Bruce marveled at the irony of it all as he stepped onto the side lawn of the mansion, kept in shadow by the tall trees. As far as he knew an old Asian couple had moved in fifteen years ago. No one knew much about them as when they arrived they had not spoken much English, they never seemed to leave, and when they did the pair kept to themselves and used English as sparingly as possible. He knew that it would have not been above Danielle to simply kill them and then use their house, but as she seemed far more pragmatic than her son it did not seem to be the best option. He skirted the parameter in the dark until at long last he saw that one of the house's many back doors was slightly ajar.

He pulled his mask a bit tighter to his face as he walked toward the open door. He peered inside and found, to his horror, an indistinct and writhing shape tied to an upturned wooden table. He lay spread eagle, with each of his limbs secured firmly to a wooden leg. An open window cast pale moonlight in a square across the man's chest, revealing splotches of the pink, innermost layer of his skin, and muscle. He oozed with pus and his eyes nearly rolled back into his head. His head angled up at Bruce, revealing bloodshot eyes. He opened his mouth and a tooth fell cleanly from between his lips. Blood poured.

"Save me." The man whispered, as his head fell against the table. His pained breathing was shallow but hauntingly audible in the otherwise empty room. As Bruce drew closer a dim, yellow light flickered on.

"He was a snitch."

Bruce looked up to see a tall, ethereal woman with long golden hair slowly stepping down a staircase he had been unable to perceive in the dark. She fingered a small microphone in order to emphasize her point and he small smile tugged at her lips as she quickly pulled out a handgun and pointed it directly at him.

"What do you want?" She asked and her cool glance was replaced by one of mania. "You have fifteen seconds to explain! One! Two!" She stopped and shot directly at his chest. Bruce only managed to escape by the skin of his teeth. A bullet was lodged in the door directly behind him. As she counted she shot. Bullet holes lined the walls and were embedded in the skinless torso of the snitch as Bruce dodged bullets by a hair's breadth.

At last she had to reload and Bruce saw his chance. He rushed forward, grabbed the gun from her hand, grabbed her head, and slammed it against the wall. She crumpled and fell down the stairs, landing right beside the snitch. Without thought, Bruce sprinted up the stairs and entered a long carpeted hallway. Marks numbering dozens lined the walls, writ in blood. Bruce did not see these as he sprinted on.

"Joker!" He called as he rounded a corner to find a hall lined with Japanese art. "John!" He called, opening doors as he went to find an occasional corpse and a fortune in fine furniture, but no joker. He checked every room, closet, and bathroom on the entire first level of the house before working his way up to the second. He had even combed through the kitchen and expected that the house had several others. He was proved right as he worked his way up the staircase only to enter another kitchen. This one had a table piled high with rotten food. It reminded him of the kitchen in Helen Levitt's trailer. He left it and took a hallway that went off to the right. It was lined with rooms and a horrid stench assaulted him as he entered. With a sinking feeling he followed it to the last open door.

It was a bare bathroom aside from a scratched up old toilet without a seat and a window sporting several beige blinds. The valence teetered precariously on the sill. The stench was coming from a towel closet in the back, and Bruce almost could not bear to imagine what awaited inside. He slowly opened the door and before he could blink an emaciated body fell into his arms.

For the first time Bruce beheld the face of John Edward Haydn. It was a face emaciated, scarred, and almost green. The cheeks were hollow, the eyes sunken, lips a mass of scab and swelling, and the hair matted. He felt virtually weightless in his arms and his stench was ungodly. Dirty clothes were matted into wounds and Bruce could feel the strange piercings adorning his back.

"John?" Bruce whispered and the eyes of the shattered man before him seemed to pry themselves open. They were dark, unfocused, and empty. "John?" He tried and those eyes looked up at him with unadulterated panic. He felt the body grow taut in his reluctant embrace. "Joker." Batman intoned softly and dark eyes shut as he started to chuckle softly. His weak imitation of his former maniacal outbursts quickly turned to tears. He wept and quaked like a lost child. Tears ran tracks in the sweat caked on his face.

At a loss, Bruce turned his eyes toward the towel cupboard the man had fallen from. The walls were stained yellow and brown, and what probably was fresh bile lay in a pile on the floor. A suitcase full of pills lay open amidst the pile. It smelled even more horrid than the man he held upright. He was pulled from his musings by a skeletal hand weakly touching the chin left exposed by his half mask. The two fingers resting against his chin felt sticky and left bile where they touched.

"Th-thank you." The John muttered as his strength gave and his hand fell limply. His breathing was shallow. "I fell. I need…to be punished." And with that his eyes, screaming of endless shame and the darkest agony, closed and his breathing became almost nonexistent. Bruce wanted to scream.

With more surety than he had ever felt before, he decided that this man would live. He held him tightly as he sprinted toward the exit, knowing well the shortness of time. He flew back the way he had come only to return to the small room he had entered. Danielle lay by the snitch, moaning in pain as she came to. Her golden hair was pooled behind her and in that moment Bruce experienced an epiphany.

This woman had tortured her child. This woman had made him a killer. She had raped and belittled and abused and fucked her baby. She had kept a toddler locked away like chattel, like a monster, who was meant only to indulge her lurid fantasies and serve her perverse pleasure. She had carved the Joker out of a hapless child with the savage ardor of a stream cutting a canyon. She was inherently evil and had raised a man who had destroyed Gotham and the single-handedly destroyed batman. She had reduced a force of nature to a corpse, and a man of justice to a common liar.

He hardly noticed as his booted foot came to rest above her skull. Her dazed silver eyes looked up at him pleadingly as he lifted his knee and crushed her skull. In those beautiful eyes pain and rage intermingled. Her brain erupted beneath his boot and blood flowed as his moment of clarity vanished. Her leg twitched as blood began run in vermillion rivulets from every orifice. Bruce stepped over her body and exited the room and again ventured into the night.

The Joker stirred as he glimpsed the night for the first time. His lips moved but no sound arose as Bruce raced forward. He only stopped when he reached the car he had parked in a secluded lane. He opened the door and began to place the distraught young man inside.

"But, I need to be punished!" He insisted as tears began to stream down his face. Bruce waited until he calmed before placing him inside as gingerly as possible.

"But I fell!" He whispered as he reached for Bruce's hand, his eye lids falling of their own accord. "But I fell-"

"I know." Bruce whispered in return as he gently removed the smaller man's hand from his sleeve and shut the car door.

FIN

AN:

The sequel will either be Bruce/John or not. If you have a preference, let me know via review. I don't know what sequel will be called or when it will be up, but there will definitely be one eventually. Thanks for reading, reviewing, favoriting, alerting, and all that. Hopefully you'll stick around for the sequel.

A kiss and a prayer,

L's-A