VIRTUE AND TERROR
"Everything burns"
In the streets of the main city, there was chaos.
Ironic that where the "rich" and the "civilized" folk once tread there was now anarchy. So much so, that even he, the architect of this glorious new revolution had to take care.
His abilities notwithstanding, Bane knew he was still human.
He felt far more at home in the Narrows—that filthy, suffocating, seedy backwater of Gotham.
That in itself was saying something.
Oh yes, it was so much like the Pit. That hell he had been born and raised in, where the nature of hope, despair, life and death had become all but ingrained into his very being.
What startled him somewhat was how its inhabitants seemed not just to be in feared deference to him and his colleagues.
They were grateful. He had nothing to fear here. Low demons bowing down to a new, glorious lord of Hell.
He did not let his amusement show. He could not afford to and the mask he wore—a visage that invoked the image of a rabid beast's snarling maw—made it difficult to do so in any case.
No longer were they downtrodden. No longer were they wanting.
What they want they could take. What they desired, they could do.
Admirable…but mistaken, recalling his own words.
How deluded they were.
To punish the oppressors is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty, a wise man once said. That was the simple truth of this grand charade.
Yes, the truth. The League of Shadows had paraded this revolution as his doing. While there was certainly truth there, it was hardly a revolution and more of…an oblation.
Rich, poor, young, old—all are equals in the dark.
He understood that much—he was of the dark. Something he had given the lone protector of this cancer of a city a painful lesson in. An ongoing lesson, courtesy of the abyss he once called home. One the man might not recover from, but it was a lesson taught nonetheless.
After all—what is the duty of the wise but to teach the ignorant?
The would-be lord of Hell took no heed of his subjects.
He had more pressing matters in mind.
In the heart of the Narrows was their destination; an imposing, if somewhat derelict structure that even in its severity, told little of the horrors it had witnessed in its long existence.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, the words atop its gates may have well said.
He had permitted the facility's continued operation to ensure that those hopelessly lost to the throes of madness would not be a problem.
Dangerous variables cannot be allowed in the grand plan at hand.
Because many of the scum of Gotham's fetid underbelly had turned to insanity as a means of avoiding justice, a law had been passed in the name of a false hero to all but ensure that they were sent to Blackgate like the cold-hearted thugs they were.
So much so that it had made the job of recruiting them to his cause all too easy.
The hero must die, so the people may live.
Indeed it had been when they had stormed Blackgate and broken down its cages. Moreso when he had publicly denounced the murderer once called "Gotham's White Knight" in the words of the city's own chief custodian.
The filth of Gotham had gone like moths to his flame—thus his glorious uprising had truly been set in motion.
So when word had arrived that there was still one man within the madhouse who should have been in Blackgate long ago, it had intrigued him.
Who was this man?
He had learned enough from records dating back nearly a decade earlier of the man they called the Joker.
But they only said so much.
He could not exactly say why, but he had to know him, and the path was all but laid out in front of him.
The Pit had always boiled over with noise.
It was a hell where the damned screamed and shouted, fought and cheered. A most raucous chorus that he had become all but used to, even after he had been maimed.
Even after he had been forced to bear the mask that so many had identified as a symbol of fear and might, when in truth, it was a brand of his shame and his pain.
In times past, he sometimes thought of such noise as a balm to his pain. But no longer, he thought.
No longer.
It is said that the essence of a thing is known only from its absence.
Perhaps there was truth there while he and his men descended into the bowels of the rambling madhouse.
The similarity to the Pit was skin-deep, it would seem.
Though there was darkness within, silence—punctuated only by their footsteps, the hushed tones of whatever staff had been allowed to remain and the occasional cries of those lost in the throes of lunacy—clung to them like a noxious cloud.
Even he felt somewhat unnerved.
Darkness had molded him. Silence did not.
Still, they plunged onward into the soundless depths of Arkham and the sounds of the outside world and the few that rang about the shadows became fainter and fainter until it seemed sound itself seemed to vanish into the gloom.
There, at the heart of the maximum security ward was the cell which held the asylum's most infamous patient.
An impregnable steel door with a slit for a window gave nothing of the creature it kept within.
One of his colleagues brought forward a cowering, middle-aged psychiatrist, his bald spot gleaming in a cold sweat, his breaths shuddering in the silent dark.
The doctor's fear invigorated him just as the anesthetic gas his mask provided kept his perpetual agony at bay.
"Open it," he requested in the mechanically enhanced growl that was is voice, throwing his gaze at the imposing door's biometrically encrypted lock.
As if in a trance, the doctor stretched forth a quivering hand and laid it upon the lock's panel.
His men brought forth two stools and a small table inside the dimly lit, padded cell and brought forth its sole occupant.
The slender and rather unkempt man was dressed in an orange jumpsuit like garment as with all the inmates and seemed utterly relaxed even after one of his men led him at gunpoint towards the chair opposite his at the table.
The man seemed to get the idea and sat down calmly, looking him straight in the eye.
An amused smirk animated his opposite's face, something the hideous arcing dull-red scars at the corners of the lunatic's mouth helped accentuate into a grotesque grimace.
The madman's smile betrayed little of whatever intent he may have had, but his eyes said it all.
This man was unafraid.
One pull of his counterpart's trigger would be more than enough to make the creature known as the Joker history.
He had seen into the souls of the many, many lives he had taken—and here was a first.
Someone whom even he believed was ready to spit and laugh in the face of death.
Most intriguing.
"Leave us," he ordered his gun-toting counterparts, but not before pocketing the key for the door's internal lock.
A moment's hesitation from his men, but they followed nonetheless and left their leader with his guest.
"So you're the one they call Bane. I was expecting you to be a lot taller," the smiling man japed, "I guess television can be flattering."
Ignoring the quip, he started, "You know why I am here?"
"What kind of question is that?" the scarred guest chuckled.
"You aren't expecting me to liberate you from you cage?"
"Oh you are?" the madman mocked, "why thank you!"
His begrudging admiration for the Joker's fearlessness was fast ebbing and replaced by a sense of irritation.
Perhaps a threat was in order.
"You know that I could kill you right here and now with my bare hands."
The padded cell rang with a mirthless chuckle and Bane felt what was unmistakeably a chill down his spine.
"If you wanted to kill me, you'd have let your boy shoot me and be done with from the start. Let's be honest here, big man. This is not just about me giving you answers, it's about you coming to me for something."
"Fair enough," Bane growled, firmly believing he was still in control, "why didn't the police transfer you to Blackgate?"
"Heck if I know," the Joker stated airily, "they're the madmen. Not me. I'm not complaining though…I've become rather attached to my little home here."
"That is not an answer to my question."
The Joker seemed to give it more thought as he answered, "You could say I was probably too…wild for Blackgate. Those lightweights over there? You should have seen the look on their faces when they were first brought here. I would have laughed my pants off if they weren't so pathetic!"
"Eight years ago, you nearly brought this city to its knees. I must ask why."
The Joker's head was tilted and his bemused eyebrow met the revolutionary.
"Why? Simply because…I could."
The Joker then started to clap his hands together in a slow and seeming mockery of applause."You sound like man with a good head on his shoulders. I loved that uh…little declamation of yours at Blackgate. Oh, and that act at the stadium? Here I thought I was a performer!"
"Cheers for finally making truth out of what I tried to do back then—ah, if only Batman didn't take the fall."
Truth? Empty bravado.
"The Batman is no longer a problem. I have made sure of it."
"For your sake, I hope that's true. Still, it would be a boring world without Batman…I wish him well, wherever it is that you dumped him."
Then it was his turn to laugh—turned into a series of unnatural strangled grunts by his mask "My sake?"
The Batman was far removed and all but an invalid. The idea that such an individual was still capable of stopping the cogs he had set in motion was absurd.
"Yeah."
Bane did not immediately realize he stopped laughing. The man's nonchalance was something disturbing, try as he might hide it.
For a moment, only their breaths broke the reign of silence. During the time, the Joker studied him with his sunken yet blazing eyes.
"You know, you and Bats have a lot in common—surly, overly idealistic. Square," the Joker gestured, "He was a lot better dressed than you are though. The whole…fatigues gig is a little too Iraq and what's with that coat? Your grandmother lend that to you?"
Bane ignored what he knew was but part of a long line of insults.
"I do not believe that you and I are so different; we had common enemies after all, and even our means had been similar. Yours were far more crude and…barbaric, I must say."
The scarred man snorted. He seemed to find the idea of barbarism amusing.
"But we have come as liberators—to save its citizens from themselves. You, on the other hand…what reasons did you have eight years ago?"
"Liberty? Wow. Which century are you from? Those are rich words to throw about here. What am I to you, hm?"
It is the duty of the wise to teach the ignorant, Bane thought to himself.
"What you are to me…is inconsequential. What you have done is more interesting. I have come here to sow virtue among the people. I am but one of many who seek to return balance to this derelict and depraved system."
"Didn't realize I was speaking to a priest," the Joker chuckled, rubbing his chin.
"Do you understand balance?" Bane narrowed his eyes, "it is the virtue of all things to return to balance. It is as nature had intended. Just as a garden overgrown with weeds requires a cleansing fire to start anew, so does humanity."
"I believe in a cause that goes beyond any man and that is why I succeed. The farce of decadence has allowed a plague to erupt. A fester that nourishes the rich and starves the poor. We have realized that such a thing is inevitable for as long as humanity remains…fallible."
"So it is our duty," Bane snarled proudly, "Something we have taken upon ourselves to do—to excise the cancer whenever the society in which it had flourished is doomed to die."
"So…you are going to save this city by destroying it?" his guest raised his eyebrows.
"No revolution has been successful without spilling blood," Bane said, spreading his hands in a symbol of graciousness, "and a true revolutionary is ready to perish in the process."
"Alright, we can agree there, Muscles," the Joker nodded airily, "now, where am I supposed to fit inside this…glorious revolution of yours?"
"You are a cipher. What you did nearly a decade before was…unprecedented. You could have succeeded in saving this city from themselves but instead of virtue you have sown nothing but terror. Terror should be nothing but justice; prompt, severe and inflexible. It is then but an emanation of virtue. You are the first to defy that and succeed somehow."
Shrugging, the Joker seemed to think none of his interrogator's philosophical musings.
"You are right—I have come here for answers only you can give me. Now, I shall repeat—why?"
"I thought you were listening this whole time," the Joker yawned, "I told you—because I could."
The revolutionary leaned closer and steepled his fingers atop the table.
"Enlighten me."
"Do you want to know…how I got these scars?" the madman sighed.
Lightly tracing a finger along the grotesque facsimile of a smile, the madman's unusually bright eyes within their sunken, disturbed pits never left those of Bane's.
"There was a time when I was just…an ordinary citizen. An average Joe. I had a wife, a couple of kids. I was happy with the simple life. As you know, times got hard. What was a poor guy like me to do?"
The Joker licked his ravaged lips.
"I got in with the wrong people, or so I thought. Just a small time gig with the promise I'd have a cut of whatever we could take. Things didn't go exactly as planned."
As he reminisced, the Joker closed his eyes. Bane could not tell if he was expressing remorse or was playing him for a fool but kept his silence.
"We had to make an escape…I was the only one who survived because of a botched shot. They weren't even cops who came after us! They were guys from another gang. Anyway…one of them goons was probably aiming for my head."
He mimed a gun and aimed slowly to the left side of his mouth.
"It was a good thing my mouth was open, else I wouldn't have much of a smile now, would I? The bullet went through here," gesturing that it had gone through and out his other cheek, " Then it smashed into a window I was running to. I jumped out and ended up in the river."
"I came to a couple of hours later and walked back to my place. Honestly, I didn't know how I didn't drown! It was the dead of night, I didn't think anybody would see me. I didn't really feel nothing then. Shock maybe? I don't know. So I got back and found the door and windows were broken down. My wife and kids…well, they were in living room with bullet holes and glass shards all over them."
The grin that had haunted Gotham's nightmares nearly a decade before then returned in all its maleficence.
"I saw what I looked like on those broken windows and I realized the simple truth of it all."
"See, later on…I found that the guys who attacked us weren't after anything material. They were there just to prove that they could."
"And?"
"That's all there is to it," his guest said as if to a petulant child, "I had a…discussion like this with Batman a long time ago. You're more like him than you would like to think."
"I am not just any man with a mask," Bane growled, "I have broken him and what he stood for."
The Joker sniggered through his filthy teeth, "Temper, temper. You wanted answers? Here they are. It's not my fault you and Bats don't get it.
"Of course…I could be lying about it all and I honestly couldn't begin to care about what you make of it. What do you say?"
"Precisely what is it am I supposed to understand?" Bane interrogated.
"That there are some things that can't be taught and only be learned? You're a smart boy, I'll give you that, and it's always the smart ones who fail to understand. Go figure."
"Then why do you persist?"
The Joker considered this question for a moment.
"It had been…awful for me for years now since Batman disappeared. People will tell you they keep me here because I'm insane—if he hadn't showed up a few days ago, that would have been true. I guess I have to thank you, Bane. You brought my best friend back. You brought me back."
"You? You will rot here in Arkham. I do not seek to free you, and you have no means of making me do so."
"You're a guy wants the world to know that he's on top, aren't you, big man?" the madman humored him, "I think that you're not what you're cut out to be."
Bane continued his composure, "Tall words for a fool behind bars."
"Really now," the Joker licked his lips, "Do you feel…in charge?"
Both men stared each other down in the dim light; one bearing a grimacing mask and the other bearing a permanent grin. Two freaks it would seem, sizing each other up.
There was a blur of grey and the masked man, imposing and herculean, raised his quarry by the neck with one hand into the air, the table knocked aside as he did.
Bane brought the madman close until they were face to face. So close he could practically smell the stench of the lunatic even as the latter reflexively grasped at the arm wrapped around his neck.
"Do you?" he threatened in a silky whisper.
He expected the man they called the Joker to cower as countless many did. To beg for clemency—yes, Bane wanted that so he could finally get an excuse to snap his neck.
Instead, the madman shook and let out a strangled, victorious laugh.
"I knew someone else had one up on you," the laughing one choked, "so, are you going to kill me now or what?"
The Joker continued to taunt and laugh even while being strangled.
To add insult, he let go of the arm intent on crushing his throat and spread his own in an almost supplicating gesture.
"Come on, big guy…you can do it. Show me who's in charge! Do it! Do it!"
Bane breathed heavily, his fury had broken loose—how dare this filth insult him! He knew he could kill this foul monster there and then just as easy as he had broken Bruce Wayne's back.
"DO IT!"
His hand tightened momentarily, and only the madman's scarlet smile and hacking laugh met him.
No.
This creature deserved a worse fate than a quick death.
Bane flung the Joker contemptuously and the would-be destroyer of Gotham landed on the padded floor with a dull thud at his feet.
"You didn't kill Batman, did you?" the Joker panted.
"He had to punished," Bane stepped on the Joker's chest, "much as you are. Much as you will be."
Even underfoot, the Joker shook his head and loosed a mocking cackle.
"All of this is about sending a message and you're going to wish you ended him when you had the chance."
Bane took away his foot and leaned down close to the Joker even as the latter sputtered to breathe.
"If he somehow comes back," Bane said, truly believing his words, "then I will break him again. As many times as I must to carve such a message into the stone."
"You will burn along with the rest of this cesspool of a city," Bane regarded him with utmost disgust.
Raucous mocking laughter met his threat. It was a sound that sent even more chills down his spine and froze the blood in his veins.
That laugh…
Why…he felt…afraid? Was that fear he felt? He could not dare say.
He was supposed to be the lord of hell...he had no reason to be fear...He could not afford to.
He turned his back at the Joker, still doubled-over in mirth on the padded floor and opened the door.
"He is not to leave this cell," Bane instructed his men, "kill him if he tries."
"Hey Muscles!"
They turned back to see the Joker finally sitting up on his padded cell, giving them a mock salute and a lazy smile.
"The joke's on you."