rabble-rousers are. Anyway, this - this guy was a bit of a drinker, so this was nothing out" - Jonathan's voice cracked; he cleared his throat - "of the ordinary, except this time he's had one too many. And he's always hated the both of us, a dislike on principle, really, but he hates my - my partner" - here Crane's voice faltered in the remembrance of the emotion called sadness - "more than me. So he takes one of his own knives to him, laughing while he does it. Then he turns to me" - here Crane snorted, obviously offended that his opponent had dared to do this - "and he says, 'Why so serious?'"
Crane's rendition of the Joker's infamously rhetorical question was much too similar to the original, and though Gordon had been extremely thankful every day that he had never had the pleasure of being "interrogated" by the Clown Prince of Crime personally, he yet recognized the acute similarities, and they made him shudder.
"He comes at me with the knife - 'Why so serious?'" Crane turned the blade so that it was now inside the Commissioner's mouth as he said this. "Sticks the blade in my mouth" - Crane pressed the blade into the soft pink of the inside of the officer's left cheek (Gordon's flesh tingled unpleasantly in warning), emphasizing the dangerous angle of the metal - " 'Let's put a smile on that face!'" he said, his voice again in that deep growl. "And…" the doctor-turned-clown sighed, seeming disappointed that his tale had come to an end. "Why so serious?"
Gordon could only stare in wide-eyed horror, tensing for the pain to come -
But it never did.
Instead, Crane giggled. "Relax, Commissioner. My tale isn't finished yet."
The look on Crane's face made Gordon wish he had closed his eyes.
"I escaped him, of course," Jonathan said, quietly, "but he had taken what was mine, what is still mine. And so I devised a plan. I traded my identity for my lover's, and I burned him so that his remains would ever be infused with his city. And here we are now because I had decided to take away the few friends the Bat-man has ever had, hoping that the psychological effects would convey some small meaning of my own agony." High keening sounds strained from Crane's throat, and with the scars twisting his mouth and the black trails down his cheeks, it was impossible for Gordon to determine whether the psychopath leaning over him was laughing or crying.
"So you see," Jonathan whispered, "the rats will resist the call, and the Piper will be without followers forever."
It was almost a mercy when Crane's wrist twitched and the blade sliced Gordon's cheek open, his blood spilling onto the desktop.
Dripping knife in hand, Jonathan staggered away from the late Commissioner, panting. He smiled - truly smiled - for the last time.
The Joker had gotten his deserved last laugh.
THE END
REAL Author's Note: I'd wanted to do a sort of "Prince and the Pauper" thing with Jonathan and his mate for a while now, and this darker scope of it just sort of popped into my head last night, and I couldn't let it go. Alternative titles for this story include "Bruce Wayne: Murderer" (yes, like the graphic novel, which I have not yet read) and "The Man Who Laughs" (also akin to the graphic novel, which I have read and enjoyed very much). Even though a good part of the characters' speech was Crane's rendition of the infamous "Why so serious?" tale, I think I'm rather proud of the dialogue this time around. Reviews are always greatly appreciated.