(no subject)
Today I realized something.
Even if I find Boomerang here, he won't be the right one. He'll either be from too early in my timeline, or from a different timeline or universe completely. If he's the one from my timeline, and I avenge my dad, it won't actually change the fact that my dad died. My dad shot Boomerang.
They sort of killed each other at the same time. So it's not like I even can avenge him, really. I can't even honor him, because he got killed because I was out doing something he never approved of, and because I couldn't keep my identity hidden. I never should've left him alone that night.
On the other hand, maybe I should be happy about it. My dad killed the man who killed him. The man who killed my father is dead. Even if I went after the guy who is CURRENTLY calling himself Boomerang... he's just the poor kid whose dad my dad killed. For all I know, he feels the same way I do. That guy was somebody's dad.
But, the man who killed my dad is dead. So, my father got justice. He exacted it himself, and I couldn't bring him back, but he got it. There are people who haven't ever gotten justice. Any family member of anyone the Joker ever hurt, never got justice.
Babs and Jason, they never got justice.
And with him in particular (the Joker, I mean), even the law isn't strong enough to keep him behind bars or locked away where he can't hurt anyone. Even when adhering to the law, even when prosecuting to the full extent of their abilities, no lawyer in Gotham can get the Joker put anywhere but Arkham Asylum. He deserves to die, for the number of lives he took, the way the people he hurt deserve to have justice.
The insanity defense can only be carried so far. He's not got a kind of crazy you can cure.
People like the Joker make the law meaningless. They make the idea of vengeance meaningless.
If Jason gets Bruce to kill the Joker, it won't matter, because Bruce didn't do it for him the first time. If Jason kills the Joker himself, it won't matter, because he'll still have been dead once (and Bruce will never have stepped up).
That doesn't mean that the Joker deserves to live. It means that the Joker deserves to have something meaningful happen to him. Something that will make him feel as helpless as the families of his victims do, after the fact.
There are just some people that the law can't fix. There are always exceptions to the rules of right and wrong.