Finally Home
I loved my prompt for Secret Santa so much that i had several ideas for it. I have already posted the actual S.S. post but this is just...something to make me happy. So for my lovely prompt
"Prompt: 56!
" The Joker's dead. That much is clear. Batman doesn't remember if he did it or not, but the Joker is still here, he is... Stretch out fingers, gloved or bare, he can almost touch him--but why, why can no one else see him, hear him cackle, hear him jeer, him philosophize? The Joker is dead...and Batman's losing his mind.”"
Title: Teen Angel
Rating:PG
Warnings: Morbid Fasinations...
Universe: DC Comics
Summery/ A/N: Inspired and written to the the song "teen angel" which makes the story better if you listen to it on you tube while reading. The title was changed after many requests on the basis that the ability to write does not imply the ability to title something.
“Sir?”
Batman was tempted to ignore the voice for just a little longer. He was wedged beneath the Batmobile and very nearly done with the new modifications. But there was something in Alfred’s voice that made him put down his tools and slide out, looking up at his old butler.
“What is it Alfred? Is everything okay?” Alfred only took a fraction of a second to clear the strange look from his face, schooling it into his usual proper English expression.
“Of course sir. I was just wondering if you have seen Master Dick.”
“Dick? He should still be in Bludhaven.”
“He has come home on…business Sir. But he has been rather upset of late and I wondered if you had spoken to him?”
Done for the now Batman gathered his tools and stood. “No, is everything alright?”
Alfred looked troubled; Bruce could see the worry in his eyes, the way he stared at him.
“I am not sure.”
It was another few hours before nightfall, before the Batman could roam once more. He sat at the computer and brought up the new specs for the modifications Dick and him had been working on. Since he was in town it would be a good time to finish their design.
Only an hour remained before dark, an hour before he could escape into the night once more when he heard the rapid footsteps approaching. Alfred was right, something was wrong; he had not been able to hear Dick’s footsteps since he was 10 years old. It was only in his rare darkest moods, moments when the reality of the world, of his parents, dragged his feet heavy to the ground that Batman could ever have such a warning.
He was dressed in street clothes, old and wrinkled as if he had spent the night in them, darker then he usually opted for, his bright and shining Robin.
“Dick.” Bruce called out but Dick only paused in his rapid heavy walk, looking at him and the blue prints beyond and looking away quickly. Bruce was shocked, he had expected something was troubling his ex-ward but the look of…agony in his blue eyes, were those tears that had glistened at him in that split second where they locked gazes?
The door of the training room thumped loudly, the violent sound echoing through the cave. Soon he could hear the pounding of fists, the subdued thud of feet hitting the mats, rapid, hard.
Batman stood, tempted to go after him, but it had been so long, so many years and words lay between them. Dick was not the little boy he had been, he was not waiting for Bruce to come to him and perhaps in the unrepentant darkness offer the comfort of their matching pain. But the door stood against him like the Berlin wall. Too many years had passed, he could not take liberties from him, he had no choice but to respect his privacy, his solitude.
He would come when he was ready.
Or he would find Alfred… The light still lingered but he longed for the night, to fly, Batman was calling to him, demanding freedom from the ties that held Bruce even here. He needed to be in his city.
He walked further into the cave, taking an older model of the Batmobile, not wanting to tamper with the half finished modifications. The streets were empty as they always were, the spars lights leading to Gotham flashing by his windows no more than a blur, a flash in the night. He linked himself to Oracle; it rang once before her familiar voice rang clear over the line.
“Oracle.” Her voice was as subdued as Dick’s demeanor. It made sense, if something was troubling him Barbara would be the first one to know. But tonight it was not his problem; his children could take care of themselves until they wanted to tell him. He trusted them that much. He kept the communication short.
“If Nightwing wants to patrol Gotham tonight feed him my transmission signal.”
“Hel-” Batman cut the signal. If he was needed they could use the emergency frequency, he did not need a lecture about leaving Nightwing behind. Not tonight.
He hid the Batmobile in the outskirts of town, taking to the rooftops as the final rays of sunlight died over the tops of the lowest buildings. He normally did not allow himself the pleasure but as he swung free through the air, catching himself at the last moment, held up by his city , surrounded by the darkness… he felt alive.
The air was bitterly cold, it stung his face, he should have worn the full face mask tonight. It seemed the rest of Gotham had the same idea. The streets were empty, completely void of life. The robbers were tucked at home in their beds, his villains locked in Arkham, all save the Joker but it was still only a few days since his escape. He would go weeks sometimes before brining a plan to his twisted fruition.
It was almost the end of his normal patrol when he realized that Nightwing was not going to join him. He switched the normal link with Oracle back on but there was no message waiting for him. Maybe they had realized what he should have hours ago. Tonight was so bitter and unforgiving that not even the criminals were venturing out.
Far below him he could hear the crushing of power tools, the screeching of metal wrenched apart, cold metallic sounds. He swung lower and his heart sunk faster than a led weight. The train.
Rusted and old, the train his father had helped built lay in ruins, crushed and burnt, metal heated and melted, cooled into a dull matte of rust. It lay far beneath the elevated tracks, half a mile of track had been wiped out of existence, an explosion that had hit the front compartment before it plummeted to the earth.
No.
How many lives had been lost?
The wreck was at least a day old, the scene had cooled and the once frenetic pace of the relief workers scrambling to find a living soul was a subdued resolve. They would not be rescuing anything more than corpses, relief workers turned morticians.
Nightwing.
Oracle.
Why hadn’t they told him? How had Alfred not heard?
“Bats!”
There, sitting on the edge of the destroyed tracks sat the Joker, legs swinging fearlessly off the edge with the daring of a child, afraid of nothing. He was smiling up at him as Batman swung lower; trying to soften the blow to the burnt wooden tracks he landed on. They did not make a sound.
“What did you do!?” His voice was an instant growl, demanding. How could he just sit here and watch like people had not died here? Like bodies did not still lay twisted in the metal below? Peoples fathers, their mothers….
“Me? I am just watching.” He pointed innocently at his own chest, eyes widened with false innocents and surprise. “It’s beautiful isn’t it?” Batman looked into his poisoned green eyes and found twisted sincerity; he looked like a man watching his last sunrise. He turned away, back to the crash below and spread his arms wide.
“Chaos!” His arms fell and he turned again to watch Batman, their eyes meeting, his impish, playful smile in place, the clown and child today rather than the homicidal maniac, as easy to read as Harvey when you knew what sides to look for. For an instant he reminded Batman of a nine year old Robin pulling at his cape, trying to show him the beauty of his first look over a nighttime Gotham.
“You missed it Bats! They just pulled out two bodies. They are in that van there.” He gestured with a smile to the still ambulance. No. No one would be pulled from this alive.
“It was beautiful. They were so damaged one ended where the other began. They completed each other!”
He was sick. Demented. Batman had to remind himself over and over. It was the Jokers distorted view of beauty that disturbed him more than anything else he had done. He tried so hard not to think that maybe it was because he could see the irony himself,see that twisted idea of beauty and death and understand…
“ah ah ah!” The Joker stood and spun recklessly, the heels of his shoes dangling over the abyss of twisted metal and death. Batman froze with the bat cuffs in hand, he had been hoping to capture him without a fight, the damaged tracks would not be able to hold them…
“It is hardly time for that Bats.” He waved his finger in the air mockingly, his body swaying carelessly back and forth. “Kind of slow on the uptake for a detective aren’t you? Bats, Darling, You have more issues then I ever dreamed of.” His smile grew, he bounced, Batman could not keep his eyes from his feet, how close he was to death…
“Stop!” Another growl but that smile never stopped.
“And I have dreamed of you.” A wink, a leer and then the smile melted, his piercing eyes looked like Nightwings, his voice held the pain of Oracle. “I will wait for you Batsy.” His arms spread wide, welcoming the city, his chaos, and fell backwards, into the darkness, into nothing.
Batman leapt after him but no matter where he looked there was nothing, the Joker was gone. He waited until the last second and launched the grapple that would save him. He waited for the sound of a body hitting the ground but nothing ever came.
His heart pounded. He had never wished to see a body as much as he did in that moment. There was no way he could have survived; there was no escape from this. Futile as it was he searched the wreck, he picked his was through twisted angry metal but there was no heat register, nothing left alive here.
Before the first rays of light peaked over the city he was gone, speeding through the streets. Something was wrong, more wrong than it had ever been in his broken city. He could hear the Jokers laugh as he fell, his taunts echoed through his mind. ‘slow on the uptake for a detective aren’t you?’ But the facts were wrong. His equipment was tampered with. It was impossible. He was grown man running around in a bat outfit, ally to a group of aliens from dozens of worlds and spent a great majority of his time in space and this was impossible.
The cave was empty when he pulled in. He went to the computer, tapped into the police reports for the night.
Batman had stopped a bank robbery.
A entire gang of thugs had been beaten brutally, excessively. The official final report would say that they were taken in peacefully, secured in bat cuffs.
But he had not done any of these things.
“Master Bruce!” Alfred walked closer; shocked as he had looked earlier and too happy to see him until searing blue eyes turned on him.
“Alfred. Why do you look surprised to see me? What aren’t you telling me?” Bruce pulled off his cowl, it was never design to intimidate his own people and he needed, needed to be human right now. To see the answers with his own eyes. “Alfred Please.”
“Sir-” They both turned to the sound of screeching tires. The new batmobile peeled in violently, the doors lifting and revealing heavy black boots, Bruce felt himself take a step closer, Batman climbed out of the car.
His figure was slumped and defeated. His cape fluttered to the floor and he walked closer to them, gauntlet clad hands tearing at the cowl he wore.
“Alfred.” He spoke, a voice so familiar; the cowl fell to the floor revealing dead blue eyes.
“Master Dick.” That was all it took for tears to well in his eyes, a child once more. Dick ran into Alfred’s comforting arms, tears streaming down his handsome face.
“I feel like I lost them all over again.” He whispered into the Englishman’s jacket. Alfred had his arms around the child he had helped raise but his eyes never left Bruce’s.
“No.” Bruce whispered in return, in denial. He did not want it to be true, all he wanted was to be able to reach out and touch him, to hold him as he should have done when he had the chance.
“I can’t lose him Alfred.” He looked at Alfred, at the screen beyond, looked directly into Bruce’s eyes but past them. Fresh tears were torn from him, each drop torn painfully from his very soul. His eyes flicked away and Bruce knew it would be for the last time.
“But I already have.” He watched as the man that had been Nightwing gather the cowl from the floor and clutch it to his chest. “Bruce.”
“Master Dick.” Alfred’s voice was broken as soft as his wards. “Miss Gordon is upstairs waiting for you, I will join you momentarily.”
He looked up again and Bruce thought he would die with the pain he saw written there. The fresh scars in those once happy blue eyes. Did all those years of separation and fighting really mean nothing in the end? How foolish had he been?
“Did she- did she find him? I need-” His voice broke but Alfred needed to hear no more.
“Her team has recovered him; she felt it best that no one close to him participate.”
It looked as though a fresh burst of tears was tearing their way to the surface but Dick nodded solemnly, swallowing it down, burying his pain deep within himself. Bruce heard his footsteps as he ran to the cave entrance.
“Alfred?”
Alfred looked as serene as ever, perfectly composed with only a deep wordless melancholy deep within his gaze.
“We had confirmation for two days two days before you showed up here. Robin was with you when it happened, he saw everything. Only your family knows. Master Bruce….” Alfred swallowed; his perfect deadpan voice was beginning to waiver. “I did not want it to be true…so when you appeared and did not know anything about it…Sir.” A single tear escaped his eyes, it looked wrong, to see Alfred loose his composure. “You are the closest thing I ever had to having a child. I never wanted to outlive you.”
“The train…”
“You cleared it, you saved all those people but you went back for the Joker. You never could let him die.” A sad bitter smile, proud almost. “The explosive he used was highly volatile, neither of you saw it coming.”
“Alfred.”
“I suppose it’s unreasonable of me to ask you to stay for dinner?” Another bitter smile but the pain was gone from his voice, Bruce almost chuckled.
“I- I have something I need to do. Will you tell them-” He shut his eyes, he saw the darkness he had lived in, he could still see Dicks broken face, the single tear that escaped Alfred English humor. “Tell them- I love them.”
“Of course sir.”
Bruce hesitated only a second. Before wrapping Alfred in an embrace. “Goodbye old friend.”
He took the cowl from the floor and held it tight in his hands, with a final look around the home he had created he was gone.
__
“You figured it out didn’t you Bats!” The Joker smiled at him again, he was still sitting on the broken tracks. He could see now how they were too damaged to hold their weight, too charred. His smile was brilliant in the dark night; Bruce tried to focus on it instead of the twist of metal beneath them. The van was gone. They were gone.
“You forgive me don’t you Batsy, baby?” He patted the charred wood beside him, Batman sat, his legs dangling and looked out at his city. “You know I never meant to kill you.” A head of green blond curls rested on his shoulder and Bruce almost wanted to laugh. Nothing seemed painful to him now. “But this changes things.”
“It changes nothing.” Light was spilling out between the gothic towers, Wayne industries glistened in the red morning light. “Batman still owns the city, he still lives.”
He smiled, but it was the smile not of a murder but of a man. There was no one left to hurt him, no one left to hurt. “Silly Bat. Of course Batman still owns the city but for us….it changed everything. I killed us, and you couldn’t save us. ” His pale white hand entwined with Batman’s gloved hand.
“Don’t you see.” He squeezed his hand, holding it tight. “We complete each other now.”
Batman looked down at the strange mix of white and black, he could feel the heat of the Jokers body next to him even now when he had become numb to the world and the icy winds could no longer touch him.
He looked at the Jokers sincere smile and laughed.
If you liked it my soiree with the dark side, my xmas and christmas posts were different stories to the same theme... that i just overcame my laziness to post in my journal.
"Prompt: 56!
" The Joker's dead. That much is clear. Batman doesn't remember if he did it or not, but the Joker is still here, he is... Stretch out fingers, gloved or bare, he can almost touch him--but why, why can no one else see him, hear him cackle, hear him jeer, him philosophize? The Joker is dead...and Batman's losing his mind.”"
Title: Teen Angel
Rating:PG
Warnings: Morbid Fasinations...
Universe: DC Comics
Summery/ A/N: Inspired and written to the the song "teen angel" which makes the story better if you listen to it on you tube while reading. The title was changed after many requests on the basis that the ability to write does not imply the ability to title something.
“Sir?”
Batman was tempted to ignore the voice for just a little longer. He was wedged beneath the Batmobile and very nearly done with the new modifications. But there was something in Alfred’s voice that made him put down his tools and slide out, looking up at his old butler.
“What is it Alfred? Is everything okay?” Alfred only took a fraction of a second to clear the strange look from his face, schooling it into his usual proper English expression.
“Of course sir. I was just wondering if you have seen Master Dick.”
“Dick? He should still be in Bludhaven.”
“He has come home on…business Sir. But he has been rather upset of late and I wondered if you had spoken to him?”
Done for the now Batman gathered his tools and stood. “No, is everything alright?”
Alfred looked troubled; Bruce could see the worry in his eyes, the way he stared at him.
“I am not sure.”
It was another few hours before nightfall, before the Batman could roam once more. He sat at the computer and brought up the new specs for the modifications Dick and him had been working on. Since he was in town it would be a good time to finish their design.
Only an hour remained before dark, an hour before he could escape into the night once more when he heard the rapid footsteps approaching. Alfred was right, something was wrong; he had not been able to hear Dick’s footsteps since he was 10 years old. It was only in his rare darkest moods, moments when the reality of the world, of his parents, dragged his feet heavy to the ground that Batman could ever have such a warning.
He was dressed in street clothes, old and wrinkled as if he had spent the night in them, darker then he usually opted for, his bright and shining Robin.
“Dick.” Bruce called out but Dick only paused in his rapid heavy walk, looking at him and the blue prints beyond and looking away quickly. Bruce was shocked, he had expected something was troubling his ex-ward but the look of…agony in his blue eyes, were those tears that had glistened at him in that split second where they locked gazes?
The door of the training room thumped loudly, the violent sound echoing through the cave. Soon he could hear the pounding of fists, the subdued thud of feet hitting the mats, rapid, hard.
Batman stood, tempted to go after him, but it had been so long, so many years and words lay between them. Dick was not the little boy he had been, he was not waiting for Bruce to come to him and perhaps in the unrepentant darkness offer the comfort of their matching pain. But the door stood against him like the Berlin wall. Too many years had passed, he could not take liberties from him, he had no choice but to respect his privacy, his solitude.
He would come when he was ready.
Or he would find Alfred… The light still lingered but he longed for the night, to fly, Batman was calling to him, demanding freedom from the ties that held Bruce even here. He needed to be in his city.
He walked further into the cave, taking an older model of the Batmobile, not wanting to tamper with the half finished modifications. The streets were empty as they always were, the spars lights leading to Gotham flashing by his windows no more than a blur, a flash in the night. He linked himself to Oracle; it rang once before her familiar voice rang clear over the line.
“Oracle.” Her voice was as subdued as Dick’s demeanor. It made sense, if something was troubling him Barbara would be the first one to know. But tonight it was not his problem; his children could take care of themselves until they wanted to tell him. He trusted them that much. He kept the communication short.
“If Nightwing wants to patrol Gotham tonight feed him my transmission signal.”
“Hel-” Batman cut the signal. If he was needed they could use the emergency frequency, he did not need a lecture about leaving Nightwing behind. Not tonight.
He hid the Batmobile in the outskirts of town, taking to the rooftops as the final rays of sunlight died over the tops of the lowest buildings. He normally did not allow himself the pleasure but as he swung free through the air, catching himself at the last moment, held up by his city , surrounded by the darkness… he felt alive.
The air was bitterly cold, it stung his face, he should have worn the full face mask tonight. It seemed the rest of Gotham had the same idea. The streets were empty, completely void of life. The robbers were tucked at home in their beds, his villains locked in Arkham, all save the Joker but it was still only a few days since his escape. He would go weeks sometimes before brining a plan to his twisted fruition.
It was almost the end of his normal patrol when he realized that Nightwing was not going to join him. He switched the normal link with Oracle back on but there was no message waiting for him. Maybe they had realized what he should have hours ago. Tonight was so bitter and unforgiving that not even the criminals were venturing out.
Far below him he could hear the crushing of power tools, the screeching of metal wrenched apart, cold metallic sounds. He swung lower and his heart sunk faster than a led weight. The train.
Rusted and old, the train his father had helped built lay in ruins, crushed and burnt, metal heated and melted, cooled into a dull matte of rust. It lay far beneath the elevated tracks, half a mile of track had been wiped out of existence, an explosion that had hit the front compartment before it plummeted to the earth.
No.
How many lives had been lost?
The wreck was at least a day old, the scene had cooled and the once frenetic pace of the relief workers scrambling to find a living soul was a subdued resolve. They would not be rescuing anything more than corpses, relief workers turned morticians.
Nightwing.
Oracle.
Why hadn’t they told him? How had Alfred not heard?
“Bats!”
There, sitting on the edge of the destroyed tracks sat the Joker, legs swinging fearlessly off the edge with the daring of a child, afraid of nothing. He was smiling up at him as Batman swung lower; trying to soften the blow to the burnt wooden tracks he landed on. They did not make a sound.
“What did you do!?” His voice was an instant growl, demanding. How could he just sit here and watch like people had not died here? Like bodies did not still lay twisted in the metal below? Peoples fathers, their mothers….
“Me? I am just watching.” He pointed innocently at his own chest, eyes widened with false innocents and surprise. “It’s beautiful isn’t it?” Batman looked into his poisoned green eyes and found twisted sincerity; he looked like a man watching his last sunrise. He turned away, back to the crash below and spread his arms wide.
“Chaos!” His arms fell and he turned again to watch Batman, their eyes meeting, his impish, playful smile in place, the clown and child today rather than the homicidal maniac, as easy to read as Harvey when you knew what sides to look for. For an instant he reminded Batman of a nine year old Robin pulling at his cape, trying to show him the beauty of his first look over a nighttime Gotham.
“You missed it Bats! They just pulled out two bodies. They are in that van there.” He gestured with a smile to the still ambulance. No. No one would be pulled from this alive.
“It was beautiful. They were so damaged one ended where the other began. They completed each other!”
He was sick. Demented. Batman had to remind himself over and over. It was the Jokers distorted view of beauty that disturbed him more than anything else he had done. He tried so hard not to think that maybe it was because he could see the irony himself,see that twisted idea of beauty and death and understand…
“ah ah ah!” The Joker stood and spun recklessly, the heels of his shoes dangling over the abyss of twisted metal and death. Batman froze with the bat cuffs in hand, he had been hoping to capture him without a fight, the damaged tracks would not be able to hold them…
“It is hardly time for that Bats.” He waved his finger in the air mockingly, his body swaying carelessly back and forth. “Kind of slow on the uptake for a detective aren’t you? Bats, Darling, You have more issues then I ever dreamed of.” His smile grew, he bounced, Batman could not keep his eyes from his feet, how close he was to death…
“Stop!” Another growl but that smile never stopped.
“And I have dreamed of you.” A wink, a leer and then the smile melted, his piercing eyes looked like Nightwings, his voice held the pain of Oracle. “I will wait for you Batsy.” His arms spread wide, welcoming the city, his chaos, and fell backwards, into the darkness, into nothing.
Batman leapt after him but no matter where he looked there was nothing, the Joker was gone. He waited until the last second and launched the grapple that would save him. He waited for the sound of a body hitting the ground but nothing ever came.
His heart pounded. He had never wished to see a body as much as he did in that moment. There was no way he could have survived; there was no escape from this. Futile as it was he searched the wreck, he picked his was through twisted angry metal but there was no heat register, nothing left alive here.
Before the first rays of light peaked over the city he was gone, speeding through the streets. Something was wrong, more wrong than it had ever been in his broken city. He could hear the Jokers laugh as he fell, his taunts echoed through his mind. ‘slow on the uptake for a detective aren’t you?’ But the facts were wrong. His equipment was tampered with. It was impossible. He was grown man running around in a bat outfit, ally to a group of aliens from dozens of worlds and spent a great majority of his time in space and this was impossible.
The cave was empty when he pulled in. He went to the computer, tapped into the police reports for the night.
Batman had stopped a bank robbery.
A entire gang of thugs had been beaten brutally, excessively. The official final report would say that they were taken in peacefully, secured in bat cuffs.
But he had not done any of these things.
“Master Bruce!” Alfred walked closer; shocked as he had looked earlier and too happy to see him until searing blue eyes turned on him.
“Alfred. Why do you look surprised to see me? What aren’t you telling me?” Bruce pulled off his cowl, it was never design to intimidate his own people and he needed, needed to be human right now. To see the answers with his own eyes. “Alfred Please.”
“Sir-” They both turned to the sound of screeching tires. The new batmobile peeled in violently, the doors lifting and revealing heavy black boots, Bruce felt himself take a step closer, Batman climbed out of the car.
His figure was slumped and defeated. His cape fluttered to the floor and he walked closer to them, gauntlet clad hands tearing at the cowl he wore.
“Alfred.” He spoke, a voice so familiar; the cowl fell to the floor revealing dead blue eyes.
“Master Dick.” That was all it took for tears to well in his eyes, a child once more. Dick ran into Alfred’s comforting arms, tears streaming down his handsome face.
“I feel like I lost them all over again.” He whispered into the Englishman’s jacket. Alfred had his arms around the child he had helped raise but his eyes never left Bruce’s.
“No.” Bruce whispered in return, in denial. He did not want it to be true, all he wanted was to be able to reach out and touch him, to hold him as he should have done when he had the chance.
“I can’t lose him Alfred.” He looked at Alfred, at the screen beyond, looked directly into Bruce’s eyes but past them. Fresh tears were torn from him, each drop torn painfully from his very soul. His eyes flicked away and Bruce knew it would be for the last time.
“But I already have.” He watched as the man that had been Nightwing gather the cowl from the floor and clutch it to his chest. “Bruce.”
“Master Dick.” Alfred’s voice was broken as soft as his wards. “Miss Gordon is upstairs waiting for you, I will join you momentarily.”
He looked up again and Bruce thought he would die with the pain he saw written there. The fresh scars in those once happy blue eyes. Did all those years of separation and fighting really mean nothing in the end? How foolish had he been?
“Did she- did she find him? I need-” His voice broke but Alfred needed to hear no more.
“Her team has recovered him; she felt it best that no one close to him participate.”
It looked as though a fresh burst of tears was tearing their way to the surface but Dick nodded solemnly, swallowing it down, burying his pain deep within himself. Bruce heard his footsteps as he ran to the cave entrance.
“Alfred?”
Alfred looked as serene as ever, perfectly composed with only a deep wordless melancholy deep within his gaze.
“We had confirmation for two days two days before you showed up here. Robin was with you when it happened, he saw everything. Only your family knows. Master Bruce….” Alfred swallowed; his perfect deadpan voice was beginning to waiver. “I did not want it to be true…so when you appeared and did not know anything about it…Sir.” A single tear escaped his eyes, it looked wrong, to see Alfred loose his composure. “You are the closest thing I ever had to having a child. I never wanted to outlive you.”
“The train…”
“You cleared it, you saved all those people but you went back for the Joker. You never could let him die.” A sad bitter smile, proud almost. “The explosive he used was highly volatile, neither of you saw it coming.”
“Alfred.”
“I suppose it’s unreasonable of me to ask you to stay for dinner?” Another bitter smile but the pain was gone from his voice, Bruce almost chuckled.
“I- I have something I need to do. Will you tell them-” He shut his eyes, he saw the darkness he had lived in, he could still see Dicks broken face, the single tear that escaped Alfred English humor. “Tell them- I love them.”
“Of course sir.”
Bruce hesitated only a second. Before wrapping Alfred in an embrace. “Goodbye old friend.”
He took the cowl from the floor and held it tight in his hands, with a final look around the home he had created he was gone.
__
“You figured it out didn’t you Bats!” The Joker smiled at him again, he was still sitting on the broken tracks. He could see now how they were too damaged to hold their weight, too charred. His smile was brilliant in the dark night; Bruce tried to focus on it instead of the twist of metal beneath them. The van was gone. They were gone.
“You forgive me don’t you Batsy, baby?” He patted the charred wood beside him, Batman sat, his legs dangling and looked out at his city. “You know I never meant to kill you.” A head of green blond curls rested on his shoulder and Bruce almost wanted to laugh. Nothing seemed painful to him now. “But this changes things.”
“It changes nothing.” Light was spilling out between the gothic towers, Wayne industries glistened in the red morning light. “Batman still owns the city, he still lives.”
He smiled, but it was the smile not of a murder but of a man. There was no one left to hurt him, no one left to hurt. “Silly Bat. Of course Batman still owns the city but for us….it changed everything. I killed us, and you couldn’t save us. ” His pale white hand entwined with Batman’s gloved hand.
“Don’t you see.” He squeezed his hand, holding it tight. “We complete each other now.”
Batman looked down at the strange mix of white and black, he could feel the heat of the Jokers body next to him even now when he had become numb to the world and the icy winds could no longer touch him.
He looked at the Jokers sincere smile and laughed.
If you liked it my soiree with the dark side, my xmas and christmas posts were different stories to the same theme... that i just overcame my laziness to post in my journal.