Nightwing: The Darkness
Chapter 6
DISCLAIMER: The characters and situations contained in this story are ©2004 by DC Comics Inc. and are used without permission for fan-related entertainment purposes only. This original work of fiction is ©2004 by Christopher W. Blaine and may not be reproduced without permission.
Seven years ago…
"…and in tonight's lead story, the Joker, the self-proclaimed Clown Prince of Crime, has once again escaped from Arkham Asylum. Viewers may remember the last time the Joker escaped, some six months ago, and how he was apprehended by the Batman after he had committed several murders." The television screen shifted from the strong-jawed anchorman to the bleach-blonde, large toothed smile of his female co-host.
"That's right, Ted; in fact, the Joker still has to be tried for those crimes," she said with a face that seemed joyous no matter what it was she was reporting.
The scene suddenly shifted back to the anchorman, who was touching his earpiece and nodding his head. "Hold on, Muffy, but it looks like we've got a WGTH news exclusive coming in." He nodded again and then looked straight into the camera. "We have a confirmed report that the bodies of Edward Nigma, the Riddler, and Pamela Isley, Poison Ivy, have been found on the grounds of Arkham Asylum. On scene investigators have stated that it looks as if they had been killed using one of the Joker's patented chemical weapons."
Muffy then appeared on the screen. "That coincides with the rumor that former Gotham City police commissioner James Gordon and his daughter Barbara have been kidnapped by the Joker…"
Dick Grayson turned off the television and frowned. Why hadn't Batman let him know?
The younger man knew he had to give the Caped Crusader the benefit of the doubt. Batman left no detail unattended to. Perhaps he had tried to get a hold of him, but Dick could not help but admit that he had been dead tired after returning from a mission in deep space with the New Titans. He had collapsed on his couch and literally had passed out from exhaustion. He checked his digital messenger and saw that it was dead. The battery must have run out on his cross-galaxy trip.
Swearing out loud, he opened up the battery compartment and dropped the cell out before going over to his "junk drawer" to pull out another. Slapping it in he was rewarded with a chirping sound and then the green flashing light that said he had messages. Quickly he scanned through them and found one from Batman, one from Tim Drake (a.k.a Robin) and a final one from Batgirl. All of them told him to get to Gotham immediately.
Quickly he finished putting on a fresh costume and took the secret stairwell to his hidden garage. His home, a seemingly modest dwelling halfway between Gotham City and Bludhaven, had been designed so that he could enter and exit without being seen. In the sub-basement he hopped into a mid-70's Chevy muscle car and gunned the custom engine. Taking a small tunnel, he emerged out of a second garage some half-mile away from his home.
He gripped the steering wheel hard, wondering what madness Barbara was being subjected to now. How many times in the past had the Joker kidnapped her or her father in the hopes of getting to the Batman? Of driving him over the edge? Why did he always zero in on them as pawns? It had never worked in the past, despite the terrible things the Joker had done. He had raped the Commissioner and Barbara, even going so far as to shoot Barbara through the spine, depriving her of the use of her legs. He had killed Jim Gordon's second wife. He had done so many terrible, terrible things and despite it all, the Batman had persevered.
But Nightwing's life had been drastically altered and there was no doubting that. The night the Joker had taken away Barbara's legs he had also taken away Dick Grayson's bride.
So many times they had come so close to professing their undying love for each other and yet something always got in the way. After awhile, he thought he understood what it was. Despite everything she had accomplished after the shooting, regardless of what anyone said to her, she always felt like half of a woman. They could never have the intimacy they had shared in their younger days, could never have children. He knew that despite his emotional bond with her, he could never truly appreciate the horror and anguish she felt every time she had to change colostomy bag. How often did she turn on a television and watch two people in love running down a moonlit beach and cry when she faced the dark truth it was something she could never do again?
She had loved him so much that she had been willing to let him go so he could have a life, but it had not been the life he had desired. Both had gone from relationship to relationship, thinking that there was some way to fill the voids they both felt without the other. It had never worked. Their lives were running on the same track, just in opposite directions. Every so often they would pass, but then they would begin to run further and further apart.
In fact, over the last few months, they had been becoming close again and he had seriously been considering asking her to marry him…again. Despite the situation, he let a small smile cross his face. "She won't turn me down a third time, will she?" It was possible she would, he knew; if there was anyone in the entire world that he could not predict the actions of, it was his Babs. Had he not been called into space for his New Titans mission, he would have already proposed.
He never considered that he would never have a time to ask.
Two hours later, Harley Quinn fell to the floor, spitting blood and teeth. Nightwing examined his baton and seeing a tooth stuck in it, threw it down onto the floor. He reached down and grabbed the Joker's girlfriend by the collar and hoisted her up. "Where is he?" he asked.
She tried to speak, but the last blow had knocked her silly, if that were even possible. Nightwing had never considered Quinn much of anything except a fool. A Deadly fool for sure, but anyone who could fall madly in love with the Joker was more an object of pity than scorn. "I'm talking to you, Harley!"
She smiled a toothless grin. "You hith me," she lisped. "You don'th hith a wady."
He brought his fist back and she shook her head. Despite her enhanced strength and stamina, she could still feel pain and no doubt she was in a lot of it. There had already been scratches on her face and tears in her costume when Nightwing had found her. He assumed it was from the fight with the Riddler and Poison Ivy. "How could you do it? How could you kill Ivy?" he asked, knowing that she and Harley had been extremely close friends for several years.
"Anyhing for my 'Puhhin!"
"I'm not Batman," Nightwing told her. "I do not have a lot of patience and I have no problem smacking you around," he said. It was a true statement in that though he pitied Quinn, he would not hesitate to violate her civil rights to rescue Barbara. "I used to date the Huntress," he warned.
A look of horror came across her face; the Huntress was well known for her brutal tactics. Harley gave him the details he needed and before he left her for the police, he tied her hands behind her back and then gave her one last punch for good measure. As he pulled his fist away, he suddenly became aware of the brutality of the act. Barbara had mentioned, several months before, that his tactics had gotten a little rougher over the last few years and he wondered if perhaps being surrounded by all of the filth was affecting him. In his youth, he would never hit a criminal that was secured.
Out cold, Harley slumped to the floor. Quickly he pulled out his digital messenger and typed in a note for the Batman and the police, telling them where they could find Harley and where he was going.
The entire game was just getting old for him, especially with the Joker. Over the last few years he had become less of a menace and instead had been transformed into something more pathetic. He hadn't had a major scheme in at least three years, not since the Justice League had crushed his Injustice Gang of the World.
Now he was back to kidnapping and trying to convince the Batman to kill him or something along those lines. The fact that he killed two other villains did nothing to add any menace to his latest plot. Actually, Nightwing thought as he made his way back to his car, it showed how desperate he had become. He was leaving a trail of bodies, but not the important ones. Batman would argue against that line of reasoning, saying all lives were important. Nightwing didn't believe so. He had seen too many people waste their lives in criminal pursuits to have any pity for people like the Riddler and Poison Ivy.
But even as he locked away his sympathy, a nagging thought entered his brain. Would the Joker kill Barbara? The last three times he had captured her he had done nothing more than irritate her, as if he was finally getting the meaning of the joke that was his life and it was no longer funny.
Of course, the hero thought as he got back into his car and floored the gas pedal, it was possible that he was just getting complacent, that the Joker had an elaborate scheme to lull Batman into a false sense of security and then bam! Then he springs his master plan!
It was hard to believe, hard to conceive of; but his past track record indicated that the Joker's maniacal rage was no longer directed towards innocents, but more towards the Batman personally. Nightwing remembered a conversation he had recently had with the Batman where he had put forth the idea that maybe the Joker was afraid of losing the Batman as a foe. "Ridiculous," Batman had commented.
That had been the final word on the conversation, but not on the issue. It didn't matter anyway; the Joker was close by and Nightwing felt he was more than able to handle a middle-aged comedian.
The warehouse was familiar; it was one of the first places that the Joker had used as a base of operations. Nightwing had actually been a teenager, dressed in his Robin costume, the last time he had visited the place. Barbara, as the original Batgirl, had been with him.
He could still smell her perfume he told himself as he walked slowly through the dark. He sniffed again, realizing that he was really smelling her favorite scent. She was here.
He did not quicken his pace, afraid that if the Joker was holding a pistol on Barbara, frightening him might set it off. He moved to the right, disappearing into a stack of old crates and scaring a couple of fat rats. He suppressed a shiver; he hated small rodents. Then he smiled; he wondered if bats fell into that category?
As he slipped around a large box marked FRAGILE, his foot kicked something heavy. Looking around, making sure he hadn't been seen or heard, he squatted down and adjusted the night lenses in his mask. He heart sank as he looked into the pained face of James Gordon, former commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department. He was dead and most likely had been for some time as his body was cold to the touch. There was no sign of foul play, not even a bruise on his face from a cursory smack.
Old Jim had a weak heart and Nightwing considered that it had finally given out. An undignified way to die, especially for such an honorable man. Yet, it was much better than any sort of violent death that his many enemies had wished for him. He put a gauntleted hand over the man's eyes and closed the lids. "Good-bye, Jim," he whispered before saying a silent prayer for his old friend.
He then caught the sound of a voice not too far away, a mumbling sound that he recognized immediately. The Joker had a tendency to talk to himself and so Nightwing had no idea if he was alone or with some of his hired thugs. He cautiously made his way to the edge of the crates and peered around the corner. The Clown Prince of Crime was standing before a stage and the hero remembered it from his earlier adventure here.
At that time, the Batman had found both Robin and Batgirl tied to a giant bomb set up on the stage; behind the large red curtain had been ten of the Joker's best men. It had taken Batman two minutes to free them.
"The only thing that is saving you right now from the beating of your life is that I believe you didn't mean for Jim Gordon to die," Nightwing called out as he stepped into the light. He kept one hand next to the shuriken on his belt, just in case someone came running out from behind the stage curtain.
"Nightwing!" the Joker called out, his face becoming one large macabre smile. "Where's Batman?"
"He's not coming; he's too busy."
"So he sent a boy to do a man's job," the Joker mused. Nightwing noted that the Clown Prince looked bad, even for his usual macabre self. He had lost a lot of weight and appeared almost skeletal. It was unnerving, like trying to confront a corpse.
The Joker moved over to the side of the stage, next to the stairs that lead up to it. "Old Jimmy was dead when I got there; I just brought the body to talk to, but it sort of got boring. Especially with old Babs screaming in the background."
"In case you haven't noticed, I'm all grown up now," Nightwing reminded him. "Let's cut the crap. Where is she?"
The Joker's eyes went wide. "Babs? My baby? Oh, Dick, Dick, Dick," the Joker said, his voice suddenly becoming cold. Nightwing straightened; how did the Joker find out his real name. The Joker saw his surprise at the revelation. "I guess you thought old Joker was washed up, didn't you? They all did. Said I wasn't funny anymore, that I had lost my edge."
In voice that would have given demons chills, the Joker continued his narrative. "But the joke was on them. I've bounced back; I've made the ultimate comeback! Figured I'd go back to where I was happiest, you know, murder and mayhem."
"Damn you, where is she?" Nightwing stepped forward a step and balled his hands into fists. "If you've…"
The Joker stuck his tongue out. "Nyah! What are you going to do, hero boy? Call daddy? Oh Bruce! Bruce! Come help me!" He started to laugh and Nightwing made no move towards him. Something was different in the Joker's eyes, his attitude and his tone. It was as if he had been transformed back into the beast he had been so many years before.
Then he thought about Harley Quinn, the psychiatrist girlfriend of the Joker. Had she done something, perhaps provided him with the therapy he needed to regain his old composure? The thought was frightening. "Where is she?" he asked again.
Ignoring the question, the Joker decided to pursue his own line of thought. "I mean it looks like even Batman, Batman of all people, doesn't take me seriously anymore! Used to be if you mentioned my name, even old Dark and Spooky came close to pissing his pants!" The Joker slowly moved to the left, towards a large lever, but he did not touch it. Nightwing made sure he was not standing over a trap door and then he realized that it was the curtain control.
He relaxed a little. No doubt Barbara was tied up behind the curtain! It was too cliché, but it was something he could handle. He even allowed himself a moment to imagine proposing to her as he carried her down off of the stage. "Do you know how much she loved you, Dickie?" the Joker asked.
"Loved?" Nightwing asked, noting that the Joker was using the past tense. His heart seemed to stop and he physically felt pain rising from his stomach and spreading out through his body.
The Joker reached for the lever. "She just went to pieces without you here," he said before pulling it. The curtain moved, pulled open by small motors high up in the ceiling. As they parted, a scene straight from hell was presented to the disbelieving eyes of Nightwing.
She was dead. Mutilated. Cut into twelve parts; his mind trying to cope with the horror by resulting to something basic such as counting. Then he heard the laughter and then the whispers started and it was his morality saying good-bye as it was replaced by something black, something dark.
In an instant every dream and every hope he had ever possessed dried up and became dust on an ebony wind that started in his heart and blew straight to most evil parts of hell. He screamed, but it was a bellow deep inside himself, his vocal cords unable to respond as his body cried out to shut down. All he wanted to do, oddly enough, was get the pieces and try to put her back together.
He understood, finally, and a part of him chuckled. It was a blackened piece of his soul, charred beyond recognizing by all of the white-hot fury he had kept repressed since the day he had watched his parents die. It was the same for Bruce and he now fully empathized with his mentor and his anal desire to maintain control over every single little aspect of life. He now saw the world through Batman's eyes, but it was only for an instant.
Batman was weak, he told himself; it was a voice that had always been there, but one he had never listened to. It had been the voice that had led to their philosophical differences.
Batman was weak. He never did what was really necessary and now Barbara was dead.
His Barbara.
He would never be able to hold her. Kiss her. Listen to her. Cry with her. Laugh with her.
Batman was weak.
Nightwing was not.
A darkness washed over him, but the Joker did not notice. "Guess old Joker should be taken a little more seriously now, eh, Dickie?"
Nightwing was next to him; he never registered moving the three-meter distance between them. It was as if he willed himself to be there. The Joker laughed and started to ask him what he was going to do. A million thoughts raced through the hero's mind as he recounted the fantasies he had always experienced, but had never let free.
He reached out with both hands and grabbed the Joker's head. A small motion of his arms and a snap and the Joker fell to the ground.
"Die you son of a bitch," Nightwing cursed before spitting on the body. "I'll see you in hell."
The twisted body was lying on the ground when a giant bat shadow fell over them. Nightwing looked up, his vision blurred by the tears in his eyes. Then he turned back to the corpse of the man who had killed the only thing he had every truly loved with all of his being.
Then he spit on it again.
"I'm not sorry," Nightwing said. "Don't look to me for an apology," he told Batman. For two days Nightwing had been staying inside the Batcave under the sternest command of the Batman. The news was already televising 24-hour coverage of the investigation into the murder of the Joker. "Let me go turn myself in," he demanded.
Batman shook his head. "No."
"Yes, Bruce, damn it! I killed him…I murdered him!"
Batman remained silent for a moment and Nightwing took it for disapproval. He decided to once again try to justify his actions. "He deserved to die, Bruce."
'I thought I had trained you better than that. I thought I gave you a choice: be like them or be like me," Batman responded. "I struggled to show you what I felt were the benefits of my way of life. I failed."
"No; I just made a hard decision that you were unable or unwilling to make…"
"And where does it end, Dick?" Batman asked, some animation finally coming to his voice. "Who will be next on your executioner's list?"
"It isn't like that!" Nightwing yelled. "The Joker deserved what he got!"
Batman did not immediately reply. Instead he slowly shook his head and looked at Nightwing as if he were seeing him for the first time. "You are a weapon I created; a weapon I am solely responsible for. If I hadn't interfered in your life, then none of this would have happened." Nightwing was caught completely off guard by the statement and started to protest, but the Batman was not listening. "I should have seen this coming," the Batman told himself.
Nightwing then noticed that there was something different about his father. His shoulders were slumped slightly and he seemed pale and distant. "Bruce, it isn't you fault…"
"A father is supposed to teach his son right from wrong. He is supposed to look out for him, show him how to live a good and decent life." Batman's bottom lip trembled but he suppressed by sheer will. "He is supposed to teach him to be a man."
Batman stepped to the right and put a hand on a workbench for support and Nightwing feared he would fall over. "Bruce…"
"I failed and now someone is dead because of it."
"No…"
"But," Batman said, looking up. "I will try to make things right. You will carry on the mission…"
"The mission?" Nightwing asked, not understanding what Batman was talking about.
"Yes, because I failed. Maybe you're right, Dick; maybe I should have done something all of those years ago," Batman said.
"But I killed the Joker! Me!"
There was a long pause and Batman's eyes narrowed. He didn't say anything and Nightwing considered the weight of the silence. Batman was dying on the inside, torn apart by feelings of despair. Even a man like Bruce Wayne could only tolerate so much.
Another presence seemed to fill the room and a figure started walking down the stairs. "Bruce?" Superman called out.
Nightwing gave a final glance to Batman, who was now a stranger to him and then he stepped quickly across the Cave floor to meet with the Man of Steel. "Hello, Dick," Superman said. His voice was pleasant but his eyes were full of sadness. "I need to see, Bruce."
"No, its me you probably want," Nightwing offered.
Superman shook his head. "I know how difficult this must be for you, but I have to take Bruce in. I don't expect you to do it."
"What?"
Superman put a reassuring hand on Nightwing's shoulder. "The evidence is clear…Batman killed the Joker. I have to arrest him. The police are waiting upstairs. Your identities are exposed."
Nightwing turned to Batman. "Bruce?"
Superman continued to speak. "We found his fingerprints on the Joker's body; forensics was able to lift them. There is no doubt that he killed the Joker."
"No…."
"The mission is yours, Dick," Batman said as he stood up straight and began to remove his utility belt. "I failed. You were right all along."
Hours after Batman had been led away, Nightwing still sat in the Batcave, tears running down his face. There was no way he would ever convince the authorities that he had been responsible for the murder of the Joker. The Batman had fixed it so that Nightwing would pay for his crimes by carrying on the work that Bruce Wayne had started decades before.
He was now alone, damned by his father, torn from his lover and ashamed to call himself a hero. Only when he saw the price Bruce was paying for his actions did he remember the first lesson: nobody benefits from murder.
"Please, God, forgive me," he said as he slipped onto his knees. He stared up into the top of the Cave. "Forgive me!" he cried into the ever present and always silent darkness.