Work Text:
It was all over the news, the joker was dead. Gone. Stopped, but not by Batman.
At first it sounded like a joke, one that the citizens of Gotham had heard all too many times, and every time it had turned out to be just that a joke. But not this time. This time it was for real. This time the GCDP had real proof.
What kind of proof you ask? The GCDP had gotten the joker's bloody decapitated head in the mail.
And all the news papers and news channels had gotten their own surprise, namely a video file. A video that portrayed the joker getting beat up, tied down, drenched in gasoline, only to be shot and decapitated by a figure clad in black wearing a mask. No sign of who it was or why.
The joker was dead and everyone waited for a sign, a change, an admission. No one came forward claiming the death of the clown that had hunted Gotham for so many years. And there was no reaction from the batman or his kind, at least not to the public eye. From the outside nothing seemed to have changed.
In reality everything changed. In reality the package containing the head of batman’s greatest enemy was not sent to the police, and the media was not the only ones seeing the video.
No, in reality a package drenched in blood arrived at the front steps of Wayne manor a sunny Wednesday morning. Containing not only the decapitated head and the video, but also a personalised letter addressed to Batman, Bruce Wayne.
Alfred found it of course, it was his job as the household butler to make breakfast, get the mail, and wake the masters of the house. So he made breakfast as usual, complete with master Bruce’s special tea, master Tim’s much loved scones. But then he went to get the morning paper. Only to find a relatively large cardboard box, and Alfred had seen enough blood in his days to know what was seeping out of the bottom right corner. The sun was shining, but the butler to the bats could feel it, there was a storm coming and this box was the first sign.
Alfred stood there for a while just looking at the dirty, tainted cardboard sitting there in the sun. The birds sang, the sky was blue, and the dark liquid coming from the box was staining the gravel beneath it.
Then Alfred made a decision, as always there was damage control to be made and there was a stark white letter resting on top of the package. Alfred had the distinct feeling that whatever message was written in the letter it was not going to be good news. And Alfred is very rarely wrong.
He had to read it before master Bruce, and he would have had done it if not he had been standing there for so long. Watching, waiting, waiting for what?
“Alfred? What is that?” Tim. Smart, brave, and eager to do good. But so, so young.
“why don’t you go get master Bruce, he seems to have gotten a package” he had to stop himself from saying present, surprise, maybe warning?
“What is going on Alfred?” Tim had run to fetch Bruce, and he actually had to wake him up. Not from his bed, that would have been unusual, no from the cave where he had spent an all nighter working on a case and fallen asleep at the computer. But when he saw how nervous Tim looked he snapped right awake.
Tim, the third robin, watch from a bit farther back as Bruce moved closer to the strange box. It was weird, Alfred seemed nervous and Alfred never worried or hesitated. But something seemed different. An apprehensive feeling, like there was a bomb ready to go off. Who would send something like that? Why to the manor, was it to the Waynes or could someone know? Fear coiled in Tim’s chest at the thought of someone finding out, but he had done it so why could no one else?
Bruce picked up the letter, it was addressed to “batman” on the outside envelope. His breath caught when he read the note inside;
“Bruce, what’s the meaning of Batman if you can’t make things right. I am making it right. I’ve come back to do what needs to be done. Gotham deserves something better than your brand of justice. You have been doing it for too long, but things will change. This is change”
“What is? Bruce what is in the box?” there is hush, a tension, and Tim can’t bear to do anything but whisper.
The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and Bruce Wayne, Batman, looks inside the blood stained cardboard box, only to find his greatest and oldest enemy’s dead eyes stare back at him. Horror, fear, relief. How could this happen, who did it, why send it here?
The joker is dead.
A son is avenged.
A son avenge himself.
He does not blame Bruce for not saving him. And deep inside he knows that Bruce would have needed someone after, to drag Bruce from the darkness.
But coming back from death only to discover that the joker was still alive, after everything, after everyone that monster have killed, was wrong. It hurt so much finding out there was no justice for him, or any of the others. He had been dead, dead, dead. Not anymore.
“The joker was alive to hurt, kill, maim. To rob more people of their friends. Their family. Their mothers. Their fathers. Sons”
But the thing that broke him, tore him up inside, and lit the rage that threaten to consume him every time he thought about his so called father, was the fact that there was a new robin. A new child soldier on the streets of Gotham. As if his death meant noting. Nothing, nothing, Bruce had learnt nothing from his murder. The joker was alive and he had been replaced.
The only place a child has in war is to die. He died a boy in batman’s war deemed to fail, to never end. He lived again as a man, to start his own war and win it. End it.
C’mon, c’mon. Say it. Say it. Say---
“port of los Angeles. Foreign trade zone. Site seven. In four hours”
Not a lot of time. But it should be just enough.
Just enough to kill the joker.
The joker runs when the boy he murdered comes after him. Well the joker does not know who he is, not yet, but the bullets tearing into the clown’s flesh does their job. But then they are trapped, and the joker’s hired goons are closing in on them – he will have to do it quick then. He ties the monster of his nightmares with ropes, hard. And drench his catch in gasoline. The laughing will stop when the pain hits. The joker will stop. The laughing will stop.
Right here. Right now.
Then … then he’ll be GONE
He holds the lighter up, he can see the flickering flames in the eyes of the joker, that will be gone forever.
Forever?
No. The joker is not the only one. Bruce needs to see, needs to understand.
He, Jason Todd, will cross the line. The line batman could not, a change will come.
He has the training now; he has the power to be the change but he has to do it now.
The memory of the joker must live on, only so that he may never rise again.
The resurrected boy puts away the fire that will erase his nightmares, and raises the gun that will make the man in front of him a point, a statement, and shoots him in the head. Paints the walls with the inside of the joker’s skull, chemically induced green hair, and sickly white skin. The laughing stops. Blood mix with unlit gasoline.
Jason Todd did not only take the jokers head with him from los Angeles, he took his revenge, he made a change in the world. The joker was killed because he wasn’t stopped.
And now its Batman’s turn.