The Joker was gone. All that was left was his standard calling card - another pointless death. What was worse, Batman couldn't think of anyone who deserved it less. Barbara already had faced one truly horrifying ordeal with the madman and then, on the anniversary of that macabre act, he finished her life with one final grim encounter.
His whole essence in tatters, the Batman leant against the wall, mentally and physically wrecked. If the Joker had intended to break him - he had succeeded. A win or win situation for the lunatic. If the toxins had killed him, Joker would have rid himself of his arch nemesis, if Batman had survived, Joker would gain great pleasure from the knowledge that failure had cost the Dark Knight. It had cost him his dear friend's life.
Then there was Jim Gordon. Good lord, what could he say to him? It was another family death for Jim to cope with. Yet to the Joker, all of this was simply another big bonus.
To top it all, to lay the icing on the Joker's jubilant victory, was the fact he had killed the lover of Batman's closest companion. The lunatic would never know this truth, but it need not matter. It was about Bruce's failure rather than the Joker's success. His failure to save Barbara was a failure to prevent another tragedy befalling his best friend.
This was the most difficult part to come to terms with. With Dick standing before him now, Batman knew this wasn't going to be made easy.
"Dick, I'm sorry" Bruce stammered as he removed his cowl. "I tried to get here in time."
"You knew this was going to happen?" His companion glared back at him, a beacon of fury in a dead room.
Bruce shifted awkwardly. He was so very tired. "I was tracking the Joker just in case he tried anything like this." He paused. "It was a possible scenario," he agreed.
"A likely scenario!" corrected the cop. "You're one of the world's greatest detective's Bruce - maybe the best. You wouldn't waste your time tracking that madman if your gut instincts didn't tell you it was necessary!"
"Dick, it wasn't like that. It was simply routine." Bruce ran his fingers through his matted hair. "I've kept a watch on the Joker at this time of year ever since-" He stopped. This wasn't helping.
"You never told me!" Dick cried. "Bruce you should have told me! I deserved to know if you thought there was any chance of Barbara being at risk!" Tears were rolling down his face and they cut deep into Bruce's soul.
"I thought I could handle it!" Bruce looked down at his torn gloves. They were beginning to shake. He removed his cloak. "I thought I could handle it." he repeated to himself.
"You thought?" yelled Dick every muscle in his body bulged with uncontrollable wrath. "You thought? This was my life you were gambling with! You know that lunatic better than anyone - better than yourself! If there was even a chance you suspected you should have told me!"
Bruce stumbled over to the body and draped his cloak over the smiling corpse. "Don't do this Dick," he whispered. "Please, don't do this."
Dick laughed uncontrollably "What? I should let it go? Just another death in the family to chalk up?" Bruce winced. "Looks like we're going to need to order another casing for the Batcave! Soon we'll have more mementos to your defeats as we do for your victories!"
Bruce snapped. He swung round and gripped Grayson by his uniform. Dick snarled and pushed back sending Bruce off balance. "Got my case prepared, Bruce? If you're not prepared to kill, perhaps you shouldn't play with people's lives!
"You don't mean that!" Exclaimed Bruce. "Dick, don't be stupid!"
"What like get my friends killed? Is that your legacy? Have you considered maybe Clark was right?" Dick scowled. "You're too old to do this job competently. Did Barbara have to die for you to realise this?"
Bruce froze. "What?"
He began to formulate a question but his body was too busy reacting to the sharp blow to his gut. He stumbled back as Dick's leg arced up and connected with his neck. Only training prevented permanent damage and he rolled with the attack. The residual effect of the drug clearly slowing his reactions.
Dick was trying to kill him.
"This can wait!" He pleaded as he feebly missed dodging a sweeping attack. The attack unbalanced his weak frame and he collided with Barbara's smashed wheelchair. He topped over the apparatus and onto the floor. His head smacked into the carpet. He winced at the sight of Barbara's partially veiled grin from beneath his cloak. His spine then screamed as he felt Dick's knee embed itself in his back.
"Take a good long look Bruce!" yelled his ex-partner. "Your fault! You're no better than that madman!"
"No." Bruce breathed. Then the thought he'd been trying to process hit him. He craned his neck; an easy target for Dick to snap but he no longer cared.
"Clark," stammered Bruce 'How did you know about my conversation with Clark?" His mind raced/ A conspiracy? Was Clark turning his children on him? Did it matter? Somehow, it felt it did.
Dick backhanded him across the face. "I know because you know."
"I don't understand." Bruce could feel his consciousness slowly fading. "I don't understand."
"You won't if you're dead." Whispered a female voice. "Keep beating yourself up like this and you'll never understand."
Barbara? He shifted to face the body. There was no evidence of change. No miraculous recovery.
"Here, you idiot."
He craned his neck up slightly beyond the cold cadaver. He squinted in disbelief.
"Funny, I always I had a nice smile," grumbled the figure. A youngish girl draped in a cape and cowl - a shock of red hair tumbled down her shoulders. The residual effect of the drugs mixed with fatigue playing with his vision.
"Who are you?" he asked deliriously. He could feel Dick's fingers wrap round his neck.
The figure delicately leaped over the body and landed before him. She dropped her head low and next to his. She kissed him lightly on the forehead as he began to fade from the world.
"Hope." She whispered delicately.
***
There were no stars, only space.
Normally the two are associated, but here there was nothing; the darkness tumbling into the distance or the dark tightly hugging his body? - he couldn't tell. Distance had no meaning.
"Almost done," giggled the voice.
Barbara - a young Barbara, Batgirl.
"I need to get up Barbara, before Dick kills me. Help me wake up."
The image gripped his waist tightly. Perhaps he should stay here, in the warm - where he didn't have to face his partner. "Perhaps it's best this way," he declared. "Let him kill me."
"Dick would never kill you," tutted Barbara. "You know that."
"I used to think that."
"You have to listen to yourself, not your feelings. You know the answer."
I know because you know.
Oh god.
"You can't hide in your make believe world any longer Bruce. You have to face yourself - and reality."
Face Dick?
No, that's not what she meant.
Face his fear.
"I never left, did I? I'm still unconscious in the warehouse!"
***
Barbara's eyes danced around the room, surveying all objects and possibilities. Never give up hope - that was one of the rules both Bruce and Dick had bestowed on her. She had tried reaching J'onn several times but she had no luck connecting to his Martian. She was on her own. It was looking increasingly unlikely she was going to be rescued and not exactly the type to play the damsel in distress. She had to do something!
The Joker had left her alone. He was upstairs, whistling merrily to himself. She could hear the distinct sound of running bathwater. He was mixing something nasty in her dad's bath. She swore her hated for him, molesting her fathers home, tainting it.
She tugged at her bonds. They were pulled very tight, they cut into her wrists. No hope of undoing them by hand, but she had hardly expected that. She glanced at the phone that sat on a coffee table just metres away. The wire was cut. She turned her head to the windows - they were closed.
She sighed.
Perhaps she was just going to have to wait for the right moment - if it was ever to come. Could she take that risk?
The she spotted her wheelchair in the corner of the room. If she could get to her utility pouch.
She smiled inwardly to herself and began to shift her chair towards it.
Hope.
***
"You're living out a dream," Batgirl whispered. "Avoiding the truth of your situation."
"Jason was my guilt," Bruce queried. "Dick was my anger and you say you are who?"
"The embodiment of your hope," she explained. "All your constructs are driven by your emotions. They aren't just simple duplicates of the people you know."
Bruce thought back to Dick's attack and Jason's taunts. "Reflections of myself - mirrors of what I feel I deserve." He felt Batgirl tickle his cheek, like a mother try to sooth a crying child.
"Self Pity," she replied. "You're weak now. The Joker's toxins have eaten most of your strength, only you're negative attributes remain."
"Jason said I was a construct also and if you all are reflections - what does that make me to Bruce Wayne - to Batman?"
Batgirl gently turned Bruce round. Standing in the dark was an antique wooden mirror, lit by unseen light.
He gazed into its soul.
The Scarecrow gazed back at him.
"Fear."
***
"Bath time!" declared the Joker bursting into the room. A foul toxic odour followed him in. His grin faded.
The chair sat vacant and the wheelchair was gone.
The ropes that had been tied to the dining chair had been burned away and a cutting tool sat on the chairs seat. He leapt towards the chair and kicked it across the room in anger. He stormed through the room and out of the open backdoor and into the backyard. He had welded the front door shut and the windows were locked. She had to be out the back somewhere.
Propped up against the fence was the missing wheelchair. He'd noticed she'd had rather strong arms; it wouldn't have taken much effort to pull herself out and over the fence.
He grinned. She wouldn't get far with just her arms. With a quick sprint he leaped over the fence.
From the shadows that shrouded the flowerbed, Barbara breathed a sigh of relief.
***
She held him in her arms, no longer Batgirl, just plain Barbara. She was toying with his hair - in a way less like a lover, more suiting to a mother's touch. Hope had taken on a maternal approach. He wondered for a moment why hope had taken the form of Barbara and not one of his parents.
He sighed, it was probably because he could no longer picture his parents embrace - just the horror of that fatal night. Their terrified faces tattooed to the inside of his eyelids.
Barbara was, he reflected, Gotham's mother. Metaphorically speaking. She was the cities eyes and ears, listening to the pulse of its people. Gotham's mother was his mother. The only mother that seemed real to him anymore.
What was real? He was just a construct - he was just a partial embodiment of Bruce Wayne. He never had a mother. Until now, he had never even existed.
Jason had told him there was a way to the fight the chaos of the toxin - he just didn't know if he could face it, or control it. He had concocted his own illusion that he could - but Bruce's mind destroyed that illusion. Now, Barbara gave him hope, strength to fight the madness - to save the real Bruce Wayne and the real Barbara Gordon from a madman.
"You know what you must do - you must embrace the chaos."
"You know what I'll be capable of? The risk involved if I let go?"
She nodded. "You are no longer playing by your rules Bruce."
His rules were important. Cover all the possibilities - leave no room for error. Now that had all changed. He had made an error and he was now paying for it. He knew he might end up paying for it with Bruce's very soul.
He cuddled closer to her.
"Let me see him. Let me finish my part in this."
"You are the world's greatest detective," Jason had said. "To catch your enemy you learn to think - to be the enemy."
It would be a small sacrifice for Bruce's sanity.
"You know him as much as you know yourself. You've learnt to think like him."
He pulled back the curtain in his head.
"You can't fight the chaos infecting in your mind. You can't control it. Your brain is built on deductive reasoning. Logic. Mathematics. The poison has no such process."
The figure sat in the chair his back turned to Bruce.
"To defeat it - to defeat chaos - you have to become part of chaos."
Bruce walked up to the figure and rested a hand on the back of the chair.
"I need your help."
The Joker swung round, puffing on a ridiculously huge cigar.
"Well now Brucie boy…"
He relinquished his life.
In the warehouse, Batman's sweat encrusted face contorted into a gigantic, hideous grin. "…all you had to do was ask."
His whole essence in tatters, the Batman leant against the wall, mentally and physically wrecked. If the Joker had intended to break him - he had succeeded. A win or win situation for the lunatic. If the toxins had killed him, Joker would have rid himself of his arch nemesis, if Batman had survived, Joker would gain great pleasure from the knowledge that failure had cost the Dark Knight. It had cost him his dear friend's life.
Then there was Jim Gordon. Good lord, what could he say to him? It was another family death for Jim to cope with. Yet to the Joker, all of this was simply another big bonus.
To top it all, to lay the icing on the Joker's jubilant victory, was the fact he had killed the lover of Batman's closest companion. The lunatic would never know this truth, but it need not matter. It was about Bruce's failure rather than the Joker's success. His failure to save Barbara was a failure to prevent another tragedy befalling his best friend.
This was the most difficult part to come to terms with. With Dick standing before him now, Batman knew this wasn't going to be made easy.
"Dick, I'm sorry" Bruce stammered as he removed his cowl. "I tried to get here in time."
"You knew this was going to happen?" His companion glared back at him, a beacon of fury in a dead room.
Bruce shifted awkwardly. He was so very tired. "I was tracking the Joker just in case he tried anything like this." He paused. "It was a possible scenario," he agreed.
"A likely scenario!" corrected the cop. "You're one of the world's greatest detective's Bruce - maybe the best. You wouldn't waste your time tracking that madman if your gut instincts didn't tell you it was necessary!"
"Dick, it wasn't like that. It was simply routine." Bruce ran his fingers through his matted hair. "I've kept a watch on the Joker at this time of year ever since-" He stopped. This wasn't helping.
"You never told me!" Dick cried. "Bruce you should have told me! I deserved to know if you thought there was any chance of Barbara being at risk!" Tears were rolling down his face and they cut deep into Bruce's soul.
"I thought I could handle it!" Bruce looked down at his torn gloves. They were beginning to shake. He removed his cloak. "I thought I could handle it." he repeated to himself.
"You thought?" yelled Dick every muscle in his body bulged with uncontrollable wrath. "You thought? This was my life you were gambling with! You know that lunatic better than anyone - better than yourself! If there was even a chance you suspected you should have told me!"
Bruce stumbled over to the body and draped his cloak over the smiling corpse. "Don't do this Dick," he whispered. "Please, don't do this."
Dick laughed uncontrollably "What? I should let it go? Just another death in the family to chalk up?" Bruce winced. "Looks like we're going to need to order another casing for the Batcave! Soon we'll have more mementos to your defeats as we do for your victories!"
Bruce snapped. He swung round and gripped Grayson by his uniform. Dick snarled and pushed back sending Bruce off balance. "Got my case prepared, Bruce? If you're not prepared to kill, perhaps you shouldn't play with people's lives!
"You don't mean that!" Exclaimed Bruce. "Dick, don't be stupid!"
"What like get my friends killed? Is that your legacy? Have you considered maybe Clark was right?" Dick scowled. "You're too old to do this job competently. Did Barbara have to die for you to realise this?"
Bruce froze. "What?"
He began to formulate a question but his body was too busy reacting to the sharp blow to his gut. He stumbled back as Dick's leg arced up and connected with his neck. Only training prevented permanent damage and he rolled with the attack. The residual effect of the drug clearly slowing his reactions.
Dick was trying to kill him.
"This can wait!" He pleaded as he feebly missed dodging a sweeping attack. The attack unbalanced his weak frame and he collided with Barbara's smashed wheelchair. He topped over the apparatus and onto the floor. His head smacked into the carpet. He winced at the sight of Barbara's partially veiled grin from beneath his cloak. His spine then screamed as he felt Dick's knee embed itself in his back.
"Take a good long look Bruce!" yelled his ex-partner. "Your fault! You're no better than that madman!"
"No." Bruce breathed. Then the thought he'd been trying to process hit him. He craned his neck; an easy target for Dick to snap but he no longer cared.
"Clark," stammered Bruce 'How did you know about my conversation with Clark?" His mind raced/ A conspiracy? Was Clark turning his children on him? Did it matter? Somehow, it felt it did.
Dick backhanded him across the face. "I know because you know."
"I don't understand." Bruce could feel his consciousness slowly fading. "I don't understand."
"You won't if you're dead." Whispered a female voice. "Keep beating yourself up like this and you'll never understand."
Barbara? He shifted to face the body. There was no evidence of change. No miraculous recovery.
"Here, you idiot."
He craned his neck up slightly beyond the cold cadaver. He squinted in disbelief.
"Funny, I always I had a nice smile," grumbled the figure. A youngish girl draped in a cape and cowl - a shock of red hair tumbled down her shoulders. The residual effect of the drugs mixed with fatigue playing with his vision.
"Who are you?" he asked deliriously. He could feel Dick's fingers wrap round his neck.
The figure delicately leaped over the body and landed before him. She dropped her head low and next to his. She kissed him lightly on the forehead as he began to fade from the world.
"Hope." She whispered delicately.
***
There were no stars, only space.
Normally the two are associated, but here there was nothing; the darkness tumbling into the distance or the dark tightly hugging his body? - he couldn't tell. Distance had no meaning.
"Almost done," giggled the voice.
Barbara - a young Barbara, Batgirl.
"I need to get up Barbara, before Dick kills me. Help me wake up."
The image gripped his waist tightly. Perhaps he should stay here, in the warm - where he didn't have to face his partner. "Perhaps it's best this way," he declared. "Let him kill me."
"Dick would never kill you," tutted Barbara. "You know that."
"I used to think that."
"You have to listen to yourself, not your feelings. You know the answer."
I know because you know.
Oh god.
"You can't hide in your make believe world any longer Bruce. You have to face yourself - and reality."
Face Dick?
No, that's not what she meant.
Face his fear.
"I never left, did I? I'm still unconscious in the warehouse!"
***
Barbara's eyes danced around the room, surveying all objects and possibilities. Never give up hope - that was one of the rules both Bruce and Dick had bestowed on her. She had tried reaching J'onn several times but she had no luck connecting to his Martian. She was on her own. It was looking increasingly unlikely she was going to be rescued and not exactly the type to play the damsel in distress. She had to do something!
The Joker had left her alone. He was upstairs, whistling merrily to himself. She could hear the distinct sound of running bathwater. He was mixing something nasty in her dad's bath. She swore her hated for him, molesting her fathers home, tainting it.
She tugged at her bonds. They were pulled very tight, they cut into her wrists. No hope of undoing them by hand, but she had hardly expected that. She glanced at the phone that sat on a coffee table just metres away. The wire was cut. She turned her head to the windows - they were closed.
She sighed.
Perhaps she was just going to have to wait for the right moment - if it was ever to come. Could she take that risk?
The she spotted her wheelchair in the corner of the room. If she could get to her utility pouch.
She smiled inwardly to herself and began to shift her chair towards it.
Hope.
***
"You're living out a dream," Batgirl whispered. "Avoiding the truth of your situation."
"Jason was my guilt," Bruce queried. "Dick was my anger and you say you are who?"
"The embodiment of your hope," she explained. "All your constructs are driven by your emotions. They aren't just simple duplicates of the people you know."
Bruce thought back to Dick's attack and Jason's taunts. "Reflections of myself - mirrors of what I feel I deserve." He felt Batgirl tickle his cheek, like a mother try to sooth a crying child.
"Self Pity," she replied. "You're weak now. The Joker's toxins have eaten most of your strength, only you're negative attributes remain."
"Jason said I was a construct also and if you all are reflections - what does that make me to Bruce Wayne - to Batman?"
Batgirl gently turned Bruce round. Standing in the dark was an antique wooden mirror, lit by unseen light.
He gazed into its soul.
The Scarecrow gazed back at him.
"Fear."
***
"Bath time!" declared the Joker bursting into the room. A foul toxic odour followed him in. His grin faded.
The chair sat vacant and the wheelchair was gone.
The ropes that had been tied to the dining chair had been burned away and a cutting tool sat on the chairs seat. He leapt towards the chair and kicked it across the room in anger. He stormed through the room and out of the open backdoor and into the backyard. He had welded the front door shut and the windows were locked. She had to be out the back somewhere.
Propped up against the fence was the missing wheelchair. He'd noticed she'd had rather strong arms; it wouldn't have taken much effort to pull herself out and over the fence.
He grinned. She wouldn't get far with just her arms. With a quick sprint he leaped over the fence.
From the shadows that shrouded the flowerbed, Barbara breathed a sigh of relief.
***
She held him in her arms, no longer Batgirl, just plain Barbara. She was toying with his hair - in a way less like a lover, more suiting to a mother's touch. Hope had taken on a maternal approach. He wondered for a moment why hope had taken the form of Barbara and not one of his parents.
He sighed, it was probably because he could no longer picture his parents embrace - just the horror of that fatal night. Their terrified faces tattooed to the inside of his eyelids.
Barbara was, he reflected, Gotham's mother. Metaphorically speaking. She was the cities eyes and ears, listening to the pulse of its people. Gotham's mother was his mother. The only mother that seemed real to him anymore.
What was real? He was just a construct - he was just a partial embodiment of Bruce Wayne. He never had a mother. Until now, he had never even existed.
Jason had told him there was a way to the fight the chaos of the toxin - he just didn't know if he could face it, or control it. He had concocted his own illusion that he could - but Bruce's mind destroyed that illusion. Now, Barbara gave him hope, strength to fight the madness - to save the real Bruce Wayne and the real Barbara Gordon from a madman.
"You know what you must do - you must embrace the chaos."
"You know what I'll be capable of? The risk involved if I let go?"
She nodded. "You are no longer playing by your rules Bruce."
His rules were important. Cover all the possibilities - leave no room for error. Now that had all changed. He had made an error and he was now paying for it. He knew he might end up paying for it with Bruce's very soul.
He cuddled closer to her.
"Let me see him. Let me finish my part in this."
"You are the world's greatest detective," Jason had said. "To catch your enemy you learn to think - to be the enemy."
It would be a small sacrifice for Bruce's sanity.
"You know him as much as you know yourself. You've learnt to think like him."
He pulled back the curtain in his head.
"You can't fight the chaos infecting in your mind. You can't control it. Your brain is built on deductive reasoning. Logic. Mathematics. The poison has no such process."
The figure sat in the chair his back turned to Bruce.
"To defeat it - to defeat chaos - you have to become part of chaos."
Bruce walked up to the figure and rested a hand on the back of the chair.
"I need your help."
The Joker swung round, puffing on a ridiculously huge cigar.
"Well now Brucie boy…"
He relinquished his life.
In the warehouse, Batman's sweat encrusted face contorted into a gigantic, hideous grin. "…all you had to do was ask."