Those Who Fall Down the Rabbit Hole | Batjokes |

End of Part 7

He's looking for them. But he can't find them. He can't ever find them. He'll spend his entire life looking, looking for something that isn't there. And when he finds them, is just to watch them die. Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And there they are.

This time, his mother's smiling at him. Those blonde curls. That warm smile. And his dad, the proudest expression on his face. Like that time Bruce had memorized the entire multiplication table of nine. Or like the time he'd fallen. When he'd fallen inside that well. And this father had asked,

Bruce, why do we fall?

And Bruce had answered,

So we can learn to pick ourselves up.

And his dad had been proud.

So proud.

And now he was getting shot.

And so was his mom.

And it was raining

White pearls.

And the guy had smiled. He had smiled at Bruce.

And Bruce had smiled back.

Because he couldn't move.

Bruce couldn't ever, ever move.

He was forever frozen.

So Bruce killed a bat.

When Bruce wakes up, he does so with a start. Cold sweat covers him. And the first thing he sees is the screen he hadn't turned off before going to sleep, that read

Harvey Dent disappears from hospital after criminal intrusion

| x |

Turns out Harvey hadn't disappeared, he had escaped. And somewhere along the line, he'd burned half his face. By the looks of it intentionally.

Bruce doesn't exactly know how it happened. In the future he will blame it on his mind being somewhere else as he went doing his rounds around the city. But somehow, at one moment, he was chasing this robber, and the next he was waking up in a warehouse. Completely tied. A half-burned, completely crazed, Harvey talking about there not being enough justice and whatnot.

Bruce knows he should be scared. In the very least alarmed. But he just feels tired. Because

Why do these kind of things happen to him?

He probably should've thought about that before self-coronating himself as the city's savior.

It sure takes a lot of patience to be a savior.

As Harvey keeps monologuing, Bruce wonders how Jesus did it.

| x |

So, the Joker had been mad. Furious. When Batman had ignored him. Because he thought they had something going on.

They did have something going on. And, after their last meeting in the asylum, when Bats had oh so prettily shown him his design. When he'd put his hand against the glass. The Joker thought Batman knew they had something going on.

The fact that he seems to not be aware... kinda makes the Joker tick.

A lot.

And so, the Joker kinda broke Harvey. To get Batman's attention! Don't look at him like that, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

Harvey's daddy issues made it entirely too easy.

And the Joker had thought that the worst Harvey would do would be, I don't know, blow up a few buildings? Kill a couple of people? Maybe kill himself?

But no.

You know what Harvey did?

He touched his Batman.

Self control be damned.