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#9: endorse their illegal hobbies
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Batman sits by his favorite gargoyle, silently watching over the city.
It's a slow night; no big-name criminals in sight, no gang shoot-outs happening by the docs. It's rare that Gotham actually sleeps at night, the streets so full of turmoil and pent-up pain that not even the biting cold can usually keep it at bay.
Tonight seems different. Quiet.
Batman enjoys peace, always. In those short moments when everything just exists and before something, somewhere, inevitably goes haywire, Gotham is beautiful.
Maybe it's not the sort of beauty that gets etched into heart and memory by exquisite art made in its honor and name, nor by the lasting sensation of experiencing it for the first time with one's own eyes. It's not the beauty deserving of words of poets and bards to carry lovingly along wherever their worship may reach.
But it is breathtaking, in a way no other place could ever be.
Pulsating with life constantly, unabashedly. Proudly. Always with pride, with heads held high and straight backs of its people, Gotham swallows the dirt and the hurt and lays open and welcoming to anyone brave enough to take their stand. It's not a gentle kind of beauty, no. It's not a gentle kind of love.
It's one that allures sharks and monsters like blood spilled in the water, one that hums with a constant threat of danger below the surface even when the winds are calm. Mesmerizing and magnificent. Alive, even while sleeping.
Batman could never leave this behind.
Even when he left to train, to make himself better, more worthy of his goals, it was always the thought of coming back here that pushed him forward. The urge to become what Gotham needed most in its darkest hours, what it deserved.
Batman can't be sure if he achieved that goal yet, but he sure as hell will give it his best regardless.
The night is calm in a way that doesn't scream of oncoming storms and Batman lets himself, well, not relax, never relax while on the job, but ease out a little. Let the tension go and the paranoia unclench. Breathe.
There is no one else on the rooftops but him.
Well.
Until there is.
A small figure two building over is making their way up the fire escape, the unmistakable shape of a rocket launcher strapped loosely to their back.
Batman stands up, immediately ready to take action. He profoundly ignores the faint feeling of loss over how nice this night could've been. And then he jumps.
Crossing the distance with his new grappling hook gun is as easy as a walk in the park on a sunny day, and it takes him mere seconds to circle the building and intercept the rooftop, unnoticed. He then hides in the shadows, waiting for the (potential) criminal to reach the top as well. It would be… unwise, to startle someone with explosives on a shaky staircase, after all.
It doesn't take long for the person to crawl their way up, metallic rattling of rusty steps clear in the silence of the night, and soon enough a silhouette emerges from the shadows. A very familiar silhouette.
Batman curses softly under his breath as Jerome — because of course it's Jerome, at this point, why would it be anyone else, really? — stumbles over the ledge. He's muttering something to himself, or maybe over his comms, that Batman can't hear from this distance, patting the pockets of his ridiculous suit. Bright red, even in the dim lights of the street below.
It was supposed to be a slow patrol.
Batman hasn't really seen Jerome on the streets since his last big bank robbery a few weeks prior, laying suspiciously low since he took Bruce Wayne sightseeing to detonate Jeremiah's last remaining batteries over the remnants of his bunker. If Batman wasn't so damn resigned about the petty war going on between the twins that apparently transcends years of absence and prison walls, he maybe, maybe, would've appreciated the sort of sense of poetic (in)justice of it all.
As it is, he's mostly just annoyed.
The whole point of Batman raising in the deepest shadows of the night was that he could face crime on his own terms. Make villains play by his rules. Only Jerome… doesn't.
The Joker and his Maniax brood keep doing whatever they want despite the many times Batman thwarted their antics already, heedless of the body count both of their own and civilians alike. Down periods of inactivity, while a breath of fresh — literally! not-poisonous — air for the city, more often than not mean that something truly ugly is brewing behind the scenes, and Batman, however much satisfaction he takes from a job well accomplished, is beyond done with such madness.
So no, seeing Jerome with a personal-use rocket launcher, giggling on a rooftop at 2 A.M. is NOT what Batman considers a fun time. It wasn't the first god-knows-how-many times it happened before, and it sure as hell isn't now.
The only good news is, though, that the Clown appears to be alone. Thank heavens for small mercies.
Batman stalks closer under the covers of long shadows cast by the taller buildings around them, silent and careful. One with the night. He doesn't really focus on the pieces of tech Jerome is putting together — the barrels and the straps and the telescopes — and instead tries to work out his target before the confrontation begins.
They're almost on the Narrows turf, no more than two blocks away, and there really, really isn't anything around here worth blowing to pieces.
Not close enough to the nearest drug den to cause a ruckus, not close enough to the Doc's territory to royally piss everyone off. Of course, Jerome — Joker — could just plan to murder hundreds of people for fun tonight, as a treat. But there is no audience to be had at the dead of this peaceful of a night and it's been a long time since the Maniax did anything without the promise of publicity.
Batman sighs, already knowing he won't figure it out before the Clown enlightens him in person, and reaches for his batarangs.
It's about time to move, anyway.
Batman charges forward, every intention to tackle Jerome flat to the ground before he has a chance to actually do something flaring in his veins.
The hit lands.
They're tumbling sideways, away from the edge and from the bazooka, enough to have some room for a fight.
And fight they do.
Jerome doesn't pull his punches any more than he always does, all vicious zeal and obnoxious laughter. He's not a fighter, not in a way Batman is — trained and prepared to counter every and any move — but that never stopped him from being an utter nuisance before.
Batman doesn't think tonight's going to go any differently.
They're rolling together over the rooftop exchanging blows, none of them willing to let the other go, aiming for maximum pain and incapacitation. At least Jerome is; his gloved hands like claws on Batman's throat, brutal and unyielding.
"I'm gonna kill ya, Bats," he sing-songs in a raspy voice straight into Batman's ear. "I'm gonna tear ya to pieces."
Batman knows he would. Gleefully so. But not tonight.
It takes only a moment to flip them over, to put a blade to Jerome's neck and push — just enough to make him stop. And it works exactly like Batman thought it would; only not quite. Jerome's fingers go slack in their hold and his arms flop down Batman's sides, but it's a far cry from defeat yet. In fact, the look he's sending Batman's way is something that Batman hasn't seen in a very long while.
A look that suddenly sends him years into the past. To the maze made of mirrors and an entirely different fight.
To a different night, when Bruce Wayne straddled Jerome's chest and for the first time looked death so closely in the eye. To a time he held a glass shard in his grip, ripping both his skin and soul apart, and for more than one, horrifying heartbeat thought: This ends tonight.
It didn't. He didn't. But Bruce never forgot the way he looked death in the face and it laughed back.
Batman stops, just for a second, overwhelmed with memories of a time long gone, when both of them had fewer edges to cut on and the fight to the death wasn't ultimately so. But the way Jerome looks at him from beneath the blade — cold and heavy and intent — sends shivers down Batman's spine.
It's so similar to the look from that first time they fought and yet… unacceptably lacking.
Jerome from the maze looked at him like he saw something more, something worth dying over, even if just for the sheer spite of shaking his childish ideals. Something worthy damaging enough that his freshly regained life wasn't too much of a price.
The Jerome underneath him now… doesn't.
His gaze burns with a cold flame of hatred and a truly maniacal need to end Batman's life, but there is no deeper desire there. No curiosity. And it sends Batman for a loop, this strangeness. This otherness.
Until he remembers it's not strangeness at all.
That it's not Jerome — the vaguely threatening menace that likes to break into his house for breakfast every so often — that he's facing right now. It's not Jerome that served as a final push to send him on his current path, Jerome whom he shares a lot of history with, both past and — surprisingly — present.
No.
It's the Joker on a warpath and out for his blood.
It's the Joker who's… laughing at him again?
Batman jumps back in an instant when the sizzling noise of a blade that wasn't in Jerome's hand a second ago hits his ears and wild cackling begins to echo malevolently in the night.
"Itsy bitsy baby Batsy, tut-tut! Don't run away."
Oh, Batman certainly won't. But he won't indulge the Clown either.
Jerome doesn't give him time to regroup, though. He rushes forward, his chainsaw-like blade brandishing in broad, chaotic swings.
Batman throws a tripwire at his ankles to knock him down but Jerome leaps at him over it and sure enough they're locked in a deadly embrace once more. Only this time the threat is appallingly real.
Batman can feel the infernal blade slowly sawing through the back of his cowl and another — there's another?! — jabbing at his neck. Jerome is clinging to him like a deadly, clown-y octopus, hindering his movements and unwilling to let go with entirely petty, malicious glee.
Batman is not amused.
He struggles free, of course, with the help of a few well-aimed blows, but as he finally drop-kicks Jerome off of him, Batman realizes his momentary distraction was enough. He can feel the gush on his shoulder, already oozing blood down his back and arm, and, to his abject horror, Batman realizes he can feel the cool, nightly breeze on the side of his face, too. His uncovered face. Which means…
His cowl!
Jerome went for his—
Batman — Bruce — freezes, spotting dark remnants of his protection not a few feet away from his current position. In Jerome's hand. The Clown is looking at him with wide, unblinking eyes, completely entranced by his miraculous discovery.
Bruce looks at him back, motionless, his mind going a thousand miles an hour over 'what ifs' and 'oh shits' of Jerome knowing who he is behind the mask.
Then Jerome jumps and the moment breaks, and they rolling on the dirty concrete like a pair of brawling teenagers yet again. Only it's...
Different.
Bruce can tell Jerome's bloodlust dissipated to naught in a matter of seconds that he spent on the ground, replaced by something much softer. Mellowed down.
He can feel it in the movement of his fists, blade-less and punchy, no longer aiming to tear apart; he can hear in the laughter that lost its dreadful note and in the blows, less vindictive, less deadly.
And even though it's never a given with Jerome — his moods swaying faster than the lights of a disco ball — Bruce knows they're not fighting seriously anymore. Jerome may have wanted to kill the Batman a minute ago, but Bruce is not afraid he's going to kill him. That ship has sailed a long time ago and they both know it.
So Bruce lets himself be pinned. He lets the weight of another body settle over his own and feel the warmth of breath wash over his exposed skin.
He doesn't protest when Jerome ogles the half of his unmasked face and traces the jagged line of breakage his knife left behind. It's strangely intimate, being so close. With their faces suspended not even a foot apart, but not spitting insults at each other through their teeth. Bruce has learned to handle Jerome most of the time, but still the only times they actually end up this close by is when an argument's involved.
It's not like that now.
Jerome gently cups Bruce's cheek with his gloved hand as he leans down, steeling the pressure he's got on Bruce's chest.
It's unnerving, how calm he can appear when just moments before he was pure chaos incarnate. Bruce gulps audibly.
Jerome's eyes crinkle when he leans even closer, mischievous glint shining deep within like a beacon.
"Always knew you had a soft spot there for lil ol' me," he says, giggle bubbling in his throat. He pats Bruce with too little sting to be anything but mockery and smirks a little too bright to be feral.
Bruce glares at him in turn. He's not exactly sure what you say to your oldest enemy having gone soft on your civilian identity by some elaborate scheme of circumstances and then finding out about it. He isn't sure if Jerome will try to stab him as retribution for Batman playing him in his own game for months — with this man everything's possible — but not for the first time this evening is Bruce grateful for the apparent lack of guns on Jerome's person.
Getting unmasked and mutilated by a Franken-knife is bad enough for one patrol. Gunshot wounds on top of that would surely earn him at least a week's worth of Alfred's Eyebrows of Doom. The thought is utterly horrifying.
But Bruce knows better than to let his mind wander while still in Jerome's direct proximity. In his clutches.
There is no possible scenario in which such negligence ends well. Just like now.
Before Bruce can really maneuver his way out from underneath Jerome — again — his face moves to hover mere inches above Bruce's own, and then he bends, plopping a wet, sloppy kiss just above Bruce's brow, where he cut his mask open.
It lasts just for a second, not enough for Bruce to react in any way (not that he wants to. React), before Jerome scrambles to his feet and dashes across the roof, his ridiculous, red tailcoat puffing in the wind.
"See ya 'round, Brucie!" he chirps, giving Bruce a little, playful wave before he takes on the ledge at full speed.
As he watches Jerome's flouncing figure disappear into the night, his sad, abandoned bazooka lying discarded on the opposite side of the roof, Bruce knows he's in trouble.
Really, really deep trouble.
A/N:
I absolutely despise writing combat. Can you tell? XD
Also apologies for the angst, promise we'll be back to regularly scheduled shenanigans next time! :3