Chaos Theory

A/N: Before you read this, know this is a very different concept, something that has been brewing in my head for months and has thus jammed its way into my muse's processor along with Always and Always, thus preventing me working on Chapter 14 of that fic until I do something about this one.

As I said, it's a DRASTICALLY different concept. Something I certainly have never seen done in this fandom (which is a good sign, right, originality and all that?). But on the flip side, it's a risk to see if anyone would like it, or even deem it plausible. But hey, sharing any work of art, literary or otherwise, is a risk, some bigger than others. So voila.

This part of the story I have written takes place well into the plot, but major plot points are referenced enough to (hopefully) give you the big picture of what's going on and how things got from the movies to here.

Yes, there will be Batman/Joker (how could there not be, coming from me). And Rachel is not dead. And Loeb is not dead, and Maroni is not dead, and lots of other people that should be dead/insane are thusly not, due to this fic's deviation from moviecanon about 45 minutes into TDK. I hope someone gets something out of this, at least, as I worked on it all night. Yup, it's nearly 5AM now. Oops.

Regardless, please share your thoughts on this one, I'd be intrigued to hear them, no matter what they may be. :)


The forest rocked in its own languid breeze, trees whispering light breaths to the branches of their fellows. Shifting, weaving, stirring, only to return to its firm state of solidarity. Brief gusts and tufts blew through the leaves and undergrowth, but all was temporary; soon, it was back to silence.

A bird keened its repetitive drone in the distance. Its simple sound was the only disturbance for a long while. Then, a slight sprinkling brushed through the grass – it was a rabbit, creeping along in its slight bouncing fashion. It sat up on its haunches, ran its paws over its face and ears once, then sat still for a minute. Then off it went, one hop, then two, then back to stillness. Listening at nothing.

All at once, the rabbit was nearly kicked out of the way, but hurtled itself to the side just in time to avoid the pounding footsteps of Carmine Falcone's sprinting form.

He gasped and panted loudly as he ran, racing through the forest as fast as his heartbeat. Tree after tree after tree whizzed by him, his mind not bothering to contemplate that it was him passing them, not the other way around. With the truth of that notion came the implication that he had the option of stopping, and resting.

And he didn't. Oh no, he definitely could not stop now.

His eyes were bulging, the air scraping past his stripped corneas until he could barely even see through his peripheral vision. Tunnel vision, really – all his focus was on the spot directly in front of him, giving him a constant goal forward, just a few more strides until he'd make it. Now a few more, and a few more after that, just keep running, they're right behind you. And so he did.

There. A few yards in front of him, the tree he'd remembered her climbing up. "Anna!" he called, breathless but strong. "Get out of here, they're coming!"

Anna Ramirez had seen him long before he'd seen her tree, and she screamed back down to him, "What happened to the supplies?"

"What do you think, we got caught!" came another voice panting behind Carmine, revealing the source to be Gillian Loeb. "Get Barbara and Stevens! Tell them to head back north!"

By this point the two on the ground had passed her tree, and spotting a hefty-looking branch, Anna hefted herself higher up the tree. Poking her head out of the canopy, she located the other two. "They said to turn back!" she yelled, and they waved, the closest signal to "copy that" they could achieve at the distance they were. Orders could not be shirked in the state things were in.

Looking down for her next foothold to scramble down the tree, Anna froze at the sight that stopped her eyes' quest midway. Even given the months escaping these brushes with death, her stomach still knotted at the sight.

At least a thousand men, all with automatics and hand grenades and God knows what else, were jogging loosely through the trees, not five hundred yards away.

She reached the ground in record time as the first of the bullets rang out in the distance. Bullets she knew they all had to run the hell away from as soon as possible. There was no way to fight this; no wonder they'd aborted the mission.

Jim Gordon raced up just as she reached the ground, and they matched step for step in their mad dash. The somewhat-former police lieutenant dared a swivel to the right, and mixed in a breath of relief into his rapid breathing as he realized it wasn't their pursuers, but rather Coleman Reese, Salvatore Maroni, Gambol, Viti, and Schiff. He was just about to call out to them about Jonathan Crane's whereabouts, who was stationed with them-

-when gunfire tore holes through the bark of a tree thirty feet from them all.

Immediately the haggard group of ten took to the thickest trees they could find, pressed with their backs as flat as possible to the trunks' bark. Their hands automatically covered their mouths, to limit the noise from their uncontrollable breathing. Without such precautions, their breath would be a dead giveaway, with particular emphasis on the word dead.

The forest was sharp-still, holding its breath as if gripped in the same panic as them. Though his lungs he couldn't do anything about, the rest of Reese was a statue beside Maroni, gripping their automatics draped across their backs without conscious thought. In this world of the past several months, the weapons were the closest comforts any of them had.

Soft swishing issued from the underbrush nearest Gambol's tree, and he and Barbara Gordon slowly, silently maneuvered their guns from their backs to their fronts. Jim's eyes were lasers on Barbara, wishing he could make out the target from behind the tree himself, so he could take the shot and protect his wife-

-when suddenly, he could make out the target. "It's alright," he called out. "It's just Harvey."

Everyone immediately relaxed the smidgen allowed in the current climate, shouldered their guns, and trudged through the growth to Harvey Dent – who, albeit battered in his mind as much as the rest, looked considerably optimistic for the grim situation.

Salvatore looked around, voicing the oddity that everyone noticed. "Where's Bruce?"

It took Harvey a breath before speaking, as he had obviously sprinted through the forest just as the rest of them had. "Took a detour, said he'd shake them off."

"Does he know how many are out there?"Anna asked, flabbergasted.

"Hey, he said he'd do it," Harvey replied, though his doubt betrayed his face a second before he could wipe it away, "Thought it'd give us a chance at outrunning them, since we obviously can't outgun them this time. And given the situation, there wasn't much time to argue-"

"Bruce knows the risks, better than any of us," Stevens interjected. The statement garnered a solemnity among the group, even greater than usual. All eyes found themselves lowered to the dirt eventually, and when they raised to meet each other's…

Their weathered souls countered the next action, shut down that train of thoughts. There were no more tears in their lives after all they'd been through. Even though what Bruce had gone through at the start of this ordeal had been far worse. But they'd learned many times over that there was no time for self-pity; else they'd drown in it.

"Still, Joker's gonna kill us," Viti murmured, earning the faintest traces of wry smiles from the group.

"Considering there's a thousand League of Shadows members on our tail, I think Joker's the least of our worries," Gambol put in. They would have laughed, had the pressing dilemma not been very, very true. The practical side of his brain surfaced through – that which had long been instilled from Batman's lessons to them all – and the ex-mobster cast his eyes about the group. Ramirez, Jim, Barbara, Salvatore, Carmine, Schiff, Reese, Harvey, Viti, Stevens, Loeb. With himself, that made twelve of their original twenty members. "Who're we missing?"

"Lau…" Jim began, "…Natasha…"

"…Lucius…" added Reese.

"…and Jonathan," Jim concluded. "Them and Bruce, who's still supposed to be out th- there they are!"

And sure enough, Lucius Fox, Jonathan Crane, Lau, and Natasha materialized into view – more hurtling toward them all if anything, nostrils flared for adrenaline-spiked breath and eyes widening with fear at the idling state of the twelve before them.

Indeed, with fear.

"What the hell are you doing? Run!" Lau roared at them, the four never pausing.

They normally wouldn't bother to question new orders from the group, but Harvey held out a hand to stop them. "It's okay, catch your breath, Bruce said he'd head them off-"

At Bruce's name the quartet shot Harvey a look of disbelief, but before Lucius could open his mouth to say anything, the incoming bullets from not a hundred feet behind them refuted Harvey's statement incontrovertibly.

The group-turned-deer-in-headlights snapped to the source of the bullets, but their dread was only jolted ever higher as a black shadow glided toward them. A shadow they were all quite familiar with.

"RUN!" Bruce bellowed, and they obeyed in a flash, picking up their frantic pace as more bullets ricocheted wildly past the trees, zinging through the air.

The wind beneath his cape could only carry him so far, and soon Bruce abandoned his glide entirely and retracted the wingspan, steel-toed boots pounding through the forest with the rest of his companions. Breath after painful breath, stride after stride, the makeshift task force of seventeen humor-drained men and women bolted for their lives, the army of their own personal hell right on their heels – a fact confirmed by the bullets that buried mere inches from the footprints they rapidly left behind.

Harvey made his way next to Bruce. "You said – you'd distract them!"

"I know what I said!" Bruce yelled back through sharp breaths. "There were – too many of them."

"I – told you there – there were – too many!" Ramirez scolded Harvey.

"What now – about the supplies?" Barbara asked.

"We tried," Loeb gasped, "maybe – the others-"

"This is as close as we've gotten to a raid, and you know it! We can't count on sending others in there without Bruce-"

"You can count on sending your asses to hell after we're all shot!" Jonathan roared at the lot of them, and the argument was prudently set to the side. Tunnel vision centered into their minds, a side effect of their tunnel way of thinking these past months.

Survive.

Natasha chanced a glance behind her, met with the foliage-obscured shapes of Ra's al Ghul's personal army growing in the distance behind them. "They're getting closer!"

"We're almost there," Lucius reassured them all, namely their screaming internal muscles. "There's the drop-"

Bullets riddled holes in the air right above Bruce's head, which would have hit the ears of his cowl had he still possessed that piece of his armor. In a growl of frustration at the continued targeting of his companions, he slowed a second, letting the others get in front of him, then snapped his cape open wide again, chancing another glide on the new gust of wind to draw their fire away.

He knew it was him that they really wanted.

The others didn't risk looking back, not with the League so close at their heels. They made it past the last few scraggly trees and raced to the cliff before them, feeling the grass at their feet give way to the barren rock at the edge.

Bruce felt a sting on his back, and dipped in his glide as he winced, but kept arcing his flight five feet off the ground. The trees just barely missed him as he maneuvered expertly around them in swoops and dives, reading their positions and reacting in matters of milliseconds, but the gunfire was a formidable pursuer. To his left, he saw his group make it to the drop, and heard someone, maybe Jim, yell out "Joker! Rachel!" to the pair stationed at the edge of the outcropping.

He lessened the cape's tension a bit, easing himself to two feet above the ground, but a sudden explosion of pain made him swerve and make contact with the rock beneath him far quicker than expected. Unprepared to absorb the shock so suddenly, he reeled, nearly lost his balance, but his feet spurred him on, running of nearly their own accord. The pain in his side was manageable, considering what he'd endured months ago at Ra's' hands, but it was making his progress intolerably slower.

The group scrambled to the edge of the ravine, calling out "Joker! Rachel! They found us, run!" The two in question, one with a six-month-along belly, the other still stubbornly in his purple suit of a time almost forgotten, turned over their shoulders at the commotion.

Rachel swiftly nodded at the others, and grabbed Joker's arm in an attempt to get them both away, but Joker was rooted to the spot, his eyes lighted on something else in the distance. Upon noticing what it was, Rachel stopped too.

Before she could react, Joker had taken his automatic in hand, and aimed it squarely at the figure in black. His eyes blazed with hatred, and Rachel was too late to stop him before his target crumpled bloody to the rocks, the rounds piercing the weaknesses in the armor.

Felling the League member who had been about to fire point-blank on Bruce, allowing the slowed crusader time enough to make his getaway.

Bruce somehow rushed up to the general conglomeration of his sixteen fellows, who in turn regrouped with the two who had been standing watch at the drop's edge. Joker shouldered his gun, and he and Rachel swiveled around to join in the others' momentum, aided as their respective lovers clasped their hands in iron grips.

The nineteen desperate fugitives leapt quite ungracefully off the edge, sliding down the curved cliff face as clouds of dust and sand billowed from their feet, smooth snake-like patterns left in their wake. "Alfred!" Bruce yelled, but the old man sitting in the car had already started the engine of the Jeep, and was poised at the driver's seat, facing the car's rear, grenade launcher poised over his shoulder at the League members sliding after his companions.

A cloud of Napalm – one of Joker's additions to the weapon – bloomed behind the Gothamites as Alfred fired a first round, then two more in quick succession. Just to be sure, he told himself, choosing not to acknowledge the motive of revenge behind the action, as well. Soon after, he decided the hell with it, and acknowledged it anyway.

There was no room for remorse in their world, nor was there for justice. Revenge was the only fire in their lives now.

Satisfied he'd at least held them off for a few precious seconds before more soldiers piled down the slope, he helped grab hands to hoist his fellows up into the car. They were careful with Rachel, given her gravid state, but looking over her shoulder Alfred's heart skipped a beat.

Bruce was slowing, still too many yards away from the Jeep, and was trying to control his stumbling to no avail before Joker caught him in time. In an instant Alfred and Rachel leapt forward to run out and help them, but Bruce shouted "No, go!"

Barely processing the decision in his head, Alfred skidded back to the driver's seat and hit the gas. Orders weren't just from trusted employers and foster sons anymore. They were from any comrade, any trusted source you could get.

And you didn't question them, because more often than not, they saved your life.

"Bruce, Joker, hurry!" Salvatore yelled over the engine, but the two figures were rapidly fading away into the distance. Jonathan turned behind him to the two diminishing men, and felt Carmine, Coleman, and Schiff tense with him to jump off the car and run back after them, with everyone else not far behind-

Joker scrambled his limbs around Bruce's body, and the cape unfurled for a third time in the past ten minutes, propelled forward on the shockwave after shockwave from the grenade explosions behind them. Clouds of fire and red consumed all in their path, singeing the cape as Bat and Clown were blasted forward, into the arms of their companions.

Upon their safe landing, Alfred didn't need to be told even once; he floored the gas pedal, careening them away from the final explosion. The shockwave hit the wound in Bruce's side head-on, and his feet slipped on the edge of the car, but Joker dove after him, he and Jim grabbing Bruce's shoulders before he could fall, Harvey steadying Joker's to keep him on the Jeep as well.

They all panted heavily, grim hatred for their pursuers and pure exhaustion burning through their eyes, still somewhat dazed as they gazed upon the deathtrap they had just escaped by a hair.

Bruce finally winced slightly in mental assessment of his injury, and they hefted him back into the car properly, laying him down on the bench seats lining the cargo bed. For a minute they all took a moment to just breathe again, let their minds take hold on the new reality: you're still alive, you're not going to die in the next three seconds.

Viti was the first to get a grip on things, and stirred to face Bruce. Upon noticing his glance, Bruce looked up.

And was greeted with a resounding knuckled backhand to his unmasked cheekbone.

"Agh!" he cried out, flinching, his hand automatically shooting up to his face. "Jesus, what was that for?"

But Viti glared back at him with little remorse. He eased back into his seat, and looking around the rest of Bruce's companions, every pair of eyes besides Alfred's and Joker's was fixed on him with that same reproach.

"Don't. Do that to us. Again," the Chechen ground out. The sixteen other pairs of eyes reflected the rough sentiments exactly.

Bruce glared indignantly right back. "Look, I just saved your lives; they would have killed us all if I hadn't doubled back-"

"We're in this together," Anna cut him off. "You can't just swoop in with your - your fancy cape and armor and expect to save the day while expecting us to let you go. You could've died, and we would have all tried to help you, and you would have led us into nothing but a trap. All – because – of you."

"If you were in my position, you all would have done the same thi-"

"No," Jim took the lead. "That's just it. We're not in your position. Do you think any of our lives matter to the League? That they'll give up the chase just because they shoot me down, or my wife, or Rachel or Harvey? We don't matter to them any more than do the three thousand Gothamites left in this world!"

"That's not the poi-"

"Oh, it's the point, all right," Rachel snapped. "You know as well as the rest of us do that it's you they want. They know the risks you'll take, and they prepare for them each time we meet them. God, Bruce, they trained you, and you don't think they know your methods inside and out?"

Bruce took a deep breath. He knew their words were true, but they still shouldn't be mad at him for what he had done for them. "I saw the opportunity, and I took it," he said flatly. "I'm still the one with the most experience with the League, so excuse me for deeming it necessary to save the lives of people I c-"

"That's the point," Lucius overrode his next words. His voice was quiet and calm, but all the more gripping for it. "You are the root of this entire conflict with the League, the only way the Gothamites will ever get out of this alive, the only thing standing between your people's morale and mass suicide, yet you care about them so much you forget it when you need it most."

He paused for a minute, until Schiff said quietly, yet quite seriously, "…how far do you honestly think we'd get without you?"

Bruce's eyes passed from one to the next, finding the same iron walls in each pair he met. Joker still cradled Bruce's head in his lap, but was clutching the man to him in a manner almost protective.

"It's not your job to protect me, last I checked-"

"Well, check again," Salvatore boomed. "You may be our only hope, but the League knows that, and it's only bolded the letters of your name at the top of their hit list. And you encouraging them by handing your ass to them on a silver platter is something we can't afford."

"They're after me because of the symbol I've become," Bruce said with a bit more venom than necessary, "and that symbol is founded on protecting Gotham-"

"Bruce Anthony Wayne, you listen to me," Rachel shot back. He looked at her warily.

"You are not Batman anymore."

The words hurt more than he had anticipated.

"You may have protected us once, but that's not the way things work anymore. Your job now is to lead us. And we. Protect. You."

There was no denying the stalwart dedication to her words in the countenances of the seventeen around him.

"Well," Joker interjected the oppressive silence, "if you kids are all finished playing Fellowship of the Ring, mind giving me a hand here?"

Viti's same knuckles slapped Joker's cheek with as much force as they had Bruce's.

"Hope you were listening," he snarled, "because all we said to him, goes double for you."

Joker rolled his eyes. "Of course, wouldn't want to let my adoring fans down by letting my heroic figure fall in the din of battle, whilst protecting my sweetheart, of all things. How absurd!"

"You know they've all come to trust you as much as they have him," Jonathan growled lowly. "We'd be nowhere without your know-how as well as Bruce's."

Joker batted his eyes at Jonathan. "I'm touched." He returned to Bruce's armor to gain better access to the wound, but a hand in black stopped him.

"Leave it for now," Bruce said. "I'm alright. I'll wait for medical once we get back to camp. I'm fine, really."

Joker sighed. "Fine, bleed all over me, see if I care."

"Please, Bruce," Alfred called from the driver's seat, "if you think you were read a riot act a minute ago, don't test fate by ruining the upholstery."

As always, Alfred's humor worked its magic to return that of the rest of the group's, and they all chuckled. Finally, some smiles, Bruce thought. Months ago he had been quite put off by the merriment his citizens had been caught up in (in large part thanks to the Joker) in light of the cruel circumstances they were forced to endure, but soon he had gotten used to it, and in time even succumbed to it himself. It was, he now understood, the last form of sanity they could turn to.

"But besides Bruce and his humbled pride, is everyone else in one piece?" Alfred called back. Everyone affirmed.

"Harvey?"

"Yes."

"Rachel?"

"Fine."

"Harvey Junior?"

Rachel smiled as Harvey lowered his head to rest on her pregnant belly. "Wonderful as ever."

Harvey smiled even wider. "It's kicking."

"No, honey," said Natasha with a laugh, "that's just Joker." They all looked over to see Joker kicking Harvey's ankle repeatedly, whether on purpose or unconsciously wasn't clear. They all laughed. Harvey kicked his foot away hard in response.

"Stop playing footsie with the other boys," Bruce slurred through closed eyelids, attempting to get some rest now that they were all safe again.

"Sweetie-pie, don't be jealous," crooned Joker, "just having a little fun."

"Oh yeah," said Carmine, "this coming from the man that would call what we just went through ten minutes ago 'fun'."

They laughed again. "You can't deny it gets your blood pumping," Joker sneered, "and all that adrenaline – does wonders for a body and mind."

"That explains a lot about you," Stevens pointed out, to another round of chuckles.

Gambol leaned back, enjoying the wind on his face as the car zoomed on through the desert, and sat in the companionable silence that followed for a moment. "To think," he mused, "six months ago, I would've put a bullet through both your heads with relish." Bruce and Joker both stuck their tongues out at him with childlike grimaces, and Gambol made a toy gun with his fingers and 'shot' them both. Everyone breathed a laugh, watching the antics with a nearly-nostalgic humor. "Even had a price on your head, Joker."

"Mmm, I do remember that."

"So where's my million for bringing him in alive?" Bruce asked.

Gambol laughed, and the rest sniggered. "Please," he said, "you have millions to spare."

"Had millions," Bruce corrected him, a far-off look in his eyes. A look they all adopted somehow. Remembering what had been. "If I still did, we wouldn't be going on these raids to feed our people. And still failing."

A silence passed over them all. Somehow, even the silliest of pretend-quarrels and faux-jests, the hardest of belly-laughs and mirth-caused tears, could not hide them from the awareness of their situation for long. Here they were, camped out in the desert with three thousand people who looked up to them, struggling to feed every mouth and outrun the faceless predator of a private army – an army with only one objective.

To wipe out Gotham City.

Once, the city had boasted thirty million, but now only a hundredth of a percent of that figure remained. And somehow, by some miracle or curse, fate had chosen the twenty of them as the survivors to light the way forward for the rest.

And in the face of it all, the mob bosses, policemen and families, business executives, foreigners, mental patients, district attorneys, and the two resident freaks had thrown in their lots together, setting aside all differences from a past life that no longer existed. It was either that, or perish.

Lucius' smile soon found its way onto the other's faces, as it was always prone to do in times like this. "Hey, look on the bright side." His eyes met directly with Bruce's across the cargo bed. "You're still alive."

The others all sent ruefully warm looks in his direction, and Joker's arms squeezed briefly around him. He knew they were all truly grateful for this fact. He could feel it.

Lucius leaned back, resting his arms on the shoulders of Viti and Lau. "And so are we, to keep you company." Lau winked at him, and they all smirked, their cheeky message of got your back, buddy sarcastic on the surface, but deeply-meant underneath.

Bruce looked around to his comrades, resting his eyes on Gambol last.

"…I think I'll take that bullet through my head right about now."

His words were abruptly met by a roar of laughter from them all. The rigidity was broken again, and they reveled in it, not knowing how long the carefree atmosphere of jesting would last.

"Sorry, no can do," Gambol finally said, "I never got around to pricing you."

"Oooh, can we play The Price is Right?" Joker asked, drumming his fingers in Bruce's hair as if he were the fender of a shiny new Maserati.

The game was met with enthusiasm, as everyone attempted to judge just how much Bruce Wayne was worth. After much scrutinizing, Natasha finally burst out with "Twenty-five cents!" which caused such an uproar of laughter that no other bids were taken. There he had it: Batman had his price, and it was a quarter.

"You goddamn bastards," Bruce let out, but laughing with them nonetheless.

"Aww, I think we hurt his dignity even further," Barbara crooned, joining Joker in ruffling her fingers through the vigilante's hair, to the sniggers of the rest.

All but Bruce, who gave her a look of bewilderment. "Mrs. Gordon, bear in mind that I have been dressing up as a bat for six months in an attempt to fight crime in my home city…" to the furthered giggling of his companions.

"…until I watched an enemy I thought was extinct all but invade the streets of my home city…" The giggling quieted a degree.

"…which I could do little about until I could do absolutely nothing at all, when they captured me…" The laughter was gone by now.

"…and held me hostage with my worst enemy, torturing us both for three weeks straight, before locking us in a pitch-black room with no way out for another three weeks, leaving one of us to die and the other to eat his remains until he died himself…" The grins were waning.

"…which was a narrowly-averted fate as you all rescued us, only upon my partial recuperation our captors returned in full force…" The light in everyone's eyes was dying out quickly.

"…and drove us out of our already-half-demolished city, leaving us with no government intervention, no international assistance, scrounging for food and shelter in any settlement we come across, all while trying to outrun a masked organization that has nearly unlimited resources and only one goal of hunting my people down one by one…" No hearts were light and carefree anymore, he could see it in their faces.

"…not to mention that, during the course of my torture and rescue, my identity was exposed by my captors, and on top of all that…" they waited with bated breath, wondering what new horror it was that he had forgotten to recount. Surely that accounted for it all; he hadn't forgotten anything; what was it that just took the cake, of all his trials and suffering they had all shared in?

"…I had to respectably come out of the closet somehow with this one pawing all over me."

The laughter was restored, gradually at first, then when the true absurdity of such a dilemma as coming out was the worst Bruce could think of, they were all reeling in cackles all over again. Maybe reliving the past six months in their minds was too much for them, and the relief of something as mundane as that was the rubber band that snapped them all back, all at once. At any rate, Bruce was glad of the effect as his friends lit up around him.

"In short, Barbara," he managed into the laughter, "to what dignity of mine are you referring?"

"Well," said Harvey, "there's…the wonderful dignity of being surrounded by friends like us. Like, Lau here…the mob's former accountant…or Falcone, who ran half the city in his day…or Dr. Crane, who drove Falcone insane, poisoned you, set you on fire, and made a goddamn pun about it…"

He could not go on any further, for everyone was too convulsed in laughter, draped over each other in attempts to control their breathing, wiping away glee-induced tears with each other's sleeves and Bruce's singed cape. As Gambol reached for the black memory cloth, Bruce grabbed his hand. "Gambol. Bullet. Head. Now."

Their laughter skyrocketed ever further, splitting their sides – quite literally for Bruce, which caused Joker to wrap the cape around his side ever further, staunching the wound. But the crisis averted, their merriment continued on as the sun began to set on the desert.

"I still won't do it," Gambol said with a smirk when their laughter fit died down some.

"You'll eat those words when he cooks dinner tonight, because that will be the only thing edible," Alfred remarked. They laughed again, still too weak from their previous fit to muster up anything quite as strong, but Bruce didn't mind. He curled up closer to Joker's chest, glad for the lulling, beating pillow that the man allowed him, and prepared for a well-earned nap to accelerate the healing of his wound.

Everyone was lulling off into their own doze or silent, warm-hearted introspection as they stared out across the desert, Rachel's and Barbara's heads resting on their respective husbands' shoulders, the others not caring in the least at any incidental physical contact between them. Off in their own minds, they still shared a companionship with the others. Yet they all missed the unspoken exchange between the two prodigal leaders of the group.

Joker gently pressed a kiss to Bruce's forehead, and Bruce was filled with a yearning. He gripped the violet-wrapped bicep tighter, rubbing up and down the cloth and the warmth beneath it soothingly. His head rose for a proper kiss, and made it an inch away from Joker's lips before…

…before Joker's hand shot between their mouths, pressing Bruce firmly away from him. Their eyes met, and Bruce remembered. Remembered the promise they had made the first night of their society's ostracism from civilization.

They knew it was up to them to keep the city's hopes up – something Joker grudgingly helped Bruce with, only for the sake of what it meant. Without it, he would never see his plan come to fruition. But to do so, they had ensured the people of Gotham – those who remained, anyway – that the League of Shadows could destroy Gotham's buildings and infrastructures, but as long as each one of them kept surviving and existing and defying the League's will, it could never destroy Gotham's spirit. For its spirit, they had told the desperate mass of then-five thousand, was its people.

They knew when they had spoken those words that it was a flat lie. A necessary lie, but a lie nonetheless.

They, Batman and Joker, were Gotham's spirit.

And Batman and Joker thrived off of, not only its people, but where the people lived. They reveled in skyscrapers, hulking buildings, dark alleys and the darker shadows in them, to make their fight. Without the City, they were exposed. They were limited. They were weak.

And so they had made a pact that night, when they found themselves exiles from the home they cared for so much. Anything else of an intimate nature was negotiable, but never once before had their lips touched. And when that moment happened, it would be electrifying; they knew it in their bones. And it had to be in Gotham City.

So never would they share a real kiss until they won their City back.

Bruce remembered it, just as well as Joker. One man saw it in the other's eyes, and with it saw that, for all the store their followers put by them, they were just men. They felt like just men, they both did – they had felt that moment of mortal weakness earlier today, when Bruce had stumbled from his blood loss, head foggy, with Joker struggling to keep him going, his strength failing to move them both in time…

When Joker destroyed a life or a building, or when Batman saved one and glided high above another, they didn't feel like just men – they felt alive. But here, out in the wild, they felt removed, frantic, grasping for straws. Desperate.

Bruce Wayne knew what desperate tasted like now, and so did the Joker.

Crusader let out a slow breath, and Clown Prince understood. Bruce laid his head back down on Joker's chest, letting his instincts guide him to cling closer to him as Joker's arms enveloped him tighter. They dozed with the rest of their fellows, as Alfred drove ever closer to the camp, allowing all worries about their failed mission for more food supplies, their near loss of their leaders, and their shredded dignity of the near-fatal lifestyle, all fade into sleep.

For now.