THROWAWAY CARD
Chapter 2
Disclaimer: Batman and related characters are the property of DC Comics.
Author's Note: Thank you so much to all of you who read and reviewed the first chapter. I honestly didn't expect anyone to do that! Here's some more for you, if you're still reading.
Wayne Manor, 12.31 a.m., two hours earlier.
"He's not responsible."
In the expensive surroundings of Bruce Wayne's study, Alfred Pennyworth gave an expressive lift of one eyebrow - his most demonstrative look of surprise. After this many years, being surprised at anything his employer did was proving a struggle.
"Really sir? A homicidal maniac with an affinity for explosives escapes, several ugly but none-the-less important city buildings blow up mysteriously, and yet you are managing to entertain doubts? I am impressed by your ability to find puzzles where there are only answers."
Bruce, still clad in his dark costume but just in the act of removing his mask, gave his friend a wry look.
"Alfred, you and I have encountered the Joker on many occasions before tonight…"
"Indeed," sniffed Alfred, taking the cast off bat-cowl between thumb and forefinger, "that gentleman sometimes seems so ubiquitous it's a wonder he isn't Mayor."
Bruce sat down in his overstuffed leather chair and tilted his head, thoughtfully.
"All the times I've fought with him, and this time he gets caught in his own trap? It doesn't feel right. The man's like a cat - nine lives and always lands on his feet…"
"And running," put in Alfred, pouring some coffee calmly. "Surely, sir, there must have been times when he has ended up a victim of his own schemes? One cannot play with matches without getting one's fingers burnt occasionally."
Bruce took the coffee gratefully, and said: "Occasionally. But on those occasions it's when I've been in time to interfere, make him slip up, make him miscalculate. But this time…this time…I turn up in the aftermath and yet he was there, conveniently right in the frame, almost as if he was waiting for me."
"Is it possible to be waiting while unconscious?" Alfred wondered out loud, clearing the cream jug and the sugar bowl out of the way. Bruce Wayne gave his tight, dry smile.
"Sometimes, Alfred, I think that you're wasted on me. You should be doling out punch lines on some late-night chat show."
"Heavens," murmured Alfred, "and leave you to do your own cooking? I'd be charged with neglect. Poisoning, even."
The doors of the study slid closed smoothly behind Alfred and his tray: Bruce took a swallow or so of coffee, thoughtfully. It hadn't felt right. None of it had felt right. Nothing concrete, nothing that he could write down or quantify. Stupid…you can't identify a perpetrator from the pattern of flames gouting from the windows of a burning building…but somehow even that had been wrong.
He ran a hand through his hair and could smell the clinging acrid smoke. Even through the cowl it had seeped in. Upholstery burning…synthetics. He stripped the heavy gauntlets from his hands and regarded the stripes of ash and dirt on the black. He had…
Gotham City, Amway Pharmaceutical Despatch, 11.13 p.m.
…put his gauntlets under the flaming pallet and heaved.
The heat wasn't intense enough to penetrate the tough material, but the smoke - the smoke was overwhelming. Two more minutes. Two. Then he'd have time to grab the filter-mask from his belt and slide it over his face.
Don't think. Move. This woman is going to die.
He scooped her limp, overweight body up and put his head down into the smoke cloud.
What am I doing? I'm becoming a glorified fireman. I should have prevented this…when did it become purely about the clearing up and not about stopping things like this happening in the first place?
The street outside the building was the normal chaos of emergency services, panic, and rubble. Above even the wail of sirens, Batman heard rafters crashing behind him as he swept from the fire exit.
Another trip, one more, and then even I can't go back in there again. The roof's about to go.
He dumped the woman in the care of a pair of surprised-looking paramedics, and was back at the fire exit within moments, fixing the mask over his mouth and nose.
"Batman! Batman!"
Shouting. Always someone.
"Batman, is there anyone else alive in there? Batman -"
The shouts died away behind him as he dove into the warehouse space. The bomb had detonated two floors up: effectively cutting off any escape for the office workers whose desks were above the main storage halls. A good place to set a bomb, if you were aiming for maximum body count. In the smoke, Batman turned away from the burning stacks of pallets, crates and lorries: he headed for the warehouse supervisor's office in the corner. Above him, the ceiling was cracked and bulging alarmingly, and tiny sparks interlaced with dribbles of molten metal fell around the ears of his cowl. The thousand sounds of cement, metal and wood under severe strain roared in his hearing, along with the occasional hissing rush as flame gouted through more and more nearby doors.
It was while he was in the act of turning away from one such surge of fire that he saw it. A huddled, untidy sprawl of long limbs, clad in a suit that was already starting to smoulder cheerfully as sparks and debris from above littered it.
Batman reached the fallen figure in two long strides, bent, lifted and looked -
…Joker. It's you.
He actually paused: a figure in sleek black outlined in destruction and flame, gazing down in a moment's mute confusion at the man he was rescuing. Above, a support gantry popped free of its melting hinges. Batman looked up: and by the time the tangled metal gantry plummeted to the factory floor ten seconds later, he was already gone.
Wayne Manor, 12.46 a.m.
Bruce ran a hand across his brow and tried to marshal his thoughts and unease into coherent form.
It had been pure co-incidence that the fire exit he'd tried to leave through had become impassable: luck, perhaps, that the next exit he found, a rapidly blackening window, had let out into a tiny dead-end alley which no police or curious spectators had managed to reach.
He had stood there in the dank shadows, the Joker in his arms, feeling the fine spray of water on his lower face as the fire engines sluiced torrents over the burning building, and it had been then that the sense of wrongness had started to niggle at him.
He had checked his enemy's condition out of sheer habit. Unconscious, but breathing well despite having most likely a lungful of smoke. Covered in ash. The purple silk suit was ruined. He'd gone through the pockets, checking for weapons, because even unconscious the madman couldn't be trusted: and had found…
Batcave, 12.11 a.m.
"No cards. No gun. No acid."
Alfred watched impassively as his master paced back and forth in the cavernous dark of the cave.
"No loose change, no candy. Nothing."
"Maybe he got dressed in a hurry this morning," Alfred offered, "too busy thinking about plastic explosive to be worried about where he left his keys?"
"I don't trust this, Alfred."
The butler's eyes drifted to the bench which Bruce himself had often lain on, patiently grimacing as Alfred extracted bullets or stitched wounds. The Joker looked out-of-place slung across it.
"To be honest, sir, he is mad. Does there have to be a reason for what he does? Possibly he simply hasn't had time to restock his arsenal since his escape."
The cloaked figure paused in his pacing. "There's always a reason. Even if it's as simple as 'because he wants to', there's always a reason. And he likes to let me know it's him so that I can try and figure out what that reason is."
He shook his head. Above in the vaulted shadows a few of his namesakes remained, leather wings fluttering.
"No calling card. No gag gift. Nothing at all…just the explosion…and himself caught up in it." He resumed pacing as Alfred bent dispassionately over the madman with a damp cloth and some surgical spirit. "Alfred."
"Sir?"
"Patch him up. And do it well."
Alfred allowed himself a tiny exhalation of irritation. His skills in first aid, rudimentary for years, had recently been increasing to field-surgeon standard. "Surely they will be able to do better at Arkham than I can here?"
A brief moment of intense, unhappy quiet.
"You will be taking him to Arkham, I assume, sir?"
"Never assume, Alfred," came the reply after a moment. "It's what people want you to do…it's what someone wants me to do. Patch him up."
The Batman swept towards his computer console and hunched over it, a shadow among shadows.
"A 'Please' wouldn't go amiss," Alfred murmured as he moved the Joker's arm to try and get at a rather gory-looking scrape. The arm flopped loosely, and made a sickening grating noise: bone against bone. Alfred's expression tightened delicately in disgust, and when he looked up Batman was looking back at him, his eyes pinpoints of light hidden in the cowl.
"Please," he said.
"Very well, sir."
Wayne Manor, 12.53 a.m.
Bruce Wayne chewed on his lower lip a little, thinking. The map of explosion sites targeted around Gotham had provided no logical or useful clues: it seemed as random as a scattering of birdseed, with no one target or victim identifiable. In many ways, a typical Joker-case. Seemingly random, until you happened to glimpse that one tiny lynchpin upon which the whole crazy logic of the events turned.
And usually that glimpse…he gives it to me himself. He wants me to follow him. It's part of the fun for him - no, scratch that, it IS the fun for him. He doesn't play unless I'm on the opposing team.
So what kind of a clue is this, Joker? Delivering yourself to me, senseless and wounded? Where's the fun in that for you?
"There isn't any," he said out loud, and lay back in his chair, fingers pressed to the bridge of his nose. The coffee hadn't helped. Weariness dogged him insistently - after four nights without more than snatches of sleep, even he had to admit that he was flagging. Perhaps he could manage an hour, a half-hour.
"Sir?"
The doors opened to admit Alfred. The butler's normal unflappable demeanour was not in place: his face was slightly flushed with effort, and he seemed, for him at least, almost flustered.
"Alfred. What happened? Is he awake?"
Alfred composed himself, drew a long breath. "No, sir, he assuredly is not. But I think we have a rather serious problem…"