Days later, the two were alone again. This time, the wind was whistling. Loud enough, in fact, to give Batman shivers - even though his suit. High up above Gotham where no one else could see them, the Joker had his plaything in his final clutches. Hanging over the edge of the broken window, Batman struggled to get free, his hands weakly shoving up against the man's shoulders. Was he even a man? No, Bruce told himself, he couldn't be; he's far too crazy. Perhaps Bruce was correct in thinking that the Joker was something sub-human, but even still, he could not keep himself from being pulled in. "I thought you said you wouldn't kill me!" he exclaimed, gasping for breath.
The metal bar being pressed against his chest was all that was separating their bodies. Every other inch of them was locked neatly, perfectly, into the other. Though the joker was pressing hard and holding down his playmate, the rest of his body was not being brutal. It was only Batman's weakened will that was preventing him from rolling away altogether - and the fact that rolling would have been dangerous, seeing as he was nearly hanging off a building and laying on top of thousands of shards of broken glass. The sounds of glass shattering when the window broke had shocked them both, and it had caused their eyes to lock as well. Bruce's soft brown eyes touched the Joker's green ones, and fire quickly spread between the two of them.
In response to the hero's comment, the Joker's face softened out of a grimace and into a look that seemed almost pained. "I wouldn't..." he admitted. It was a slow confession. How was he to explain, without looking weak? A new class of criminal? Ha. How was he supposed to accomplish that when he was so busy playing with his newest toy? All he could seem to focus on was Batman. Sure, the set-up of Harvey and Rachel had been one designed to stir the town into a frenzy and perhaps destroy Gotham's best chance for purity, but really... it had been about Batman. Why else would he have thrown Rachel into the mix? It wasn't all about the chaos, and that fact gnawed down to his very core. He was a disappointment. A let down. He, just like every other criminal in Gotham, had been swallowed whole by the bat man.
Regaining his composure and tucking his pain away for a later date, he stared down into the eyes of his adversary with his signature playful grin. It was showtime once again. "Oh, Batman. Don't be silly. I wouldn't kill you. You..." But he was cut off by his impatient victim, who was all too ready to lash out from frustration. And how could he not be frustrated? The man truly did seem to be insane to the deepest degree.
"No," Batman spat - literally, up into the Joker's paint-covered face - and glared up at the figure. "You're crazy. WHY are you even doing this? What are you getting out of it? You said you wanted chaos, but you're not working towards it. You're busy here, playing with me. What do you really want, Joker? You wanted me to play your game. I played, didn't I? I did what you wanted..." His face twisted into a grimace, as if his stomach was threatening to turn up whatever dinner he'd eaten that night. "Didn't I? I don't understand... How can I make you stop?" His pleas were almost desperate.
The Joker thought hard about this, as if he'd never even considered it himself. As a number of things flashed through his mind, the muscles throughout his body tensed, and the man beneath him could feel it. This caused a looked of concern mixed with confusion to plague his features. Batman cared, or at least that was how it would seem. The Joker, though obviously startled by the pressing questions, at last had formulated something similar to an answer. "I want... I want..." Upon realizing that his answer wasn't formulated fully, after all, flicked his tongue across his lips a few times and pressed a hand through his greasy hair. His hair seemed to be glowing green from the light of the copters outside.
At last, the words came. "I want to feel at home somewhere. Not even Gotham seems to have a place for me without you." This confession, too, was slow, but less so. His eyes fell away from the man underneath him and rested on the broken window. Soon, they would run out of time to be alone together. "You don't fit in here, either, Bruce," he finally said, looking back into his eyes. "No one here loves you. They all want you to turn yourself in. To give yourself up! To take off your mask..." He paused here, glancing over the item with curious intensity. "To take off your mask, and reveal yourself. They want you thrown to the dogs. A scrap of meat. A sacrifice to keep the devil at bay. But it won't work, Bruce. Gotham will tear itself apart, hating you, until you hang up the costume and become Bruce Wayne, the former Batman." Again, he paused. He wanted the words to sting. "They think they don't need you. But they'll find out, when you're behind bars and their city is in ruins, that you were the only thing holding Gotham together."
His grip on the bar and his pressure on the hero's chest had lightened a good deal, but Bruce - Batman... or was he Bruce still? - lay still, pinned not by the Joker's hands, but is piecing gaze. "That's not true. They do need me. You're just blinding them all to the truth. They're scared. Clearly, they should be."
"Oh, don't say that. Don't say that." Looking displeased, the Joker's tongue flicked out across his lips once more, as if he had eaten something bitter. "They should be scared of me, but I'm not really so frightening. Come on. Just look at me. Look at me!" Without so much as a menacing cackle, he grabbed Batman's jaw and turned his head to face his own. "Now, isn't that just the most innocent, sweet little face you've ever seen? Hmm?"
Batman thought for a moment, then nodded, moving the Joker's hand with his head as he did so. As he gazed up into the face of the man who had seemingly gone so insane that he wanted to take over Gotham, images of what the man had been like in his childhood flashed before his very eyes. They played over and over again in his mind, until, finally, he spoke. "You're not so tough. You don't even enjoy pain. You enjoy watching people squirm..." Feeling the man on top of him lean in and press his body ever closer - every part of his body - he fought hard for each breath as he kept speaking. "That's not so cynical, really."
Just as the Joker opened his mouth - he was looking rather shocked with it hanging open that way - to respond, Batman jerked his head around, seeing the search lights focus in on their window. "End it, Batman. Go on. End it now. I want you to. End it! I dare you! Throw me over the edge." At first, Batman reached up and gripped the man's shoulders tightly, as if he might have actually completed the action. Then, the horror of the moment - the realization - flashed across his brown eyes.
"No. I won't. I won't be corrupted by you," Batman protested, loosening his grip but leaving his hands on the Joker's shoulders and the scowl on his face. Still, he didn't sound as sure as he was trying to. "Get me out of here. And make it look good. You can play with me all you want if it will get you to leave Gotham alone." Though it should have sounded like some brave hero's sacrifice for his beloved city, it did not. It sounded more like a request, and the Joker was more than willing to comply. To the search lights, it probably appeared as if the Joker was dragging away a defeated victim. To the two of them, it was a play - a staged act for the public. What really went on between the two would remain a secret, only to be known to them, for the rest of their days.