The modified Titan formula was fast-acting – it had only been about an hour since J.J. had left them, but Tim was fading fast. He had giant sores all over his body, his flesh pockmarked and ugly. Barbara could only watch in horror, trying to comfort him, but there was nothing she could say or do to stop the agony he was experiencing.

The door opened and J.J. strode back in, followed by Harley Quinn and Batman. "Bruce!" gasped Barbara. "Thank God you're here! Tim's been infected by a modified Titan formula, and J.J. has a cure! Please, you've got to make him give it to him!"

Batman laughed. "Oh, that old chestnut?" he chuckled, turning to J.J., who continued to glare at him. "Geez, more trouble came from that stupid Titan formula, when all I wanted to do was make a harmless little army of monsters! Seems like a responsible person like Batman should have spent his time hunting down all the Titan containers that got off the island rather than whatever the hell else he was doing – probably swanning around at fancy parties as Bruce Wayne or wasting his time chasing after one of the lesser supercriminals. See, that's why I'm glad they're dead – no more pointless distractions! Just him and me, locked up together inside this body forever. I can feel him fighting even now, but he's not strong enough to overthrow me, not anymore."

"Bruce, what are you talking about?" demanded Barbara.

"It's not Bruce," retorted Batman. "And it's not even Batman anymore. I'm the Joker now. Bruce was going to tell you, but then this whole attack on Gotham started and there wasn't time. But I infected Bats with my blood in Arkham City, and I've been alive inside him for the past fifteen years, biding my time to take over."

"That's impossible," retorted Barbara. "There was nothing wrong with Joker's blood except the fact that it was infected with Titan, like Tim is now. But the Titan effect is fatal, not parasitic. Once cured, as yours was in Arkham City, there's no record of any further mutations."

"Wow, your own tech support stabs you in the back," chuckled J.J., grinning. "I knew this was all a trick. You've just snapped, Batsy, and you're trying to excuse that fact by saying Joker made you do it. But the truth is, after all this time, you just have gone crazy, which is what my father always wanted."

"J.J., let's not be too hasty," said Harley. "I think he's telling the truth…"

"You want him to be telling the truth!" snapped J.J., rounding on her. "Because I'm not good enough for you anymore, is that it?! I'd never be good enough for you if you thought my father was alive again – you'd focus all your love and attention on him, and I wouldn't matter anymore!"

"Baby, that's not true!" exclaimed Harley, stunned. "I would never love you any less…"

"I will not tolerate competition!" shouted J.J., interrupting her. "And I won't let you be taken in by this liar! He murdered my father, and he needs to die for that! But not before he watches his little helpers suffer!"

"Look, sonny, I would never object to torturing Batman's buddies, but if you think this is gonna somehow break me, then you're sadly mistaken," retorted Batman. "I was the one who broke Jason Todd, remember? Months of precise physical and mental agony before I shot him in the face, all sent to Bats on a videotape for him to enjoy again and again. Admittedly, Jason Todd was much more annoying than these two, but I'm still not gonna be hugely upset by their suffering."

"Stop taking credit for my father's work!" shouted J.J. "He was nothing like you!"

"Now there's a philosophical question!" chuckled Batman. "Just how far apart were we really? Oh sure, I had no qualms about murder, but we both enjoyed a good mutilation now and again. He just claimed more noble reasons for it. But if he was honest with himself, the truth was he was as big a fan of inflicting pain as I was. Not for fun reasons, like me, but in a futile attempt to control the chaos. If he had just embraced the chaos long ago, if he had been brave enough to let go of his principles and rules and order, then everyone would have seen that the line that separated Joker from Batman wasn't even that thin. It was almost nonexistent."

"Joker never understood Batman," muttered Barbara, glaring up at him. "And you've forgotten him too, Bruce. His principles and rules and order are what made him Batman – they're what made him a good man. Joker could never understand how important those ideals are because he never had any. But yours made you strong, Bruce. And they made other people want to follow you, to live up to your ideals, however unattainable they were. They were worth fighting for."

"And look where that fight got you!" chuckled Batman, gesturing around. "Trapped in a madhouse, held prisoner by raving psychopaths, your spine broken, your family dead, your husband dying, and your baby born into a world of chaos and violence! Hardly seems worth it to me!"

"Then you're right," said Barbara, nodding slowly. "Batman is dead. You've become the Joker."

"No, he hasn't!" shouted J.J. "I have! I'm the Joker now! I accomplished what he never could, turning Gotham into a wasteland of crime and nightmares, killing all Batman's friends and enemies, and bringing him here to face justice! And I will not allow Batman to weasel out of his fate by claiming insanity!"

"Why not?" gasped Tim, staring up at him. "Your father always did."

"He is not my father!" shouted J.J. "I won't allow him to keep lying and hurting Mommy with his lies! My father is dead, and Batman killed him! And now he's going to die, but not before you do!" he said, removing the vial with the cure in it from his utility belt and holding it up, about to shatter it on the ground.

Tim started up, shooting out a hand to try and grab the vial from him. The two men grappled, Tim clearly stronger than J.J., and desperate, while Barbara looked on helplessly.

"Baby!" shouted Harley, racing over to try and help J.J. "Mr. J, if it's really you, you gotta help your son!" she cried, turning to Batman.

Batman did nothing, watching the struggle with a slight smile on his face. "No, Harley, I don't think I will," he murmured. "Sonny boy doesn't seem too happy to have me around. And he's right – there would always be competition between us. And if he can't even take the Bat-brat in a fight, you didn't do a great job training him. You gotta give kids space to fail, y'know, that's good parenting."

"He's gonna kill him!" shrieked Harley, as Tim managed to seize the vial, and then seized J.J. around the throat, squeezing hard.

"And sonny boy would have killed me," murmured Batman, smiling. "Seems like justice to me."

Harley screamed, grabbing J.J.'s gun from his holster and firing it at Tim several times. It took four bullets to bring him down due to the Titan effect, and the fifth bullet missed entirely, ricocheting off Tim's armor and slicing across J.J.'s face. He screamed, cupping his mouth as blood poured out of it.

"Baby, no!" gasped Harley, racing toward him and embracing him as he slumped to the ground. "Baby, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to…"

"It's ok, Mommy," he whispered, embracing her in return. "I'm ok. You saved me."

"Baby, I never meant to hurt you!" whispered Harley, stroking his hair back. "Let me see…" she murmured, trying to tilt his face up to her, but he pulled away, keeping his mouth covered.

Barbara was sobbing, staring in horror at Tim's body, while Batman calmly picked up the gun and came over to her. "Time to finish what I started a long time ago," he said, aiming the gun at her face. "I was aiming for your head when I shot your spine, but I was much younger then – I think my aim's improved. A good joke bears repeating! And you know what they say – second time lucky!" he laughed.

Barbara shut her eyes, waiting for the end…but it never came. She heard Bruce's voice shouting, "Bats, no!" and then a strangled cry, and then a shot. She opened her eyes to see Batman's body falling to the ground, his hand clutched in a death grip around the smoking gun, which had shot an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound through his brain, bleeding out of his mouth.

"See, that wasn't Mr. J in there," murmured Harley, staring at the body. "He would never have stood by and seen our baby hurt. And he definitely wouldn't ever have killed himself rather than one of Batsy's pals."

"No, he was always Batman to the last," muttered J.J. "The Bat-family was always too self-sacrificing for their own good. But it's a relief anyway – she has to live," he added, nodding at Barbara.

"I don't want to," whispered Barbara. "Not anymore."

"I understand," murmured Harley, kneeling down next to her and smiling gently. "I didn't want to either. I understand the fear of being alone in the world, the fear that you're not strong enough to survive. But you are. Because you have to be. Your baby needs you to be. You have to live for your baby. And so does Gotham."

"What are you talking about?" whispered Barbara. "Gotham has fallen."

"Not yet," murmured J.J., raising his gauntlet and pressing a button on it. "Not until I release the fear gas."

"Gotham will be razed to the ground, you see," murmured Harley. "Its remaining citizens will be completely enveloped in terror, destroying themselves and each other and their city so it becomes nothing but ashes. But something has to rise from the ashes. As long as there is chaos in the world, order will rise to fight it. A hero will rise from the ashes, and that hero will be your baby."

"Mommy and I are patient – we can wait," agreed J.J. "We've already waited a long time. Now that we've done what we came here to do, now that we've wiped the slate clean, we'll leave Gotham and hide away somewhere else. Until the baby's old enough to provide a real challenge, the same challenge Batman gave my father. Then we'll come back, to start the Bat-family and Joker rivalry all over again. But we had to destroy everything first. We had to erase everything that came before so we could reset the world from the beginning. That's the only way perfection can be achieved, if we right the wrongs of the past, and start all over again."

"And we've done that," agreed Harley. "And now it's up to you. Good luck," she said, standing up and patting her on the shoulder. "You're gonna need it."

She took J.J.'s hand and headed for the door, and then suddenly laughed. "What's so funny, Mommy?" asked J.J.

"Just that it all ended where it began," said Harley, gesturing around. "In a madhouse. And that's where it'll all begin again. Makes you want to laugh, doesn't it, baby?"

J.J. removed his hand from his mouth, revealing that the bullet had severed the edges of his lips, so that they twisted in a wide, unnatural smile. "Yeah, it does, Mommy," he murmured. "Yeah, it does. And I think you can call me Mr. J now, don't you?"

Harley smiled, kissing his mutilated lips gently and murmuring, "Whatever you say, Mr. J."

…

Barbara had passed out shortly after from the overwhelming horror of her situation. When she woke up, she was in a different room, and all alone, surrounded by bodies of both friends and enemies – what appeared to be weird statues of the Rogues, horribly mutilated, stood next to her, as well as the bodies of Robin and Batman, which lay by her side.

She shut her eyes again, hoping that when she opened them, this would all be gone - a nightmare, or a fear gas hallucination. "I've been fear gassed," she whispered to herself. "And every horrible thing that's happened has just been an illusion. I have to wake up now. I have to wake up."

She opened her eyes again, but nothing had changed, and the realization hit her that this was no fear gas hallucination. This was all terribly, horribly real.

Barbara stared around aghast at what she hoped were horrible waxworks, before she noticed something flashing at her feet. It was a cell phone, and she reached toward it, picking it up and dialing 911.

"GCPD," said a familiar voice.

"Aaron, it's Barbara," she whispered.

"Barbara, oh my God, are you somewhere safe?" demanded Cash. "We're all locked down here in GCPD waiting for this fear gas cloud to dissipate – we had an anonymous caller, aka the Arkham Night, tell us it will within twenty-four hours, but that there might not be much left of the city when it does. I guess we have no choice but to trust him, because there's nothing we can do to fight against this, so we gotta just sit tight and wait. Where are you?"

"I'm…safe," stammered Barbara, hoping that was true. "I'm in Arkham Asylum."

"Oh yeah, I don't think the gas cloud has hit there," said Cash. "It's concentrated over central Gotham and doesn't appear to be moving. But what the hell are you doing there?"

"It's…hard to explain," stammered Barbara. "When it's safe to go out again, could you send a car to pick me up? And several vans for…the bodies."

Cash was silent. "Yeah, we'll do that," he said at last, not asking what bodies she meant because he didn't want to know. "You stay safe until then, ok?"

"Don't worry," murmured Barbara. "I'm not going anywhere."

She hung up the phone, and then slowly crawled away from the bodies out into the rest of the penitentiary. She gradually inched her way to the door and opened it, gasping in relief at the breath of fresh air after being locked up for hours on end. The penitentiary was built on a cliff, so she could see the hideous yellow-orange fear gas cloud hanging over Gotham – in the sunrise of the breaking dawn it seemed almost beautiful, if she hadn't known what it meant. It meant people were dying, and she was unable to help them. No one could help them. There was no hero in Gotham anymore.

She leaned against the open door, trying to breathe the fresh air and remain calm, as she lay a hand on her belly. Her child would be born into a world without Batman, a world of crime and violence and darkness. And like every person ever born into a world without Batman, the child would have two choices – to give in to it, or to fight.

Barbara knew the kind of person she was, and she didn't know how to raise her child any differently, even if she wanted to. And right now she did want to – she wanted to leave Gotham and take the child as far away from the cursed city as possible, to keep it safe and protected forever. She wanted it to never understand the horrors she had seen and suffered, and to live a happy, peaceful, contented life away from all the misery of the world.

The sun broke over the asylum and washed over her, filling her with warmth. It glinted on something near the door, which caught Barbara's eye. She crawled over to it – it was the Arkham Night's Batman armor, and it had a note attached:

A gift for the Bat-baby – should take 'em about fifteen years to grow into it! See you then, Bratgirl!

Love,

The Joker and Harley Quinn

Barbara felt like crying. She felt like giving up in despair and misery, surrendering herself to the darkness. But the sun rose brighter in the sky, tinging the darkness with shades of pink and gold, driving away the shadows of the night. And Barbara knew she had no choice. As sure as day followed night, as sure as order and chaos fought for the soul of every human being, there would be a Batman to save Gotham City. And he would never give up the fight.

The End