Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Aaaah, we're so close to finish line for this fic! Two more chapters to go! I almost can't believe it, this story has been so fun to write. Kind of bittersweet to think that it'll soon be done. ;-;

Chapter title comes from Back to Black by Beyoncé and Andre 3000.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis


~the black and gold 'verse~

~the little man who wasn't there~

~chapter 10: back to black~


A week after that night, the Joker returned.

He did so during the 1 o'clock talkshow on one of the local Gotham TV news stations. The topic was none other than the Joker himself – in this, he had aptly chosen. The two hosts of the show, an alpha woman named Agatha Monahan and an omega man named Coleman Reese, were "debating" on whether or not the efforts to catch the Joker by the police and Harvey Dent had truly been worth it when Harvey and several others were now dead, Rachel was in the hospital and "horribly disfigured," and the Joker had escaped from the police station he'd been held in and was nowhere to be found.

Monahan took on the role of the older, wiser person who was less trusting in the government. While she claimed that apprehending the Joker was indeed a necessity, she was distasteful of how the police had insisted on the plan instead of taking the obvious route: demanding that the Batman turn himself in. She acted like she believed that if he did that, then the Joker would follow suit or at least stop his reign of terror on the city, letting them go back to the peace (read: fragility) they'd had before.

"Harvey Dent didn't want us to give in to this maniac," one obviously male alpha caller protested vehemently. "What makes you think you know better than him?"

"Well, I say that if we could talk to Dent now, he might feel differently."

Reese went the opposite route – and with him, it didn't just seem to be a persona that he took on, but something that he genuinely believed in. He said that, with the Joker having outwitted even psychologists with the most expertise on the national level, it had been impossible for the police to have known just exactly what the Joker had been planning. While that perhaps meant that they had been in the wrong to enact their plan, it did not mean they were to blame for Harvey Dent's deaths or the others. Most likely, Harvey and Rachel would have been kidnapped anyways. At least with the Joker in custody, they'd been able to save Rachel instead of both husband and wife dying.

Moreover, he said, Gotham needed Batman, Catwoman, and Black Canary, as new the latter was to the scene. There were no "if's" or "what's" about it. The numbers on the crime rates spoke for themselves.

"Are you saying that Batman's life is worth more than ours?" a female, omega- and older-sounding caller cried out to this.

"No, I'm not saying that, ma'am."

"But you do believe that one life could be worth more than one hundred?"

"Perhaps. I think it depends on the life. Why do you ask?"

"What if it was your life? Would you say that your life is worth more than several hundred?"

"Of course not!"

"I'm glad you feel that way," the old woman said sweetly, before her voice abruptly dropped in pitch, becoming lower and masculine – becoming familiar. "Because I've put a bomb in one of the city's hospitals. It's going off in sixty minutes unless someone kills you, Mr. Reese."

Monahan's and Reese's faces both paled to the color of bone. "That can't be – " the female alpha began to say.

"Do you want to be included as well, Ms. Monahan?" the Joker snapped. When she went silent, he cackled darkly. "I had a vision...not necessarily of a world without the Batman, but of a world with something greater. The mob ground out a little profit and the police tried to shut them down, one block at a time, and it was so...boring. It wasn't fun. Batman hasn't been much fun, either. But I want the fun. Don't you all to? Well, maybe you'd disagree, Mr. Reese...

"If Coleman Reese isn't dead in sixty minutes, then I will blow up a hospital. Of course, you could always kill yourself, Mr. Reese. That would be the noble thing to do. But, you're a gossip show anchor! I doubt you'll do it yourself. Maybe you'll prove me wrong."

Click.


The next several hours were a mess.

The second that the Joker ended his call, Coleman Reese became the person most wanted dead in the entire city. Jim had a hell of a time trying to keep him safe, even with getting to the building the news station was in within a matter of minutes. People flocked to the building, the only thing stopping them from killing Reese outright besides the fact that they recognized murder was wrong being the police escort that Reese received to a van, led by Gordon himself. On top of doing that, as the Acting Police Commissioner once more, the beta man supervised the evacuation of all 9 of Gotham's public hospitals – since while there were more, they were all smaller and they weren't as high on the priority list, although the private hospitals did their own evacuations as well.

Getting Reese to the police van was only half of the battle, though. Cars chased it, trying to crash into it. One very nearly did; it was only some quick-thinking on Bruce's part and him miraculously being in the right place at the right time that he crashed into that car with the Lamborghini he was driving. It was also one of Tony's favorite cars, because he hadn't been thinking when he'd left the Glass House, he'd just known he'd needed to get into the city. He knew he was going to pay for that later.

"Are you okay, Bruce?" Jim asked him as he helped him out of the car.

Bruce played up his public persona and sat on the curb, pretending to act woozy. "I think so."

"That was a brave thing you did."

He acted stupid. "Trying to catch the light? I was in a rush."

"You weren't protecting the van?" Jim questioned, even though the glint to his eyes proved he knew better.

"Why? Who's in it?"

He looked past Jim at the van, since it had stopped for him to get out and for them to switch transport vehicles for Reese. The poor omega man looked absolutely terrified as he was led to an undercover car of a different make and model.

Jim gave a forced chuckle. "I forgot. You don't watch a whole lot of news."

"No. I've always said, it can get a little intense," Bruce replied with a shrug. "Think I should go to the hospital?"

"Not today, I wouldn't."

There was no time for chitchat beyond that, no matter how much for a show it was. Bruce got to his feet to head over to another officer to give his "statement;" before he did, he did a twist of his wrist to cause a scroll of paper to fall into his hand and deposited it into Jim's in the act of a farewell gesture. The note that was written on it was simple:

BERG COMPROMISED

If the Joker was targeting one of the hospitals, it was only because he knew which one Rachel was in. He hadn't killed her; she was injured to the point she was in a medically-induced coma, but he hadn't killed her. She was still a pawn in his game.

But that information wasn't easily discoverable. The only people that knew she was in Gotham General specifically were him, her parents, the small list of doctors and nurses assigned to her care, and the police. Her parents had not been visited by the Joker or any of his men, as without remorse he'd placed bugs in their home the last time he'd visited it to ensure their safety and Arthur Dawes' hospice had high restrictions on visitors and staff due to its clientele. The doctors' and nurses' identities were not public knowledge, therefore it was highly unlikely that one of them had revealed where Rachel was and highly likely that the leak was within the police force, specifically Gordon's task force. From there, he, Alfred, and Rebecca had been able to narrow the identity of the traitor down to Matt Berg, whose wife was currently a patient at Gotham General due to her cancer.

In the end, Jim was able to get Reese to some safe house or other, arrested Berg for his own safety, and got Gotham General almost entirely evacuated before the bomb inside it exploded. There were only eleven people out of the hundreds who had been there left unaccounted besides the four that were confirmed dead. Among them were Berg's wife, although that turned out to be because of a miscounting and she was quickly found in one of the many hospitals surrounding the area, and...Rachel.

. . .

. . .

Bruce had expected it. Jim had told him he would have his men do everything that they could to ensure her safety, but he had expected it. And yes, that undoubtedly meant he should've gone to the hospital himself to prevent the inevitable, even at the risk of exposing his own identity, but he'd come to the city as Bruce Wayne: billionaire, former playboy, philanthropist, husband, father. Not Batman.

He never would've been able to get past the guard of police cars surrounding the hospital, much less into the place itself.


The Joker didn't stop with Gotham General and abducting Rachel.

Later in that afternoon:

"What does it take to make you people join in? You failed to kill that cute little anchor...I've got to get you off of the bench and into the game. So, here it is:

"Come nightfall, this city is mine, and anyone left here plays by my rules. If you don't want to be in the game, get out now. But the bridge-and-tunnel crowd are going to be in for a...surprise."

One simple message, which caused the chaos already within the city to reach its boiling point. The Gothamites began to panic in earnest, because with the city's population numbering 6 million and the vast majority of the road exits supposedly unsafe, it was all but impossible to leave the city. Jim started arranging ferries with the help of the National Guard, but even the biggest of the ships could only fit 30,000 people – and on top of civilians, he had the prisoners to worry about, too.

As the people within the city limits scrambled and night edged closer, Bruce helped his family and Selina's son Felix get ready for a helicopter that would be taking them to New York City, before they would take a plane to the house in Cambridge, even if it wasn't exactly the best of houses for seven people (Rebecca included) to be staying in. It was unlikely that the Joker would target their house when it was far beyond the houses of any other celebrities and/or the rich and famous, but he wasn't willing to risk his family's safety – most of all when Fleck had already come so close to figuring it out.

"Dick, do you have everything?" he asked his eldest son as Tony bounced their youngest on his hip.

The younger omega's face was pale, his lips thin. He readjusted the strap of his backpack with one hand, the other having Lili's hand clutched in it tightly, and nodded. "Yeah."

"Jason, what about you?"

The nine-year-old made his own assent.

He hugged all three of his elder children, then momentarily stole Harley from Rebecca's arms (he'd thrown a tantrum, and she'd been helping him calm down since then) to do the same. Handing the still sniffling almost-four-year-old back to the female alpha, he went over to his husband and Peter next.

"Bruce, I don't like this," Tony hissed to him, eyes burning with tears as Bruce smacked a kiss to Peter's cheek.

He sighed. "I know you don't."

"If I'm not here, I can't help you," Tony pressed on. "And if I can't help you – "

Bruce leaned in close to lower his voice even more from the half-whispering they were already doing. "Do you think I'm going to die?"

It was an honest question. He had no idea what was going on with the omega, how he'd been able to predict that night, and how the other things seemingly related to it fit in, but he was becoming more and more suspicious that Tony had a...gift.

And he didn't mind the prospect of dying for his family. It pained him to think about what would happen to them if he did, all of the birthdays he would never see, and the fact that they didn't even know the gender of the baby inside Tony yet and he never would if he died.

If him dying meant protecting his family from the Joker, however, he would do it in a heartbeat.

He just wanted to know if he would have to prepare himself for that eventuality first.

Tony glared. "If I thought that would happen without me, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. I wouldn't be going, end of discussion," he said. "You and Selina...I don't think anything's going to happen, but I still don't like this, Alpha."

He decided on a different tactic. "Hopefully it'll just be for a few days, then you all can come back once everything's settled. And if the press or anybody else asks, I stayed here to help out...monetarily-speaking."

"Right. I'm not stupid." Before he could open his mouth to say that he didn't think he was, Tony reached up to kiss him. The kiss was a softer and slower one than what they were used to. Bruce thought he heard Dick and Jason protesting in the background, but as Tony broke off the kiss, all he could focus on was him. "I love you, Bruce."

"I love you too, Omega."

As the helicopter flew off into the distance, headed east, Bruce watched it go with Selina and Alfred on either side of him. "They're going to be fine," she said, slugging him in the shoulder playfully.

He looked away from the helicopter and at her. "I know they will."

She gave him a smile that was all teeth, although it didn't reach her eyes. "So, you ready for a repeat of the Riddler?"

"As ready as I'll ever be."

They went down to the Batcave, Alfred taking his place at the computers as he and Selina suited up. The second they were ready, they took the Batmobile into the city. He was at the wheel this time as he drove through the tunnels connected to the sewers, then once getting into Gotham proper, heading for the pier where the ferries were supposed to be. Gotham Bay, which fed into the Upper New York Bay, only had the two large ferries operated by the Seven Sisters Ferry Company in its waters. He knew from Alfred that each of them was at full capacity, one carrying 30,000 civilians and the other 30,000 prisoners. He had no idea where they would be going or where the other smaller ferries had gone when there were so many people fleeing from one area, but that wasn't a problem for him to be worrying about right now.

"Something's wrong with the ferries," Selina said, as if he hadn't already noticed. "They're dead in the water. You see that?"

"Yes," Bruce ground out. "Alfred, what is it?"

"There are 142 active cellphones on the ferry carrying the civilians and 8 on the one carrying the prisoners," Alfred reported dutifully. "On each ferry, there is one call that can be traced to the same source as the call on the other."

"Get us on that call."

"I'm working on it."

These were two of the three things that Bruce had asked Lucius about the week before, the goggles not included. They'd needed a way to trace the Joker, and using what had been a prototype for the government to hack into cellular towers and satellites in order to do it wasn't beneath them in this particular situation. They'd also needed a way to get in on any call that the Joker would make, like picking up a landline while somebody else was making a call in the same house.

"Got it!" Alfred exclaimed.

It was good to know Lucius' work had paid off.

" – I'm ready right now to blow you all sky high," the Joker said through the radio not a second later. "Anyone attempts to get off their boat, you all die..."

Selina growled.

"Do you have a location on the Joker?" Bruce asked Alfred.

"It's west."

He floored the gas pedal, flying past the pier as Alfred narrowed in on the address. With the ferries dead in the middle of the Bay, stopping the Joker was the only thing they could do.

The Joker prattled on, talking about his plan: "But we're going to make things a little more interesting than that. Tonight, we're going to learn a little bit about ourselves: there's no need for all of you to die. That would be a waste. So I've left you both a little present.

"Each of you has a remote to blow the other boat up. At midnight, I blow you all up. But if one of you presses the button for the bomb on the other boat, I'll let your boat live. You choose. So, who's it going to be: Harvey Dent's most wanted scumbag collection, or the sweet, innocent civilians? Oh...and you might want to decide quickly, because the people on the other boat may not be quite so noble."

Click.

"He's lying," Selina stated. Bruce knew she wasn't referring to the play, but rather letting any side win after they'd blown up the other.

"I know. Alfred, what's his location?" It was the fourth time he'd asked hat question, the other two being during the Joker's speech.

Thankfully, this time Alfred had the location down to the building. He rattled it off to him.

Bruce took out his phone and threw it at Selina. "Tell Gordon we've got him," he ordered.

Selina caught the phone easily and did as she was instructed.

Police cars had already pulled up by the time they got to the skyscraper where the Joker was, even with how fast he drove. He parked the Batmobile and, rather than waiting for Jim to show up himself since the man hadn't arrived yet, asked one of the patrolmen where the command area was. The officer pointed him and Selina in the right direction.

"Why haven't you gone in there yet?" were the first words out of his mouth.

The officer with the highest ranking on the scene grimaced. "We have a hostage situation," he said, eyes flitting up towards the higher levels of the skyscrapers. "I've got men in that building over there," he gestured with his head to the building across the street, "and they tell me there's ten people on the 76th floor, tied up and wearing clown masks. We think they're the people that were unaccounted for from Gotham General."

Bruce's blood ran cold. "Do you think one of them is Rachel Dawes?"

"I don't know. It's impossible to tell."

"And the Joker?"

"Snipers can't get a good lock on him without injuring or killing at least one of the hostages."

"Is anybody else in the building?"

"Another ten clowns guarding the hostages."

Bruce did not like the sound of this. In theory, it sounded simple.

But nothing about the Joker was ever "simple."

He and Selina locked eyes with each other. She didn't need to say anything to ask the question: "what's the plan, Bats?"

"How far out is Gordon?"

"Two minutes, at the most."

They couldn't wait for him.

"Let's go," he said to Selina.

The commanding officer gaped at them. "You're just going to go in there?" he demanded as they turned around, walking towards the building opposite of the one where the hostages were being held – that was the Prewitt building. "You're not even going to wait for Gordon to give the go-ahead?"

"How have your plans been working out for you so far?" Selina snapped back.

His face reddened with rage. "If the snipers get a good shot at the Joker, they'll shoot – even if it means you'll end up being in the line of fire!"

She rolled her eyes. "That's oxymoronic, don't you think?"

"If Gordon wants to get in contact with us, he'll know what to do," Bruce added.

They left before the commanding officer could get in another word.

Neither of them spoke again until they were in the elevator, going up.

"What's his plan here?" Selina mused out loud. "There's a trick here. What is it?"

Bruce thought about it. The adrenaline was kicking in, which made it easier. His mind was going at miles per second, trying to reach the most likely conclusion based off of what they knew about Fleck and his modus operandi since becoming the Joker.

The answer came to him like it was from a dream, haunting and twisted. "The hostages aren't really the hostages."

Her vivid green eyes bore into him. "You think the clowns are?"

He activated the comms of his suit which connected to Alfred in the Batcave. "Alfred, get through to Gordon and tell him he needs to get the snipers to stand down," he ordered. "There's hostages in the building, except they've been set up to look like the Joker's men. His actual men are acting like the hostages."

"On it, sir."

"You need to give him a different name," Selina ribbed at him. "Otherwise, somebody's going to figure it out one of these days."

He didn't deign her with a response.

The elevator dinged, the doors opening up onto a floor that was several ones higher than the 76th. The snipers and surveillance people were not on it. The floor consisted of many cubicles, but none of them were occupied. Everyone had left downtown in the face of what was to come.

Bruce took out the goggles Lucius had given him and put them on. "What do you see?" Selina asked.

"The Joker, ten of his men, and ten of the hostages." As the police had said. Although the goggles functioned in the greyscale, they still measured heat. He observed the Joker's ten "clowns," zooming in when it became necessary. "We were right. There's bombs strapped to the people dressed up as his men. They're not his."

She played it off with what she said next, but he could tell by the sucking in of her breath that she was just as apprehensive as he was. "Good thing we have that device Fox gave you."

He reached into his tool belt, pulling out the aforementioned object. It was small, easily fitting into the palm of his hand, rectangular, and the third thing he had asked Lucius for. He handed it over to her, having already shown her how to use it. "We're not out of the woods yet. That disturbs electronic signals between devices. If he put dead man switches on the hostages and not remote-controlled bombs, they're all dead." Us, too, if we're close enough. Regardless of what Tony had said.

"We've had worse odds before," she reminded him with a grin, plucking the device from him and putting it in her own tool belt.

They got to work. He got out a bat bomb from his tool belt next, placing it on the ceiling-to-floor window in front of them and turning it on. They both stepped away, waiting several seconds until –

BOOM!

The one window and the closest ones on either side exploded, glass shattering and falling to the floor and the ground below. They stepped over the broken shards easily. He got his claw ready.

"I'm going first," he told Selina. There was no room for argument. "Once you're in, activate that device. If it works, I need you to work on getting out the hostages as quickly as possible. I'm going to be handling the Joker myself."

He knew she didn't like the plan just by the look on her face, and if it had been almost seven years ago during their takedown of the Riddler, she would've tried arguing with him. But she didn't, because she knew.

He needed this.

"Okay, Bats. Let's get this party started."


Bruce took more pleasure in fighting the Joker than he should've.

He and Selina crashed through the glass of the 76th floor and were on the receiving end of a rain of bullets as the Joker's "clowns" stopped playing the roles of the hostages and got to their feet. She activated the disrupter device as soon as they landed on the floor, which caused the Joker to let out a snarl as he, true to form, pressed a button on a remote control and found that none of the bombs on the hostages ignited. The villain turned tail and ran away almost immediately, throwing the remote aside.

Bruce took out two of the clowns in his quest to run after the Joker, one with a punch to the head and the other by taking his gun from him and shooting him in the leg with it. That left eight of the clowns for Selina to deal with, but he knew that she could handle it.

He followed the Joker into one of the stairwells, taking them two at a time to catch up with him. The Joker's cackles echoed in the multi-level room, and if he'd been seven years younger and with less experience (and if Fleck hadn't killed one of his best friends and permanently disfigured the other), it would've sent chills down his spine.

Now, however, all he could feel was rage.

Rage, rage, rage.

Seven floors up, the Joker exited the stairwell, having more stamina than would've been expected for the average human who didn't push themselves to the extreme limits like Bruce did. The floor was another office space and the Joker ran past the cubicles until he abruptly turned around, a smirk on his face and a switchblade in his right hand. "You came," he said. "I'm touched."

"Where's the detonator?" Bruce shot back.

The Joker's smirk intensified. "Oh, it's somewhere on my body," he assured him. "You wanna come try and find it?"

Disgust made Bruce recoil. "I would never have sex with you."

The Joker sighed. "A shame. Our differences aside, I was wondering how a Bat's dick would – "

Bruce charged at him, preventing him from saying anything more. He saw red, just the mere thought of cheating on hisomega – much less with the Joker – sending fury into his veins. The Joker laughed, sidestepping him easily. "Is that all you've got, Bats?"

But that was just the beginning.

The fight was brutal. The Joker was an omega, but years on the streets had taught him how to fight. He wasn't as good as Selina or Rebecca, but he played dirty, using everything he could to his advantage. He held nothing back.

Bruce was caught off-guard when the knife slid between his ribs just below the titanium plate covering his chest, going through the Kevlar just as easily as if it was butter. He knew it couldn't be made of the standard materials, it had to be made of something...else. Like vibranium.

But there was nothing he could do about that right now.

When the knife was pulled back out, the next opportunity that he could, he grabbed the Joker and threw him towards the windows. The omega went flying through it, then disappeared as gravity took him.

It would've been all too easy to let him continue to fall and splatter against the ground. All he would have to do was refuse to act.

But.

He remembered his three-word mantra. He remembered what Rebecca had told him after he'd found out the Joker had escaped from police custody last week.

"Justice, not vengeance."

Bruce ran to the broken window. He jumped out of it, because on this side of the building there was construction going on only a few floors below. As he braced himself to land on one of the steel beams, he aimed his claw at the Joker. It miraculously caught him by the ankle, and a sharp pull locked the claw around him tight. He wasn't going anywhere.

Pulling the Joker back up, he pinned him on his stomach to the metal beam. In front of them, lit only by the lights of the city and the two ferries, was the Bay. Neither of the two ships had exploded yet.

This was the moment that Bruce had been waiting for. Ever since Fleck had taken on the persona of the Joker and started his reign of terror, and more so after he'd destroyed his friends, this was the moment he had wanted.

He grabbed a fistful of Fleck's hair, making him hiss in pain as he brutally pulled his head up so that he could see the ferries – but not just them. Also the large clock in the distance.

It was one minute until midnight.

"Tell me, what were you hoping to prove?" he snarled. "That deep down, we're all as ugly as you are?"

"They've still got time," the Joker replied. The usual giddiness in his voice was not there, however. "There'll be fireworks."

At the stroke of midnight, neither of the ferries had exploded.

The Joker growled wordlessly as he wriggled underneath Bruce. "Can't trust anyone these days," he complained, reaching for something in his suit.

Bruce flipped him over. Batting his hand away, he reached into the suit's inner pocket and pulled out the detonator. "What happened to making me look for this?"

The detonator was easily destroyed with the tightening of his fist.

Nobody else would be dying tonight.

He watched the Joker's eyes widen.

The omega man struggled beneath him, wriggling and bucking up in a desperate attempt to escape. When he realized that he would be unable to from Bruce's sheer body alone, let alone his strength, his upper lip curling as defeat settled in his eyes. He lifted his head then slammed it down onto the metal beam hard enough that a sickening CRACK! was heard. Once, twice, he did it.

Just as Bruce thought he would have to get him to stop before he wound up injuring himself further, a new light flickered in the Joker's eyes. That damned laughter of his returned. "Oh, I guess it's the end of the line for me, Slick," he said. "But you know, I have one last trick up my sleeve. I think you could even call it my pièce de résistance."

Of course, he didn't need to ask what – or rather, who – he was referring to.

There had been hostages downstairs. Ten.

But there had been eleven people left unaccounted for earlier that day after the Gotham General bombing.

Rachel was still missing.

He grabbed the Joker by the collar of his shirt once again, uncaring of the precarious position they were in. "What did you do to her?"

The Joker grinned. "Me? I didn't do anything," he singsonged. "At least, no damage that hasn't already been done. The better person to ask that question, 'cept for those last two words, might just be...her."

Bruce froze, staring at him.

What seemed like an eternity, but he knew only to be ten seconds at the most in all reality, passed. Then his comms crackled in his ear.

"Batman, we have a situation," Alfred said.

He wasn't the only one to hear the man, as delight brightened up the Joker's face. "Do you know how I got these – ?"

Bruce wasn't going to kill him, but he had no qualms in punching the living daylights out of him and tying him up back inside the Prewitt building for the police to find under Alfred's guidance before he took off into the night.


Word Count: 5,347

Next Chapter Title: set fire to the rain