Gotham v. Joker, 1894 (Chapter Eight, Part One)

Batman and Selina near the warehouse in quick, anxious steps. The cape and the cloak rustle in the wind. Batman takes a glance at the forest and notices a slit in the crescent of trees that engulfs the shore. It leads to a long serpentine avenue that runs through the pine forest and opens up to the other end of the island. The bridge begins there. Batman is counting on it being heavily guarded. That’s what the flare gun is for—in case something goes wrong or if they need a ride back to the city with a subdued Joker.

They come to a halt by a campfire. There are flint stones lying around and a concentrated pile of cones.

Suddenly, there’s a cackle, sharp and erratic, one which Batman is familiar with. Maybe even a bit too much. Selina, however, is startled. She reacts by fastening her fingers around her lasso.

Then there’s a clap. And another one. And another. The sound is coming from inside the warehouse, they realize.

“It’s over, Joker,” Batman announces.

Joker strolls out of the shadows with his arms extended. He looks like a stick-figure, his arms too thin and his face cadaverous. It makes the purple jacket he is wearing look over-sized. Instead of clown makeup, he has a stubble and a pair of baggy eyes. He’s also wearing a matching bowler hat. “What’s the hurry?” Joker says. “You only just got here. Took you long enough but it’s better than you forgetting about me entirely. Although I’d have preferred if you had not dragged the Cat in. It was supposed to be our thing, you see?”

Batman without a word begins to march at Joker. It’s simple from here on. Take him down, hand him over, go home and have a good night’s sleep for the first time in a week. But the clown won’t allow it to be that simple, will he?

Joker gropes inside his jacket and pulls a revolver. He points it at Selina. Batman halts, but observes the gun, as well as he can in the low light. Joker hasn’t cocked the hammer yet. That gives Batman a split second advantage.

“He tries anything silly and you’re dead,” Joker tells Selina, rubbing his nose and sniffling. “Listen, I wish you had a bigger part to play in this but I guess you’ll have to do with the damsel in distress. We’re all making sacrifices here.” He fails to maintain a straight face and finally laughs. “Of course I’m joking!” and then with a pause, he says, “Except for the last part. It’s been a tough week.”

“You don’t have to take your name so seriously all the time,” Selina says.

“I beg to differ. It’s better than having no connection with it at all. Like, why on earth do they call you Catwoman? Did you win a meowing contest? Is that what happened?”

She cringes. “You’re more pathetic in person than I’d have imagined.”

Joker grins and takes a bow.

Batman, in the meanwhile, tries to reach into his belt. He’s inches away from a Batarang.

“No, no, no!” Joker cocks his gun. Now he’s only a trigger away from hurting, or killing, one of them. The advantage is lost. “Don’t get too clever, Bats. I will shoot. In case you’re doubting my aim, you should know… I had some practice with this cracker last week.”

The last remark touches a nerve. Batman grits his teeth. He can feel his pulse accelerating and the rush of adrenaline. The world begins take on a redder tint. “I can’t lose control again,” he tells himself. “Not now.” He hasn’t got a lot of mental strength in stock, not with the amount of sleep he’s had lately. It takes all he has but he manages to calm himself. “Just one more night.” He breathes in deeply.

Joker snaps his fingers to get Batman’s attention. “I have nothing against meditation but this is just inappropriate. We’re in the middle of a confrontation!”

“You’re not going to shoot anyone,” Batman says with much conviction.

Joker snorts. “You know what they say about certainty? It kills.”

“You’re not dumb and neither are we. You know about the bridge patrolmen,” Selina says.

“And you think I care?” Joker grumbles.

“You need to calm down,” Batman demands. “You’ve been off the meds for a week. So I understand that it won’t be easy. But try.”

Selina shakes her head and looks away, seemingly disappointed at Batman’s leniency.

Batman reaches toward his belt again. Joker tenses up. “Trust me,” Batman says.

Joker holds his breath as he ponders. He takes his time to think, until finally he sighs and gives a nod. Noting the approval, Batman pulls a Joker card from one of his belt pockets and flicks it toward him. It glides right into Joker’s hands. He stands befuddled—Batman suspects that Joker is experiencing déjà vu.

“No, no, I remember,” Joker says, breaking out of trance. “The card … Yeah … Is that everything the guards told you or are you a better interviewer than that?” He flicks the card back at Batman. Batman tucks it back into the pocket.

“The stranger said something right after. Do you remember?” Batman asks.

“If you already know, why are you asking me?”

“I want to hear it from you.”

Joker scratches his neck. “He said he had a gig for me.”

Batman glances at Selina.

She shakes her head again. “His delusions are out of control. You can’t reason with him,” Selina warns.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Joker wants to know. The gun trembles in his grip. He must be feeling the strain from pointing it for so long. He looks to Batman, his eyes begging for clarity.

“The stranger said that he did as you asked and that you had something of his,” Batman explains.

“Yeah? Well, you shouldn’t believe everything you hear. The guard who said it might have been lying, because I know I’m not.”

“All of them heard the same thing.”

“It was the toxin speaking then! Collective… auditory… hallucination…” Joker waves his hand, as if placing each word in the air in front of him. “Boy, I do love the sound of that!”

“Highly unlikely. Besides, everyone in the sector was intoxicated. That includes you. It’s a great mystery to me why the toxin didn’t affect you the same way as it did others, but I don’t think you’re completely immune to it either. I suspect the toxin triggered your psychosis and helped craft a delusion, one that’s too intricate for you to see through.”

Joker rolls his eyes. “That’s a very polite way of telling someone they’re crazy.”

Selina groans like she’s had enough of this. Her hands tighten on the lasso and this time it begins to a glow a bright orange. “You’re an Arkham inmate. You killed an innocent woman within an hour of breaking out. You’re goddamn crazy and there’s no need to sugarcoat it.”

Joker laughs. It sounds forced. “You have a gun pointed at you. Act the part.”

Selina pulls her hood back and it collapses past her cropped hair. She shoots him a stern look.

“What are you doing?” Batman whispers. But she disregards him, the way he has been disregarding her advice all night.

“Take a good look at my face, Joker,” she says, as the Lasso of Truth shines. “Do I seem afraid to you? I’m not. If you were going to shoot us, you’d have done it already. Tell me, did you indulge in a conversation with her too, with your little jokes, before you killed her?”

Joker shivers, sweats and stares at the sand, seemingly to avoid meeting her eyes.

Batman squints and wonders, “Does he actually feel guilt for what he’s done?”

“No,” Joker blurts as if yes would be outrageous. Finally he lifts his head and he is smiling. It’s an eerily wide smile, straining like an elastic band about to reach its breaking point. With the help of that and a pair of eyes that look like they could pop out at any moment, he looks possessed. It makes even Batman send down a gulp. Selina’s grip on the lasso also loosens in an instance. The oranges glow of truth and bravery dies.

It’s the clown prince of crime they’re looking at, as nefarious as he has ever been.

“No,” he reiterates. “I didn’t talk to her before I killed her. Who has the patience? I went to her house and I took the first shot I had.” He laughs. “But it felt… empty, not special at all.”

Joker walks as he speaks, going around the fire—shadows fill his eyes. He has the duo’s undivided attention.

“I could have left her to die, but I didn’t. I’m nice that way. I stayed by her side until her last breath. She couldn’t move—I must’ve shot her through the spine—but her eyes… they were fierce and hateful. She didn’t go down begging for her life, did she? No. She was a strong one. That’s when I realized what a mistake I had made. With her spirit, she would’ve made a formidable nemesis!

“That’s all I ever wanted: someone on my level, someone to compete with, someone to be friends with,” he says. “You know when I hit my lowest point? Winter of 1882. Gotham was a shithole. It was there for the taking. But where is the fun that? There were no stakes, you see!” He grins, pointing a finger at Batman. “That’s when you showed up. You made things fun again. You gave my life purpose. It was all going so well, until you betrayed me.”

Selina glances at Batman and mouths, “What do we do?”

Batman points his index and middle fingers to the ground and wiggles them—an instruction to leap. Selina takes notice. With her fingers still curled around the coiled lasso, she slides her hands down the lasso in different directions, and then, bobs her head, as if asking for confirmation. Batman understands the sign and nods in approval.

"—how dare you!” Joker wails, startling Batman and Selina. “You dropped me in the asylum and you just left! Never once did you visit in three years. Three years! You’re telling me you didn’t have the time? Poppycock! On top of that, you replaced me with Scarecrow?” He gags. “You didn’t put him in the asylum, did you? I know everything. You cured him yourself. The warden was in on it, wasn’t he? Tell me, how is it that you could befriend Crane’s crazy head but never mine?”

While Joker squealed and passionately performed his monologue, Batman and Selina, in catlike steps, split up and created a narrow-triangular formation on the shore. Thankfully for them, Joker is drowning too deep in emotions to have taken notice.

“Crane is not my friend,” Batman says, “and neither are you.”

Joker chuckles, painfully, like he’s masking a sob with it. “You think you’re better than us? Look at yourself! You deserve to have a special little cell of your own at the corner of Sector-I.”

“Maybe I’m not entirely sane myself. I dress up as a bat and get into bouts with muggers, robbers, and the occasional megalomaniac, in the dark of the night. It’s painful, but I’m committed to my cause.”

“You sound like Crane right now. I can practically smell the obsession!”

“Except it’s not an obsession. Trust me, I would like nothing more than to hang up the cowl. I can’t do that because of criminals like you.”

Joker stares at his gun.

“Drop the weapon, Joker.”

“You know what’s funny? I had no plans of using it tonight. All I wanted was a confrontation. If I killed the two of you, I’d just be left alone again, like in Gordon’s living room. I could surrender now, as a gesture of goodwill, but what’s the point? You’ve made very clear that our friendship is nothing but a joke to you.

“You’ve preached so much about what I’m not: I’m not in my right mind, I’m not your friend.” Joker turns to Selina and lifts his gun. “It’s time you were reminded what I am.”

“Calm down!” Batman demands. But it has no effect anymore.

“I’m chaos incarnate,” he says, with a pitying look that almost says we could’ve ended this differently and finally pulls the trigger. There is a moderate boom. Batman instinctively glances to his side, eyes wide and mouth gaping. Selina is still standing still. Her hands are in front of her face. He tries to process what just happened. She must have pulled her hands up to her head in instinct and lucky for her, the bullet must have deflected of the lasso—must be a special property of the weapon.

Joker laughs at this and shrieks, “Eight lives! Four bullets!”

“Now!” Batman commands.

Batman and Selina leap away in different directions, going around and flanking Joker.

“I know better than to chase two rabbits at the same time!” Joker yells. He keeps his eyes on Selina who is closing in on his right. Selina is swift. She keeps moving away from his line of aim. Joker takes his chances and fires two shots in quick succession. Selina manages to leap away from the first bullet’s trajectory but she is not so lucky the second time. The bullet hits her in her left arm, throwing half her body backwards and sending her rolling along on the ground.

“No!” Batman shouts. He readjusts his route now and runs directly at Joker. He flicks off two Batarangs at him. The first one smacks the gun off his hand. The second one gushes deep into his knee and immobilizes him.

Joker grunts and yells out, “Not fair!”

Batman finally rams into him. Joker falls a few feet away on his back. His hat flies off too, revealing his natural brown hair. His head bumps heavily against the damp ground.

Batman turns back to Selina. She seems to be up on her feet now, clutching her upper arm in pain.