red in tooth and claw - itallstartedwithdefenestration

Chapter 1 Chapter Text

I woke the same
As any other day except a voice was in my head
It said seize the day
Pull the trigger, drop the blade
And watch the rolling heads

— “The Day I Tried to Live,” Soundgarden

Come as you are
As you were
As I want you to be
As a friend
As a friend
As an old enemy…
And I swear that I don’t have a gun
No, I don’t have a gun

— “Come As You Are,” Nirvana

-- -- --

September 2008

Bruce was driving down I-78 going at least twenty miles over the speed limit in his father’s ’75 Plymouth. The police scanner he’d installed was crackling as was his brain as was the sky which streaked over New York in the distance with lightning. He had the windows down despite it was raining and the water splashed inside and soaked the interior and his arm and his hair. Driving down in slanted sheets it kept easing up then crashing back down and Bruce couldn’t see past his headlights. He knew he should slow down but he just couldn’t — quite — make himself.

The police scanner burst firecracker-loud in the close space. After a moment Bruce recognized Ramirez’s voice reporting on a shooting on Henderson; then O’Brien reporting a drug deal in the lower harbor; then Landry asking if anyone was up for a game of radio chess, all frequencies invited, he was bored, it was a f*cking dull night, there was nothing —

“Hey, heads up.” Stephens. “All units. Breakout at Arkham.”

Ramirez, tiredly: “Who is it this time?”

Laughter crackling in the static with the lightning and Bruce’s mind —

Stephens: “It’s the Joker.”

Abruptly the laughter ceased. There was a sharp inhale from a rookie and himself Bruce was swinging his father’s car across the empty lanes so hard he nearly fishtailed —

— not that he’d care if he did —

— before getting into the service lane, putting the car in park, and waiting.

“He’s stolen one of the guard’s cars,” Stephens was saying. “License Charlie Delta Oscar three-oh-six. White Bronco — ”

“Who the f*ck does he think he is,” O’Brien cut in, “O.J. Simpson?”

A few nervous giggles.

“He’s heading north on 78 and — ”

Bruce dove out of the car. He had the suit in the trunk; he hadn’t run as Batman since July but sometimes (he couldn’t really help it, burning compulsion) he drove around with it just in case — well, just in case of things like this. The rain had let up enough he could get his civilian clothes off and into the Kevlar with very little trouble. His hands trembled as he fastened the clasps. It had only been two months and he knew it would be dangerous if he got caught but this felt necessary. He didn’t know why there was this pull, this urge to run after the Joker, the man who destroyed everything Bruce had known, everything he’d loved for so long —

— Rachel —

— but it was there guiding his hands as he pulled the mask on dragging it down his face, the blunt edges of his nails catching the skin of his cheeks. He was shaking and listening to the wind as it howled through the empty streets. It was so dark, it was almost two in the morning and Bruce had no idea what the hell he was even doing out here —

The police scanner made another noise he heard through the open window —

— right. North on 78. He got back in the car, turned around at the next interchange, and got back on the other side. He was well south of Arkham and didn’t know how long it would take to catch up to the Joker but he planned on catching him no matter what, even if he didn’t reach him until they were in New York, tailing him through Manhattan and into the Atlantic, anything to catch him, to make him pay, to get him around the neck and shake and get his fist in his face —

— but Bruce was going one hundred miles an hour and therefore caught up to the Joker pretty quick because he was going a sedate sixty-five, weaving gently between lanes so that the few cars they passed kept their horns going, steadily constant string of F-notes through the night, through the still darkness, through the rain as it hit the asphalt and the hood of the car with its constant guttering sound like gunfire in the distance. Bruce swung his car alongside the Joker’s and through the open window yelled at him to pull over but either he didn’t notice or else he was just ignoring Bruce because he kept driving. Bruce cut in front of him with his foot heavy on the accelerator until blinded by his headlights he slammed on the brakes forcing the Joker to jerk his wheel to avoid crashing into Bruce’s bumper. Bruce watched him spin out in his rearview mirror. The stolen car spiraled on the wet concrete. Even through the dark Bruce could see the Joker’s outline in the front seat and he could see he was laughing. When at last he came to a stop he was facing away from Bruce and Bruce heard his engine gun and protest momentarily before he skidded out with violence and so Bruce turned too, leaning on the horn, watching his taillights as they receded and sped up faster and faster between the white headlights of passing cars as their horns screamed and tires burned rubber shifting to the sides. Bruce chased the Joker down 78 going south now feeling the same blind rage as he had back in July when he’d chased him on the motorcycle, the same directionless unmoored violence, the same urge to hurt, to push too far, to get his foot in his chest and his hands around his throat and squeeze —

— to just break him down, to destroy him, to beat him until he was bleeding out broken, until he finally stopped, and stopped f*cking laughing —

— until he’d paid for it all, for every life he took, for everything he’d taken from Bruce. For everything he’d taken from Gotham. Bruce allowed the rage to build and build until it was channeling through him, all he could hear or see or think or feel, red all around him, a siren in his head, tunneling his focus. He couldn’t see the other cars, only the Joker’s, in the dim piercing glow of his headlights and the rain coming down harder and faster again, swirling along the road in white rollercoasters that sprayed the other cars as Bruce’s tires smacked the puddles. The Joker was going and going and both of them were still passing the other screaming cars blowing at them and Bruce didn’t care, he didn’t care, he had to catch the Joker, he needed him to bleed —

The Joker slammed into another car going seventy, maybe seventy-five miles per hour, and the Bronco was pulled upwards by the force of it, the back wheels lifting off the ground as the front end twisted itself. Then the whole car was flipping over, skidding along on its side before its momentum pulled it completely upside down as it came at last to rest near the guardrail. The wheels still turned in the air like a flailing incapacitated animal and smoke rose from the engine. Bruce pulled in alongside him on the driver’s side watching the smoke rising from the crushed engine, the glass glittering on the road in the rain, multiple shards throwing off bright scattered reflections of light from the streetlamp overhead. He got out of his father’s car and made sure the other driver was okay —

(shaken but unhurt; she started to smile at him before her eyes focused and she realized who he was, and then she spat and said his name with such venom, and all Bruce could tell her was the police were already chasing the Joker and would be here soon)

— and then he walked to the stolen car. The driver’s side door had been twisted in the crash and Bruce didn’t think he could get it open, but he was able after some maneuvering to brace his legs and arms and wrench it open with force and then there he was.

The Joker.

He’d been knocked unconscious by the force of the crash. His temple was bleeding where it had smashed into his window and his mouth was bleeding where it had smashed into the airbag. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Bruce was shocked he hadn’t gone through the windshield. He hung upside down with glass in his hair, soaked in blood, and Bruce started to reach in to haul him out but his eyes snapped open (Bruce realized distantly he wasn’t wearing his facepaint) and when he saw Bruce he let out a sharp angry sound more like a bark than a laugh and lowered himself down before crawling out of the car. It was a visceral sharp reminder of when he’d flipped the eighteen-wheeler in July, the way he’d barely needed time to recover before he was shooting again, and he barely needed it now either as he struggled to his feet and stumbled a little before catching himself. He was clad in his Arkham-issued orange jumpsuit, number 012406 stitched into the pocket, and only one shoe. The other foot was bare and rested in a puddle. Bruce noticed for the second time that he wasn’t wearing his facepaint and this time with the light full in the Joker’s face Bruce could see that without it he was almost shockingly young, and strangely familiar. Without all his regalia — his overcoat and suspenders, his filthy shirt and trousers and that ridiculous watchchain — he was just… nearly normal. Nearly human, except for the manic edge in his eyes suppressed under layers and layers of drugs and the fury and the rage balling his hands into fists and the unhidden scars pulling at the corners of his lips.

“Well,” the Joker drawled, looking Bruce up and down and licking at his mouth, “we just keep running into each other, don’t we.” Then wildly he swung out with his fist, catching Bruce in the jaw. The force of his knuckles flooded pain up through Bruce’s teeth, rattling his skull, but he was still able to maintain the presence of mind to reach out as the Joker’s arm fell and grab his wrist. He shoved him backwards so that he slammed against the wreckage of the car. The Joker laughed as his head thudded back against the metal.

“Oh yeah,” he said, “just like that — ”

Bruce’s jaw was still throbbing and he let it carry him, let it tighten his grip on the Joker, caging him in. He could still hear the scanner in his car going. He stood body shadowing the Joker in the glow of his headlights and the rain was still coming down, misting now, zigzagging in the light and gathering in the Joker’s hair, the half-grown greenish streaks of it. The seats in the Plymouth were going to be ruined, Bruce thought; the window was still rolled. Sorry, Dad.

The Joker was staring at Bruce’s mouth; it was the only part of his face he could see. He was smiling, he was f*cking smiling and Bruce wanted so badly to hit him he could feel it rushing down his arm, the echoing pulse of it in his jaw. He was remembering the way it felt in the interrogation room at Gordon’s, how his hits crashed through the walls again and again and the Joker’s laughter crashed along with them, the way he just took all of it laughing and letting Bruce do it, letting him do whatever he wanted. He was remembering all of it and he wanted so badly again to fist his free hand in the Arkham collar and haul the Joker forward, get his fist in his unpainted face, but he forced the urge down — though it felt like opening a drain to oil — and he said,

“Gordon’s men are coming.”

“Oh,” the Joker said. “That’s interesting. I didn’t think you’d want to be here for that.”

He was baiting him. He was baiting him and he shouldn’t respond, he couldn’t —

“Why not?”

The Joker tilted his head. “They hate you,” he said. “Don’t they. Just like the rest of this city. Didn’t I tell you this would happen? That the second you proved just how much of a freak you really are they’d throw you out of their little exclusive club you’ve been so desperate to be part of. Like a kid on the playground watching the popular group knowing he’ll never really fit in — ”

Bruce hit him. He couldn’t help it. He’d let go of the Joker’s wrist and his fist struck before he’d even realized what he’d done. The Joker staggered sideways laughing against the ugly twisted wreckage. “There’s that good old repressed violence,” he said, blood running down from his temple to his cheek and over his mouth and now from his nose where Bruce had hit him. “Let it out; you know you’re not going to have a chance when Gordon gets here and it’s time to prove to him just how normal you think you can be — ”

Bruce grabbed his forearm again and twisted his wrist, feeling the bones move against each other, the pressure of his skin, the racing pulse. “Shut up,” he snarled, shoving him against the car a second time. He had cuffs he pulled out from the suit, dragging the Joker’s other wrist up so as to lock them together. I should’ve done this the first time, Bruce thought, watching the Joker’s face shift with something like triumph in his eyes. The rain had started back up and it hit the metal, cooling it off, catching in the hair on the Joker’s forearms, dampening his uniform so that it clung to him, the tense sinew of his body. Bruce was honestly pretty shocked the Joker hadn’t tried to run yet but in the glow of the headlights and up close like they were he was starting to notice other things, too, like that his eyes weren’t all the way in focus, and he was swaying a little where he stood in Bruce’s grasp.

He smiled down at the cuffs. Then at Bruce. “You can pretend all you want,” he whispered. “It’ll never make you into one of them — ”

Bruce hit him again, across the jaw this time, same place the Joker had hit him. He heard his teeth strike together but he was still f*cking laughing, laughing, body twisting sideways from the force of the blow. His foot was turning purple in the puddle where it rested and Bruce could feel him shivering so he jerked him forward, closer to his father’s car. The girl the Joker had crashed into was still sitting in her own car watching the two of them with undisguised curiosity so Bruce angled his body away from her and said,

“I’m not pretending.”

The Joker’s lips twitched. He didn’t say anything which of course made Bruce even angrier than if he’d spoken and he was winding up to hit him a third time when his head dropped a little. It was only for a second but it was enough to bring Bruce out of it. He stared at the Joker’s eyes and closer to the light he could see the pupils were blown and his eyes were shifting, staring over Bruce’s shoulder. His tongue darted out. His hands were trembling.

“What are you on,” Bruce asked.

This earned him a neat eyebrow raise. “You looking to score or something? Thought you could get co*ke for free with the scary voice — ”

“I know you just got out of Arkham and I know they have you on drugs, what did you take before you left.”

The Joker snorted. “‘course I’m doped up; I’m always loaded when I’m there. Makes the place more tolerable; if you ask me they’re doing me a f*cking favor — ”

Bruce was still gripping his wrists even though he was cuffed. He squeezed down on the bone through the metal and slapped the Joker’s cheek. His eyes snapped to Bruce’s:

“Oh, I didn’t know it was like that,”

and he was laughing again. The manic fox’s cackle of it mixed strangely with the police sirens in the distance.

Police sirens.

sh*t.

Bruce looked over his shoulder. In the far distance he could see red and blue flashing lights in sailing arcs coming steadily closer through the rain. They were coming closer and they were coming fast. The girl in her car was getting out her license and insurance and the Joker was half in Bruce’s arms shivering and high and laughing, soaked in blood, bruised up already because of Bruce, and he didn’t know what to do, so he shoved him. He shoved him harder than he’d meant and the Joker stumbled but he stumbled in the right direction which was towards the ’75 Plymouth. Bruce was shoving him towards his father’s car and he didn’t know why.

“Get in,” he said, and the Joker gave him a look. Even through the drugs it was level and measured and almost lucid.

“I’m not really interested in dying in your giant weird car — ”

“Okay,” Bruce said, feeling his jaw tighten, “you can wait here in the rain for the GCPD to come and put you back in Arkham or whatever the f*ck they want to do with you; really I don’t know and I don’t especially care — ”

Except he did, obviously. Or else he wouldn’t have asked the Joker into his f*cking car.

The Joker was watching him. “And how is that any different from you doing whatever the f*ck you want with me,” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Bruce said, shoving him again towards the passenger side. The police scanner was still going inside:

Unit 173 we have a visual on possible suspect, vehicle crash up ahead on 78 —

“Why is Batman helping to aid and abet,” the Joker asked. “What are you hoping to gain from this. Certainly not Gotham’s favor — ”

“I don’t know,” Bruce said again, “I don’t know, just get in the car,” and the Joker surprised him by getting in, tugging the door shut, sitting in the passenger seat. He sat and for a moment Bruce stood outside in the mist with the cape flowing around him and the mask tight over his face and wondered what the f*ck he was doing. He had no idea what he was doing. He hadn’t had any idea whatsoever of what he was doing since July, the last time he’d done anything as Batman, the last time he was able to show this face in public. He had no idea what he was doing and no idea who he was. He’d thought if he could get his hands around the Joker’s throat, if he could just land a few punches the anger would snap, it would bleed out and the blackness would recede, but it had only grown worse, red pulsating in the corners of his vision, white noise screaming in his head, rage rage rage blind f*cking constant rage boiling in him always, every day, every second, every hour, not just since Rachel died either but years, Bruce had lived years like this and had only ever seen it reflected in one other place —

— and it was looking at him now through the car window, through drug-glazed eyes, and Bruce didn’t know what he was doing but he swept around the car, got in, and put it in reverse. The police scanner was still going and Bruce turned it off; he couldn’t listen to it, he couldn’t hear their voices. The sirens were getting closer and closer all the time. He watched their lights in the rearview mirror as he pulled out, away from the wreckage of the smoking car. He watched the Joker in the passenger seat with his head on the window, smearing blood on the glass, hands resting in his lap as he watched Bruce’s own hands shake on the steering wheel. Bruce straightened up and put the car in drive. The little Thomas Wayne that had lived in his head since 1985 whispered,

You won’t come back from this,

and Bruce whispered back,

I know,

and he sped out onto the road.

“So where are you taking me,” the Joker asked. He attempted a grin which didn’t quite fit on his face. Bruce didn’t worry — he told himself he didn’t worry — about the mental or physical state of the man beside him because after all he was the f*cking Joker, he deserved to suffer, he —

He was holding the cuffs up and trying to grin as Bruce exited 78 and began the drive out to the Narrows. “Suppose it’d be too much for me to hope this means we’re going to your secret hideout to have whatever fantastic kinky sex you like with the cuffs and that leather — ”

“It’s Kevlar,” Bruce said, for no apparent reason, “and please stop talking.”

The Joker was still grinning. He slid his hands into his lap again and started picking at the skin around his nails as best he could within his limited range of movement. At a stop sign Bruce glanced over and was again startled both by how young the Joker was and how different he appeared without the greasepaint. Trying not to think about it he said,

“Actually, I’m taking you back to your place,”

and he could see he’d surprised him. The Joker bit his lower lip, teeth indenting the skin and turning it white. He stared out at the rain and the darkness and the blurring lamplights through the steamed up windows (Bruce had finally managed to remember to roll them up after driving for five minutes with water in his face; the interior was completely f*cking ruined). The Joker stared out at the city scratching himself with his blunt nails. For no reason Bruce remembered how long they’d been in the interrogation room.

Finally the Joker said, “I’m not telling Batman of all people where I live.”

“That’s fine,” Bruce said, voice tense. “I don’t really want to know. Just an approximation is fine.”

The Joker just stared at him. Bruce rolled his eyes.

“Do you want to go back to Arkham,” he asked, “because that’s fine too; I can take you there right now, it’ll be a lot faster — ”

“Just keep going straight,” the Joker said. “Turn right on Anderson,”

and for a while that was the only sound in the car outside of the heater, the faint white noise of the scanner where it was still turned all the way down, his erratic breathing, and the rain hitting the glass. The bruising pulse of the windshield wipers. Just his voice every so often giving directions in a strange flat monotone. Bruce was still trying not to worry about him of all people, the man who had pushed Rachel out of the window, who had orchestrated her death, who had lied to Bruce purposefully to trip him up, to prove some point. Bruce knew he could’ve made other decisions regarding her and she might be alive right now if he had, if he had just chosen the city over himself, if he had just placed the city first like he’d always thought he did, like the Joker hadn’t wanted him to, like the Joker had expected he wouldn’t, like Bruce had proved he was incapable of doing. Bruce had no interest in worrying about the man responsible for all of that but the farther into the Narrows he got the worse the slur in the Joker’s voice got. The farther into the decadent filth sprouting from the sewers, the drug deals, the hookers leaning against light poles, against fire hydrants in their fishnets and corsets, lipsticked mouths lurid and smiling in the ghostly misting rain. Finally when Bruce pulled up to a stoplight on Roosevelt he couldn’t help it any longer; he looked over at the Joker and asked,

“How did you escape Arkham in your state?”

The Joker’s eyes flashed in the red light a mixture of irritation and dry amusem*nt. He didn’t answer. Bruce tried again:

“What are you on?”

and this time the Joker’s head turned towards him very slowly. Even without the greasepaint his mouth was deeply, almost startlingly red. “What?”

Bruce felt something tighten in his jaw. “What do they have you on at Arkham that’s making you act like this?”

“Maybe this is just my very own winning personality.”

No, Bruce thought, jaw tightening further, hands trembling on the wheel. He remembered boundless rage anger hatred darkness violence blood; a voice like firecrackers booming, pop pop pop, and the guns and the manic laughter and the terror and the consistency of it, the pulse, the trigger, the lashing electricity uncontained, uncontrollable… How he was like a rabid animal loose in the woods, like a fighting dog too long in the ring, whipped into a bloody starved frenzy, shaped by cruelty, savage and vicious. Something beaten and brutalized until it burst forth in dark glittering victory, the triumphal scream:

(without cruelty there is no festival)

— no, this isn’t you, Bruce thought, but he couldn’t say it. He sat listening to the Joker’s erratic breathing and watching his leg shaking idly against the seat and finally he said,

“I just want to give you drugs to combat the symptoms.”

This earned him another snort and an eye roll. “You’re always trying to fix things. Fix people. Your problem is no one’s ever told you no, I don’t want to be fixed. Or maybe they have,” he mused contemplatively as the light turned green, “and you just didn’t listen.”

Bruce breathed out. “It’ll even things out a little until — ”

“Wanna know how I got these scars?” the Joker asked, as though Bruce had not spoken. “It was a bar fight, some guy told me he didn’t like how I laughed at the bartender’s joke and I told him I didn’t like how his mom f*cked me but we all have to deal with life’s little disappointments. He grabbed me by my hair, slammed my face into the bar, broke his bottle, and carved these — ” tilting his head — “into my face.

“Or maybe,” he murmured, twisting his hands over and over themselves, “I got them at Arkham. I was playing cards for months with the same group until one of them had enough sessions with his psych he discovered how to use rational thinking. He found the cards I hid up my sleeves and paid the guards to hold me down while him and his buddy knelt on my stomach and sliced my mouth open — turn left here,” he added as an afterthought, gesturing vaguely to Primrose, and Bruce jerked the wheel so hard he hit the curb. The Joker was still pistoning his leg and knocked his head against the window but did not react to any of it. Bruce looked over at him:

“Joker — ”

“And what if nothing happened to me,” the Joker whispered, so quiet Bruce almost couldn’t hear him over the rush of wind outside the car windows where he’d stopped again at the intersection of Primrose and Cooke. “What if I’m just f*cked up like this because I want to be. What if mommy and daddy gave me milk and cookies every night and I always brushed my teeth and got good grades, chess club and Boy Scouts and whatever else, but something just… slipped. I stuck the razor in myself one day because they were out and I was bored.” He looked at Bruce directly and under the drugs and the possible concussion and the exhaustion there was that familiar spark of lucidity, of mania, of barely concealed fury. “What if there’s nothing to fix? What would you do then?”

Bruce didn’t answer him because he couldn’t. He thought he knew what he wanted to say but it frightened him, it wouldn’t leave his tongue. He stepped on the accelerator though the light hadn’t yet changed. He saw the Joker smiling to himself in his peripheral, but he ignored it. He ignored everything.

The Joker was quiet for the rest of the ride, humming softly under his breath, shaking his foot, giving directions, until at last he had Bruce pull off to the side of the road beside a massive abandoned warehouse. In the dark its entryway was cavernous and threatening. Bruce could see rusted corrugated steel hanging off the support beams and moonlight in the puddles inside from the leaking roof. Then he realized the clouds had parted enough to let out the moon. The rain had let up entirely and as Bruce killed the engine he heard insects.

“So what are you on.”

“Thought you said you didn’t wanna score.”

The thing in Bruce’s jaw felt ready to snap. “I want to know what you’re taking so I can give you the right things to — ”

“To what. To help me? Didn’t we just have this conversation?”

“I have drugs in my trunk that can — ”

“You just can’t let go of the idea of saving me, can you.” The Joker sounded exhausted. Annoyed. “What do you hope you’re going to accomplish by this, exactly. It can’t possibly help you feel better about yourself — ”

“Look, if you want to keep feeling like this — ”

“Maybe I do.” The Joker’s jaw was gritted the same as Bruce’s, tight enough he could see his teeth grinding. They were both quiet for a bit. Bruce could hear a couple down the street arguing in Spanish. Finally he said,

“Okay,” and he smoothed his hands down his thighs. He was still shaking. “Then get out of my car, I don’t have anything else to — ”

“It’s chlorpromazine,” the Joker said. He was glaring at the floor and Bruce wondered what the admission was costing him. “You have to — ” he held up his cuffed wrists — “anyway, so you might as well…”

Bruce didn’t push it. He went to his trunk and retrieved the case of pills that would combat the symptoms of withdrawal and the pills that would combat the overdose and he brought them both to the Joker. He opened the door and the Joker swung his legs out over the side. Bruce was briefly surprised to see he was still wearing only one shoe. He explained what each bottle was for, then helped ease the Joker out. He handed him the pills. He unlocked the cuffs. The Joker stood for a moment rubbing at his bruised wrists and Bruce thought —

But then the pills were clattering to the wet asphalt and the Joker was grabbing Bruce, knocking him in the nose with his forehead. Pain burst along his bones and into his skin as the edges of the mask cut his face. The shock of it radiated up into his skull and Bruce staggered backwards furious with himself for not seeing it coming. By the time he was able to straighten up again and blink the black edges out of his vision the Joker had disappeared. The bottles were gone too, though, so Bruce closed the trunk, unclipped his cape, and slid into the driver’s seat.

It’s better this way, Bruce thought. Better to just go home and forget this ever happened; try not to dissect it with yourself or anyone else. He tossed the scanner into the back and flipped through the stations on the radio until he found something that sounded like how he felt, gritty and unstable, and he turned on his headlights, and he drove away.

October 2008

The fundraiser was for the refurbishing of Gotham General. The city wanted to do a sort of upscale version of it, with an adjacent children’s hospital and a special ward with grief counselors and a nicer chapel than the one they’d had before, which had hardly been used anyway on account of its draftiness and general gloom. Bruce was hosting it at his penthouse; he could have rented out a ballroom, but it was easier this way, and anyway he had the grand piano (hardly used) which he’d commissioned for the evening to be played by the city’s virtuoso pianist, with whom he enjoyed occasional and very vague flirtation so as to keep up appearances. The caterers had served wine and co*cktails and hors d’oeuvres and Bruce had already made his preliminary speech and was now mingling on the outer edge of his guests and wishing he didn’t have to do this.

Not for the first time he found himself unexpectedly missing Rachel. It was a different feeling somehow than the blank raw grief he remembered consuming the months following his parents’ deaths until he’d learned to pull the shutters. It was more like something he was watching happening to someone else very far away. It came and went in sharp bursts and normally — when he could get out of bed with it — it sent him to the gym to race the feeling off with a weak and less than fulfilling simulation of the violence and physicality he’d come to rely on, running on the treadmill until he was nauseous with overwork or weightlifting until he strained a muscle or wrapping his knuckles and beating the sh*t out of one of his punching bags, pretending it was the Joker, or else sometimes (guiltily) that it was Harvey, because he’d taken her from him… but since he could do approximately none of those things tonight he only stood mouth pressed in a tight smile listening to the head of the psychiatric department at the former Gotham General talking about what he would do with the new wing, and who he would hire. A very distant voice in the back of his mind whispered, if they’d just put this much energy into Arkham perhaps people wouldn’t break out of it so often and there wouldn’t be as many suicides. But of course he didn’t say anything. Bruce Wayne didn’t think like that, after all.

Eventually Alfred came by to see if Bruce or his companion wanted a drink. He gave Bruce an inscrutable look, slight furrow appearing between his eyebrows, before suggesting to the psychiatric head that he go speak to one of the other suits in charge of finances. When the man had departed Alfred said, quietly:

“Might I suggest you take a moment to breathe, Master Wayne.”

It felt like Bruce was watching Alfred from that same strange distance. He kept seeing Rachel, the last time she’d been here, at the last fundraiser he’d thrown. Late July and the sun was setting behind the city skyline, bathing the buildings in burnished gold and crimson, and the river throwing off cool air into the otherwise suffocating heat. Harvey had been here too, but Bruce could only remember Rachel’s anger, the way her face had pinched when he’d told the crowd Harvey could lead them, and lead them well. He’d been better at reading her emotions than his own, sometimes. Why had he never told her that?

“I’m fine, Alfred.”

“Forgive my bluntness, sir, but I’m not sure there’s a single person in this room, myself included, who would believe that statement.”

Bruce reached up and touched his own face, wondering what he looked like; how he could not feel anything in the detachment yet express undesirable emotions upon his face. “I need to close some deals,” he tried, and Alfred — gently, firmly, as he had for years — put a hand at his elbow and steered him towards the door leading out.

“No one will notice if you just step into the hall for a moment,” he said. “The deals will still be there to be closed when you return.”

As though given permission by Alfred the exhaustion suddenly overwhelmed him; it was all he could do not to lean against a wall and slump to the floor. Rachel was everywhere in this room; he remembered that window and how it had shattered; and Rachel on the balcony accusing him of lying; and Rachel standing just there while the Joker brutally, wildly fought Batman —

He stepped out into the hall and Alfred shut the door behind him. The sound of the crowd quieted and Bruce closed his eyes. It usually wasn’t this bad; after all he lived here, he went into that room fairly often. He supposed it was just seeing the crowd here that had brought it all back. If he could just be out here for a moment he was sure he could get himself back under control —

He heard footsteps, and then from beside him a voice said, “Excuse me, Mr. Wayne, where do you want these?” A strangely familiar voice, lilting and brittle, and for a moment he wondered if it could only be his imagination; thinking of Rachel too much, perhaps, and the stress he’d built up lately without any form of release… But when he opened his eyes the Joker was there. He was wearing a waiter’s outfit and he’d pulled his hair back in a bun — the loose curls falling — and he had a towel draped over one arm. Perhaps most surprising besides his actual presence was his lack of makeup; Bruce hadn’t thought he’d go without it again after escaping Arkham, yet aside from little flesh-colored spots over his scars his face was totally bare. He was watching Bruce’s expression for something, likely fear, but Bruce was first too surprised to remember he was supposed to show any, and then too angry. Even if he’d somehow managed to hear the Joker sneaking up on him from wherever prior to this encounter he wouldn’t have had time to get to his suit and change. And there was nothing he could do now to get away and get it on because the Joker and all his guests would wonder where Bruce Wayne had gone and how Batman had known to show up. Bruce wasn’t often stuck in positions like this and it made him even angrier to think that perhaps if he’d just left the bastard in the rain this wouldn’t be happening right now.

He drew in breath to speak — he had no idea what he was planning to say — and the Joker dropped his towel and his little amused half-smile and grabbed Bruce by the wrist, pinning it behind him and shoving his foot between Bruce’s, forcing his legs apart.

“I’d suggest,” he whispered, breath ghosting over the back of Bruce’s neck, “that you don’t talk right now.” Bruce felt the edge of a knife against his spine and went still; he had very little self-preservation left but he thought perhaps it would look odd if someone like him kept struggling when threatened. “I mean I haven’t even told you why I’ve come to your little soiree.”

Bruce bit down very hard on the inside of his mouth. Distantly he realized he could feel the Joker’s nails digging into the skin of his wrist; they’d grown back out since September. The Joker waited a beat, then said,

“Better. All right. Now. Why don’t we look at each other? I like eye contact.” He tugged his foot back and pulled on Bruce’s arm so that he turned. The knife was at his chest now, and Bruce was face-to-face with the Joker for the first time since September. His eyes were manic, the hellish green of them overpowering the hazel, and restless, and angry. In fact all of him was angry, radiating barely suppressed violence in the tension of his shoulders and in the line of his mouth. As it had been the night he escaped Arkham he was startlingly threatening even out of his usual regalia. Bruce wasn’t really sure if he forgot because of the strange sloping way the Joker usually held himself or if it was something else (the suit had platform boots) but it always surprised him more than it should to realize how broad the Joker’s shoulders were, and how tall he was. There was maybe an inch of difference between their heights. Bruce could feel his pulse jumping in his throat.

“So you’re Bruce Wayne,” the Joker said. He looked faintly amused again. “Gotham’s sugar daddy.”

Bruce nodded.

“You know who I am?”

“Sure,” Bruce said, evenly. “You’re the Joker. You’ve — ” he cleared his throat. “You’ve been here before.”

The Joker tilted his head. “Have I?” He slipped his knife up Bruce’s shirt — the point of it caught his top button and snagged in the thread — and rested it against his chin, pressing up a little, forcing Bruce to lean his head backwards. “I don’t remember seeing you around last time I visited.”

Well it’s my f*cking house, so, Bruce almost said, but he swallowed it back. “My, uh — I have security footage from the night of Harvey’s fundraiser.” His mind was racing. “I couldn’t be here personally but my butler was and I — he told me about you showing up. The fight you had with Batman.” He was looking at the Joker down the bridge of his nose. He watched the strange tilted mouth pull into a smile.

“The fight I had with Batman,” he murmured. “Yeah… I really f*cked your house up, didn’t I.”

“Uh,” said Bruce. “I mean, it’s — I fixed everything.” He couldn’t tell what the appropriate things were to say or not say. He’d had the replacement panes flown out within a few hours of the incident but he doubted the Joker would care about the trivialities.

The Joker lifted an eyebrow. “Pretty and efficient,” he murmured. “Too bad you’re not a whor*.”

Bruce didn’t know whether to be angry or insulted or if he should be anything at all. The Joker was after all a master at discomfort and baiting. Indeed he was watching Bruce with steadily growing amusem*nt — the smile from earlier returning — and Bruce thought, do not react; he wants you to react. But the problem still remained that he didn’t know what the hell was going on, or what he should do. Without the suit he was limited; he didn’t have anything to defend himself against real weapons and even if he and the Joker were in a clean fistfight the Joker might come out on top because Bruce wouldn’t be able to use his full strength else he should give himself away. For the first time in a while he felt a thread of real, genuine unease and tried to swallow it back or keep it from his eyes because if the Joker sensed it he knew it would all be over. He said,

“You wouldn’t be able to afford me,” and then winced; was it too much? But the Joker only laughed, a bit less raucous than normal, likely to avoid attention, and he said,

“You know what? I like you already.” He flipped the knife over in his hand; pressed it again to Bruce’s chest. “So I’m just going to make this very short and sweet for you. I’ve recently had an opening come up in my ranks and I’d love if you were the one who filled the gap.”

Bruce’s eyebrows furrowed. “You — what?”

The Joker rolled his eyes a little. “Much as I’d enjoy it I can’t operate alone,” he said. “One of my group recently found himself unemployed — not his choice — and I need someone to take his place.” His tongue flicked out. He trailed the knife back up Bruce’s neck. “I thought you might be interested.”

Unemployed probably meant dead. Bruce knew Batman wasn’t responsible; likely the Joker had just gotten bored with whoever it was, or perhaps he’d gone back to Arkham and been set upon. It happened, sometimes while the doctors watched. They didn’t bother covering up for it anymore, though Bruce was himself on the board and often in the past had expressed his displeasure over it.

Then the full weight of what the Joker was asking hit him and he felt his pulse jump hard against the knife’s edge. “I’m — ” he began, slowly, and the Joker’s amused expression tightened into something more dangerous, and more subtle.

“It wasn’t really a question, you know,” he said.

Instinctively Bruce glanced over his shoulder but no one else in clown masks appeared in the hallway to knock him out or else hold a gun to his head. When he looked back at the Joker he was studying him, animal curiosity. Again like clear water the strange familiarity passed through Bruce’s mind.

“So you want me to join your gang,” Bruce said. “Can I ask why?”

“Oh, it’s really quite simple,” the Joker said. “Bruce Wayne, billionaire, Gotham’s savior. I enjoy, uh, knocking things out of order. Morality is only subjective. We’re all just waiting to crumble.”

Bruce was trying to keep his expression neutral, but it was hard — he knew the Joker meant Harvey, and he knew also that Bruce Wayne didn’t know about Harvey Dent’s plunge into darkness. He bit the inside of his mouth again.

“If I pushed you,” the Joker said, “how far would you fall?”

“So it’s — an experiment,” Bruce said.

The Joker smiled. He knocked the blade of the knife against Bruce’s jaw — he didn’t do it hard, but Bruce flinched anyway, because he knew it was expected of him.

“What have you done for this city anyway,” the Joker said. “You see a problem and what — you pile money on it. Handful after handful of it. You think you’ve fixed anything? You think this city is any better off than it was five, ten years ago? Look at what you’re doing tonight. I blew that hospital up, you’re gonna rebuild it, and I’ll just blow it up again. You’re wasting time. You’re wasting Gotham’s time, and you’re wasting my time.” He slid the knife down, and then he stepped back, unexpectedly. He was still gripping Bruce’s arm; his hands were clean, except for the nails, which had traces of paint or perhaps blood in the beds of them. “You’re just a trust fund kid with a hero complex,” he said, and Bruce almost laughed, because if the Joker knew —

“My parents — ” he started, and the Joker exhaled. God help him Bruce recognized the sound from past run-ins; the Joker was getting impatient, and also likely bored.

“Your parents are dead,” he said. “I want to know who Bruce Wayne is when he’s not solving other people’s problems by ruining their f*cking lives.” He dropped Bruce’s wrist; the place where he’d been holding him was sore, and nearly numb. “What are you going to do when money doesn’t fix one of your problems. You’ve got to learn sometime. I’m just expediting the process. You could say I’m doing you a favor.” He slipped his knife into his pocket, and picked the towel up from the floor. Again unexpectedly Bruce was struck at how young he was, and how tired he looked, in spite of his anger and the tension coiling outwards from every inch of his body. “You can tell me your final decision tomorrow.” Reaching again into his jacket he pulled from it a joker card; it was creased along the middle and stained in blood, and he tossed it at Bruce’s feet. In the time Bruce took to bend and pick it up the Joker disappeared down the hallway. Bruce would have assumed it was some type of horribly vivid hallucinatory dream except that his hands were shaking.

He looked at the back of the card. There was an address scrawled on it, messy capitals, some place Bruce didn’t know in the Narrows, and a time. Bruce folded the card and slipped it into his pants. He took a second to breathe out, then he walked back to the room. No one looked up at his entrance; even Alfred had vanished somewhere in the crowd. He took up a glass of sparkling cider from a nearby table and stood for a long time watching them, and thinking, but in the end it was hardly a decision at all. Rachel’s presence everywhere, and Bruce’s mind still whirling from the rush he’d felt when the Joker had initially cornered him. Rachel’s senseless death at the hands of the same man who had somehow broken into Bruce’s house twice. If the Joker wanted an experiment, fine. But Bruce could experiment too. He knew just as well as the Joker how to manipulate and twist things for his own gain. If he infiltrated the Joker’s gang it would be the easiest thing in the world, like slipping on the suit, simpler than breathing, to wrap himself up in their petty squabblings and their secrets, and to take them down from the inside, one at a time, until at last even the Joker crumbled.

In theory Bruce had wanted to pick a car that would seem less conspicuous in the Narrows. In practice of course this proved to be essentially impossible as all his cars were either antiques or they were Lamborghinis. He couldn’t even take his second sturdiest car besides the recently renovated Tumbler (the Plymouth) as it was the car he’d picked the Joker up in back in September. In the end he picked his father’s favored classic Mustang — blood red, with leather seats — and told Alfred he was going for a drive down the coast. He put the address into the GPS he’d forced himself to install and spun out onto the road. Getting to the Narrows was about as bleak a trip as it ever had been; the sidewalks and buildings seemed grimier the further he traveled, and as he passed into the unofficial barrier of it he smelled through his air vents a certain pervasive odor which clung to every facet of his car and his clothes.

The further Bruce drove the more he recognized — this was the place, or approximately, where he’d taken the Joker as Batman. He began to be vaguely nervous that perhaps it was all a setup for the Joker to reveal he knew Bruce’s identity and to blackmail him into something terrible or else just kill him outright. But when his GPS pinged his arrival and he pulled up alongside the curb nothing happened aside from a thin-faced kid sticking his head out a window in the next block to stare momentarily at his car. He didn’t know if he was supposed to wait or get out but he decided that Bruce Wayne, billionaire, wouldn’t make the choice for himself. So he sat looking out at his surroundings. It wasn’t quite the same warehouse where he’d dropped the Joker off in September, but it carried a not-dissimilar air of abandonment and neglect. The air was chilly, not quite cold, and inside the car Bruce’s skin felt clammy. The clouds seemed like to sink into the soaked ugly pavement.

There was a knock on Bruce’s driver’s side window and he startled, banging his knee on the underside of his steering wheel. One of the Joker’s henchmen was standing there outside his car and though he had a clown mask pulled down over his face Bruce could tell he was being laughed at. He pushed down an unexpected surge of anger — heat rising in his face — and rolled the window down a little:

“Hi.”

The henchman was not-subtly checking out the inside of his car. Possibly a little impressed by the make, but mostly just looking for weapons. He had one hand dangling at his side; the other was in his jacket, concealing a handgun. “Bruce Wayne?” he said.

“Yes,” said Bruce. He wondered how terrified he should try and sound. Then he wondered if he was a little genuinely nervous after all; he had nothing with which to defend himself, and behind him in the rearview mirror he could see two other henchmen skeleton key-picking his trunk so they could look inside.

The henchman at his window made a noise. “I can’t f*cking — ” he made it again, and Bruce realized he was trying not to laugh — “believe the boss actually wants you of all people — ”

Bruce offered him a tight smile.

“I mean no offense but what the f*ck can you even do for us,” he said.

Bruce shrugged, one-shouldered. He held up the card. “He just said to come here,” he said. “That’s all I know. I’m not sure what I’m doing, either.”

Through the tiny slits in the mask Bruce saw the guy roll his eyes. “For f*ck’s sake,” he muttered, and then, “Okay, get out of the car.” He gestured with the hand not stuck inside his jacket and Bruce opened the door and stepped out. There was a pat-down and a completion of the car inspection during which the first henchman stood beside Bruce like he thought he might try to run.

“It’s a nice f*ckin’ car,” one of the other henchmen said from under the carriage.

Bruce tried not to think about what he would do if it got stolen or if they rigged it to explode. He had certain devices concealed within that would detect basic alterations like a tracking device or something similar but if they cut the gas line or tied a bomb to the brakes —

“Relax, Wayne,” said the henchman standing beside him. “Nothing’s going to happen to you or your pretty f*cking car. Boss doesn’t do sh*t like that to his own and he don’t let it happen to us either. Okay?”

His own. Bruce wondered what the f*ck exactly he was doing here. Carefully, he nodded, and then his car was pronounced clean and they led him around it and into the warehouse. It was colder inside with the draft coming from the busted-in ceiling and no central heating, but they had space heaters plugged into a few outlets and the minute Bruce and the others were inside the door was shut. A couple of the men glanced up at the door opening and then down again. They were maskless and Bruce recognized a few of them from Arkham. They must have been told he was coming because aside from one or two slightly creased brows no one reacted to his presence. Or perhaps they were only too frightened of the Joker to speak out.

The henchman who had spoken most directly to Bruce outside told him to wait. When he had gone — the others standing close beside Bruce as though daring him to run or else, handguns concealed poorly beneath their own jackets — Bruce looked around, storing the layout and the placements of its various tools within his mind for later use. It was mostly an open space; clearly a work area, not for living in, though there were pellets on the floor. They had a weapons arsenal — guns, knives, bombs — and copious amounts of gasoline, and dynamite, and grappling hooks. In the back where the warehouse had once been functional Bruce saw a truck in the old loading dock, its back open, a couple of henchmen sitting inside counting goods on charts. There were maybe twelve men altogether not counting Bruce and his companions who were doing various jobs. It was, Bruce had to admit, really a very impressive operation.

Then from his left Bruce heard footsteps, and the familiar nasal voice: “Well, well, well. You actually came,” and he braced himself, and turned, and faced the Joker. He was wearing his face paint for the first time that Bruce had seen him since late July; the red was smeared a little over his cheeks and his fingers were still colored with it, ivory and crimson. He was dressed as he had been at Major Crimes, the garish violet pinstriped pants and lavender shirt and green vest, sans overcoat, and he walked forward with the old strange loping grace.

“Bruce Wayne,” he said, when he’d gotten close enough they could have shaken hands were this a normal business transaction.

Bruce cleared his throat. Beside him he could feel the presence of the other henchmen; even the ones he had not come in with had stopped what they were doing to watch covertly beneath their brows. His heart was thudding a little painfully against his ribs; he’d worn his most casual clothes and still he felt as though he’d come into a situation for which he was woefully unprepared. Likely he could punch all of them in their throats and steal their guns if he absolutely needed to but how dangerous of an idea that sounded to him, even now, just standing here and barely contemplating it —

“I’m flattered you squeezed this appointment into your very busy schedule,” the Joker said. “No one else thought you were going to show up, but I had faith in you. Isn’t that right?” He glanced at the others. No one answered. Bruce kind of thought he would shoot them out of sheer annoyance; his hands were twitching restlessly at his sides, but after a moment he only sighed exaggeratedly and said, “Do you have an answer for me?”

“Yes,” said Bruce.

“I hope it’s a good one,” the Joker said. His eyes like flint beneath the paint.

“I guess it depends on who you ask,” said Bruce, for the second time without thinking. Now everyone really was staring, hands poised over guns with oil-soaked rags for cleaning or filthy nails paused midway through the construction or deconstruction of a bomb. The henchman who had commented on Bruce’s car sucked in a breath. But the Joker after a moment only huffed, short amused sound.

“Bruce Wayne,” he said again. “You must have some kind of death wish, the way you talk to me.”

“I do sit through a lot of really boring meetings,” Bruce said.

The red-smeared mouth twitched. He was looking at Bruce with his head a little tilted and after a moment he said, “So are you going to keep us all in suspense or do we get to know whether the lofty deigns to leave his perch?”

“I — deign, yeah,” Bruce said, glancing a little uncomfortably at the others. The Joker made a delighted sound and suddenly his hand was on Bruce’s jaw, turning his head back to face him. Perhaps because their past two encounters had been off the Joker’s turf or perhaps because he hadn’t been in his traditional outfit or perhaps only because Bruce hadn’t been looking for it but for the first time he caught the Joker’s scent: gunpowder, and the faint chemical odor of his greasepaint, and of his hair dye; sweat, and blood, and gasoline. It was a heady mixture that did not for some reason immediately repulse Bruce and he had to take a second to reorient himself. The Joker had taken his hand off Bruce’s jaw but he could feel the lingering echo of the cold dry skin on his, and the faint scratch of his long nails.

“Look at me when you say it,” the Joker was saying. “Unless you’re pledging loyalty to them,” with a nod at his followers, who had some of them resumed their tasks with a perceptible air of reluctance.

“I’m not, no,” Bruce said. He cleared his throat; it always seemed so dry around the Joker, for no reason. “I, yes, I want to join you. I’m here to accept the, the invitation.”

Behind him barely audible he heard a rustle of fabric. The Joker’s eyes cut over Bruce’s shoulder, and then back to him; he said,

“Are you positive?” and when Bruce said yes, he really meant it, the Joker said all right, and then unexpectedly he lunged forward and grabbed for the first henchman’s gun. He startled backwards and the Joker pointed the barrel over Bruce’s shoulder and pulled the trigger. There had been a silencer on the gun but still there was a light ringing in his ears through which he heard a body fall. When he turned it was the henchman who had looked through his trunk. He was honestly surprised for the first time in a while (discounting last night’s incident, in which the Joker had broken into his f*cking house) and stared for a moment at the body with its head wound still bleeding freely and the smell of cordite in the air.

“Bruce is my guest,” the Joker said, coolly. “No one’s going to be looking at him funny or pointing guns at him or anything else. I thought we’d already agreed to that? Or do I need to repeat myself?”

f*ck me, Bruce thought absently. He was aware on some level that he was likely failing in his — whatever, awareness, if someone had just been pointing a gun at his back and he hadn’t even realized it, but he put it down to having his whole focus on the man standing before him. The others were glancing at each other; a few of them shook their heads, but silence seemed to be answer enough. Bruce watched two henchmen take the body away. The blood trailed in overbright droplets across the concrete.

Handing the gun back to the first henchman the Joker stepped closer still to Bruce, so that he could see all the cracks in his greasepaint, the lines of his scars and the dark roots of his hair. “As far as you’re concerned, Wayne,” he said, more quietly, “you’re on probation. You understand that?”

“Sure, yeah,” Bruce said.

“You might be the prettiest guy I’ve ever hired,” the Joker said. “But we’ve still got rules. If you’re not useful enough to me, or if our little experiment fails — ”

“I can be useful,” Bruce said. He wasn’t even sure what he was talking about. Bruce Wayne didn’t have the same skill set as Batman, or anyway he wasn’t supposed to. He wasn’t sure how much he could get away with doing without giving everything away. Then again he also wasn’t sure how long he’d have to fully infiltrate this operation and blow it up from the inside without getting himself killed first because the Joker got bored with him.

The Joker was watching him. Out of the corners of his eyes Bruce saw the other henchmen slowly going back to their jobs; the atmosphere was relaxing, by degrees. Outside the wind had picked up against the corrugated steel of the roof. The Joker’s tongue flicked out against his mouth and he folded his arms.

“I certainly hope so,” he said.

There wasn’t much they wanted from Bruce on the first day. The Joker slunk off not long after Bruce’s initiation to take care of whatever business he had and left Bruce with the two henchmen who had initially greeted him and inspected his car. They all went by nicknames, they explained, because the Joker liked it better that way. Like Holes, one of them explained, except deadlier.

“I’m Cornell,” said the one who had tapped Bruce’s window. “That’s Reznor,” indicating the man who had complimented Bruce’s car.

Bruce almost smiled. “As in — ”

“Right,” said Cornell, who had lifted the clown mask off his face — he was a big guy, muscular, with close-cropped hair and a tight line between his eyebrows. “We also have a Vedder and a Kowalczyk and a Cobain… even a Byrne.”

“Who — ” Bruce hesitated. “Who did he kill?”

“Yorke,” Reznor said, glancing at the place where the body had fallen — the dark stain in the concrete. “So maybe leave your Kid A at home for a couple days.”

This was perhaps the least expected — like, the last possible thing Bruce would have ever expected to hear. He’d been away for most of the nineties but he knew the music, kind of, or anyway the more well-known pieces; it was good for when he needed to get out of his head, which of late was most of the time. The idea of the Joker sitting around and listening to it, though — naming his henchmen after the lead singers —

“So listen,” Cornell said, handing Bruce another one of the joker cards; this one was a little less creased, and not covered in blood, though it did smell of cigarettes, and the material of it was discolored. “This is the time and place we’re meeting next. You’re coming and you’re not supposed to, you can’t say anything. Or do anything. You just stand there. You watch. You’re on probation.”

“I’m aware,” Bruce said, a little dry. “I remember when the Jo— when the boss told me like, five minutes ago.” Slow down, sport, said a voice in his head that sounded a little like his dad — the lingering bits of him he remembered, anyway. Sometimes it was still jarring to realize he actually could no longer recall either of his parents’ voices, or really their faces, except in dreams — smudged oil outlines, and the shape of his dad’s mouth, because Bruce’s had the same shape. He wondered how long it would be before that started happening with Rachel.

Cornell narrowed his eyes further. “Look,” he said, quietly. “It’s what I said outside, Wayne. I don’t know what the f*ck the boss wants you here for. You get away with saying that dumb sh*t to him for whatever reason — but you can just cut it the f*ck out around the rest of us.”

“Yeah, you don’t get your rich boy pass here,” Reznor said.

The ugly selfish part of him he generally repressed — the part he drew on when he needed to especially promote his image as stupid billionaire playboy in the media, the antithesis of the equally hated part he drew on for his violence, and his unhingedness — snarled, my ‘rich boy pass’ keeps both of you on welfare with decent clothing and a place to put your filthy f*cking heads every night. But of course he didn’t say anything. His rich boy pass also kept them doped up and abused at Arkham, after all.

“Sure,” he said, biting back the Batman-part of him (the violent antithesis) that wanted to bust their lips open and break their wrists, offering a tight smile instead as he pocketed the joker card. “Sorry. I’m learning.”

Cornell and Reznor glanced at each other. “Just come to the f*ckin’ meeting, Wayne,” Cornell said. “You don’t wanna f*ck up this early into it.”

“Of course not,” Bruce said, still smiling. He maintained it all the way out the warehouse — offering a wave to the others as he went, because why not — and up until he’d reached his car. He sat for a moment in silence with his hands white-knuckled against the steering wheel, feeling himself come down from it. He could still smell the cordite on his skin.

This was his life now, or part of it. He’d chosen to do this. Likely there were easier ways of taking the Joker’s gang down. But Bruce had never found any, and anyway he was not unused to deception, to running around secretly pretending to be one thing or another. If he could handle being Batman, he could handle being this.

He just wasn’t sure for how long.

Chapter 2 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Upon returning to the city proper he went straight to Wayne Enterprises where after a few choice phone calls he managed to land what he thought were some good deals on Gotham General from several of the benefactors who had attended his fundraiser. The psychiatrist seemed pleased with the results as did the people who were rebuilding the chapel. Then he had to attend some meetings during which he drew terrible cramped approximations of Edvard Munch’s The Scream on the lined paper where he was supposed to be taking notes. Lucius asked him privately a little later how things were going, and he lied and said everything was fine, and then he went home and told Alfred he had business plans tomorrow that would take an unknown amount of time and so to either avoid or cancel anything else. Then he swallowed an Ambien and went to bed.

In the morning he was still unsure as to his decision and whether he could handle it but he went to the meeting anyway. He took again the Mustang which was probably a stupid idea but which also remained his least threatening, least conspicuous car. The meeting was in the basem*nt of one of the mob restaurants. Bruce had to bypass the bartender and the few patrons having early lunches. The bartender gave him an odd look, and Bruce wondered if he would say anything, but after a moment he only went back to cleaning out the filthy glasses with a rag. Frank Sinatra was playing on the jukebox. Bruce went to the basem*nt door around the back and knocked three times as the card instructed; one of the henchmen let him in, patted him down, and sent him to the others. There were seven of them including Cornell and Reznor. If they were surprised to see him Bruce couldn’t tell; they had their masks on again. The Joker himself was not there; Bruce wondered if he should comment on it. Instead he began, tentatively:

“So what’s — ” but Cornell held up a finger.

“Shut up,” he said. “I told you, today you’re here to observe. Just listen, okay, Wayne? Can you do that?”

It turned out he could, or at least that he could fake it very well. Bruce employed tactics similar to those he used when sitting through hours of boring meetings: he stood to the side, head a little lowered in deference to the others, and watched out the corners of his eyes as they conducted their interrogations. As Batman he’d seen a few of the men they were questioning; they were former members of the mob, the last remnants of the system the Joker had dismantled so quickly back in July. It was occasionally still shocking how even the Falcone crime family was struggling to reorient itself following the Joker’s overhaul of the city. The Joker wanted more weapons, or something; Bruce wasn’t really listening, though if Cornell or the others glanced his way he made every effort to appear otherwise. And his acting must have been better than he thought, because some days after this initial interrogation he was asked to come back — a card pressed into the folds of his wallet, somehow, when he was surveying the plans for the refurbished hospital. He went to two more meetings like the first — basem*nts of mob restaurants, smelling like the grease fires above and the cooking fat and oil and punctuated throughout by the sound of the cooks arguing half in Italian. In between these meetings (Bruce always standing in the background, silent, while Cornell half watched him and half watched the proceedings) he went to things concerning Wayne Enterprises; also he listened to the police radio, trying to ignore the stabs of guilt he felt when he heard the Joker’s activities being broadcast and knowing he was actively aiding in them rather than stopping them; and he worked out sometimes at midnight in the gym at his penthouse, once listening to OK Computer on his iPod, thinking about Yorke — the henchman, not the singer — and the spread of his blood across the stone floor. Alfred watched him unsubtly and worriedly but of course didn’t bring anything up. Bruce wasn’t sure if he wanted him to.

Two weeks into the whole thing, he began feeling a little — dissatisfied. He hadn’t seen the Joker since their first meeting in the warehouse. He didn’t know what Cornell or any of the others were telling him. He assumed it was satisfactory enough, since the cards kept arriving. But he wasn’t sure why they kept calling him back just to stand in the corner and watch things going on. The guys they were interrogating were small-time criminals, even the ones from the mob, and they never even looked Bruce’s way because Cornell kept him hidden in the shadows. He hadn’t been asked to participate and he hadn’t been given any sort of instructions outside of stay out of the way, keep your mouth shut, don’t f*cking breathe unless we tell you. He had no idea how the f*ck he was supposed to gain their trust — gain the Joker’s trust — with his back against the f*cking wall, and his hands in his pockets.

The thing was there was probably no limit to what any of them would do, in the end. He’d only seen very mild things in these first weeks but he was used to smashing criminals’ heads into brick walls to knock them out or else beating them into submission with his fists and he knew the Joker had even less inhibitions than he did — if he had any at all. If he wanted to gain their trust he’d have to do something big, probably. Maybe they were waiting for him to make the first move; it didn’t seem likely, given how fond Cornell and Reznor and the others were of glowering at him when he showed up to the meetings, but anything was possible. He could take initiative; he’d seen them at work enough, he knew what they wanted, the basic patterns of their tactics. They were not dissimilar to certain of the tactics he employed while interrogating people as Batman. This needed to work. He needed to infiltrate the gang and destroy every evil underhanded part of it. But he needed them to actually think he was on their side, first.

How far are you willing to go? Thomas’ voice again. How far will you go for the man who killed Rachel? Will you be party to the same types of orchestrations? Will you set up another chain of events like the ones from that night, and lead the lambs to slaughter, and ruin one more life?

He didn’t know. He didn’t know. But one thing was clear: the Joker was the reason Rachel was dead. He’d lied knowing what Bruce would do, which side he’d pick, and Bruce had played into it, he’d been weak and foolish, and she was gone. They’d done that together, and he couldn’t apologize, not to her, and not to Harvey, either. But he could keep it from happening a third time. He could drag the Joker through hell; he could knock him down, leave him struggling in the dirt, rip him apart, destroy every inch of him, all his lies and his manipulations, every second he’d made Bruce suffer, every second he’d made Harvey suffer. Bruce could go pretty far to ensure there was vengeance for that. He’d already shaped his entire life around vengeance for a single night in an alleyway. He knew he was more than capable. Assimilation at any cost.

It occurred to him in a sort of detached way that even when he’d revealed he was double-crossing the Joker and had him brought in, he’d never be able to tell him he’d done it for Rachel, or even for Harvey, because the Joker couldn’t know he was Batman. But he’d deal with that when he got to it. Maybe he’d get his satisfaction in a different way, in the end.

At the beginning of the third week of October, a joker card was slid beneath Bruce’s glass of water at a restaurant when he went to the bathroom during a business lunch. The woman he was eating with didn’t seem to have noticed anything, and as soon as he sat back down she started chattering again about her garden, and how next spring she was going to plant lilies, because her grandmother loved them. Half-listening, Bruce slid the card out from under his glass and set it down in his lap. The water had smudged some of the ink but it was still legible: Back alley. Come soon. Bruce sighed; he forced himself to spear another green bean, and then he said,

“Excuse me for a minute, Courtney — I just remembered I have to make a phone call.”

“Of course,” she said, waving her hand. Bruce got to his feet again; walked out the door. The restaurant alley was half a block away, due to the size of it, and it reeked of garbage, but Cornell and Reznor were standing just outside it. Reznor was smoking a cigarette.

“This isn’t a great time,” Bruce said, glancing over his shoulder. “I’m with a colleague.”

“Oh, so sorry we forgot to cater our schedule to yours,” Cornell said, rolling his eyes. “Next time we’ll f*ckin’ page you first, Wayne, huh? Would that make it easier for you?”

Bruce folded his arms. “What do you want?”

Cornell looked at Reznor, who sighed, and stamped out his cigarette. “Boss wants you on the next interrogation,” he said. “It’s tomorrow, it’s a — well, it’s a shakedown, we’re trying to get this f*cker Richmond to fork over the parts he owes us and he’s being a bitch about — ”

“Richmond?” Bruce said, and Reznor blinked at him. Cornell exhaled sharply.

“You f*ckin’ deaf? He said Richmond, yes, let him — ”

“I know a Richmond.”

Another eye roll. “Good for you, Wayne, I’m sure there’s a thousand f*cking Richmonds in the city — ”

Bruce sighed. “Just — who is it?”

Cornell glanced at Reznor, who shrugged. Cornell groaned. “His name’s Josh. Joshua Richmond. He’s this old f*ck we’ve been doing business with for a while now, don’t really know him very — ”

“Yeah. I thought so. He used to work for me,” Bruce said, and relished the surprise that passed over Cornell and Reznor’s faces before they could hide it. “I know his family. Not, like, insanely well or anything, but we have employee records at the company, of course, and I could — I mean, if it would help — ” What the f*ck was he doing? Assimilation at any cost, but was this the cost? He didn’t even know where the suggestion had come from —

— though he did remember Lucius’ sonar, and how he’d tapped every single phone in the city to chase a man down and throw him off a building —

— but he could feel his heart in his throat, watching Cornell consider it. Finally he said,

“You could hack the files? Get information on his family? Stuff about his wife, his kids, whatever?”

“I own the company, so I wouldn’t have to hack anything, but — yes. I could get that for you.” It was just a job. He was good at coming up with things for his company and he could be good at coming up with things for this company. He was just acting. He needed this to work. If this was what it took for them to trust him —

“Okay.” Cornell was frowning at him, but he was also nodding, albeit slowly. “Okay, so, you get the information now, and — ”

“I told you, I’m having lunch with — ”

“Now, Wayne. This thing is tomorrow. We’re not f*cking catering to you just because your company could buy out the state.”

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. Reznor was texting rapidly on his Nokia; after a moment he said, “Boss likes the idea,” which — great, that was exactly what Bruce wanted. The Joker’s approval was only the first step, but it was a huge step, and he made himself smile, and he said,

“I’ll go pay my check, and I’ll get started on this right away. How do you want me to get the information to you?”

“Reznor will come by your building in an hour. Can he get in the lobby or will he need you to buzz him in.”

“The lobby’s fine — ”

“Great.” Cornell pushed past Bruce and headed down the sidewalk. “One hour, Wayne,” he called over his shoulder. Reznor followed him, pulling out another cigarette as he went. Bruce watched until they crossed the street, heading for a McDonald’s; then he went back into the restaurant. Courtney accepted his lie that an emergency had come up — it wasn’t entirely a lie, anyway — and flagged their waiter down while Bruce wrote out his half of the bill. He stuck the check under his plate, apologized to her again, and ducked out. It wasn’t a far walk back to the building, and he took the elevator to the uppermost floor of the business section, where the files were kept on employees. Josh Richmond was buried deep in the back, because he’d retired nearly ten years prior, but once Bruce extracted the file — he could have gone into the company server, but he didn’t want any electronic proof he’d done this, just in case — it was easy to find what he knew Cornell wanted, and what he’d offered. By the time Reznor arrived Bruce was already waiting in the lobby for him.

“He has grandchildren at Wayne Day,” Bruce said quietly. “We can go there tomorrow morning and follow his car.”

Reznor raised an eyebrow; evidently he hadn’t thought Bruce would really do it. This pissed him off, for some reason.

“Can I have the file?” Reznor asked, but Bruce shook his head:

“I’m not risking any copies getting filtered into the wrong hands and backlash landing on me. If the boss wants me on the job in the morning then I’m going with you or with Cornell or whoever it is he’s assigning this thing to. I can give the information then.”

“You’re not in any position to f*cking negotiate terms — ”

“The boss said he wanted me there. What the f*ck use am I if I give you the file now? I have a photographic memory, I won’t forget anything I read on Richmond just now. It’s safer in my head than out where literally anyone could get hold of it. No offense, but I have way more at stake doing this than any of you — ”

“Oh, man,” Reznor snorted, “none taken, asshole — ”

“Look, I’m just saying — ”

“I get what you’re saying.” Reznor glared at him, taking a step back. “You are a f*cking piece of work, Wayne. Cornell’s right, I have no idea why the f*ck the boss hired you.” He kept his eyes levelly on Bruce’s for a long time, and Bruce stared right back, watching peripherally the rush of people around the two of them. He wondered what they were thinking, seeing him just standing there. At last Reznor sighed; he pulled out his phone again, and shot off a text, and some minutes later he said, “All right. Cornell’s gonna pick you up tomorrow morning. You’d better have some damn good sh*t to tell him.”

“I will.” Bruce shoved his hands in his pockets so Reznor wouldn’t see them trembling. “I will.”

Reznor just shook his head. As he walked out, Bruce saw him snatch up some of the complimentary mints from the front desk. They were really technically only for guests of the building. But he decided to let it go.

Bruce had assumed a Suburban would be too stereotypical for the Joker’s people but when Cornell pulled up to the bus stop the following morning at the corner of Edmonton and Burnside he was indeed in a black Suburban, cigarette smoke trailing from the driver’s side window. Bruce heard the locks pop from inside. He hesitated, glancing down the street, then got in. Cornell was already rolling his eyes as Bruce snapped his seatbelt.

“Don’t look to the left and the right, Wayne, for f*ck’s sake,” he said. “The point is to be as inconspicuous as possible, not to look like you’re dodging the f*cking police.”

“Sorry,” Bruce muttered, which earned him another eye roll. Cornell pulled out, and turned right. They drove in silence for most of the way, except for the radio which was playing, somewhat surprisingly, a Top 40 station. Cornell ashed his cigarette out his window when they were close to the school and held up his pack to Bruce with his eyebrows lifted a little. Bruce was so startled by this gesture that he took a cigarette and lit it with Cornell’s proffered lighter. He’d only smoked a handful of times in his life, usually at business functions to make himself seem more open and social, and the first inhale made him cough. Cornell laughed at him as he pulled over to the curb just outside the school zone and killed the engine. There was a line of cars waiting outside the gates, kids spilling out, waving to their parents as they headed in. Bruce saw the Richmonds’ van almost immediately, and pointed it out to Cornell, who nodded and settled back in his seat.

“So tell me about them,” he said. “This wealth of information you’re supposed to have. What is it?”

Bruce swallowed. The cigarette was hot between his fingers, and he took another drag on it to distract himself. “Well, um — ” He hesitated; he hoped Cornell would take it as his inexperience, and the nervousness that would inevitably come from a businessman trying his hand at crime. He watched the van doors open, and three children spilled out, holding their plastic lunchboxes and shoving at each other good-naturedly. “The guy who worked in my company — his name’s Josh Richmond. He and his wife Kathy are uh, they’re both in their early seventies, and he worked in the music industry for a long time before he switched over to Wayne Enterprises. He retired in ‘99. He and Kathy take care almost full-time of their grandchildren — ” pointing to the kids, who were running into the gate now, waving over their shoulders at the car — “Stella, Suzanne, and Daniel. But sometimes they live with their mom…” The longer he talked, the easier he found it to let the words spill out. He had no idea if what he was telling Cornell was even useful but Cornell never interrupted, or took his eyes off the van. And Bruce told him everything: more names, addresses. He told him things that wouldn’t necessarily lead back to him directly; other people could have easily known the things he said, and he and the Richmonds had never been close.

This was just a job, he reminded himself. He was an employee, and Cornell was his colleague, and he was giving him information on a client. That was how he had to look at it. That was how it was. This was what he’d wanted to do, and if this was how he had to do it then he’d do it this way. If gaining the Joker’s trust meant giving out a little information for an interrogation then okay. Bruce wouldn’t have to feel guilty about it later because he would turn the gang in to Gordon and save so many other people from this. This was his job, however temporarily. And Bruce had always been a good worker.

When he was done, he glanced at Cornell. Cornell’s expression hadn’t changed; there was something calculating in it Bruce didn’t really like, and after a moment he said, “You know, all of that information had better be correct. Because I’d hate to have to call the boss and tell him you wasted our time.”

“Call him if you want,” Bruce said, measuredly. “I didn’t lie about anything.”

The van’s brake lights flashed, and Cornell sighed. He cranked their engine again, and pulled out a little after. He followed the van across town, keeping a good two or three cars’ lengths behind it, until at last it pulled in at the parking lot of a Kinko’s. Cornell parked three lanes behind it and lit another cigarette. Bruce pitched his out his window. They both watched the car until the driver’s side door opened, and out stepped —

“f*ck,” said Cornell. “That’s not Kathy Richmond.”

It was a young woman, blonde. She shook her things down into her purse, locked her car doors, and started for the Kinko’s. Cornell turned blistering furious eyes onto Bruce.

“You f*cking lied to me — ”

“No,” Bruce said, straining to keep his voice even despite the soft strand of fear that had wound up his chest at the sight of her. “No, I didn’t. That’s the right car and those were the right kids, and that’s — that can be the right girl. It’s just a different girl than we were expecting.”

“Well then who the f*ck is it, Wayne?”

Bruce tightened his fingers against his knees. “Her name is Alice Richmond,” he said. “Remember, I mentioned her earlier — she’s the kids’ mother. Josh’s daughter-in-law. Her husband Donald was killed a few years ago in a car accident, and — ”

“How many years?”

Bruce frowned. “Why does that — ”

“It matters,” Cornell said, sounding close to murder, “because we cannot f*ck up any part of this job, Wayne. Do you understand that? No, of course you don’t,” he said, before Bruce could answer, “you’ve only ever sat in a cushy f*cking office and smiled at the pretty receptionist and had birthday cakes in the breakrooms and whatever the f*ck else. You’ve only ever owned your whole f*cking family’s company. It’s not like that with us. The boss is good to us. But only so long as we give him what he wants. The second we’re less than perfect, the second we don’t turn out the right information or collect enough profit or whatever, one little thing wrong, that’s it. And we aren’t just fired. We’re killed. Even me or Reznor. It’s not set in stone that you’re here, Wayne. So you need to tell me the exact number of years so I can know how to get to her. Because otherwise you might not get to go back to that safe pretty penthouse with the air-conditioning and the elevator. Okay?”

Bruce bit down on his lower lip. He stared at the Kinko’s entrance and thought for a bit and then he said, “Five. It was five years ago. I remember that because I hadn’t come back from — from studying overseas when it happened, and — ”

“You studied overseas?” Cornell snorted. “f*ck’d you do that for?”

“I — ” Bruce hesitated. His stupid rich Wayne persona would’ve come in handy right now, but in the end all he could say was, “I just… thought it was a good opportunity.”

Cornell rolled his eyes for the third time that morning. He tossed his cigarette out his window and rolled it back up before cutting the ignition. “What the hell could possibly be worth learning overseas that you couldn’t learn in some college here,” he said, though he didn’t really seem to expect any real answer. Bruce shrugged. He cracked his knuckles, remembering how much Alfred hated it. Then he said,

“It’s — it wasn’t worth it. It’s just some dumb sh*t I don’t use anymore.”

Cornell looked at him for a moment. Then he shrugged, got out of the car. He walked around to the trunk and retrieved a UPS outfit which he changed into in the spacious backseat. The nametag said Jorge. He shoved a cap over his hair, and then he grabbed an empty cardboard box and walked around to Bruce’s side of the car. He dropped the keys and his burner phone in Bruce’s lap through the open window.

“Anything goes wrong, you leave,” he said. “Don’t wait for me to come out. Call Reznor or Kowalczyk before you call the boss. Okay?”

“Okay,” Bruce said. Cornell hesitated, looking like he wanted to say something else — don’t f*ck this up, probably — but then he walked away. Bruce watched him enter the Kinko’s. He was in there for a while, and when he came out — sans box — he was walking with purpose. Bruce decided it would be best to start the car up while Cornell was still heading over, so he did, and unlocked the doors, but Cornell only slid into the driver’s seat and tossed his hat to the floor. He put the car in reverse and left the lot. It wasn’t until two blocks later that Bruce learned his information had gone through okay.

“She was so f*cking terrified,” Cornell said, laughing a little around his fresh cigarette. “You know — ‘oh, please, don’t hurt my kids, please, I’ll do anything’…” He pulled up to a red light and sat drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. “f*cking annoying c*nt,” he muttered. “She’s lucky Josh has the money he does so she can afford to suck the fat off her neck.”

Bruce felt something clench up in his chest tight and hot like a burning fist. He could feel Cornell’s eyes on him, watching for some kind of reaction, like he knew what Bruce was thinking, so he forced his face to stay neutral. He offered Cornell a little smile.

“You gonna tell the Joker I came through, then?”

The fourth eye roll. “Whatever.”

“So am I in?” Bruce asked.

This earned him an incredulous laugh. “f*ck no, Wayne,” he said. “What the f*ck. I told you, this isn’t a one-and-done job interview type position. You gave me one set of facts about one person, and it turned out to be right, but this was so small compared to everything else. You’re far from in. Now shut up — ” turning the radio louder — “I f*cking love this song.”

After Cornell dropped Bruce off at the penthouse he went down to his garage and drove out to the bunker where he pulled up the city’s security camera files on his computer. It wasn’t difficult to find the Kinko’s he was looking for, and within two minutes of that he’d hacked their CCTV. He rolled to the right timestamp, pulled up audio, and leaned back in his chair.

Alice walked in first. She handed the cashier a USB and they chatted for a while about the various files on it, and then about wedding cakes, for some reason. Then Cornell walked in, carrying his package. He set it on a table in the back and though the cashier was standing there eyeing him with curious expectancy — waiting, no doubt, to sign for it — he ignored her completely. He looked at the cards in the rack by the door and touched the highlighters and notebooks on the wall, and all the time, he stole occasional covert glances over his shoulder at Alice. Bruce had no idea why the cashier wasn’t suspicious, but after a while she seemed to have forgotten he was there to begin with.

Eventually Alice finished with her USB file transfer and walked to the back to make a copy. Cornell followed her, and Bruce switched to the second camera in time to see him stand behind her as though waiting in line. He reached out to touch her shoulder and she jumped, spinning around.

“You startled me!”

“I’m sorry,” Cornell said. “It is just that I think I know you from somewhere.” He was affecting a thick Spanish accent he didn’t have normally, but for some reason it seemed to set Alice at ease; Bruce watched the tension flood out of her shoulders and her face relax into a pleasant smile.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I just didn’t hear you come up behind me, that’s all.” She turned back to the copier, but before she could get the paper on the glass Cornell touched her shoulder again.

“I swear, I know you,” he said. Her eyebrows drew together, her smile growing a bit — not much — dimmer.

“I don’t — ”

“Si, si,” Cornell said, like he was just remembering something. “Yes, I know what it is. Your children are at Wayne Day Academy, isn’t that right?”

Her face shifted, the smile fading more steadily now. Bruce could see her working through the options in her head: was he a parent she didn’t know? A teacher? “I’m sorry,” she said, finally, “I’ve never — ”

“Stella, Suzanne, and Daniel, right?” Cornell said. “Your kids?”

Her shoulders stiffened back up. The smile was totally gone. “I — I’m — ”

“How are they doing?” Cornell asked, still with his fake accent. “Suzanne’s in — lacrosse, isn’t she? Fifth grade?”

Alice’s throat jerked as she swallowed. Her face was frozen, deciding between panic and anger. “Who are — ”

“And how are you, Alice? How’s the waitressing going? I’m surprised with a job like that you can afford to send the kids to that school. I’m surprised you can live in the neighborhood you do. Moon Terrace, right? 1755 Lakeside Drive? Or do you pay for it at all? Is that the work of the father-in-law, maybe? Josh Richmond?”

Her hands were claws against the copier. Her arms were shaking, the elbows locked. “You — how do you — ”

“Josh and Kathy love their grandkids, don’t they,” Cornell murmured. He’d stepped closer to Alice; he was almost whispering. “I’m sure they’d all hate to lose each other, especially after the accident.”

The color was draining from Alice’s face. “What?”

“Your husband, Donald? He was in a car crash five years ago, wasn’t he?”

“I — ”

“So you can understand, Mrs. Richmond, why I am trying to prevent your family suffering more loss. Your father-in-law owes us a shipment. He’s two days late on it, and for my boss, that’s just not acceptable. We’d really appreciate it if you could let him know that we’re waiting to hear from him about it.”

Alice’s mouth worked, but for a minute no sound came out. Finally: “My father-in-law doesn’t work; he’s retired — ”

“Si,” Cornell agreed softly. “But he took a new job. And like I say the boss doesn’t tolerate mistakes. So. We’d like if he’d deliver what he promised us. The sooner the better, okay?”

“S-Sure,” Alice said; her voice was completely dry. “I can — I can call him right now if you — ”

“No, no, that’s okay.” Cornell waved his hand. “You want to finish your errands, of course.” He reached out and took the piece of paper from Alice’s hand. Bruce watched his eyes flick over the writing; then he said, “This is a flyer for one of your children’s events?”

Alice closed her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. “My Stella’s dance recital.”

“How nice,” Cornell said. His eyes scanned the paper again, and Bruce realized with a jolt he was memorizing whatever was written there: the date, the time, the address. “So you can tell Josh that he has — what is that, a month and three days to deliver what he owes us? That’s an awfully generous amount of time, Mrs. Richmond. I don’t expect your father-in-law will make a mistake on this. Do you?”

“No,” she whispered. “No, of course not.”

He smiled at her, though her eyes were still closed. He handed her the flyer back, and her hands crinkled its corners with the force of their trembling. “Have a good day, Alice,” he said, softly, and he turned and walked back to the front. Bruce switched back to the first camera to watch as he purchased a pack of the colored highlighters he’d been admiring, and a pack of gum. He smiled at the cashier, whose eyes flicked to the cardboard box, then back to Cornell. She seemed to be considering telling him he was leaving his package, but apparently thought better of it and just wished him a good day. Bruce watched until Cornell walked out the door, the bell jingling behind him. Then he cut the feed and scraped his hands down his face.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t. He couldn’t give out information that would result in the potential deaths of children, of entire families. Batman would have already beaten Cornell to sh*t for that, put him back in Arkham for a few weeks at least. Long enough to get the Richmonds out of Gotham and into protective custody. Bruce couldn’t condone this, this violent, soulless behavior —

And yet. And yet he had to. Because it was just a job. It was just for now. If he got on their side and gained their trust through feeding them information, then he’d be saving so many lives in the long run. If he infiltrated the gang and took them down from the inside, if he had enough to give Gordon to put them all away for life, then so many families like the Richmonds wouldn’t ever have to suffer like this again. Hell, a month and three days was a long time. Bruce could potentially break through the gang before then if he kept his head down and kept feeding them information and kept his mouth shut. Because he had to. Because this couldn’t go on.

Momentarily he closed his eyes, and leaned his head on his forearms. He counted backwards from thirty. Then he straightened up, and drove back to the penthouse, where after heading up in his private elevator he poured himself a coffee, and headed down to his offices for the first meeting of the day.

“The boss was impressed.”

Cornell’s voice came from the other side of the gas pump, and Bruce nearly knocked his fuel nozzle out of the car. He wasn’t often startled and he didn’t like the feeling; to cover for it he set his mouth in a neutral expression and said,

“With what?”

There was a pause. He could see Cornell’s eyes over the pump. He was filling up a white van, and Bruce debated asking if he wanted him to go into the Circle K and buy him some candy to go with it. But he kept his mouth shut, and after a moment Cornell said,

“With the info you gave on Josh. f*ck else do you think? I told him how it all checked out and he said that was great, and he wants to see you in action since, quote, you’re ‘full of lovely surprises like a piñata’.”

Bruce snorted without meaning to. Then the full meaning of Cornell’s words hit him and he almost dropped the nozzle again.

“He wants to see me — ”

“Yeah. There’s a meetup tonight at the Quik and E-Z in that shopping center on Carter. A guy we know from Delaware is delivering a shipment of guns and the boss wants to be there personally since it’s his guns.”

Bruce breathed out. “And he wants me there because — ”

“Because you f*cking work with us, Wayne,” Cornell snapped. He shoved his own dispenser back into its chamber and walked around the pump to glare at Bruce. “You did a good job on the Richmonds and the boss wants to see what the f*ck else you’re capable of — personally I’m thinking he’s going to be a little disappointed, but — ”

“If I hadn’t given you that info you would have been f*cked,” Bruce interrupted quietly, hanging up his dispenser and collecting the receipt. “The boss won’t be disappointed.”

Cornell’s mouth tightened. But all he said was, “Just get your ass and that pretty f*cking car of yours down to Carter by ten, okay? If you’re not too f*cking busy.”

“I won’t be,” Bruce said coolly, and he slid into the driver’s seat. When he keyed the ignition the radio was blaring Nirvana: he’s the one who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, and he likes to shoot his guns… He could see Cornell in the rearview watching him, and he made sure to roll down his window and wave as he drove off.

It had been four days since the incident with Alice Richmond. Bruce was — surprised, for lack of a better word — that the Joker wanted to see him perform. Surprised, but not disappointed. This was working. His stupid reckless plan. He wondered what exactly the Joker was expecting from him, and if perhaps there was a way to make this go more or less favorably for him. Assimilation at any cost. How far was he willing to go. The same two thoughts, over and over. Vengeance for Rachel, and for Harvey, and for his city. Whatever he had to do.

As he pulled up to a stoplight he thought vaguely of how little necessity there was in his attempts at baiting Cornell or Reznor, or trying to prove himself to them, trying to impress, whatever the f*ck he was doing. He needed to look good for the Joker in particular, and for the gang overall; he needed their trust, but he himself didn’t need to feel anything real about it. Still, he supposed it was better if he genuinely believed he wanted their approval. It would make everything that much more convincing, in the end.

On the radio, a commercial started up for hair cream, and Bruce twisted the knob until the volume cut out, and he drove on.

“I thought the boss didn’t work with other gangs,” Bruce said, as he walked across the parking lot towards the laundromat, feet falling in the shadow he cast from the orange streetlight. This statement earned him, as usual, an eye roll from Cornell and Reznor. Despite his earlier talk with himself — or perhaps because of it — he felt another twinge of unexpectedly sincere desire to get them to stop. He wanted to say, look, I’m trying to get you to like me, I need you to like me, this f*cking needs to work, but of course he couldn’t; all he could do was stand back quietly and listen as Cornell explained that out-of-state gangs weren’t the same. The Joker didn’t necessarily view them as threats so much as competition, and that was okay. He needed contacts in other cities, anyway.

“In case anything goes wrong on our end,” Cornell said. “Then we’ll have guys outside the Gotham jurisdiction who can take up the slack for us. And anyway it’s good to have multiple sources and people who can vouch for whatever the f*ck’s going on in New York or wherever. I thought you’d appreciate that, considering what you do. Or are you just a sh*tty CEO?”

Reznor snorted. Bruce sighed. They’d reached the Quik and E-Z and as he pushed the door open he said, as neutrally as he could, “I was just asking so I could learn more about what we do. I’m just trying to be as attentive an employee as I can. I figure the more I know the less likely I am to f*ck up, and then you two won’t catch any sh*t for not training me right. Or would you rather I didn’t show interest?”

He thought another series of eye rolls were coming, but after exchanging glances Reznor and Cornell only walked in after him. The Joker, Kowalczyk, and a guy Bruce didn’t recognize were already inside; Kowalczyk set down his magazine — Home and Garden — and introduced the sixth guy as Weiland. He had on face paint similar to the Joker’s and Kowalczyk explained this while Cornell and Reznor set themselves up with their concealed knives and guns and stood to watch for the other gang.

“Weiland’s got asthma,” Kowalczyk said. “So he can’t wear the f*ckin’ clown mask. But he’s also got — y’know — ” he gestured vaguely at his face — “this massive f*ckin’ birthmark, it’s ugly as sh*t — ”

Weiland shoved him. “Shut the f*ck up,” he said, but he was laughing; they all were. Even the Joker looked moderately amused.

“ — so that’s, y’know, the most distinguishing mark any of us have, I mean, besides the obvious, and the police aren’t gonna take the boss down but they won’t f*ckin’ hesitate with anyone else, so he covers his face like that.” He paused, then, grinning: “And he picked the clown sh*t specifically ‘cause he wants to suck the boss’s co*ck,” and Weiland shoved him again, but he didn’t look especially annoyed. Bruce was surprised for some reason. He glanced at the Joker; there was a mild tightening of the skin around his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. After a moment Reznor said,

“So where’s Ashland?”

“Late as f*ckin’ usual,” Kowalczyk said. He lit a cigarette despite that New Jersey had outlawed most indoor smoking in 2006. Bruce sat in one of the cold plastic chairs surrounding the washers. He tried to look as though he knew what he was doing.

A woman came up to the door, bag of laundry in her arms. Cornell leaned against the frame and smiled at her, mostly teeth. “Sorry, sweetheart, we’re closed,” he said, but she didn’t seem to care until she looked around his shoulders and saw the Joker. He wasn’t doing anything, just leaning against one of the dryer units, smoking his own cigarette, but the woman at last seemed to decide it would be easier not to argue, and backed off. Bruce bit down on what he’d wanted to say which was, don’t be an asshole, she wouldn’t have been in the way, because even he knew that wasn’t true. Another few minutes went by, and then a group of four men came in, obviously not customers. Two skinheads with steroidally large muscles, maybe twins, and a guy with a white-blond mohawk, and a dark-skinned man with a rose tattoo on his cheek. One of the skinheads situated himself at the door; the other walked over to stand close to Reznor. The guy with the mohawk and the guy with the tattoo stood in front of the chairs.

“f*ckin’ finally, Ash, what the f*ck,” Cornell snapped.

“Sorry, traffic’s hell on 78, you know that,” Ashland — the guy with the mohawk — said. His eyes flicked between the six of them; when they lit on Bruce he frowned. “Who the f*ck is this?”

“New recruit,” the Joker murmured around his cigarette. He unfolded himself from the dryer, a languid, dangerous line. “He’s not important.”

“Not important?” Ashland’s eyebrows lifted just slightly, and he smiled at Bruce. “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“Yeah, probably seen him in your mom’s bed when you got home too early,” Kowalczyk muttered, and Weiland broke into laughter. One of the skinheads’ shoulders tensed, but Ashland waved him down.

“All good fun,” he said softly. “So listen, about that shipment I promised.”

The Joker folded his arms and tilted his head questioningly. Ashland took a breath.

“It’s gonna be a little later than I expected,” he said. Reznor frowned.

“What the f*ck, Ash.”

“What’s ‘a little late’?” the Joker asked. His voice was quiet, calm, but Bruce saw the tension starting up in his jaw. Ashland folded his arms too, and looked at the guy with the tattoo.

“Rollie’s guy got some dates mixed up,” he said, “and they don’t have the AK’s they told us about. So we’re not gonna get it to you for at least another week.”

Weiland dragged a hand down his face. “Oh, man.”

“Just a week?” the Joker asked. His voice was still calm. “You promise?”

Ashland raised one hand. “Swear on my mama’s titt*es,” he said. Turning to Bruce: “Which you would know all about, apparently.”

This time his guys all laughed. Cornell, Reznor, and Kowalczyk looked at each other. Bruce saw their hands go to their pockets.

“Well, see, the thing is,” the Joker said, “now I don’t know if I can trust you. Because you promised me arms last week. And apparently your dealers are too incompetent to work with a calendar. I want those guns. So I’m gonna go straight through the source.”

Ashland’s eyebrows drew together. “You said I could take half the cut — ”

“Ah, yeah, I did. But Ashland — ” he walked over to him, patted his shoulder — “I’m starting to wonder if you could even count that high.”

The guy with the tattoo — Rollie, apparently — pulled out his gun. Cornell and Reznor did the same; Kowalczyk and Weiland got their knives. This prompted the skinhead by the door to block it completely with his body while his brother pulled out a shotgun. Bruce slid as quietly as he could out of his chair and walked over to stand beside Cornell. He thought Cornell would snap at him but he was focused on Rollie. They were all standing in a circle around Ashland and the Joker, who still had his head tilted, a calm, almost pleasant smile on his face.

“Sensitive, isn’t he,” he said, nodding to Rollie.

“He just doesn’t like people touching me,” Ashland explained. “I’ve been stabbed one too many times.” Up close Bruce could see his eyes were a striking shade of ice blue. There was a tiny scar under one of them which curved over his cheekbone.

“Is it because you make sh*tty deals like this?” the Joker asked. Ashland’s mouth tightened.

“I told you, it’ll just be another week,” he said.

“Yeah, and then in a week it’ll be the same thing, and on, and on,” the Joker said. “You know, I don’t have an infinite amount of time to wait. Or infinite patience.”

“I can find a thousand other guys to sell to who’ll wait a f*ckin’ month if I ask,” Ashland snapped, and Bruce knew it was a mistake even before the Joker’s face changed. The pleasant smile dropped and he nodded at Cornell. Suddenly Cornell was grabbing Rollie by the arm, trying to dislodge the gun. It went off in the floor, and Reznor slid in, holding up his own gun, but one of the skinheads grabbed him by the hair. The Joker was aiming kicks and punches at Ashland, who seemed capable of dodging every wild swing the Joker threw at him, as though this was not the first time they’d fought. Kowalczyk and Weiland had their knives out and were trying to get in at Rollie and the other skinhead but with Rollie’s gun still loaded this was proving difficult. Bruce couldn’t see what was going on. For a moment he wished he had the suit; he could’ve just pushed his way in, without fearing the bullets or the blades, and grabbed Ashland by the collar, and hauled him back. It would’ve put him in a position of power over him, and it might have added a modicum of respect to the Joker’s opinion of him. But he didn’t have the suit, he hadn’t brought any weapons because they’d told him not to, they’d said this would go smoothly… Everything was confused, and the Joker was still fighting in his usual unhinged, untrained way, punching and kicking without reason, and Cornell was twisting Rollie’s wrist, and Reznor was trying to get at his own gun to shoot the skinhead in the jaw, and then —

— the Joker looked at Bruce. It was just for a second, and Bruce thought it was just a reflexive glance over his shoulder until he saw the Joker’s eyes. He was looking from Bruce down to his foot. When Bruce looked too he saw the Joker had trapped a knife — his or someone else’s — beneath the sole of his shoe. He must have done it sometime when he was flying at Ashland; Bruce had to admire the way he was able to act, fluidly, seamlessly. How he always had the element of surprise; one second there was nothing in his hand, the next a bomb. His hands were occupied currently with fighting off Ashland, and Bruce rushed in. The Joker aimed a kick at Ashland’s stomach, and Bruce grabbed the knife. He did not think. When Ashland doubled over from the blow Bruce grabbed his arm, twisting it behind his back. He got the knife against Ashland’s throat. Ashland struggled against him, but Bruce gripped his wrist harder. Even without the suit he discovered it was easy, easier than he’d assumed it would be, to hold on, distributing his weight so that he could sort of hold Ashland against him. He could feel his pulse jumping against the knife. Suddenly everyone was looking at the two of them. The Joker stepped back, breathing hard. His hair fell into his eyes.

“What was that about selling to someone else?” he asked, still in that same soft voice from earlier. “Do you really want to find another buyer? I think it’s a little late in the game for that, unless you’re really that confident.”

Ashland swallowed. Bruce got his elbow over his shoulder and pressed in harder at his throat. He could feel Cornell and Reznor both looking at him from either side. The Joker kept staring at Ashland, almost pleasant again. Ashland was looking at him, too, with his head tilted a little back from where Bruce was pushing his jaw up with the knife. After a few moments he sighed.

“Rollie…” he said, and Rollie set down his gun. Cornell picked it up immediately and handed it to the Joker, who dismantled it, never once looking away from Ashland’s face.

“You’re going to call your dealer,” he said. “You’re going to tell him that his deadline is midnight. That’s in two hours from now. That’s plenty of time to get the shipment together.”

“But — ”

“Ah, ta, ta,” the Joker said, waving the empty gun. “That didn’t sound like a question to me.” He looked over at Bruce. “Did that sound like a question to you?”

It took Bruce three long seconds to realize he himself was being addressed. The Joker was looking at him expectantly, eyebrows raised, so he said, “No, boss,” and gave Ashland’s arm an emphatic twist.

Another sigh. “I’ll get him on the phone,” he said. “The guns’ll come in at the fish wharf.”

“Excellent,” the Joker said softly. He nodded to Reznor, then to the skinhead. “Could you please let my man go so he can collect my guns?”

The skinhead frowned at Ashland. Ashland nodded against Bruce’s knife. Reznor was released, and he walked forward.

“Boss?”

“You and Weiland go get the shipment,” he said. “Kowalczyk and Cornell, stay with the guys until the phone call’s complete. I’m not interested in having this conversation again.” His eyes darted again to Bruce. “You can let him go,” he said, and Bruce dropped Ashland’s wrist and removed the knife from his throat. Ashland started coughing, for some reason, and the Joker rolled his eyes, then held his hand out for the knife. When Bruce handed it to him there was a moment — his fingertips brushed the Joker’s palm, and it startled him into looking up. The Joker was already watching his face, his eyes dark, inscrutable, calculating. He had his head tilted again, but it felt different, now. His tongue darted out to wet his mouth. This close Bruce could see the moment it touched his scars.

Then the Joker looked away, and started for the door. “You can stay here, or you can go home, I don’t care,” he said to Bruce. Then to Cornell and Reznor: “Text me when your parts are done,” and he walked out. Bruce’s hands had started shaking, so he shoved them in his pockets. He looked once more at Cornell, who was looking back at him with his eyebrows furrowed. Then Ashland pulled his phone out of his pocket, and Bruce walked away. He headed slowly across the parking lot, trying to reason with himself: it wasn’t as bad as some of the things he’d done — most of the things he’d done — as Batman. He’d thrown Salvatore Maroni off a balcony, for f*ck’s sake. He’d broken both his legs. Hell, he’d smashed the Joker’s head into f*cking plate glass; he’d thrown him off a building, nearly killed him. It was just the job. If it got him closer to convincing the Joker and everyone else of his sincerity, so be it. He’d made it through blackmailing the Richmonds and there had been no repercussions, and this guy — Bruce could put him behind bars too, when it was all over; would have already put him behind bars as Batman if he’d known about him sooner. So in a way wasn’t this better? Learning more and more details about life underground? Wasn’t that the point?

He reached his car and paused — there was something stuck under his windshield wiper, and for a moment he thought he’d somehow managed to land a parking ticket. Then he realized it was a joker card. The design was old-fashioned, a man in a jester’s outfit covered in yellow and red and blue diamonds, a black mask over the top half of his face, little red cap, outlandish white Elizabethan collar. The edges were stained and worn with time, and blood, and cigarettes. Bruce flipped it over; on the back, in the same tight, jagged handwriting as on all the other cards, it said:

You’re doing so well, you get a prize. Like those claw machines at arcades. Or maybe like a dog that’s finally learning how to behave indoors. Expect a phone in the next few days. It’ll come with special secret initials.

Like a dog learning to behave indoors. Bruce’s fist flattened the card so that it creased at the center. When he looked again he saw his thumb had smeared some of the ink across the paper. The Joker must have just written this, then, and left it. Bruce had no idea how he’d managed to do it so quickly. He looked around the lot, but all he saw was an empty plastic bag beneath a streetlight at the far end, inflated by the wind, trapped in mangled weeds. Inside the laundromat he could still see Cornell and the others waiting for Ashland to wrap up his phone call.

He looked back at the card. Expect a phone. That had to mean something. He was ‘in’ enough now he could receive direct contact from the Joker himself. Maybe all of this would be over faster than he’d thought. That would be…

…well, it would be good, he thought, as he got into his car and started the engine. If the prize for holding a knife to a man’s throat was getting a burner phone — and secret initials, whatever the f*ck that meant — Bruce wasn’t sure he wanted to know the prize for going further. Or how much further he’d have to go in the first place.

Probably it was best if it plateaued here. He turned out of the parking lot, heading north on Carter. He was feeling a little — off, like he wasn’t really sitting in the driver’s seat, like maybe part of him was still back there in that laundromat with the others. He knew it was likely just residual guilt — he was working to gain the trust of the man who had killed Rachel, after all — but even so, he thought perhaps the faster he could get away from this, and get back into the suit, and get back to doing things like this in the suit, the better off he’d be.

Close to dawn, he gave up on sleeping and headed into the in-home gym for a run before work. Rachel had made him download a lot of Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera onto his iPod last year in an attempt to revamp his iTunes library and also just to try and get him involved more in the music scene he’d missed out on. He didn’t especially care for it but it was good exercise fodder; also now, of course, it meant something else entirely. He turned on the Food Network, too, and tried to channel his confused unmoored energy into something burning and focused while her music blared in his ears: get it fired up in a hurry, wanna get dirty…

He was on minute five when he remembered the way Ashland had looked at him when he’d first walked into the laundromat. Don’t I know you? He’d been lucky that time, because Ashland was from out of state, and hadn’t recognized him. But there was no way — even if he only went out at night, and kept his head down, and didn’t talk, there was no way no one in Gotham would notice Bruce Wayne, head of Wayne Enterprises and affiliate companies, stalking the city at one in the morning with a knife in one hand alongside the Joker. He wore the mask as Batman for a reason. It made it hard to breathe sometimes, but it was effective. It kept everyone in the dark. If this was going to work, he’d need a disguise here, too. And his hand was already flying to his phone to text Lucius about it when he realized: he couldn’t do that, either. He’d have to come up with something on his own, because Lucius couldn’t know. Not even Alfred could know — Bruce didn’t know how either of them would react, but he couldn’t imagine it would be good.

You’re getting in too deep already, Master Wayne.

You’ve got to remember your own human limitations, Mr. Wayne. You can’t take a project of this size and this much danger on by yourself —

But he could. And he was. He tucked his phone back into his pocket and pushed the speed of the treadmill higher. When he turned the Joker and all his men in, Alfred and Lucius and everyone else would be thrilled. They would shower him with praise, and they’d help restore Batman’s name in society, and they’d forget to care that he’d snuck behind their backs, face shrouded, in order to do it.

The package arrived before seven in the morning two days later while Bruce was still waking up, navigating his schedule in his head. Alfred approached the bed and deposited it on the side table; Bruce glanced at it, felt his heart skip, and, trying to sound casual, said,

“What’s that?”

“Package for you, Master Wayne,” Alfred said. “It was left in the lobby downstairs. I’ve run the usual scans on it and nothing seems amiss — shall I open it, sir?”

“No,” said Bruce, “just — leave it there, it’s fine. Thanks, Alfred.”

“Yes, Master Wayne,” Alfred said. He walked out to start breakfast and Bruce took the package up, setting it on his lap. It was addressed from JRB — the initials the Joker had told him to watch out for. Bruce wondered what they meant — if they were code for the name he was supposed to take in the gang now, maybe. As he rummaged in his side table for a pocket knife he thought about the nineties rock singers he knew — none of them had J and B as initials, though in fairness he didn’t know many.

He slit the packing tape open and lifted the cardboard flaps. There was the phone: a Razr, garish shade of hot pink. He caught his mouth trying to smile and forced it back. He imagined one of the guys, Cornell or Reznor most likely, or else maybe the Joker himself, selecting the phone at a Radio Shack and laughing, the image of stoic dark businessman Bruce Wayne and this ridiculous overblown phone. He knew it likely had been selected specifically to humiliate him. They were still testing him. This was going to take a long f*cking time.

At length he checked the contacts menu and found three pre-entered names: Cornell, Reznor, and… the source of JRB. He was so surprised for a moment he thought he was hallucinating; he would not have guessed this particular answer to the riddle had he been given a week to decipher it. He stared at it for long minutes, keying over it with the arrow buttons; finally he hit the green call button, and stuck the phone to his ear.

The Joker picked up on the first ring. “Wayne,” he drawled. “You got it.”

“Yeah, I did — ”

“Do you like it?” The Joker’s tone was borderline pleasant. Bruce wasn’t sure what he was really asking; chancing it, he said,

“Yeah, it’s great, boss,” and then, “Listen, I — ”

“I’m sure it’s not quite up to your standards,” the Joker said. “But it’s better than what I’ve gotten most of my guys.”

“I mean, it’s still a popular phone, it’s fine,” Bruce said, and then, before the Joker could keep talking: “So listen — that name… is that what this is about? Is that… real?”

There was silence on the other end. Bruce could hear the Joker breathing; it crackled gently over the receiver. Finally he said, “Surprise,” more quietly than Bruce had ever heard him.

Bruce’s heart started racing for no apparent reason. He was trying to think of appropriate things to say, but he couldn’t; at last, a little impatiently, the Joker said,

“Is this going to be a problem?”

“No, I — no,” Bruce said, “it’s just — I wasn’t expecting this. That’s all.”

The Joker snorted. “So you remember me, then?”

“Yeah, I — of course, yeah.”

“I’m flattered, Wayne.” The Joker was smiling; Bruce wondered if it was the nasty fake one, or something else he hadn’t seen yet. “I’ve been wondering.”

“Jude Baker,” Bruce said; he tried to keep the dubiousness from his voice, and the incredulousness, but it must have gone through anyway because the Joker — Jude — whatever — sighed. Bruce heard something rustling on his end.

“Yeah, it’s really me,” he said. “You can’t run a fingerprint check, so don’t try.”

“I don’t want to,” Bruce said. “I mean, I just — why did you even tell me? No one knows your name.” He wanted to say, not even Jim Gordon, but he couldn’t remember if Bruce Wayne was supposed to know Gordon or not; at last, taking the middle road, he said, “You’re just a mystery in every circle, boss.”

Jude laughed. Bruce heard voices in the background; Jude called to someone, and then he said, “Well, as much as I’d love to chat with you, I’m pretty busy today. Lots of interesting plans. I left you a little note in your package — ”

“Wait,” Bruce blurted, and Jude sighed.

“You’re not one of those people who develops ADHD or whatever the f*ck the second you get on a phone, are you, because I’m taking it back if — ”

“No, no,” Bruce said. “I just, I wanted to tell you — I’m working on a disguise.”

There was a pause. “A… disguise,” Jude said, finally. He sounded dubious, or perhaps just confused. Bruce leaned his elbow against his knee, readjusting the phone in his hand.

“Yeah,” he said. “Ashland almost recognized me. I can’t — you know I have a reputation.”

Jude snorted. “A reputation. Yeah, Wayne. Don’t we all.”

“Yeah, no, but I mean — ”

“I know what you mean.” A faint note of impatience was creeping into the Joker’s — Jude’s — voice, and Bruce hurried on:

“So I just — well, you and Weiland have your face paint, and some of the guys have masks, and I thought maybe I could figure something out for myself, too.”

Jude called again to whoever it was in the background. “Wayne,” he said, “look, I’m not f*cking holding your hand through this; if you want a mask you’ll have to find it yourse— ”

“I don’t want a mask,” Bruce said. His voice came out sharper than he’d meant, and Jude made a noise, so Bruce hastened to add, “I have an idea already, that’s all,” which was only partially a lie. At any rate he knew how he wanted to dress, sweats and a beanie. “I just wanted to run that by you and make sure it’s — ”

“I don’t give a f*ck, okay?” Jude was evidently annoyed now. “I really have to go, so if you’re done — ”

“Yeah. Yes. I’m sorry. I’m finished, boss.”

Jude breathed out. He sounded like he was trying to even himself out, or something. He said, “Okay. Listen, just don’t paint your face some weird sh*t, okay? We’ve already got enough of that here. Wear whatever it is to the next meeting. See you in a couple days, Bruce Wayne,” and then he hung up. There was no phone etiquette taught amongst thieves, Bruce supposed. Though he was still so shaken by the name reveal he doubted he’d have remembered to say goodbye, either.

Jude Riley Baker. His parents were Leo and Nina; Leo had worked for years with Wayne Enterprises, first as a senior in the financial department at the Chicago branch, then as head of accounting at same. The Bakers were rich; in Gotham, only the Waynes and the Sionises made more. Leo would come out sometimes to work from the main offices; in the summer, Nina and Jude would join him, but otherwise they stayed in Chicago so Jude could go to school. Therefore Bruce only saw them a few times a year at various Wayne Enterprises functions.

Jude was six years younger than him; he’d been four when Bruce’s parents died. Bruce remembered him vaguely (the familiarity from the past few weeks washing over him in sudden shocking clarity, like ice water); he’d stand in the corner of the room at whatever function he was attending, the youngest person there by far, awkward and scrawny and quiet. Usually he was holding a plate of hors d’oeuvres, typically something Bruce made sure Alfred brought him so he wouldn’t be forgotten. He’d been towheaded when he was really, really little, with those curls cropped short and close to his head. Bruce remembered kind of feeling sorry for him, because he was at the functions all night essentially alone. But he’d been wrapped up in himself, and in Rachel, his weird obsession with her even then, and he hadn’t had room in his life (or time, or patience) to try and befriend some out-of-town kid not even in his age group.

The last time he’d seen Jude, they were eleven and seventeen, respectively. It was one of Bruce’s last nights in Gotham before he’d left — summer 1992, and he was busy handing the company off to his immediate successors. Everyone was plainly shocked that he was leaving but to their credit most did a valiant job of hiding it. Likely they all assumed he was heading for or had at last arrived at the long-anticipated breakdown over his parents’ deaths, or that he was leaving the country because he couldn’t handle seeing the reminders of them around Gotham, or because he needed fresh scenery, or simply because he was a rich entitled teenager graduated early from high school who neither cared about nor needed to concern himself with the future of his father’s company. He finished up his speeches and left the podium, taking a drink of sparkling cider from Alfred and making his way around the room.

The Bakers were there, of course; Bruce had been the one to promote Leo to head of accounting in the Chicago branch. Jude was trailing behind his parents; Bruce remembered his hair hanging almost to his shoulders. Leo and Nina each shook Bruce’s hand and wished him luck on his venture; then they were accosted by another of Bruce’s business partners, and Bruce was momentarily left alone with Jude.

“Good luck,” Jude said, echoing his father. He looked at the floor as he spoke; he was holding a plate of miniature egg rolls, balancing them so they wouldn’t fall off.

“Thanks,” Bruce said.

“It’s gonna be better than here,” Jude said. Bruce remembered — or thought he remembered — Jude’s voice at eleven was not the same voice he had now at twenty-seven. The hoarse nasal pitch and the sarcastic lilt were both gone; it was just a normal kid’s voice, a little scratchy, maybe, but nothing like what it would become. It was no wonder Bruce had never guessed at the truth.

“What is?” Bruce asked, noticing across the room Rachel gesturing at him: come here, come here!

“Wherever you’re going,” Jude said.

Bruce offered him a half-smile; he wasn’t really listening, because Rachel had her excited ‘you have got to see this’ expression on. He was already saying something to Jude about, excuse me for a minute, it was good seeing you and your parents, thanks for coming… He walked away from Jude to join Rachel at the window so they could both laugh at the drunk guy wandering around the manor lawn rocking out to some song on his Walkman, still fully clothed in his black-tie outfit. Bruce could not remember anything else about the Bakers from that night; when they’d left, if he’d said a more proper goodbye to them, if he’d seen Jude again, even from across the room.

He wondered now what might have happened if he’d had the presence of mind to ask Jude to come over with him and Rachel. If he’d remembered even for a minute that Jude was the same scared, lonely kid he felt sorry for at all the functions.

Probably nothing, he reasoned, fiddling with the phone, keying over the name again and again, remembering across the years the wild curls, those vivid greenish eyes. Probably nothing at all.

Notes:

eta 02/05/22: idk why i forgot to say this when i initially published this chapter but josh and kathy richmond are actually two very old ocs of mine from back in 2009 when i was still writing band fic on quizilla. actually in my original fic about them their names were josh and kathy richman but i misremembered that when i was writing this fic and then it just didn't seem important enough to go back and change it later, lol
in my original fic abt him josh was the ramones' (manager? producer? i wasn't super specific w it i think) and he was with my female protag beth who ended up cheating on him w joey ramone while josh went and cheated on her with kathy, who i think worked in the music industry as well. i remember when i was writing this i just put the name josh richmond randomly and later realized i had subconsciously taken it from that old fic, and i thought that was so f*cking cool, a little private easter egg for myself. i meant to say s/t abt it when i first posted but i forgot to i guess so im just saying it now bc i think it's fun

Chapter 3 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“…with Neumann Corp. over in Metropolis,” Jolene Anderson, the head of Wayne Pharmaceuticals, was saying. Bruce, who had been one-third listening and two-thirds watching the rain cut irregular patterns into the glass, abruptly found himself falling forward in his chair, so that the front legs smashed onto the floor. The carpet softened the blow, but it still made a bang, and everyone turned to stare. Bruce’s new accountant — recently hired to replace Coleman Reese, who had quit after July, citing ‘mental disturbances’ and ‘a need for a calmer environment’ — jumped in his seat. His name was Todd; he was a slender nervous thing about Jude’s age or perhaps a little younger with acne scarring along his jaw and a habit of twitching his leg as he sat. Bruce smiled apologetically at him and at Jolene, who narrowed her eyes, mouth tightening, before continuing: “Our joint ventures will bring us to a new era of — ”

But Bruce had cut his eyes from her again, back to the rain, and the fog which smudged the tops of the buildings. Metropolis. Clark. Of course. He had those ridiculous glasses and Bruce had an ongoing bet with him as to their actual effectiveness. You literally, you walk around in a sweater and chinos and those glasses, and then you take them off and people are like, Who the f*ck is that? How the f*ck does that even work?

It just does, Clark had shrugged, and then, grinning: I’ll give you twenty-five if you can ever get valid proof otherwise. That had been some months ago, and in the interim Bruce had kind of forgotten about it between various other goings-on. But if it worked for Clark —

He wouldn’t get glasses, he decided, watching Jolene’s hands fly over her laptop keyboard. That would be too close, and anyway he didn’t want to be constantly pushing them up the bridge of his nose. But if he could get ahold of some colored contacts… change his irises… He’d have to buy them on his personal card, but it was fine. The note Jude had left him along with the phone had said their next meeting would be in four days. He’d go this afternoon.

“Mr. Wayne?” Jolene said, and Bruce realized everyone was looking at him. He cleared his throat.

“Sorry, what?”

She rubbed her temples. “I asked if you agree,” she said.

Bruce adopted a sheepish, apologetic smile. “Oh, yes,” he said.

He took the Mustang after lunch to a Halloween shop which sold costumes on the weirder side. There was a whole wall of Batman outfits in varying degrees of complexity; some of them looked remarkably close to his actual suit. Over the display was a massive yellow banner: WHERE HAS THE CAPED CRUSADER GONE? He frowned at it; he hadn’t thought people would care where Batman was. It hadn’t been that long since he’d gone out, taken Jude back to the Narrows in his car.

…Except, he realized, it had. It had been nearly two months. He’d been in the Joker’s gang for almost a full month and he’d barely made any progress —

— No. No. He had the phone. He had the Joker’s real name. He’d held a knife to someone’s throat and he was here for a reason. It was fine, things were fine. He smiled at the store clerk who approached him.

“Can I help you, Mr. Wayne?” she asked, and then, looking a little flustered: “…Um, I mean, I recognized you from the, from People, so — ”

“Yeah.” Bruce put on a show of thinking. “Can I — do you sell contacts here? Non-prescription ones, I mean?”

“Oh, sure.” She led him to the opposite wall, where there were an assortment of fake eyes and noses and other various facial reconstruction bits. “So the contacts are here — ” pointing — “and you can just, like, pick whatever — ” For a moment they both stood there, studying the line of boxes along the middle shelf. The contacts were arranged in rainbow order, but Bruce already knew which ones he wanted. He’d known from the moment they got close enough to see the colors.

“What kind of costume are you making?” the clerk asked. “I didn’t think a company like yours would do a Halloween party.”

Bruce shook his head. “We don’t, normally,” he said, which was true. “We have a lot of interns this year, though, and they kind of pushed us into agreeing,” which was not. Still, it made the clerk smile, and she told Bruce to come find her if he needed any more assistance, and then she walked away. As soon as she was gone Bruce selected the box he wanted. There were two sets of white contacts — one set was totally white, giving the effect of blindness, but the other only covered the iris. The result, at least according to the picture on the box, was a pale white circle around the pupil approximately the color of skim milk. Bruce took the latter; then, as an afterthought, he also got a wig, and a Harry Potter wizard’s hat, and some fake teeth covered in plastic blood. He brought it all to the cashier who rang each item up, looking bored.

“My niece is going as a witch for Halloween,” Bruce explained. The cashier barely glanced at him:

“Uh-huh,” she said, and then, “Do you need to have a prescription put in these,” holding the contacts up.

“No,” said Bruce. “She doesn’t wear — ”

“Okay, so the instructions for care are on the back,” the cashier said, “and you need to have her buy a container to put them in, otherwise they’ll dry out.”

“Sure.” Bruce bit the corner of his mouth. “Thanks.”

“Total’s thirty-two dollars,” the cashier said.

Bruce felt his eyebrows lift, but he handed her his card — it was probably the hat. She put his purchases in a bag and handed it and the card back to him with a hollow, “Happy Halloween.” Bruce nodded at her and walked out. After he was out of sight of the windows he stuffed the wig, the hat, and the teeth into a trashcan; the pointy end of the hat stuck out accusingly. Ignoring it he walked to his car, took his new contacts out, and sighed. It was just gone four, and he had a lot of work left to do.

By the time he got back to the penthouse it was after dark. He’d had to drive to four optometrists before he could find one that would give him contact solution and a case without a prescription. The doctor was on the outskirts of the Narrows and seemed for some reason to think Bruce was using this as a cover for drugs; when Bruce gave him a check for two thousand to keep his mouth shut he just grinned, and winked, and said, “Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Wayne, I understand.” Bruce wanted to say, no you don’t, and what the f*ck, but he just thanked him and left. Once he’d parked in his garage he went up in the elevator and entered his thumbprint in the door to his private quarters; he tried to sneak through the kitchen but of course Alfred was sitting at the island, drinking tea.

“Out late again, sir?”

Bruce cleared his throat. He tried not to let the heat rise to his face; he felt like a teenager again, trying to sneak in after staying out too late with Rachel. “I just — miss the city, that’s all. I’m used to it at night so I go out — ”

“You know,” Alfred said carefully, “you could always just don the suit again, Master Wayne.”

“I know,” Bruce lied. “It’s just — I want to give it some more time. That’s all. I don’t think Gotham’s ready yet. If they really need me, of course I’ll go. But I don’t want to… it’s just not time yet. That’s all.”

Alfred was giving him a look Bruce recognized all too well; it was the same look he gave him every time he said something stupid, or self-centered, or self-deprecating, or rude — it was a look Bruce got a lot, in other words. But all he said was, “Goodnight then, sir,” and Bruce said,

“Yeah. Goodnight, Alfred,” and he headed off to his room. In the bathroom he read the instructions off the back of the box; three hours and some very sore and bloodshot eyes later, he had figured out how to get the contacts to go in and come out with only a little difficulty, and he put them in their solution and in the case, and hid them away in his bedside table. He tried afterwards to work on some business stuff related to the Neumann Corp. merger Jolene had mentioned, but he discovered he couldn’t concentrate, and by midnight he was in the gym, soaked in sweat, blasting Stefani again:

This sh*t is bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

Four days later, after three overly long meetings about solar energy and improved funding for road repair, Bruce slipped into his sweats — black — and his beanie — dark green — and popped in his contacts. He lost the left one briefly under his eyelid, which felt a little like he was driving a knife into his skull. Then he told Alfred he was going for a drive down the coast, and not to wait up, and he raced down to the garage and slid into his Mustang. His heart was pounding. By the time he arrived at the apartment and got to the right room the others had already assembled there: Cornell, Reznor, Kowalczyk, Weiland… and Jude. Jude Baker. Bruce still couldn’t quite wrap his head around it, the surreality of the situation. Now when he looked at him there was no longer just that faint hint of familiarity but the feeling like rewatching a movie after finally recognizing that one actor. For a moment when Bruce stepped over the threshold no one turned and he took advantage of the moment to study Jude’s profile. It was his first time seeing him since he’d learned the truth, and he saw it, like two images superimposed: it was Jude. It had always been him. For a moment he wasn’t the Joker at all but that quiet, scrawny kid who had made Bruce laugh once when he’d stuck a grape up his nose, age seven, during one of Thomas’ business partners’ boring speeches about converting fossil fuel energy into hydroelectric. Something in the shape of his eyes, or the strange mouth…

Jude turned, briefly, perhaps feeling Bruce’s gaze on him, and Bruce could see he was honestly surprised, though it flashed across his face so quickly he might have imagined it. But he knew he didn’t imagine the slight chin tilt a moment later, nor the evident meaning behind it: approval. He didn’t know what it meant that it made him feel relieved.

Cornell caught Jude’s movement as he turned away again and glanced over his shoulder; his jaw dropped, and he said, “f*ck, Wayne, that’s some freaky sh*t.” He started to walk forward, glanced at Jude, seemed to think better of it, and just stood there, staring. “Are those implants?”

“Contacts,” Bruce said.

Reznor looked at Bruce too, and raised his eyebrows. “Damn,” he said. He sounded — impressed. They all looked impressed, actually, and Bruce had no idea what to do with the warmth that spread in his chest. He wondered what Jude had told them about Bruce picking a disguise; if he’d told them anything at all. He was glad it was working, he supposed. It meant he was one step closer to proper infiltration. He imagined himself in a month or two, at a press conference on GCN, laughing about the whole thing with Gordon: once I put on a mask of sorts, I knew I had them… He tried not to think of how very unlikely it was that it would happen that way; that even when Batman had been at his height, when the city had been grateful for his presence because the crime rate was lowering and nothing else, there had been no place for him on television, or in the GCPD. That Gordon wouldn’t risk his career just to shake hands with a newly-reformed vigilante on live television.

That in fact, it would be nearly impossible to explain what he’d done here without revealing both of his identities.

He shoved the thoughts down. They were starting to stare at him. To deflect attention he walked all the way into the room — and stopped short. Their latest victim was in a chair against the opposite wall, bound and blindfolded and clearly knocked out, but even with his face half covered by cloth it was impossible not to recognize the head of the psychiatric unit at Gotham General. Charles Ainsworth. Jude was looking at him, too; his hand kept tensing against the back of one of the tables.

Cornell’s eyes shifted between Bruce and Ainsworth. “What?” he said, and then, frowning: “Don’t tell me you’re gaining a conscience now, Wayne — ”

“No,” Bruce said. “No, I just — I know him.”

Cornell rolled his eyes. Okay, so he definitely hadn’t gotten all the way there yet.

“You knew Alice Richmond, too, and that didn’t exactly stop you from helping me terrorize her in the back of a Kinko’s — ”

“Yeah, but — I work with him.” Bruce folded his arms. “He’s the head of the psych unit at Gotham General.”

Reznor raised an eyebrow. “So?”

“Wayne Enterprises is funding part of the rebuilding,” Bruce said. “And we’re both on the board of directors at Arkham, and — ”

“Are you.” That was Jude; his voice was quiet, and cold, and full of a strange tension Bruce couldn’t read. He turned to look at him. His hand was still tightly clasped against the edge of the table. He was staring at Ainsworth with so much hate in his face and Bruce wondered —

“I am, yeah,” he said. “I fund parts of the hospital. I’ve kept the psychiatric units going for some years now, and — ” He bit his lower lip. “I mean, is that an, is there a problem, or something?”

Jude stared at him for a long time, long enough Bruce began to feel uneasy. But at last he said only, “No, Wayne. There’s no issue. Just do your job here. Unless you’re more interested in keeping your professional relationship with Ainsworth intact, in which case — ”

“No,” Bruce said, at last partially understanding the challenge. “No, I — I mean we’ve never sat down and had coffee together or anything. He’s just, you know — he was at that fundraiser at my house, the one, uh, the one you crashed. He knows what I look like.”

Jude sort of smiled. It wasn’t pleasant. “Then this is a perfect opportunity to see if your little disguise works or not,” he said, before gesturing with his knife. “He’s waking up.”

Weiland slunk over to Ainsworth’s chair, where indeed he was shifting against the restraints, and put his own knife to his throat. “Evening, Chuck,” he said, and Ainsworth jumped.

“Where am I?”

“Aw, Chuck, don’t be boring,” Weiland said. “What a generic, boring question. Don’t you think, boss?”

Jude didn’t answer. He was walking towards Ainsworth’s chair in that way he had, a little tilted, each step slamming into the floor, challenging the air, barely contained violence. He had his knife still out in one gloved hand and when he reached Ainsworth he put the other hand on his shoulder and cut the blindfold off. The edge of the blade nicked his temple and Ainsworth yelped, squirming away. His eyes found Jude and his mouth dropped open.

“Hello, doctor,” Jude said. His voice was blistering. “You have anything you wanna tell us?”

“I — no, I don’t think — ” He was looking frantically from face to face; when he saw Bruce there was a moment, Bruce’s heart stalling out, where he thought it wouldn’t work, but then to his relief Ainsworth only shrank back further in his chair, eyebrows drawing together. Bruce sighed; he was out twenty-five dollars. Congratulations, Clark.

“C’mon,” Jude murmured. Weiland had withdrawn so Jude could press his knife to his quivering pulse instead. Bruce could see he was enjoying himself; he could also see a tight strain to his shoulders that wasn’t usually present, as though he was holding himself back from doing even more. “You’re telling me you don’t remember our little deal?”

Ainsworth swallowed. “No, no, it’s just — I paid off my last debts last month. I’m clean.” He flexed his fingers, evidently trying to hold his hands up in surrender. “I don’t do that sh*t anymore.”

“Interesting,” Jude murmured, “since last week one of our sources saw you in Trenton closing a deal with Harper.”

Ainsworth’s face paled. Bruce could see him making a valiant effort to think his way around whatever corner Jude had just painted him into. “Your source must have me confused with someone else,” he said, finally. “I swear, I haven’t touched drugs in at least two months. I don’t run anything anymore; you’re going to have to — ”

Jude laughed once, harsh, high. “Are you telling me what to do?” His voice had a dangerous edge to it, the lilting nasal pitch splitting and spreading and turning sharper. His knife dug into the flesh of Ainsworth’s neck, and Ainsworth closed his eyes. “You’re in my territory right now, doctor. You don’t get to give any orders.”

“No, it just — I’m not ru— ”

“Stop lying.”

It took Bruce a moment to register that he himself had spoken. His voice was — not exactly at Batman pitch, that would’ve been too much, but it was close, and he could feel Cornell and Reznor both staring at him in surprise. He wondered for a moment if he’d made a mistake, interrupting the Joker in the middle of an interrogation, but Jude didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look up. Ainsworth did, though, gaze snapping to Bruce; again, that flare of panic when their eyes met, and again, somehow, Ainsworth failed to recognize him.

“I’m not — ”

“You’re lying,” Bruce said again, walking forward. “You’re lying to the Joker, of all people. How good of an idea do you really think that is?” As he approached the chair, Jude shifted over a little, circling like a dog to stand at Ainsworth’s back. His hand flexed on Ainsworth’s shoulder; the other still held the knife. Bruce remembered — lightning flashing — the way they’d worked together at the laundromat. Jude’s knife beneath his foot, and how fluidly Bruce had moved in to grab it. How natural it had felt to insert himself and get hold of Ashland. It felt like that now, for some reason — the same energy sparking off Jude, landing on Bruce, hot and quick and dangerous. It was like their fights had been as Batman and the Joker, except now instead of trying to tear each other to pieces they were dancing side by side.

How far are you willing to go, whispered Thomas’ voice. It sounded more like Bruce’s, these days. And he couldn’t answer it any better. So he brushed it aside, and took out his own knife, peripherally aware of the others’ hands on their own weapons in the half-dark. He cut away the ropes binding Ainsworth’s right hand to the chair and held his wrist.

“Tell the boss the truth,” he said. “Who are you working with?”

Ainsworth stared up at him. “No one,” he said, and Bruce bent his middle finger back. He watched the skin of his knuckle fold up and pale. He could hear Ainsworth’s breath going choppy; his hand was trembling in Bruce’s.

“Why are you still lying?”

“I’m not, I swear, I — ”

With a quick, deft movement, Bruce broke Ainsworth’s finger. It snapped clean along the joint and there was a brief, stunned pause before Ainsworth started screaming. This prompted Weiland to rush back in from the other side and slap his palm over his mouth:

“Shut the hell up, Chuck,” but Bruce was staring at Jude. If he’d overstepped he knew he’d see it immediately, but Jude didn’t look angry. He was actually — he was almost —

Laughing.

“That’s what happens when you lie to me,” he said, and this time his knife drew blood. “It’s gonna be pretty f*cking hard to jerk off now, isn’t it?”

Ainsworth made a noise, muffled, against Weiland’s hand. There were tears in his eyes. His hand was shaking and tense in Bruce’s grasp, trying to pull away.

“You gonna talk now, huh, doctor?” Jude asked. “Wanna tell me who you’ve given my drugs to?”

Ainsworth moaned.

Jude looked at Bruce.

Bruce inhaled once. You’ve done worse as Batman, he thought, this is nothing, this is just infiltration, it’s just a job, it’s just the job — He broke Ainsworth’s index finger, too, and after that he was babbling, hysterical. His hand swelled up and went limp in Bruce’s while he talked, half-incoherently, about shipments out of Arkham and how he’d only gone to Harper that one time because he was desperate and Harper was offering more money and a fairer deal and a better cut —

“You think the Joker doesn’t give you a good enough deal?” Cornell asked sharply, pointing his gun at Ainsworth’s forehead.

“No, no, no, that’s not what I — ”

“If you want to be greedy with my product, I’m better off not doing business with you anymore, anyway,” Jude said. “I can easily drop you from my clientele.”

Bruce knew what he really meant. Judging from the violent twitch Ainsworth’s hand gave in his, he understood it, too. “No. No. I’ll run the drugs to you,” he said. “Next shipment’s coming in two weeks from A.C. I can get it to you by Saturday — ”

“Ah,” Jude said, almost cheerfully, “see, you’re not so stupid after all, are you.” He released Ainsworth’s throat, walked around to his front. He patted his cheek, then slapped him a little. “Don’t f*ck me over again,” he said. “Or actually, do. I’d be interested to see what other parts of you Mascis here could break.” He grinned at Bruce, and Bruce, stunned, couldn’t really help it — he smiled back. Jude had given him a nickname. This was sort of huge. It meant things were working in his favor, unless Jude was just stringing him along and planning to slit his throat, but he couldn’t think about that. He had a nickname and his disguise worked and he was that much closer to his goal now. This was what he’d set out to achieve. There was a rush of pride in his chest he couldn’t quite tamp down; he could tell it wasn’t entirely attached to the right thing, but that was okay. It was just acting. Like playing at being Bruce Wayne, socialite, for the crowds. It was still what he’d told himself at the gas station: if he had to fool himself a little internally, that was fine. It would just make his act that much more convincing.

He let Ainsworth’s hand go. “What do we do with him now, boss?”

Jude had slipped his knife back into his overcoat. He already looked bored. “Tie him back up,” he said. “Knock him out. When he wakes up we’ll be gone, and he’ll keep his mouth shut. Won’t you, doctor.”

Ainsworth nodded, frantically. His arm was trembling, and he cried out when Weiland grabbed it to lash it back to the chair. He was soaked in sweat.

“If you’re lucky,” Jude said softly, “you’ll wake up before those fingers are past the point of fixing.” Then he nodded at Cornell, who smacked Ainsworth in the back of the head with the butt of his gun. Ainsworth’s neck dropped forward, and a light trickle of blood from the cut on his neck fell on his shirtfront. Jude sighed. Bruce could still see marked tension in his shoulders, and in his jawline, but he only turned and walked to the door. When he was nearly out he paused, looked back. He looked directly at Bruce. His eyes were burning.

“I want to discuss something with you, Wayne,” he said. “You’ll come meet me by your car after you help the guys clean up.”

“Sure, boss,” Bruce said, but his heart was in his throat. Had he said something off? Jude had seemed pleased with his performance, even amused by it. Had he gone too far, and Jude just hadn’t reacted because he wanted to complete the scene? He couldn’t read Jude’s expression, and he could tell it would be wrong to ask for elaboration in front of the guys, so he forced himself to look away, and to keep his hands steady as he packed up the assortment of weapons they’d brought. When he glanced up again, Jude had disappeared. Cornell was watching him, mouth thin, but when Bruce looked at him he just shook his head, saying,

“Count the guns, Wayne, would you? There’s supposed to be seven.”

Outside the wind had picked up. Jude was waiting as he’d said beside Bruce’s car, leaning against the passenger door with a cigarette. He’d taken his gloves off and the skin of his hands was purple with cold beneath the smears of greasepaint. His nails were yellow with nicotine. When he withdrew the cigarette from his mouth the end of it was stained with the violent red imprint of his mouth. Bruce’s feet crunched in the gravel of the parking lot, and Jude glanced over. His mouth twitched, and he crushed the cigarette out beneath his heel.

“Hope you don’t mind driving,” he said, when Bruce was close enough he didn’t have to shout. “My car’s in the shop again.”

Bruce couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not, but he just shrugged. “I know you like my car,” he said, testing it. Jude rolled his eyes:

“Careful, we don’t want you thinking too highly of yourself,” but there wasn’t any heat behind it. Bruce nearly smiled; he unlocked his door and slid into the driver’s seat. He stared at his hands on the wheel. They were trembling a little bit, for some reason. He kept feeling the snap of bone beneath his fingers, and seeing the way Ainsworth’s features had contorted. This was far from the worst thing he’d ever done. But maybe the thing was he’d done all those other terrible things as Batman. And he had all of Batman’s rage and violence backing him. The blind, nearly manic edge that kept him buoyed up when he had on the suit, and his adrenaline was going going going, pushing him forward, crashing him through plate glass or rappelling him down the sides of buildings. In that apartment he wasn’t anything other than Bruce Wayne. And without all of his anger and the conventions of society stripped away he had only his strength, and his training, and he found that the result was very cold. Very cold, and very methodical. He hadn’t felt a single thing when he’d broken Ainsworth’s fingers. He hadn’t realized how deep the disconnect ran between one personality and the other, and he supposed the idea should have chilled him.

It was still just acting, though. He was still learning how to do this, how to find Bruce Wayne beneath the socialite and the vigilante. That was easier to consider than the alternative. He didn’t want to think about the alternative; his mind shied away from it, and so as Jude got in the car too he keyed the ignition, forcing his hands to work so they’d still. The radio started playing Rage Against the Machine’s “Guerrilla Radio”, and Jude snorted, but otherwise didn’t speak. They pulled out of the alley and onto the main road. Finally when the silence had gotten to be too much Bruce bit his lower lip. Jude had given him the phone; he’d given him his name. He clearly wanted something out of Bruce that he didn’t require from the other guys; it was probably all right to initiate conversation. If nothing else, it would mean the plan was working. Bruce drew in a breath and said,

“Who am I?” They were at a stoplight and he saw Jude glance over at him.

“What?”

Bruce made a gesture. “That name you called me, back at the apartment — Mascis. I don’t recognize that one.” He didn’t recognize most of the names Jude called his guys, actually, but he didn’t really want to admit that. He’d have them all in Arkham or in jail soon enough, anyway.

“It’s the guy from Dinosaur Jr.,” Jude said. “I didn’t like them as much, but I was kinda running out of good names to give out. I figured if you had a working disguise it would be pointless to keep calling you Wayne and ruin the suspense.”

The light turned green. Bruce drove. “You know a lot of band trivia,” he said.

“Does that surprise you?”

“Yeah,” Bruce said, without really thinking, but Jude only laughed. Absent its usual sharp edge it was very nearly a nice laugh.

“You know when I grew up,” he said. “You think I had anything better to do than listen to the radio and watch MTV?”

The lonely sad kid sitting hunched in the corners at Wayne Manor, nose about an inch from his Gameboy. Bruce felt the edges of his mouth tighten. “They sound good,” he said, quietly. “The names, I mean. I like them, boss.”

They were at another stoplight and Jude was shaking his leg. He withdrew his pack of cigarettes and lit one staring absently at a Starbucks. When he rolled the window to exhale the smoke filtered out over the buildings and Bruce realized with a jolt they were on the street where the Joker had stood not quite four months ago and begged Batman to run him down. He’d been so desperate to just let go and f*cking plow into him, and so angry with himself when he jerked the wheel at the last second. He remembered watching Jude lean over him, hands coming towards his mask to lift it off. He remembered reaching up to grab his wrists.

“So what did you want to talk to me about?” Bruce asked, shoving the memory down.

Jude’s cigarette hand twitched. Some of the ash fell on his fine linen trousers. “Could you take me somewhere?” he asked, and Bruce blinked, startled.

“I — yeah, sure,” he said. “Wherever you want to go, boss — ”

“Turn left here,” Jude said, gesturing at Stratham, and Bruce nodded, cutting the wheel. He tried to drive less erratically than he had as Batman, back in September. The radio was playing Stone Temple Pilots now. These conversations kill, falling faster in my car… Bruce could feel his heart starting to beat harder the longer they drove without speaking. He remembered suddenly the way Jude had reacted when he’d said he was on the board at Arkham. It was clearly an issue even if Jude wasn’t going to bring it up and he wondered —

“That little stunt you pulled,” Jude said suddenly, blowing a long column of smoke out the window. “With Ainsworth.”

Bruce tensed. “Did you — I mean, should I not have — ”

“I’m just wondering where the CEO of a Fortune 500 company learned how to do sh*t like that.” Jude was watching him, and Bruce tried not to let his face betray the sudden panic swirling in his chest. He had overstepped. He hadn’t been thinking about it. Of course Bruce Wayne didn’t know how to do these kinds of things. He remembered the first time he’d gone as Batman, how afterwards he’d spent hours making lists of alibis, places he could’ve been during those hours, people he could’ve been with. Rachel had topped nearly every list, because Bruce had known she’d cover for him without him having to ask.

His mind was racing. Jude was still looking at him, eyebrows lifted beneath the paint. “It just doesn’t seem like something they would’ve covered in orientation — ”

“It’s not,” Bruce said, feeling his nails dig into the leather of the steering wheel. “It’s — f*ck, this is kind of embarrassing — ”

Jude pitched his cigarette butt out the window. It flew onto the asphalt and lay smoldering there, a tiny red-orange cluster of sparks. “I’m intrigued,” he said, softly, and Bruce could tell what he really meant, so he said,

“While I was — overseas, I kind of… I studied taekwondo.”

There was a pause. Then Jude burst out laughing. “You did what.”

“I studied — ”

“Oh, no, no.” He waved his hand at Bruce, still snickering. “No, I heard you, you don’t have to — turn right here — you don’t have to say it again, I might not make it through hearing it a second time…”

Bruce turned onto Parkside, feeling vaguely irritated, though he wasn’t sure why. “I was in Asia part of the time,” he said. “There was — I was going through — ” He bit his mouth. He didn’t have to tell Jude any of this. Why was he telling him this? “I was in school in Europe for a while,” he said; the same lie he’d told Cornell. It felt wrong to tell Jude, for some reason. “It was hard to stay in one place, and I — you know I have the money, so I went off. I couldn’t come home, so I went and found other things to do.” When they got to Anderson he turned automatically without being asked, and Jude raised his eyebrows, but didn’t comment. Instead after a moment he said,

“What did make you come back?”

Bruce swallowed. I knew the city needed me. I knew I couldn’t run forever. Even in his head it sounded hollow, trite. And there was no way to explain the connections between his training and Gotham without revealing that he was also Batman, so in the end he said,

“Some of my advisors were contacting me and telling me about underhanded deals going on in the company. I had to come in person to straighten it out. I just — ended up staying.” He shrugged. “It was easier than getting back on a plane, I guess.” It wasn’t entirely untrue. There had been a lot of mess in the company when Bruce had gotten back to Gotham. A few of his father’s closest employees had gotten involved with the mob, or else they’d started laundering money themselves, and Bruce and Lucius had had quite a time of cleaning things up in the various infiltrated departments. Between that and becoming Batman, in the end, it had just seemed logical that he stay where he was.

Jude was quiet. Bruce couldn’t tell if he’d said the right thing — in fact he couldn’t really tell where this conversation was even going. After a moment Jude asked, “And do you regret it?”

“What?”

“That you stayed.”

For once, he didn’t have to think about it. He didn’t even have to lie. “No,” he said. “Gotham’s mine, it’s my home. I couldn’t — even without those financial troubles. I couldn’t have settled anywhere else.”

Jude didn’t answer, but Bruce could see he understood. They were both city kids; grown wild and f*cked up and unhinged beneath the sewers in their respective states. They got it, the way a city drew you in and then kept you trapped, kept you coming back. Bruce supposed every city was like that, to a degree; they all had their idiosyncrasies and their specific inner corners no one except a native would know. But there was a difference between every other city and Gotham. Gotham was its own breed, and so were its citizens. It had the highest crime rate in the country, higher even than New Orleans, but it also had the steadiest population of people who grew up in its walls — and then stayed. Hardly anyone left, and Bruce didn’t know if it was out of loyalty or something darker, but it didn’t matter. They were there, and so was he. So was Jude, drawn back despite having only spent parts of summers here as a child and as a preteen. They were here, and they weren’t going away.

He and Jude had grown up the same, in similar filthy cities, in well-known, wealthy families. And though on the surface they’d gone different ways as adults, there was something similar about their paths, too. After all, they both had their violence, the hot anger they drew on when they needed it, Jude’s raw lashing electricity and Bruce’s controlled silent rage. The difference was Jude let his run him all the time, whereas Bruce’s was contained, pushed back. He’d thought for a long time it was better his way, more effective. Recently, though — like now — he wondered if maybe it wasn’t a little bit of a problem, after all. Because there really was very little separating him and Jude, outside of a set of standards — though even that was questionable — and there were things… Bruce knew, even though he hated it, that a good bit of why they were already working so well together was because Jude understood, in a way no one else really could, what Bruce was thinking — at least as Batman — and why. But the thing was —

— the thing he’d repressed earlier, the thing he hadn’t wanted to admit —

— was that even when he wasn’t wearing the suit, there was still a little piece of Batman in him. Actually, there was a larger chunk in him of Batman than socialite Bruce Wayne. The controlled violence, ready to snap to the surface at any given moment. It was very difficult indeed to suppress; he remembered when he’d first met Cornell and Reznor at the start of the month, and how he’d had to work at not beating the sh*t out of them because they’d made him angry. It was there and all he had to do was pick at the scabs a little to draw it right back out. The desire, running constantly through his fists, to grab, to punch, to throttle, and to keep throttling, to choke and bruise and bleed and hurt, really hurt, until he was blind from it, until he was hardly breathing. It was always there, simmering, and Bruce knew that because he could feel it, every second. It had always been a lot easier to slip into Batman than to come back out of it, and sometimes he wondered if it wouldn’t just be easier to be Batman all the time. Jude was the Joker all the time, letting his anger control him, and it had thrown the city into chaos, it had destroyed countless lives, but at least he was happy. (Comparatively, anyway.) He enjoyed himself. And Bruce knew that, because…

…because in the apartment, when he’d broken Ainsworth’s fingers, when he’d stood there with Batman’s violence at his surface in Bruce Wayne’s skin, and snapped the delicate bones, and snarled, and paced, there hadn’t been a suit to cover his f*cked up desires, and the need that ran through him. There had only been him, him and the violence, Bruce Wayne using Batman’s violence, alone, exposed, and —

— and he’d f*cking liked it.

They drove down Leesville for a ways, then turned onto Peterson, then Wooddale. By then they were deep into the Narrows, static crackling on the radio, blocking out parts of the music: …broke our mirrors… light my candles, in a daze ‘cause I found God… The moon had drifted behind clouds and half the streetlights didn’t work so Bruce crawled along, squinting to see beyond his headlights. In the passenger seat Jude had been silent for a long time except to give directions, and Bruce was quiet too, jaw clenched, wondering what else was coming. He knew better than to let his guard down just yet. They went past the warehouse Bruce had dropped Jude off at back in September. Two blocks later Jude had him turn left onto Cedarcrest, and then another left on Forest, and then —

“Pull over here,” Jude said, gesturing. Bruce executed a decent parallel park and looked up. They were next to a dilapidated apartment complex, grayish and haunting in the dark. Half the windows on the fifth floor had been broken out; maybe a fourth were boarded up. There was a massive tarp over one corner at the roof. When Jude saw Bruce staring at it he shrugged. “Some f*cker tried to bomb us all out a couple years ago. They never figured out how to fix it.”

Bruce wondered if Jude himself had been the ‘f*cker’, but decided not to ask. The pipe which ran from the roof to the drain in the sidewalk was rusting badly in places. The bricks were crumbling, covered in vines. There were junkies on the front steps and tents set up under the windows. On the corner a prostitute stood beneath the single working streetlight, her slender thighs clad in fishnet, ample breasts accentuated by a leopard-print tank. She smiled at Jude through the windshield of Bruce’s car, pale pink mouth stretched wide, and Jude rolled his eyes. He lit another cigarette.

“That’s Helena,” he said. “She’s always trying to get me to f*ck her. She thinks if she screws her way through the underworld she’ll be able to get away with anything she likes in the city. But we both know that’s not true. Don’t we, Wayne.”

Bruce nodded, slowly, watching Helena as she reached down to adjust the straps of her heels. Her skirt was too short to be very effective, and he could see she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

“Take out your contacts,” Jude muttered suddenly. “No one’s gonna care if they see you here.”

Bruce wasn’t sure what the issue was with leaving them in, but he knew better than to argue. He popped them out, flinching a little at the feeling of his own fingers at his eyes, and slipped them into the case he kept in his glove compartment. He would have to figure out a way to sanitize them on the job. Once they were out he blinked, feeling his eyes water, and stared for a moment into his rearview mirror. The sclera was a little bloodshot, but mostly it just looked like he’d been smoking weed, or something. He looked at Jude with his eyebrows raised, and got a little mocking congratulatory smile in return.

“What made you pick them, anyway?” Jude asked as he opened Bruce’s passenger door. “You never said.”

“I remember it working really well for Marilyn Manson in the nineties,” Bruce lied, feeling another rush of relief when Jude laughed again. And that was weird, because he had no need to feel relieved. None of this was necessary, not standing here in the Narrows outside Jude’s apartment, not trying to amuse him as deflection, not any of it. He supposed it was good for gaining Jude’s trust, which in turn would be good for infiltration. Alfred would have pointed out that Bruce always went the extra mile on everything, anyway.

The night air chilled Bruce’s skin. He lingered a second too long beside his car and Jude saw him doing it, and rolled his eyes. “Wayne, c’mon,” he said. “You leave your f*ckin’ car at the warehouse all the time. Everyone knows you’re with me. No one would dare touch this car. Okay? Just — lock it and let’s go.”

Bruce nodded: “Sorry, boss,” and shut the driver’s side door, and locked it. He and Jude walked across the street, passing Helena, who called,

“Hey, Mr. Wayne, I didn’t know you came down here!”

“He’s off limits,” Jude said coldly, turning to give her a look which, amplified by the orangeish glow of the streetlight, was very nearly hellish. “He’s my guest.”

She pouted, holding her hands up. “Can’t I just say hi? We don’t get celebrities here too often — ”

“I said no,” Jude repeated softly, and Helena glared at him, but she also stepped back up onto the curb. She teased her hair up off her shoulders.

“You gentlemen have a nice night,” she said, and Jude rolled his eyes a third time, walking the rest of the way to the complex. At the door — ignoring the junkies — he withdrew from some inner pocket of his overcoat a key ring on which sat at least seven keys, plus an assorted cluster of keychains: Disney World, the Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta, a miniature Eeyore, a tiny plastic Nintendo controller… He selected one of his keys and fit it into the lock, shoved the door open with his shoulder —

“It jams when it rains,”

— and led Bruce inside and up the stairs. At the third floor he walked down a hall and stopped at the door at the end. It was just a door, nondescript, dark wood. Bruce wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. The gate to hell, perhaps. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Jude found another key and stuck it in the lock, then looked at Bruce, his eyebrows raised.

“I suppose I don’t have to tell you how much better it’ll be for you if you keep your mouth shut about where I live.”

“Yeah, of course,” Bruce said. It was chilly in the corridor, the damp concrete walls and floor retaining the outside air. The whole building felt like it had been long since neglected and was only waiting to collapse. It reminded Bruce weirdly of Arkham, the few times he’d visited.

Jude studied him for a few more seconds, then twisted his key and opened the door. Together they walked inside, and Jude flicked on the overhead light. The interior was as unassuming as the door, and somehow all the more unsettling for the normalcy of it. It could have been anyone’s apartment. There was a living room with a couch and a television, a record player against one wall, and a tape deck, and three doors in the wall to the left. The kitchen was beyond the living room, separated from it by a half wall. Bruce could see his stove and part of his sink. He had things scattered over the floor — old takeout boxes, dirty clothes, books with the spines bent — and a few of his guns on the coffee table by the sofa. There was a pizza box open with a few slices inside on top of the television and as Jude walked past it he grabbed one up, offered it to Bruce.

“Want?”

“No,” Bruce said, trying not to notice the way the cheese smelled, “thanks, but I’m…” He trailed off, feeling like an idiot, but Jude made a noise in his throat as he dropped his keys on a pile of — something, socks, maybe — and slipped off his overcoat, so Bruce steeled himself for the mockery and said, “I’m vegan, so.”

There was a pause. Jude’s mouth twitched; he swallowed a lump of pizza, and he said, “A vegan billionaire who knows how to break fingers. What the f*ck, Wayne. Who the f*ck did I hire? What else can you do?” He was grinning; his mouth was shiny from the grease. Bruce looked away, towards the wall over the sofa. It was littered with various clippings from newspapers and magazines: a vividly colored photograph of 9/11. An article about the Dyatlov pass and one about the Erebus and Terror. A poster of Zeppelin’s first album, evidently only there for the Hindenburg. A long article from the Gotham Gazette about the AIDS crisis, with words circled in red. ‘Panic’. ‘Reagan’. ‘Morality’. ‘Telethon’.

“You like it?” Jude asked, coming up to look over Bruce’s shoulder. He smelled f*cking terrible. He always smelled like he’d just crawled out of the bottom of the river — among other things. Bruce had no idea why it didn’t totally repulse him.

“It’s — ” He searched for a word that wouldn’t break this weird — whatever they had going on between them. Not that he had any reason to keep up the charade; they’d long moved past doing anything useful. They were in Jude’s apartment. Bruce had no reason to be here. “It’s definitely different,” he settled on, and Jude’s mouth tightened a little at the corners. Bruce only noticed because he was looking for it — for some reason — but it still made him wince. He’d f*cked up anyway.

“Of course it’s different, Wayne, that’s the point.” Jude dropped his pizza slice on the ground. It spread grease on the threadbare carpet. “I like this sh*t — ” pointing to the 9/11 picture — “I find it f*cking fascinating, so — ”

“I didn’t mean it’s bad,” Bruce said. You need to like me, he thought. This needs to work. “It’s just — it’s really not something anyone else…” He trailed off. Jude wasn’t looking at him anymore; he’d moved on into the kitchen. Bruce could hear him pouring water in the sink. He felt like he’d failed some test, and he wasn’t sure how, and he wasn’t sure why he was disappointed. It was the same feeling he’d had at the laundromat, wishing Cornell and Reznor would approve of him. “What interests you about all those — ”

“Stop trying so f*cking hard,” Jude snapped. “You try too hard, Wayne. You think too much. It’s going to break your f*cking brain.”

Bruce swallowed. Okay. “Sorry, boss,” he said quietly, and that earned him a frustrated sigh. Bruce saw Jude’s hand clenching around the counter.

“Why the hell do you think I asked you to come here?” he asked, after a moment. “Do you think the others come here? Do you think any of them know my name? My real name?”

“I — don’t — ”

“No, Wayne. The answer is f*cking no.” He walked back into the living room. His makeup was smudged on his face, like he’d been wiping at it in the sink. “You’re still the prettiest guy I’ve ever hired, and I think you’re f*cking weird, and I’m interested in that. It’s why I hired you. Or did you forget that?”

How far would you fall? No, Bruce hadn’t forgotten. He just wasn’t sure of the answer anymore.

“So if I want to bring you back to my apartment, and share certain things with you — I expect reciprocation. You don’t want me to lose interest in you, Wayne.”

“You’re not going to, boss,” Bruce said, which — what the f*ck — but Jude only raised his eyebrows, and then his mouth twitched, and he said,

“Ah, yeah. There’s that f*cking death wish.” He tilted his head. “I really like the way you talk to me, Wayne.”

Bruce remembered tying steel wire to the axles of an eighteen-wheeler and dragging it end over end. He remembered broken glass and a machine gun and the way Jude had come up the street growling like a rabid dog. He remembered flipping him onto his back later, and how even when his head had gone through plate glass he’d just laughed, shaking with it on the floor, begging Bruce to hit him again, nearly reaching for it — and he remembered synchronicity, how easy it had been to reach for the knife, to hold it to Ashland’s throat. How it had been even easier tonight to glare and intimidate Ainsworth and break his fingers while Jude cut his skin. He thought again of their similarities, how their divergent paths were really just frayed edges of the same rope, still within reaching distance, and he cleared his throat, and made a show of looking around, and said,

“So this is your lair.”

Jude laughed. “Oh what, I’m a Star Wars villain now?” he said, and Bruce laughed too, feeling some of the tension unwind miraculously from his shoulders. He walked to where the records were, leaning against each other beneath the tape deck. There weren’t many, but Bruce wasn’t really surprised by the selection: Superunknown, Audioslave, Pretty Hate Machine, Bleach, Facelift, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness… He ran his thumb over the tops and turned to look at Jude.

“Going for record on stereotypical nineties’ albums?”

He walked over to stand beside Bruce again. He seemed to have no concept of personal space. “You judging, Wayne?”

“Considering what all our friends’ names are…”

“Oh, they’re our friends now?” He sounded amused. Bruce fought to keep the red from staining his face. His heart was pounding for some reason and to keep Jude from seeing it in his eyes he asked,

“You got any drugs?”

Jude’s eyebrows went even higher. “Is it that kind of visit?”

Bruce shrugged. “You wanted me here for entertainment. You tell me.”

Jude’s tongue darted out to wet at his mouth. He was almost smiling. “Getting there, Wayne,” he said, and suddenly Bruce’s face was even hotter. Thankfully Jude had already turned away, heading into one of the rooms lining the left wall, and Bruce followed, feeling as though he was about to go way out of his depth. He found himself in the bathroom. Jude was moving aside a few pill bottles from behind the mirror and retrieving a bindle of co*ke, a container of oxys, and a prettily rolled spliff.

“Take your pick,” he said, “if you want heroin or something else not on offer you’ll have to come back another day — ”

“I don’t, this is fine,” Bruce said. He took the co*ke, lining it on the edge of the filthy sink beside the pointillist toothpaste splatters and the rust stains and the hair dye stains and what looked like blood stains. He tried to ignore that. He’d done so much worse already, to Jude, with Jude, to himself —

“You gonna snort that or do I have to,” Jude asked quietly at Bruce’s elbow. He realized he was just standing there like an idiot, so he leaned down and snorted the line, feeling it buzz into his nose, into his blood, into his brain. It was pure and good and he could f*cking taste it. Jude spilled some too opposite Bruce’s and snorted it with one nostril covered, edging it into a straight line with his longish pinky nail, keeping it from spilling over too far one way or the other. When he straightened up Bruce could see his pupils were dilated and he was grinning manic and wild. Bruce’s gaze snagged on his mouth for some reason. He had co*ke residue clinging to his nostrils and some of it had spilled onto his mouth, the white flecks standing out starkly against the red paint.

“You’re looking at me weird, Bruce Wayne,” Jude said. “Are you gonna kill me now?”

Bruce blinked, jerking his eyes back up to Jude’s. He could feel the co*ke racing in time with his heart. “Of course not. How the hell would I explain that to Cornell or Reznor?”

Jude smiled, jagged. “You catch up quick,” he said. He was breathing unsteadily, perhaps also feeling the co*ke, the way Bruce could see it making his teeth grind. Bruce could smell him even more now, sweat and blood and unwashed hair, old clothes, the chemical scent of his greasepaint. He narrowed his eyes at his reflection, running his tongue over his teeth. His fingers drummed incessantly on the edge of the sink. He caught Bruce’s eyes again in the mirror and his jagged smile grew. “C’mon, Wayne,” he said suddenly, “let’s blow this f*ckin’ depressing place. I wanna finish the grand tour with you before the news comes on.”

Bruce’s gaze had caught on Jude’s mouth again, and when he said blow Bruce’s brain went momentarily offline. It took him a long few seconds to realize that Jude hadn’t said he wanted to leave the apartment, and then another beat before he registered the rest of the sentence altogether. Jude was banging his knee on the underside of the sink and his hands were tense. Bruce felt really weird, almost dissociating, one half of him standing in the bathroom, the other half watching himself from inside the tub. The co*ke was still pulsing in him; maybe it was that, he didn’t do drugs very often.

“You watch the news?” he asked.

“Sure.” Jude smiled at Bruce’s reflection, then reached over and snapped the light off. He walked back into the living room, then made an abrupt about-face and went into the room to their right. His bedroom, Bruce realized, with a stunned sort of feeling. He wasn’t sure why it had never before occurred to him that the Joker might have a place to sleep. There was a mattress on the floor, sheets piled around it, and a fan plugged into the wall, and more books scattered over the shelves, and a dressing table with his makeup smeared over the mirror. The tubes of it sat in disarray among cigarette packs and knives and tiny animal figurines. Jude leaned against the table. His whole body was trembling. “I wanna see what the Batman’s doing so I can go behind his back and undo it,” he said.

Bruce stilled temporarily in the doorway, but he didn’t think Jude noticed. He was only half watching Bruce anyway; most of his attention was devoted to his reflection, he was mumbling softly to himself, “Gotta touch it up soon… maybe take off the paint now…” He pointed at Bruce without looking. “Could you get me my — f*cking — the thing you take makeup off with.”

“I — what? What thing?”

Jude rolled his eyes in the mirror. There was a crack right where he was standing and it bisected his face from his forehead down part of his nose. “The pads, Wayne,” he said, as though everyone should have known this. “The cream. Didn’t you ever watch your mother take her makeup off in the evenings? Oh wait — ” He snorted, and Bruce closed his eyes, counting back from ten. Rage pulse — he’s just teasing — f*cking bastard — he’s baiting, he’s testing you — should smash his head into that f*cking mirror right now f*ck this plan — keep it light, you need this to work — When he looked up again Jude was watching him still, expectant, and Bruce sighed.

“What does it look like?” he asked, and Jude grinned. He told him, and Bruce walked back into the bathroom, opening the mirror cabinet again and searching for several seconds before finding the container of Pond’s behind a tube of lipstick. He forced himself to stay away from the pill bottles, and to shut the door again. When he brought the cream to Jude their fingers brushed and Jude’s eyes snapped to his, all traces of amusem*nt gone from his face. He kept his eyes on him in the mirror while he lathered first his hands and then his face with the cream. Bruce watched the greasepaint slowly lift off his skin, until at last it was all gone, except for a few traces of black clinging to his eyes, and white splotches along his jaw. Then he set the cream down, screwing the cap back on, and turned to Bruce, spreading his hands out.

“Ta-da,” he sang.

It was the first time Bruce had seen him bare-faced since he’d learned who he was. For the second time that day Bruce caught a flash of the kid he’d been; it was the same face, sixteen years older, eyes blazing with so much rage and mania and exhaustion; sixteen long years dealing with pain —

— pain Bruce thought he very nearly recognized. He wanted to reach out and touch him, for some reason — his shoulder, maybe, or his mouth, the edge of it where it was still red despite being clean of product, where the scars were. He was staring and he could feel Jude’s eyes on him, curious, a little amused, like he knew to which tendencies Bruce’s thoughts were running, and so Bruce allowed himself to ask,

“Do they hurt?”

“What, these?”

“Yeah.”

Jude shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“When sometimes?”

“When they hurt.”

Bruce huffed. “You’re deliberately being obtuse.”

“That isn’t a question.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“I can’t answer a question you haven’t asked.”

Bruce sighed. “When do they hurt?”

“All the time.”

“You said sometimes before.”

“Maybe I lied.”

“Do you lie often?”

“Are you sure you can trust my answer?”

Bruce swallowed. He didn’t know how to answer and so he didn’t. “So what’s,” he tried instead; his voice caught, for some reason, so that he had to clear his throat and try again: “Your whole thing with Batman. You really hate him, huh.”

Jude blinked, evidently taken off guard by the subject change, but he rose to it gamely, unbuttoning his vest and tossing it on the floor. He looked sort of ridiculous with just his suspenders but Bruce didn’t dare say anything. “Nah,” Jude said, leaning backwards against the dressing table with his elbows. “Don’t have the energy to hate such a self-righteous hypocrite.”

“Why do you call him a hypocrite,” Bruce asked carefully. “He does a lot of good for this city.”

“Oh, like you?” Jude’s mouth twisted. Bruce folded his arms. He watched himself in the mirror, watching Jude.

“I do plenty for this city,” he said.

“Sure,” Jude said. “Except we’ve already had this discussion, and we both know you don’t. Your philanthropy act — that’s all it is, Wayne. Just an act. Shelling out money so people will like you. Pretending you give a f*ck about anything you’re paying for.”

“I give a f*ck.” Bruce’s hands were shaking where he had them clasped around his arms. He couldn’t tell anymore if it was just from the cocaine but he didn’t think it was. His heart was racing and he was a little bit nauseous. “I give a f*ck, Jude.”

“Everything you touch is still destroyed,” Jude said. “Every single thing. And you’re hunting down people with me now — how good do you think that makes you?” His eyes dropped to Bruce’s mouth and Bruce’s heart gave a violent thud, like he’d been kicked in the chest by a giraffe. Jude’s mouth was still twisted and he said, “You really think being on the board at Arkham makes them do sh*t for the patients? You think showing up once a year to their meetings and handing Ainsworth a check makes him give a f*ck about us?”

Bruce’s teeth were clenched so hard it was sparking a headache behind his left eye. He walked forward — he’s still baiting you — and grabbed a fistful of Jude’s hair — and you’re f*cking letting him — and pulled. Jude made a guttural, growling sound; after a moment Bruce realized he was laughing and he was seeing red. I give a f*ck, he wanted to say again, spinning Jude around, trapping him against the dresser. He was one long line of coiled tension in Bruce’s arms and Bruce had no idea what the f*ck he was doing. This was the same man who had held Rachel over the windowsill; the way he’d pushed her out —

“You know I like the way you talk to me,” Jude said, almost softly. “I know I said that earlier but I really, really mean it, Wayne. None of the others have the courage to tell me they hate me. That’s why I like you so much.” His eyes snapped up to meet Bruce’s again, and Bruce was burning with it, and also cold, because it was the same as it had been in the apartment with Ainsworth, the adrenaline without the suit, and the enjoyment. The rush of fearangerhatred, and the f*cking enjoyment.

“I can tell every second we’re together,” Jude said, “how much you want to kill me.”

Every ounce of heat in Bruce’s body rushed down between his legs. “I don’t — ”

“Hey. Do us both a favor and don’t f*cking lie, okay?” Jude’s voice was steady, but his eyes were gaining an edge Bruce didn’t like. “Why the f*ck else would you be staring?” he asked.

Bruce took a deep breath. The silence and solitude before the plunge. The weightless drop behind the ribs from diving off some or another foreign skyscraper. “I want to f*cking devour you,” he whispered. It felt like it had come out of f*cking nowhere, but the second Bruce heard it, he knew it was true.

Jude gave him a measured look. Finally he said: “Okay,” and Bruce started to grab for his belt loops, to spin him around and direct him where he wanted him to go, but before he could Jude was turning himself. He got his hands on Bruce’s wrists and walked him back to the mattress, shoving him down. Bruce could feel his breath coming fast and uneven and Jude was staring at his mouth and crawling between his legs. One hand settled on his hip. The other on his knee.

“Couple of things,” Jude said. “I don’t f*ck unless I feel like it. And I don’t feel like it very often. So if I’m going to f*ck it needs to be good. Otherwise I’m wasting my time.” He reached up, and ran one long finger down Bruce’s cheek. The feeling of his skin against Bruce’s — cold and dry — made him shiver. “Do I seem like the kind of guy who wants to waste his time?”

Bruce swallowed. He closed his eyes. Steeled himself. And said, “If you don’t shut up and let me get you on your back then I’m wasting my time.”

There was a pause, and Bruce had enough time to start thinking perhaps he’d made a mistake, but then Jude laughed, once, sharp brittle sound like shattering glass. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you, Wayne.” His voice came out even more hoarse than Bruce was used to hearing it, and it shot an unfamiliar, warm tingle down his arms.

“I thought that’s what you liked about me,” he said, and then, “Are you gonna shut up now?” and Jude laughed again, and took Bruce’s wrist, and flipped them over.

The thing was — and Bruce wasn’t sure he’d ever admit it — but the thing was that he was the same as Jude: he didn’t like f*cking much. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t feel the desire as he just didn’t feel like going through with it; he was more interested in obsessing over another person until both of them were repelled by each other, like opposite poles on magnets. It was what he’d done to Rachel, to a degree. The vulnerability involved in sex was like ripping himself open from the inside and expecting the other person to just sit back and take it. He hated showing so much of himself to anyone, so he just didn’t. The last time he could even remember f*cking anyone else had been over a year ago, maybe; some model at a fundraiser, bent over in the bathroom, door locked, her dress hitched up around her waist, shoe clasps loose on her ankles. Bruce had to picture Rachel to come, and it hadn’t been satisfactory enough. The model had seemed to understand without being told that he needed something out of it he wasn’t willing to discuss, and to her credit she’d tried to accommodate him, but it just — hadn’t worked.

This, though — this was nothing like that. Nothing like jerking off thinking of the sh*t he’d do to Rachel if he could have her. Nothing like any of it. Right from the start it felt the way it did when they fought as Batman and the Joker; that same violent release of tension, that same uncontrollable urgency to hurt, and to keep hurting. Bruce thought again of hitting Jude over and over in the interrogation room. He remembered his foot in Jude’s chest in the penthouse, and Jude’s knife below his ribs, and the rush when he’d shoved Jude off the side of the Prewitt Building. This was like that, except with markedly less clothes.

Bruce wasn’t gentle with Jude; he didn’t have the time or the patience to be. He got Jude on his back on the mattress and there was this feeling — a rush of heat straight down his spine, uncontained, which he’d never had. It made his hands shake and he was suddenly so hard he couldn’t get past undoing his belt and unzipping his fly. Jude was laughing up at him, but there was nothing mocking about it, though Bruce could see he was pretending otherwise.

“Is this what years of business meetings and repression does to a person,” he asked as Bruce bit his neck, working at his pants, hands shaking as he fumbled them off Jude’s hips. “Or are you just naturally made of all this f*cking tension, Wayne, this isn’t healthy you know — ”

“You sure are f*cking good at running your mouth,” Bruce growled against his throat, pulling Jude’s shorts down past his hips. He could feel the hard line of Jude’s pulse and he licked at it. Jude gasped, still laughing, as Bruce reached between them and grabbed at the shaft of his co*ck to stroke it. He was too impatient to go for anything to slick it up but Jude seemed to like it better that way, shoving at Bruce, begging him:

“C’mon, c’mon, harder, f*ck, Wayne, f*cking — touch me, you f*ck,” and Bruce stroked him dry, hard, rough, angry, thinking of Rachel, of Harvey, of the thousands Jude had killed and the thousands he would kill and how underneath it all he was right. He was right about Bruce and he’d been right about Batman and now Bruce was here in his apartment biting his mouth red and bloody, bruising his neck, snorting his drugs. He’d orchestrated everyone’s deaths that Bruce had ever cared about but Bruce was f*cking around with him on his filthy f*cking mattress in the middle of the night. He’d broken a man’s fingers and he hadn’t even been wearing the suit to do it. He’d held a man at knifepoint and he’d liked doing it and he had no idea how to deal with any of it except to twist Jude’s co*ck in his hand dragging forth more brittle broken laughter. He was thrusting up into Bruce’s hand, scraping his nails through the short ends of his hair and down his neck, like stroking a feral dog, hard enough to leave visible marks, hard enough to draw blood. Bruce could tell he was close so he stopped, and flipped them over. He spit into his hand and got Jude open enough he could take Bruce and then he plowed into him from behind, shaking on every thrust, Jude shuddering against him, head hanging down between his arms, and what did it was Bruce curling his fingers into the unwashed locks of Jude’s hair and pulling. Jude’s neck arched back and he came all over Bruce’s hand and his sheets and the sight of it sent Bruce over the edge as well. It was the hardest he could remember coming perhaps in his whole life and he hadn’t been thinking of Rachel at all. He couldn’t stop moving his hips. He couldn’t stop shaking. When he pulled out Jude pretty much instantly slumped onto the mattress, burying his face in his pillow. Sweat had gathered at the base of his neck and Bruce leaned in and licked it off. Jude snorted into his arms.

“Bruce Wayne,” he murmured. “I had no idea you were so f*cked up.” He twisted his head a little so he could watch Bruce’s face; Bruce didn’t know what for, and he didn’t know if he wanted to. He pushed himself a little to one side and said,

“Was that a waste of your time?”

Jude’s eyes were lidded. Bruce could see the bruises forming along his throat and his shoulders where he’d bitten him. “We’ll have to see,” he said, and settled himself down more firmly into the mattress. They stayed like that for a while, staring at each other, until eventually Jude closed his eyes, and Bruce understood his welcome had worn out. He stood, slowly, on legs that felt like water. He redid his pants, hands shaking. He walked to the mirror and stared at his mouth. It was swollen from biting, bleeding a little. He reached up to touch it, gently, with his fingers first, and then his tongue. The skin tasted like Jude.

“See you later, boss,” he said. Jude grunted sleepily.

“Light off when you go,” he slurred into his skin, and Bruce nodded, and switched off the light before leaving the apartment and heading downstairs to his car.

He didn’t know why he was smiling.

Two evenings later Bruce arrived at the scheduled meeting with a scarf around his neck to conceal the obvious. Jude however had not and when Bruce walked into the warehouse his eyes zeroed pretty much instantly on the deep sucking bruise at the base of Jude’s throat. Everyone else was talking quietly and evidently trying not to look or ask questions but as Bruce approached Reznor looked at him, and at his steadily warming face, and then to Jude, who was watching Bruce with an obviously co*cked eyebrow. Reznor nudged Cornell who mouthed ‘ahh’. Jude had an expression like, what are you going to do. Bruce rolled his eyes, shoved his beanie into the pocket of his coat, and then removed the scarf as well. It got momentarily very quiet. Then Cornell said,

“What’s on the agenda today, boss?”

and the meeting began.

Notes:

check out art i made on ms paint of jude's apartment here

Chapter 4 Notes:

archive warning applies in this chapter
See Also
The Plain Dealer from Cleveland, Ohio The Plain Dealer from Cleveland, Ohio Alabama Journal from Montgomery, Alabama Journal articles: '43 Club, London' – Grafiati

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

November 2008

Bruce was on his way out of the door when the business phone rang. It was a white landline mounted on the wall and generally Alfred answered it as it connected straight to Bruce’s office downstairs but Alfred was polishing the Wayne family silver as he did every year so Bruce dropped his keys and his pass in the glass bowl by the elevator and walked to the stove. He picked the phone up:

“Bruce Wayne.”

There was a pause. Then: “Mr. Wayne?” Lucius. “Do you have on your TV?”

Bruce frowned. “I — no, I’m about to head down for the meeting — ”

“I think you should turn on your TV first, Mr. Wayne. Put on the news.”

Still frowning, Bruce leaned across to the kitchen island and grabbed the remote. Next to the sink and the knives in the far corner of the kitchen there was a little cathode ray set which he flicked on. It was usually on GCN, because Alfred liked to watch it early in the morning while making breakfast, but today, bizarrely, he’d been watching the match between Manchester United and FC Barcelona, so Bruce had to take a minute to change the channel. When at last he found it he didn’t even realize for a moment what Lucius was so upset about. Mike Engel was sitting behind his usual desk, wearing his usual tie, talking in his usual calm, measured voice to —

Oh, f*ck.

“ — and you think you’re ready,” he was saying, as Bruce turned the volume up.

“Yes,” said Coleman Reese. He was pressing his hands together in his lap, but the camera had angled up so that the movement was only visible in his shoulders. He’d chewed an irritated red spot into the corner of his lower lip, but he was looking right at Engel. “I’m — it’s time. It’s past time.”

“Are you sure,” Engel said, folding his hands together on the desk and leaning a little forward. Bruce could just make out the outline of a bulletproof vest beneath his button down. He’d started wearing it after the events in July. “The last time you threatened to out the Batman’s identity, the Joker blew up Gotham General — ”

“I know,” Coleman said. “And I’m not saying that there isn’t a risk involved in coming forward now, but I — you know, he’s disappeared. Batman hasn’t made an appearance in society in over a month now, and I hear people talking at — well, where I work, and — since I know who he is, and I know where he is, and what he’s doing, there’s no reason to, to keep my mouth shut about it now — ”

“The Joker also tried to have you killed,” Engel pointed out. Bruce watched the flex of Coleman’s throat as he swallowed.

“Batman was responsible for the deaths of five of Gotham’s citizens over the summer,” he said. “And his — the person hiding behind his mask has gotten to just go on with his life and pretend he hasn’t committed — absolutely atrocious crimes, just these, these heinous acts he needs to answer for. That Gotham needs him to answer for. And if Jim Gordon and the rest of the GCPD won’t hunt him down, I’ll say his name on this channel, and I’ll drag him out of his house kicking and screaming. Whatever happens after — I just want justice. That’s all.”

“Some people might say that this is bringing something into light the city would rather forget.”

“Look, I know there was a lot of trauma,” Coleman said. His hands were twisting harder. Bruce remembered he’d often made a habit of it during meetings when he was trying not to lose his temper. “I’m not trying to ignore that. But you and forty-nine other people were taken on a bus and nearly killed, and they’re spending billions of taxpayers’ dollars trying to rebuild a hospital that wasn’t funded well in the first place, and I — you know, I still have nightmares about that voice. Hearing that voice in this room. And Harvey Dent died for Batman, and Batman vanished. He took Dent’s sacrifice and he threw it in the trash. I’m just trying to get him to answer for that.”

“Well.” Engel cleared his throat. He looked at the camera in a way that made it clear he was trying to get his cameraman to cut to commercial. “This city certainly has a way of — of taking the law into its own hands. I have no doubt you will go through with this plan, Mr. Reese, and that you will be quite successful at it. When we come back, we’ll take a few callers — ”

“Oh,” Coleman started uncertainly, chewing on the raw place of his lip, “I don’t think — ”

“Carefully screened this time,” Engel said, cutting him off. “We’ll take a few callers, and then we’ll make a revelation this city has been curious about for over a year now.” It went to commercial, and Bruce switched the set back off. His hands were shaking. His mind was curiously quiet, though. He took a moment to breathe; then, slowly, he put the receiver back to his ear.

“You still there, Lucius?”

“I’m still here, Mr. Wayne.”

Bruce found he was staring blankly at the dark screen. He could just make out his reflection in it, the warped white lines of his body. “What are you planning to do?” he asked.

Lucius was quiet for a beat too long, and Bruce felt the silver shiver of panic flood down his arms and wrap them in cold tendrils. “Lucius,” he started, and Lucius sighed, breath crackling over the line.

“Look, Mr. Wayne… he’s already on the air. There’s nothing we can do. I called you so you’d be prepared. I didn’t want you sitting in the meeting when the news broke. You can talk through the speaker; I have it set up on the table. The board will understand if I tell them you had an emergency conference in Berlin or some other appropriate — ”

“No.” Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, that isn’t — I’m not doing that.” In July when Coleman had come forward Bruce hadn’t really thought much of it; he’d saved Coleman’s life because he’d pitied him, and his pathetic attempt at gaining recognition. But it was different now. If Coleman spoke out now Bruce was f*cked; he hadn’t been in Jude’s gang long enough. He hadn’t extracted nearly enough nor hardly any real information.

“Mr. Wayne, you can’t be in here when Mr. Reese reveals who you are — ”

“I know.” Behind him he heard a quiet shuffle of feet and turned to see Alfred standing in the doorway of the dining room. He was holding the silver polisher in one hand and Bruce’s mother’s favorite vase in the other. It had flowers around the base. Bruce had found a dead mouse in it once. “I won’t be. But I can take care of this.”

“You won’t be able to call the station and stall them by talking for a full half hour — ”

“I know,” Bruce said again. “Just. I’m sure he’ll — if I go down there and see him.”

Lucius sighed. It was very close to the same sigh Alfred always gave him when Bruce said or did something stupid. Bruce was sure he’d continue protesting, or else that he’d flat out tell Bruce no, but after a moment all he said was:

“If you can’t get to Mr. Reese in time, Mr. Wayne, we will have to implement our backup plan.”

For the third time, Bruce said, “I know.” Then, before Lucius could say anything else, he hung up. To Alfred he said,

“See if you can call the station and have them delay the program. I’m calling Coleman.”

Alfred twisted his mouth. “Of course, sir,” he said, dryly. “While I’m at it, shall I perhaps ramp up the testing at NASA? I know they’ve quite a hankering to get to Mars — ”

“Alfred, please,” Bruce said, and snatched his keys and his pass from the glass bowl again. Alfred sighed.

“Yes, Master Wayne,” he said, but Bruce was already ducking into the stairwell. He ran down, taking the stairs two at a time, until he reached the elevator in the guest section of the penthouse. As he rode down to the elevator lobby which would take him to the rest of the building he fished out his business cell. He still had Coleman’s number despite it had been several months since he’d left, and Bruce started to let it dial out so Coleman would see his name, then stopped. He retrieved his burner instead and flipped it open. He arrived in the lobby and slid his pass so the next elevator would take him straight to the ground floor, rather than having to bypass his security measures. As it arrived and he stepped on, he copied Coleman’s number onto the Razr and hit the green button. It dialed as the floor numbers fell — thirty-seven… thirty-five… thirty-four… When Coleman answered he sounded more than a little irritated:

“I don’t want any, and I can’t afford to give any, whatever you want, I’m about to be on national television — ”

“It’s a local news station,” Bruce snapped, and Coleman was quiet for a minute. Then:

“What are you — ”

“You can’t tell them.” The floors were still falling. Not fast enough. Not fast enough. Bruce’s throat felt like he’d just swallowed dry ice. “Coleman. You can’t — ”

“It’s too late,” Coleman said. “I’m here, it’s done. I’m going on air again soon and — ”

“How much?”

Coleman was quiet. “What?”

“I know you went to Lucius Fox for an offer when you found out.” The elevator had at last hit the ground floor and Bruce stumbled out, staring frantically at the television mounted in the upper corner of the lobby. It was on GCN; they were still running commercials. “I’m prepared to give you twice that much.”

“How, uh — ” Coleman stuttered for a moment. In the background Bruce could hear voices; he supposed Mike Engel was trying to get him to wrap up the conversation. “What’s the — ”

“Fifty million,” Bruce said.

Coleman made an abortive sound in his throat. “I — fifty — ”

“Yeah,” Bruce said. The Honda commercial was running to an end and he knew the news program was going to be coming back on soon. “Does that sound like something you’d — ”

The commercial abruptly cut off, in tandem with a sudden outpouring of voices on Coleman’s end of the phone. The BREAKING NEWS banner flashed across the bottom of the screen, and the line went dead as the camera cut to Mike Engel. His face had totally filled the screen. They must have forced Coleman off the phone.

“I’m just being told that we have — ” he pressed his finger to his ear — “we are receiving footage of a high-speed chase occurring in the central business district down Edmonton — ”

Bruce glanced towards the glass-fronted doors which led from the street. The other people in the lobby were also staring, conversations dying as they all turned to look.

“ — a gray Dodge Grand Caravan, en route to the fish wharf loading docks at Marseilles, was shot through by three hooded men with a twelve-gauge shotgun. One then took over driving while the other two positioned themselves in — ”

Bruce felt the blood drain from his face. He knew. He could hear the police sirens screaming as they approached Wayne Tower, and as his employees and staff rushed to the windows to watch he silently backed out, headed into the conference room, and locked himself in. He keyed over to his contacts. Pressed Jude’s name. The phone rang six times before Jude picked up.

“Wayne,” he drawled. Bruce hadn’t spoken to him one-on-one since he’d been to his apartment. The sound of his voice sparked dark overheated memories Bruce couldn’t handle right now. “I’m kind of in the middle of — ”

“Is this you?” Bruce asked. “The chase in the van. Is that you?”

Silence except the sound of rushing air past an open window. He was definitely driving, though there were no sirens on his end. Finally Jude said, “Don’t you have a company to run? Why are you sitting around watching TV?”

“I have to keep up with my stocks,” Bruce lied, and Jude snorted. Bruce could hear his blinker going, and he said, “Seriously, Jude — is it you?”

More silence. Then: “Do you know how hard I’ve worked to maintain order in this city?” Jude said. “And then that little f*cker comes back from whatever gutter he crawled into — ”

“What are you going to do?” Bruce asked. His hands were shaking. He could hear the police sirens outside reaching a crescendo.

Jude sighed. “I’ve got Staley, Vedder, and Cobain on an O.J. run distracting that incompetent sh*t of a reporter while I head to the studios.”

“You’re going to GCN?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And then what — you’re going to — ”

“I’m gonna kill that piece of sh*t,” Jude said. “I warned him in July but I guess people just aren’t interested in — ”

“Wait.” Bruce could hardly believe he was interrupting and apparently neither could Jude because he actually stopped talking.

“What.”

“I — ” Bruce swallowed. “I want to take care of this for you.” He breathed out. He had no idea what he was doing.

Jude was quiet. “You want to?”

“I can,” Bruce said, more firmly. “I can take care of this for you. Like I did with Ainsworth.” He leaned against a table with the back of his hand. He knew — if he didn’t get to Coleman first, if Coleman spoke out, if Jude got to Coleman and tortured him, it would all be over very quickly.

Jude was quiet for a minute. Bruce heard his music get turned down, and the car brakes sigh as he coasted to a stop. “You have three blocks to convince me why this is a good idea,” he said.

“I already called him,” Bruce tried.

“When?”

“Just now. While they were on commercial. I called him and told him I’d give him money.” Then he winced, realizing what a monumentally stupid thing that had been to say. On the other end Jude started driving again. Bruce could hear the wind rushing past his window.

“You bribed him to keep his mouth shut about Batman?”

“Yeah.”

“Why.”

Bruce really had absolutely no idea what he was doing. “He used to be my accountant, so I know I have some pull with — ”

“No, I mean why are you doing this, why are you going so far for this particular cause. Does Batman’s secret identity get you hard or something.” A slight pause. “Should I be jealous, Wayne?” and then he laughed. Bruce forced himself to laugh, too, and then he said,

“I remember in July, the — everything that happened, all the stuff you did to ensure that Coleman wouldn’t talk.” Ruining his fifth Lamborghini. The whiplash he’d incurred had come four days later and lasted two weeks. When he’d fought the Joker on the Prewitt Building it had been like performing acrobatics in a straightjacket. “It really seems to bother you — ”

“And what, and you want to give me Coleman’s head on a platter? Serve him up with roses like St. John the Baptist? How f*cking romantic of you, Wayne.”

Bruce didn’t exactly freeze, but he felt something stiffen inside him. It was as ever impossible to tell if Jude was kidding, though Bruce doubted he was. How far are you willing to go for this? He bit his thumbnail. Outside he could hear his employees talking and knew he didn’t have much time to make the decision before Jude made it for him. “I — would that make you happy? Is that what you want?”

Jude didn’t answer for a moment. Then Bruce heard the car slowing down. “Is this something you feel capable of doing?” he asked. “Because murder isn’t the same thing as blackmail, whatever American Psycho might have taught you — you did see that one, right? Serial killer f*cker in an office, kinda looked like you — ”

“I’ve seen it,” Bruce said. He’d watched it with Rachel when he’d come back to the States, for some reason. “And I know it isn’t. But if he won’t take my bribe — and hell, even if he does take my bribe there’s no, like, guarantee he’ll keep his mouth shut forever, I mean, you grew up in this life, you know fifty million a year isn’t exactly a fortune — ” It was the first time he’d ever really alluded to Jude’s past. But Jude didn’t say anything beyond:

“Not to you or me, maybe,” and then, “The thing is, Wayne, I’m not interested in him. He’s a f*cking boring little dude and I don’t know how you kept him employed for however long that was. So the idea of him living and having a chance to cause more trouble isn’t really — it sounds like a waste of my time. And you already know how I feel about things that waste my time.”

Bruce bit his mouth. There was still a little sore place inside his lip from where Jude’s teeth had scraped the skin. “I know.”

“So if you’re offering to take care of this for me I need you to be sure you understand exactly what you’re offering.”

“Yeah, boss.”

“It won’t be like breaking Ainsworth’s fingers.”

“I know.”

“If you can’t do it I’m not gonna be happy. You really don’t want to waste my time, Wayne. Not when I’m just starting to like you.”

Bruce unlocked the conference room door and opened it a half inch. On the television the gray van was still driving erratically with three GCPD squad cars on its tail. Bruce could see Cobain — he thought it was Cobain — hanging out the back passenger window and firing his automatic, laughing hysterically.

“I’m not gonna waste your time, boss,” he said, shutting the door again.

Jude was quiet. Bruce could hear his music playing faintly in the background. Finally he sighed; it sounded frustrated. “You have one hour,” he said. “Then I get to do whatever the f*ck I want to with him.” And with you went unspoken, but Bruce heard it loud and clear. He started to say okay, but Jude had already hung up. Bruce stared at his phone for another few seconds, then flipped it shut. His hands were shaking. He had to go back up to the penthouse via his private elevator to get his contacts; thankfully Alfred was already preoccupied elsewhere, and didn’t notice Bruce come in or leave. As he headed back down to his garage he shoved his hands into his jacket pockets.

How far are you willing to go? Thomas whispered as he walked. And Bruce drew in his shoulders, and shook his head, and said, over and over:

It’s just a job. It’s just the job.

He remembered Rachel telling him: you have a problem knowing when enough is enough. It’s what makes you so good at being Batman, but it’s also what makes you so terrible at being a person. She’d been right, of course. It was the reason Bruce was so good at hiding his identity from Jude and the others, but it was also what had gotten him into this metaphorical corner.

His code. Batman’s code. The one thing he’d always sworn, right from the beginning. He would not kill and he had not killed. He’d maimed, he’d mauled, he’d injured, beaten to a bloody pulp, smashed heads into glass panes — but never killed. He’d thrown people off balconies, off trains, onto metal tables, off the sides of buildings — but he’d never killed. And yet —

And yet. He was in the Joker’s gang. The Joker’s gang. It wasn’t like joining some amateur mob crime family. It was the f*cking Joker and he meant everything he did and Bruce knew it. He knew it when he decided to take this project on by himself, this whole stupid, unwieldy, dangerous project. He had no outside help and he’d known he was way in over his head almost the whole time; maybe even since September. He wanted Jude to trust him so he could infiltrate the gang further, take it out from the inside, destroy the man who destroyed his life —

— the man he’d slept with a week prior, the man he’d already fought alongside twice now and maimed for and enjoyed doing it —

— and the lives of so many citizens of this city. This stupid foul horrible damaged debauched f*cked up soulless city. This city Bruce had spent so long fighting so hard to save for no reason because it never thanked him and it never kept its promises. He wanted to infiltrate the Joker’s gang for this soulless throbbing black heart of a city and he didn’t know why anymore and he thought perhaps he never had. All he knew right now was there was only one way to fully gain Jude’s trust and that was to kill for him. If f*cking him wasn’t good enough… if Ainsworth wasn’t good enough…

He’d known all along in the back of his mind where he never reached so he could keep secrets even from himself that only the most extreme thing would do it. How far are you willing to go. He was pretty sure he could back out now and just hole up in the penthouse with his security on full until Jude got bored of waiting for him and moved on. He had substantial information, after all: Jude’s real name, and his address, and their contacts, the gang members and Ashland and Ainsworth. But it wasn’t enough, not yet, and anyway he didn’t want that, he couldn’t stop now. Ultimately there was no other option except to break his code. To kill Coleman Reese. His head with roses for Jude’s entertainment. Without cruelty —

Bruce remembered Jude in July, in Major Crimes: You have all these rules, and you think they’ll save you. How he’d goaded him: Tonight you’re gonna break your one rule. And in the penthouse, just a month ago:

If I pushed you, how far would you fall?

He was going to break his rule for the very man who wanted it from him the most. The man who had killed Rachel. But it was going to save so many other people in the end. In giving into Jude’s wishes to break him and expose the rotten pieces beneath, he would ultimately save the very city that wanted him dead. It would only be temporary, anyway. After this was done he’d go to Gordon. He’d confess his transgressions. He’d pay for his crimes.

It was only temporary. He’d have time to fix himself later.

He called Cornell and met him some blocks away from Wayne Tower. Cornell pulled up in the Suburban he’d taken Bruce to the Richmond thing in. Bruce himself had taken a Nissan, because it was less conspicuous than the Mustang. When he got in the Suburban Cornell offered him a cigarette.

“Thanks,” Bruce muttered, taking it and setting it between his lips. Cornell handed him his lighter, too, and then he said,

“So you’re gonna kill for the boss, huh?”

Bruce swallowed. Nodded. Cornell snorted.

“Why’d he ask you to do it.”

Bruce ran his thumbnail along the thin edge of his phone in his pocket. “He didn’t,” he said, watching the side of Cornell’s face. “I offered. He said yes.”

Cornell lifted one incredulous eyebrow in Bruce’s direction. “You offered,” he repeated, blankly.

“Well, he kind of suggested it, but — yeah. Essentially.”

“And he — ”

“ — said yes,” Bruce repeated.

The other eyebrow went up, briefly. “You sure must be f*cking incredible at sucking his dick,” he said, “‘cause otherwise why is he so f*cking willing to let you do whatever the hell you want.”

Bruce felt heat trying to draw its way up his jaw. The memory of last week flashed through his mind before he could stop it. His teeth on Jude’s neck. The noise he made when he came. “I don’t know,” he said. “You better ask him, since you seem so concerned about it every time we talk.”

Cornell’s nostrils flared. Bruce watched his jaw tense.

“Look, come on,” Bruce said, “that car chase can’t last forever. He only gave me an hour to get this done.”

“And you’re sure you can handle this.”

Bruce leveled Cornell with a look he’d used sometimes as Batman on lesser criminals. “Why don’t you let me and the boss worry about what he thinks I can or can’t handle, huh?”

“Man, Wayne, you sure have f*cking nerve; you think ‘cause you have money you — ”

“I think if you don’t hurry up and help me we’re both gonna get fired,” Bruce snapped, losing the last of his patience. Cornell returned his Batman-look with a surprising degree of accuracy, but he also unlocked the doors, and Bruce pitched his cigarette onto the asphalt before following him around to the back of the van. There was the UPS outfit. Someone had sewn the gray sleeves of a Henley into the real sleeves for the cold weather. It still had its nametag, though Cornell tugged it off before handing the shirt and pants to Bruce.

“You ain’t gonna pass as a ‘Jorge’,” he said, and laughed when Bruce rolled his eyes. He changed into the outfit the way Cornell had at Kinko’s, leaving his own clothes in the backseat of the Nissan, and put in the contacts. With the hat shoved down over his forehead and the white irises he looked —

“f*ckin’ scary sh*t, Wayne,” Cornell said, shaking his head. He looked annoyed, likely at having complimented Bruce in the first place. Still, Bruce jumped down from the car, grabbed a makeshift cardboard box, and was about to go in when Cornell put a hand on his arm.

“Unless you’re planning on getting Reese in a chokehold and cutting off his air you aren’t killing him without a weapon,” he said. From the interior of his jacket he retrieved a slender silver knife. “You can borrow mine. I want it back, though. Don’t lose it in there. I’m not going to jail over some stupid mistake. It’s hard getting out even with Batman f*cked off to wherever he’s gone.”

Bruce wrapped his fingers around the knife handle and slipped it into the waistband of the UPS pants. The lining was elastic — Bruce guessed everyone shared this disguise. Carefully leaving his expression blank he said, “Where do you think he is?”

Cornell snorted. “Who the f*ck cares? He made my life harder. At least the boss can do as he pleases now without him breathing down his neck all the time.”

Your boss f*cking loved when I’d breathe down his neck, Bruce didn’t say. He just nodded, neutrally, and said,

“So after I’m done — ”

“Call the boss.” Cornell shut the trunk of the Suburban and flipped the keys over in his hand. “Take your car out to wherever he tells you.” He hesitated. Then: “Don’t f*ck it up, though. Like I told you, he won’t give you a second chance, even if you are sucking his co*ck.” He walked to the driver’s seat and got in. The engine roared to life. Bruce could hear the faint monotonous beat of some pop song as Cornell pulled out. For a moment he stood alone in the parking lot, feeling the wind as it wrapped a noose around his neck and pulled. It cut into the edges of his contacts, and Bruce closed his eyes. When he opened them again, GCN was still there, unmoving, unjudging.

It’s just a job, he thought, and started forward.

The desk clerk in the front office seemed reticent to wave Bruce through the metal detector until he showed her his knife and explained it was for cutting the packages. “I’m supposed to have an X-Acto knife, but I just started two weeks ago, and they haven’t had a chance to update their products yet,” he said. “So I’m just using this one for now. But I didn’t want the alarms to go off with everything else going on…” He waved vaguely at one of the televisions mounted on the wall, on which Engel’s program was still playing out the chase. She frowned at the screen, then at the box under Bruce’s arm.

“Who are you delivering that to?”

“Uh — ” Bruce pretended to check an intake form. “It’s for Mike Engel.”

Still frowning, she ran her finger down a paper on a clipboard. “Mr. Engel isn’t scheduled to receive any packages today.”

Bruce shrugged. “I just deliver where I’m told,” he said. “If it’s wrong, I’ll apologize personally.”

The desk clerk bit her lip. She looked at Bruce. Then at the television. A fourth police car had joined the chase. The captions read:

ENGEL: AND WE ARE NOW RECEIVING REPORTS FROM COMMISSIONER GORDON THAT KANE MEMORIAL IS PREPARED TO RECEIVE THE SURVIVORS OF THE INITIAL SHOOTING —

“Fine,” she said. “Just go quickly.” She handed him a visitor’s pass, and he slid Cornell’s knife back into the uniform and walked to the elevators. There were nameplates outside the elevators; Mike Engel was on the fourth floor, along with Natoya Schiller (weather) and Tilly Carmichael (sports). He got on an elevator and rode up. On the fourth floor there was a reception desk with a few secretaries who shot covert and uneasy glances at Bruce’s contacts before one finally gathered herself enough to ask who Bruce was delivering the package to.

“Mike Engel.”

“Oh, he’s down that way,” the secretary said, pointing. “But you’d be better off leaving it in the mail room over there — ” and she pointed — of course — in the opposite direction. Bruce sighed, glancing at the clock. Half an hour had already gone by. He drew in breath to try and protest, but before he could, a door opened at the far end of the hall, and Coleman Reese walked out. Bruce stared; he couldn’t help it. He cut his eyes for a moment to the monitors over the secretaries’ heads, but Mike Engel was still reporting on the chase. So Coleman hadn’t talked yet. He was just — here.

Suddenly there was a tightness in Bruce’s chest he couldn’t identify. It wasn’t quite panic or fear, but something related to both. It was seeing Coleman and realizing with a feeling like a wall slamming into his chest from the inside that this was what he was here to do. This real, living, flesh and blood person. He was here to kill Coleman Reese and the abstract thought had not struck him until now, standing here, staring at him as he walked past, the familiar reddish hair, the receding hairline, the slight frame, the square jaw. He watched Coleman’s hands against his sides as he walked, and the movement of his legs beneath his pants, and the soft sandy whorls of hair on the back of his neck. His heart crowded his throat. The knife blade felt frozen against his stomach.

Coleman disappeared into the men’s room, and Bruce looked at the clock. Another five minutes had somehow already gone by. The secretaries were staring at him.

“Sir, are you — ”

He slid the empty box across the desk. “Sorry, yes,” he said. “Could you just — hang onto this for me for a minute, I need to…” He bit his lip. “I have to make a phone call,” and he headed off in the direction of the men’s room as well.

He felt distanced from everything. He was suddenly, fully aware of each detail around him: the pale shade of the walls, the tightly knit grayish carpet, the soft hush of conversation behind the doors. The hollow thud of the water cooler as someone took a drink. Each step took twice as long to make. There were claws at his ankles, and his ankles were made of lead. As he pushed the door open and slipped inside, his hand closed around his phone. He couldn’t do this. He would call Jude and beg out of it, and incur whatever penalties. His hands were shaking. He couldn’t —

But when he pulled his phone out and flipped it open he discovered a missed text. It must have gone through while he was changing into the false uniform. It was from Jude:

Hit on hd 1st. Will ethr knk out or dsrnt. Qkr & esr 2 kill.

Bruce breathed out. He stared at the text, then at his reflection. The white irises stared back, hollow and unmoving. He counted backwards from ten in his head, forcing his heartbeat to slow, squeezing his nails into his palm. Maybe he could do this. He’d already smashed Jude’s head into the table at MCU, and into the mirror. And he’d done worse things still as Batman, violent, angry things that had left people hospitalized. This would be over in a matter of seconds.

He remembered the cold, calculated feeling that had descended when he’d broken Ainsworth’s fingers. How the detachment had separated him from himself until he was just running on autopilot, letting his training take over, letting his desire to win take over. This was more of the same. It was just pushing a little farther, and it was fine. It would be fine. He already had the capacity for extreme violence and anger within him and he knew how it felt to use it without Batman’s armor and he knew he was capable of it and of liking it. This was just a job. It was just infiltration, part of the job, part of the deception. He was wearing a disguise and none of this was anything new for him, aside from the obvious. He was doing this for Jude —

— no, for the city, for the city, and it would be fine.

How far are you willing to go? whispered the voice which was Thomas’ and his own, at the same time.

As far as I need to, he whispered back.

As far as he needed to.

He locked the bathroom door. A toilet flushed in one of the stalls, and Bruce moved towards the line of urinals, ready to pretend he was using the bathroom for its intended purpose if need be, but then Coleman stepped out. He startled at the sight of Bruce, cutting his gaze uncertainly to his eyes; for a moment Bruce watched him narrow his own suspiciously, trying to work out if he knew Bruce, but in the end all he said was:

“Excuse me,”

as he walked past. Bruce watched him go to the sinks and begin washing his hands. His eyes sought Bruce out in the mirror; Bruce could see his growing unease. He leaned forward to pump soap out of the dispenser and Bruce moved. He’d moved a lot farther and a lot quicker as Batman and it was no effort to cross the narrow space between the walls. He grabbed Coleman by the back of the head while he was still turning and smashed his forehead into the mirror over the sinks.

The glass splintered and fell onto the tile behind the faucets. Bruce braced his arm to absorb the impact — it ran up his elbow worse than when he had on the suit, but he ignored it. Coleman’s blood gathered at the central point and flowed down the spiderwebbing cracks which were running out. His forehead was a f*cking mess as he slumped forward against the counter, mouth slack. Bruce could see he was struggling to keep his eyes open. The blood was running over the bridge of his nose and gathering in his lips. He stared at Bruce dazedly, half-conscious.

Bruce slid his fingers, which had slipped from Coleman’s hair at the point of impact, into his collar. He hauled him back up into a standing position and braced himself against him so that his face was directly behind Coleman’s shoulder in the mirror. They stared at each other as Bruce gripped the thin top layer of Coleman’s hair and slowly pulled his neck backwards. He reached into the waistband of his uniform pants and pulled out the knife. Coleman moaned softly as Bruce touched the blade to his throat. Bruce saw faint strains of lucidity trying to come back to Coleman’s eyes, and the moment his face twisted in slow-dawning, horrified recognition.

The knife sank into his flesh. Bruce ripped it clean across his throat. The blood sprayed out in an arc, splattering wetly against the mirror. Coleman’s body jerked against Bruce’s and he gripped him tighter around the chest. The gray sleeves of the fake Henley were soaked through. A few flecks ended up in Bruce’s hair and on his jaw, but most of it landed on his hands, which — f*ck, he’d forgotten gloves. He watched it slide into his nails with the same detached, cold observance as he’d watched everything else. Coleman jerked again, gasping, tongue slipping out of his mouth. Then his head fell forward, and the blood began to flow steadily down over his own chest and the sink. His eyes went unfocused beneath the half-closed lids. His muscles felt suddenly heavy. Bruce had to lower him carefully to the floor, the gash in his throat exposed, deep, dark, and ugly. He clenched his jaw against a sudden rush of nausea, but it passed, and then there was just — this. This thing he’d done. Coleman Reese lay dead in a spreading pool of his own blood at Bruce Wayne’s feet in a sterile, cold bathroom at GCN Studios, and there was the knife in his hand, and more of the blood on his shirt, and his face, and it was over. The fear and panic he’d felt earlier had disappeared, and in their place was something else. The cold, clinical thing that had enabled him to hold the knife to Ashland, and to break Ainsworth’s fingers. It was charged and electric and dark in a wholly different way than the brutal and blind anger of Batman. Perhaps it was another person entirely.

Bruce stepped back before the blood could reach his shoes. He walked around Coleman’s body and ran the knife for some minutes under running water. He hadn’t thought to bring anything to sterilize with but it was fine. He splashed the blood off his face, out of his hair; he scrubbed it from under his nails and rubbed it out of the cracks of his knuckles. The sleeves he couldn’t do anything about, but with some maneuvering he was able to roll them up his arms and hide the stains entirely. There was a spot on his collar but it could’ve been water. He looked down at his hands to check for any stains he’d missed and was surprised at their steadiness. He straightened his collar. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the phone again. Flipping it open, he snapped a picture of Coleman’s body, the slack mouth and the congealing blood at the throat. He sent it to Jude. Then he unlocked the bathroom door, and he walked out.

The secretaries were engrossed in their own activities again. Neither of them looked up at the sound of the door swinging open and shut. On the television screens over their heads Mike Engel was still covering the chase, though it seemed to be running down, because it kept cutting back to him in the studio, as though they were tiring of the footage. He walked in the opposite direction from where he’d come, passing the mail room and the studio of Tilly Carmichael, before he came to a set of stairs. He pushed the door open. He wondered how long it would take them to discover the body.

As he made his way down the stairs — slow, even strides — he took a moment to call Cornell. “It’s done,” he told him, as soon as Cornell had picked up, not even saying hello. “What should we do about the body?”

Cornell cleared his throat. Judging from the tone of it he was surprised. “Uh — where is it?”

Bruce told him. Cornell snorted.

“What, you just — left him there?”

“I — should I not have?” He was at the back entrance of the stairwell now; when he pushed the door open the sunlight assaulted his eyes, white and sheer. He had to take a moment to adjust, his eyes aching, before he could see that he’d come out on the other side of the studio to where his car was parked.

“No, no, it’s fine — the boss has a few people at the studio, I’ll get in touch with them. Just tell the boss — ”

“I sent him a picture.”

“Huh.” Cornell paused. “Well. You’re just… striding right the f*ck forward, aren’t you.” He hung up before Bruce could respond, and Bruce sighed. He shoved his phone back in his pocket and walked around the building. His Nissan was still in the parking lot, and he watched himself walk towards it. He could feel the cold, detached thing slowly easing itself off. Something else was underneath it. It felt wrong to try and touch it, or to look at it, but it didn’t feel unfriendly, either. Just… wary.

The thing was that killing Coleman had been easy. It had been easier than Bruce had expected, once he’d gotten it started, like going through the steps as Batman. The same violence, the same fuel of adrenaline. Only it was stripped. It was exactly the way it had been with Ainsworth. He’d done it, and it had been over. And in the moment, when the blade had sunk into the flesh and the blood had sprayed and filled the room with that hot, iron scent —

— with the adrenaline fading, and reality returning, and the cold, detached thing slipping off, he recognized that same violent, jarring enjoyment he’d felt with Ainsworth. Accomplishment and purpose. The ache, the constant ache in his chest where his parents had been, where Batman had been, the need, the drive —

— satiated.

His phone buzzed and he pulled it out along with his car keys. The wind was picking up; the air smelled like snow. It was Jude on the other end of the line:

“Wayne, f*ck.”

Bruce bit his mouth. His skin was frigid, an odd contrast to the lightning inside him. “I told you I’d do it.”

Silence. Then:

“Tell me how it was.”

Bruce unlocked his door and slipped into the car. As he cranked the engine to warm the interior up, he told Jude what he’d done. It should have worried him, maybe, how calm his voice was coming out. His hands were still steady and his heartrate had slowed. That should have worried him, too. He’d thought he would feel remorse, or something, or at least guilt, but he didn’t really feel much of anything except relief that it was done.

“Well,” said Jude, when Bruce was finished. “Our little Bruce Wayne is moving up in the world.”

“I’m trying to,” said Bruce.

Jude cleared his throat. Then, shockingly: “Congratulations, Wayne,” he said. “Come over later.”

Bruce blinked. On the radio the DJ was expressing relief that the car chase was letting up. “You mean — ” He cleared his throat, too. “To your apartment, or?”

“Yeah,” Jude said. Unspoken, but still obvious: no sh*t. Bruce rubbed the back of his neck. In the rearview his eyes were like glass.

“It’s just — you haven’t ever — ”

“Well, I am now.” Jude was starting to sound exasperated. “Is this a problem or something, Wayne?”

“No,” Bruce said hastily. “It’s just — ” He hesitated. He didn’t want to assume anything, but his skin was already feeling tighter, his mouth drying out. He remembered the way Jude had looked underneath him and his heart began pounding again. He knew Jude would likely call him an idiot, but: “Can I ask why?”

“Why the f*ck do you think,” Jude said, and hung up. Bruce stared at his own phone for a few seconds, then snapped it shut and tossed it onto the passenger seat. He had no idea when he’d started smiling, nor why he couldn’t stop.

Coleman had assumed he’d get away with it this time. Likely he’d assumed Bruce would be either too scared or too kind to say or do anything about it, and that at most he’d try to file a lawsuit after the fact to deal with the fallout. But Coleman Reese hadn’t known who the f*ck Bruce Wayne really was.

“And neither do I,” Bruce whispered, and put the car in drive.

He intended to stop by the bunker and burn the UPS uniform in one of the incinerators, but Lucius called his business phone as he was driving and told him that according to Mike Engel, Coleman had left the studio abruptly and therefore the segment was cancelled.

“You don’t happen to know where he went, do you, Mr. Wayne?” Lucius asked, and Bruce winced as he remembered telling Lucius he was going to “take care of” the problem. Carefully clearing his throat, he said,

“I took a page out of your book.”

“What do you — ”

“I offered Coleman a bribe, and he agreed to take it.”

The silence which stretched on after this explanation went on far too long. Bruce went through two intersections before Lucius finally admitted to being distracted by the presence of the board members. He sounded like he wanted to say more, but in the end only urged Bruce to get back quickly, since with the threat of Coleman gone Bruce now had no reason to stay away from the meeting. So Bruce bypassed the bunker and went back to Wayne Tower, parking in his garage and shoving the uniform into the trunk of his Mustang. If nothing else he figured he could always just hold onto it until the next warehouse meeting, then give it back to Cornell to clean or burn or whatever he wanted to do with it. He changed back into the suit and tie which he’d left in the Nissan and popped out his contacts before heading up in his private elevator to the meeting. Lucius gave him a look as he walked in, but Bruce ignored him in favor of smiling at all the board members.

“Sorry for the delay,” he said. “You know how things can get,” which earned him a friendly chuckle from one of the women. From there it was as easy as it had been at GCN to slip on another skin, and to wear it steadily through the afternoon. He shocked himself with how calmly he spoke about various boring things: funding for new sonar research, the additions to Gotham General in the psychiatric wing, the community college he wanted to begin development on, with its sister school in Hoboken. In his nose he could still smell the sharp iron tang of Coleman’s blood. He kept remembering the way Coleman’s head had hit the glass, the jarring impact of it up his arm. He’d likely be sore by morning.

Todd, the replacement accountant, was taking notes and making marks in the ledger, and Bruce watched him idly. He remembered that during Todd’s interview he’d asked if Coleman had only quit temporarily due to the nature of the Joker’s threat. Your predecessor certainly isn’t coming back to usurp you now, he thought, and barely kept himself from laughing. It felt on the edge of hysterical. It felt like it would sound like someone else’s laugh coming out.

After that meeting, there were two others Bruce had to sit through, one with a clean energy company, one with a volunteer organization that wanted funding for better roads in the inner city. Bruce, who was mildly concerned about the condition of the Mustang’s undercarriage after his last trip into the Narrows, was happy to sign off on that one. He felt Lucius’ eyes on him throughout the day, and it grew quickly exhausting to keep the Bruce Wayne mask up, especially since he was hiding two things from Lucius now. By the time they were all finally able to leave the tower Bruce felt ready to collapse. Instead, he begged off Lucius’ invitation to dinner and went up to the penthouse to watch the news.

“Our sources tell us that Mr. Reese was last seen heading towards his own red Camaro in the studio parking lot,” Mike Engel said. “The unfortunate timing of the chase during what would have been a very revealing interview — ”

Bruce switched the set off. So Cornell hadn’t lied about their studio connections. The relief he’d felt earlier grew, alongside a faint, nagging sense of triumph. He tried to ignore it; it felt like it belonged to the cold, calculated creature that had committed murder with Bruce’s face.

The evening stretched. Alfred, like Lucius, was watching Bruce too closely. He f*cked around for a bit on his laptop before slipping into his sweats and announcing he was going for a drive. He got turned around twice in the Narrows — it was just gone daylight savings, and already pitch black as he left the penthouse — so that by the time he arrived at Jude’s apartment it was well after seven in the evening. He parked the Mustang at the same corner from last time and walked to the front door of the complex. There were no buzzers, and the junkies on the steps were too out of it to help, so Bruce texted Jude:

Here.

Locks busted agn, came the reply, after a moment. Jst open door. Cm up. Bruce winced at this lack of security, but he also knew that Jude had a deadbolt and like six million knives and guns, so he decided to let it go. He had to brace his shoulder against the door for it to open, but eventually the wood gave under his weight and he walked inside. The stairs looked even more scuffed than they had last week, and Bruce took them two at a time, until at last he reached the third floor. He walked down the hallway to Jude’s apartment. A couple argued in Spanish behind one door. The faint strains of Sesame Street behind another:

I count seven cookies! One, two, three, four —

Bruce knocked at Jude’s door. After a moment the deadbolt unlatched, and then there was Jude. He’d put on a black sleeveless shirt and dark violet shorts and his hair was tied up and he’d removed most of his greasepaint and he just — he looked good. As Bruce stepped over the threshold his eyes centered on Jude’s arms — he’d never seen them bare before, and was surprised, more than he supposed he should have been, at the number of his scars. Most of them were older, varying lengths and shades of white or pale red, crossing down from his shoulders to his forearms, but one on his right bicep was different, wine-dark and deep and nasty-looking. Bruce kicked the door shut behind him and reached out to touch it. Jude tensed, but didn’t pull away, and Bruce traced his fingers slowly down the ridged line of skin.

“Where’s this one from?” Bruce asked softly.

Jude shrugged. “Don’t remember.”

Bruce frowned. “It’s newer than the others,” he pressed, though not insistently. “I’ve been with you for all your events for the past month and — ”

“No, you haven’t,” Jude said, and something in his voice told Bruce to shut up. He stepped away from Bruce just enough that his hand would fall, and dug his overlong nails into his elbow. “And I didn’t ask you here to talk about my scars, anyway.” He was glaring at the opposite wall, and Bruce breathed out. Jude wasn’t normal, he reminded himself; he didn’t think like Bruce — or like anyone, really — and Bruce needed to keep him placated. If Jude wasn’t happy then Bruce would have killed Coleman over nothing, and Bruce needed this to work.

— And it was nicer to be around him when he was happy. Bruce liked the way he looked at him when it was just the two of them. He was interested in drawing that look out again, so he took a breath, and stepped forward. He reached out again, touching Jude’s face this time, the deep knotted scars on his cheeks. Jude stilled beneath his fingers.

“I thought you loved talking about your scars,” Bruce said, trying to keep just enough of a light tone Jude would understand he was teasing him without mocking. After a moment Jude cut his eyes to Bruce’s; his features relaxed marginally. When he sighed it was exasperated, but tinted with something close to fondness.

“C’mere,” Jude said, and reached up to pull Bruce’s hand down. He curled their fingers together and tugged Bruce further into his space. Their noses were nearly touching. “You are f*ckin’ something else, Wayne, you know that?”

Bruce was going cross-eyed trying to focus. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Not particularly,” Jude said. His other hand found its way onto Bruce’s hip. Bruce’s heart had started pounding again.

“You killed for me,” Jude said, after a while. He’d pulled back a little so they could look at each other. His eyes dropped to Bruce’s mouth.

“Yeah,” Bruce said.

Jude’s lips twitched. “Guess you fell pretty f*ckin’ far, huh?”

Bruce took a breath. In. Out. “Yeah,” he said again.

“Tell me again what it was like for you,” Jude said.

Bruce swallowed. “It, uh — it felt — ” He couldn’t say it. The cold beast that had slouched in his arms, ready to be born —

“You enjoyed it?” Jude asked, stroking Bruce’s hair. He was nearly whispering.

“…Yes,” Bruce whispered back, closing his eyes. He couldn’t quite discern what he was feeling now that the adrenaline was wearing off. He just knew he was dizzy with it, nearly overwhelmed.

He felt Jude’s fingers trail down his cheek. “Hey,” he said, still quiet. “Look at me.” It wasn’t like the way he’d said it to Brian Douglas; Bruce could tell it wasn’t a command. But he looked anyway. Jude’s eyes were steady on his, and there was understanding in them, and a little sadness, too.

“It’s better after the first time,” he said, and Bruce blinked in surprise, but Jude’s mouth was twisting downward. Bruce could tell he was embarrassed, or something resembling it. He could see Jude was offering him something in return for Bruce killing for him, and he couldn’t imagine what that must be costing him, so he forced aside the dizziness and the sour taste in his throat and he said,

“You know my parents were shot and killed in front of me.”

Jude nodded.

“So that f*cked me up for a long time — ”

Jude snorted. “I’ll f*ckin’ bet — ”

“ — but when I got capable of thinking again, rational thought, I decided… I wasn’t ever going to do that. I wasn’t going to kill anyone.” He flexed his fingers in Jude’s hand. “I don’t — know how to process how easy it was to slit Coleman’s throat. And I don’t know why it was easy in the first place.” It was the closest he could get without actually admitting the truth. Jude tilted his head. His tongue darted out to wet his mouth.

“You know,” he said, in that same, quiet voice, “Batman’s got that same exact rule.”

Bruce’s heart dropped sixty feet into his stomach. “Oh, yeah?” he said. His mouth was completely dry. Jude’s expression wasn’t angry or manipulative but Bruce knew he shouldn’t trust based on appearances. If Jude knew Bruce figured he only had two options, and he wasn’t sure why he was put off by one of them. But Jude just nodded. His posture and his hand in Bruce’s and on Bruce’s face remained relaxed and easy. He said,

“It’s why I like you better,”

and Bruce couldn’t help his mouth twitching.

“You like me better?”

“You’re not a hypocrite about it,” Jude said. “You don’t… enjoy the violence and try to hide it. You just enjoy it. And you admit it. I like that a lot.”

Bruce’s brain made a sound which was incoherent but most closely resembled: huh. He reached up and put his own hand on Jude’s face. Their arms were touching. “It’s pointless,” he said, a little hoarse. “It’s not gonna go away if I — ” the words stuck; there was too much irony in them, but he made himself finish — “if I ignore it, or tell myself it’s something else.” He’d been doing that already for years, and look how well it had turned out. He was standing in the apartment of a mass murderer trying to convince him he wasn’t the exact person they were both talking about, and he himself was a murderer now. He could still smell Coleman’s blood in his nose if he focused. So in a way he was still doing it. But Jude nodded again, and he said,

“Are you going to do it again?”

“Kill for you?”

“Yes.”

Bruce didn’t hesitate; he couldn’t, he knew the only answer. “Yes,” he said, and didn’t add, if you want me to, or, if I have to, because he knew that wasn’t what Jude would want to hear, and anyway he wasn’t sure it was what he meant. The truth was he really did have more than enough to go to Gordon with now; he could stay here long enough to get what he and Jude both wanted, and then sneak out, go to the station. Perhaps Gordon’s anger would not be so brutal that he wouldn’t recognize what Bruce had done for him and for the whole city, and he’d get Bruce, Alfred, and Lucius placed into Witness Protection for a while. But Bruce just couldn’t — quite — make himself. He wanted to see how far he could stretch this thing. He wanted to see what else the cold, calculating creature was capable of, when it was unleashed and unmasked and given a face and voice.

He was used to masks, after all — Batman, and billionaire Bruce Wayne, but this — he knew this was someone else. All of Batman’s unhinged violence under Bruce Wayne’s tight, nearly ascetic control. No, Bruce wasn’t going to give this up. Not yet.

He watched Jude’s face relax marginally at his answer. He didn’t know what it meant that he felt relief, too.

“Okay,” Jude said. Then his eyes shifted. “How about we get around to what you came over for, huh?”

Bruce snorted. “So you decided I wasn’t a waste of your time after all?”

“Obviously,” Jude muttered, extricating his hand from Bruce’s and curling his fingers around the other side of his jaw. He drew Bruce forward. His mouth was as warm and dry as Bruce remembered. Bruce licked the taste of cigarettes off the roof of it. He let himself be walked backwards into Jude’s room where he was unceremoniously shoved backwards onto the mattress. As he went Bruce grabbed the front of Jude’s shirt and hauled him down too. Jude landed with a thud on Bruce’s lap, knees on either side of his hips. His hands dropped to circle around Bruce’s wrists. He dragged their crotches together so that Bruce could feel how hard he was through the soft cotton of his shorts and the even softer fabric of Bruce’s sweats. He groaned at the friction, bit Jude’s mouth. Jude wasn’t holding his wrists hard and it was undifficult to get out and flip them over like he knew Jude wanted. They were still kissing, hungry, devouring. Bruce was panting like a dog into Jude’s mouth. He could feel all his adrenaline rushing back in a different way — the heat and thrill from their fights as Batman and the Joker, but without the suit. The intent and purpose drawn and channeled to a different outlet. Bruce could have easily hit him with how he was feeling. Instead he dragged their co*cks together again and hooked his thumbs into Jude’s waistband to pull his shorts off. He licked the edge of one of Jude’s scars and Jude jolted against him.

“Wayne, f*ck,” he said hoarsely, squeezing his knees against Bruce’s ribs. Without thinking about what he was doing Bruce shifted upwards and pulled off his sweatshirt. His arms were trembling from holding himself up. He was shirtless underneath and there was a second where neither of them moved as Jude’s eyes narrowed in on Bruce’s scars and Bruce realized —

— shocking, frozen feeling, like diving into a lake in Siberia —

— what he’d done. Then Jude reached up and touched one. It was the one on Bruce’s abdomen that Jude had given him back in July at the penthouse, kicking him, the knife in his shoe piercing the Kevlar. Bruce stilled. He tried to breathe evenly.

“Where’s this from,” Jude didn’t quite ask. His eyes darted to Bruce’s shoulder — the Rottweiler bite — and then back to his stomach. His eyebrows furrowed and Bruce was f*cked. He didn’t dare move, hovering over Jude, their noses maybe two inches from each other.

“Taekwondo,” he said, carefully. Jude’s tongue flicked out.

“Why the f*ck did you take such a violent f*cking form of it.” He reached up and touched the other scars on Bruce’s arms. Bruce almost dreaded him seeing his back. “Is that where you got all of these?”

Bruce shifted a little so that he could support himself better on his elbow. He hooked one knee around Jude’s thigh so that his co*ck was pressed to Jude’s hip, and didn’t miss the brief catch in Jude’s breath. “How come you’re asking me so many questions about them?” he said. “You wouldn’t tell me about — ” He touched the dark, ugly scar on Jude’s arm, and Jude stiffened.

“Because I’m f*cking in charge, Wayne,” he said, “and I get to ask whatever I want. And you answer. I’m interested in where a f*cking vegan CEO got like eight hundred million — ”

“When I was overseas,” Bruce said. He said it too fast, maybe, but it made Jude shut up, which had been the goal. Bruce’s body was warm from arousal and he could still taste Jude on his tongue and when he closed his eyes he kept seeing the way Coleman’s blood had sprayed out over the mirror. He kept remembering the way his body had felt when it trembled and then went still, and how methodically he’d laid it on the floor, and walked out. “I got them all in Europe and Southeast Asia. Bar fights and taekwondo and just — street sh*t.”

“Street sh*t,” Jude repeated. His eyes were still stuck on the knotted flesh on Bruce’s shoulder.

“Uh-huh,” Bruce said. “Some kid attacked me for my wallet in Vietnam.” This was a half-lie; it had been at the training facility, and the kid had been a black belt brought in to simulate real-life fighting experiences with Bruce to test his reflexes. “He had a knife on him. And this one…” He pointed to a crescent-shaped cut on his bicep where some Falcone family member had swung at him with, bizarrely, a prison-sharpened toothbrush. He was still surprised it had managed to pierce the Kevlar. “A, uh — snorkeling accident.”

That made Jude’s mouth twitch, as Bruce had hoped it would. He touched it too, his long nails scratching the numb skin. Then he looked at Bruce’s face.

“Snorkeling.”

“Yeah. Coral reefs are nasty f*ckers.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Jude said dryly, “with all those little holes and — ”

Bruce kissed him. He forced Jude’s lips to part with his own and didn’t miss the way his breath went shaky as he shifted himself onto his side for better purchase. When Bruce pulled away — just barely, their lips still touching — he said, “Are you gonna stop making inane comments now and let me f*ck you, or do you want to resched— ”

Jude growled, hooked a leg around Bruce’s, and dragged their co*cks together.

Okay. Okay, yeah.

They ended up with Bruce’s knees digging into the floor through the filthy stained mattress, hand braced against Jude’s shoulder. He was buried seven inches inside him and yet Jude still turned, mouth spit slick bitten red under the greasepaint, and said,

“You know, Wayne — you fell farther than I expected.”

“Yeah,” Bruce grunted, teeth gritted, digging his blunt nails into Jude’s skin. “You said, boss.”

Jude huffed out, reaching backwards to grab Bruce’s other hand and push it against his hip. Bruce dug his fingers into the sex-heated skin and thrust in deeper, flesh striking flesh in the otherwise silence of the room. “It’s why I like you,” he said again. “Better success rate with you than with Batman.”

Bruce carefully didn’t react. He drew out a little, then shoved back in, gasping out at the tender tight feeling of Jude’s ass around his co*ck. “You tried breaking Batman?”

Jude grunted, ducking his head down between his shaking locked arms. “Uh-huh,” he said, a little breathlessly. Then, laughing a little: “What is it stores say? If you break it, you bought it.” He looked over his shoulder again, momentarily. His eyes were lidded and hot with arousal and something else underneath. “So that means I own you.”

Bruce couldn’t help it: he started laughing. Jude’s eyebrows furrowed tightly, but Bruce fell a little against him, still laughing. He bit his shoulder.

“What’s funny, Wayne,” Jude growled.

“Nothing.”

“No, tell me — ” and he’d been pushing back against Bruce but he stopped now, flipped Bruce over so he was being ridden. His knees caged his ribs and he leaned over Bruce, sinew and cord, flat stomach muscles taut, ready to run, years of practice. Bruce had sucked bruises into Jude’s skin and he was slick with sweat and trembling holding himself up, so hard it looked painful, but he was staring him down and holding himself still, hands clenched on his thighs. “What the f*ck is funny right now.”

“Just — nothing, boss, sorry — ”

Jude huffed again, annoyance creeping into it. “I said don’t waste my time.” He started to pull off and not thinking Bruce clasped his own hands around his thighs, forcing him back down. He felt himself sink all the way into Jude all at once, down to the hilt. The movement set off tight hot sparks along Bruce’s spine, down into his groin. He made an embarrassing noise, back arching off the mattress. Jude was still staring down at him. His teeth were gritted. He’d made a noise too, though he’d muffled it better. He’d also overbalanced a little and his hands were resting on Bruce’s shoulders now. The long nails cut his skin.

“You don’t know when the f*ck to stop, do you,” he said. Bruce shook his head, and Jude bit the inside of his mouth, glancing at the far wall. When he looked back down his hair — coming loose from its bun and collecting sweat in the tendrils of it — was hanging around his face. He dragged his hips forward.

“Guess you’re lucky you’re a f*cking good lay, Wayne,” he said, and sank his teeth into his neck. Bruce hissed out, twisting away from the bright choking pain beneath his skin. He felt the bite run bone deep and knew there would be a bruise there by morning.

“I’m sorry I laughed,” he said, snapping his hips up, driving into Jude. He made a tense punched out noise against Bruce’s neck and Bruce realized — throat tightening — that this was not going to last much longer. “It’s just — oh f*ck — it’s just. You said you own me.”

“Uh-huh.” He wrapped his hand around his dick and then he looked at Bruce’s face. Bruce wasn’t sure he was reading the command in Jude’s eyes right but, chancing it, he pushed Jude’s hand away to get his own around him and stroke. Judging from his expression it was a good move, the way his mouth went slack, the feral sharp lust in his eyes.

“I do own you though, Wayne,” he panted. “You do whatever the f*ck I f*cking ask. You killed today because I wanted it.”

“I’m inside you right now, Jude,” Bruce pointed out, rolling his hips, making Jude hiss out.

“f*ck’s that matter?” he snapped. “I want you there, it doesn’t put you in control over me.” But Bruce had heard the barest hesitation in his voice; felt the way Jude clenched around him. Instead of answering right away Bruce flipped them over again, hand still on him. He drove him into the mattress, strokes going choppy, thrusts erratic. They both came nearly at the same time, sweating, gasping, Bruce’s teeth sunk into his own lower lip, Jude’s eyes on Bruce’s mouth, greedy and insatiable and starving. Bruce leaned down and kissed him savagely, viciously, bruisingly, tasting blood. He shuddered against him, grinding into the mess on their stomachs until they were both oversensitized. Bruce pulled out gingerly. He flopped to the side, pressed his arm to his eyes. For a long time after the only sound was their breathing in the dark, overheated room. Finally, Bruce said,

“I like f*cking you.”

No answer.

“It’s okay if you like — ”

“Hey.” Jude’s voice was sharp and Bruce looked at him. He was glaring at him, what little makeup remaining smeared around his face, hair a f*cking mess. “I don’t need your permission to like anything, Wayne. I don’t need you to tell me whether I can or can’t like something at all. I like what I like and I know you’re good at f*cking. If you don’t want to do this anymore I can find someone else more pliable to — ”

“Jude.” Putting his hand on his shoulder felt dangerous, but Bruce did it anyway. Jude shocked him by shutting up. “I like sleeping with you,” Bruce said. “I already told you that. I don’t want to stop this.”

“Then stop f*cking questioning me.” Jude’s eyes were hard. “Whatever the f*ck I don’t tell you isn’t your business,” and Bruce knew he was talking about the scar, too. For a while they lay staring at each other, a dark challenge in Jude’s eyes Bruce couldn’t read. Finally, Jude huffed. He seemed almost to take pity on Bruce.

“Who do you belong to, Wayne.”

Bruce knew the right answer to that. “You, Jude.”

“For how long?”

Bruce swallowed. His throat was dry. “Until you decide you don’t want me around anymore.”

Jude’s eyes darted across his face. Finally,

“So you can learn,”

and then he was off the mattress. He dragged his shorts back on. “I’m going to make a call,” he said. “Don’t wait up,” and he was gone. Bruce heard the front door slam. He knew he should get up and leave, but Jude hadn’t explicitly said to, and Bruce was suddenly tired. So he stayed lying there, smelling him in the sheets: cigarettes, filthy clothes, greasepaint.

He was pretty sure he was still in control. Jude could think he owned him if he wanted. Bruce was only doing whatever he said because he wanted it that way. It was all part of the plan. Part of the job. There wasn’t anything else to this. There wasn’t anything else.

Jude returned some hours later. Bruce was mostly asleep. He didn’t have the energy to open his eyes when Jude walked in so he listened to him shuffling around for a bit, the sounds muffled as though through water. Then the light overhead went out, the mattress dipped, and there was a threadbare blanket pulled over Bruce’s shoulders, stretched tight to accommodate two people.

Bruce knew he really should wake himself up all the way, excuse himself, and go. But it was so dark now, and he was so, so tired, and he hadn’t slept right in some days, and the mattress was more comfortable than he’d thought. Jude was warm, and —

— Bruce was f*cked.

In spite of his exhaustion and his half-conscious state, Bruce couldn’t fall totally asleep right away. He lay listening to the gradual evening out of Jude’s breathing, the sound of the L rumbling past, grabbing the room, rattling it bone deep. He watched the unfamiliar shadows moving on the wall. After a moment they took on the shape of Coleman Reese’s blood. The way his throat had opened for Bruce’s knife. The twitching and the glassiness of his eyes and the trickle of blood from his mouth. It had been over so quickly. And the thing was —

— the thing was Bruce hadn’t even been thinking of it until now. There was no guilt, not like he’d thought there would be. There was no residual pulsing worry, no obsession over the details, no concern as to whether or not it had gone “right”. He’d done the job, and he’d done it well enough to satisfy Jude. It had released whatever inside him that strayed too close to the surface. It had felt… like the culmination of certain of his most violent acts as Batman, the final push he’d needed, without knowing he needed it. He remembered Jude telling him about something similar on the Prewitt Building. He remembered also how Jude had said earlier that he preferred Bruce to Batman, because Bruce didn’t lie about how he felt about violence. Because Jude had been able to break Bruce, but not Batman.

Bruce thought again of the tender, raw creature he’d shoved down, unable to look at it or touch it; the way it coexisted alongside the cold, calculating observation of the scene in the bathroom, and wondered if perhaps he himself had broken Batman.

He tried imagining how he’d tell Jude the truth. He’d put his hand on his shoulder, over the deep, brutal wound, and he’d say, I’ve infiltrated your gang undercover. All of this was to get information from you, and then, while Jude’s mouth was starting to tighten at the edges:

I’m Batman.

The hell you are, Jude would say. But he’d narrow his eyes and Bruce knew he’d see the truth in his face. There would be a fight; things would get violent, and in the end Bruce would knock Jude out and bound and gag him before calling Gordon from the burner. He’d stay with a knife pressed to Jude’s throat until Gordon arrived at the apartment. He’d watch as the police ungently hauled him to his feet and forced him into consciousness and marched him out without reading him his rights, probably saying he didn’t have any —

“Wayne.” Jude’s voice was hoarse with exhaustion, and faintly irritated. His arm was around Bruce’s waist, his fingertips just touching his ribs. “f*ck. Quit thinking. Go to sleep.”

“Sorry, boss,” Bruce mumbled. He didn’t think about what he was doing — if he even really knew — when he reached down and curled his own fingers around Jude’s. What he was doing as he drew his hand up to his mouth and kissed it in placation before letting it drift back to its original place. Jude grunted against his neck. Bruce felt his breathing even back out.

…Yeah, he was definitely f*cked.

Notes:

feel free to check here for my jude inspo tag on tumblr

Chapter 5 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The following morning, as Bruce and Lucius were setting up for another meeting in Conference Room B, fourth floor:

“You remember I told you Coleman Reese left his interview yesterday.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I heard from a source attached to Mike Engel that during the coverage of the police chase, Mr. Reese walked out to the bathroom and never returned. Mr. Engel had to end his segment with calls speculating on who the Batman is. Guesses ranged from President Bush to Mayor Garcia to the owner of Helms on Anderson.”

“Huh.”

“Mr. Wayne.”

“Yes, Mr. Fox.”

“What do you know about Mr. Reese’s sudden disappearance?”

Bruce kept his face turned towards the laptop. “Didn’t we already talk about — ”

“Humor me, Mr. Wayne,” Lucius said. Bruce tapped his nails against the keyboard.

“I, uh — like I said yesterday. I told him he’d get a substantial sum of money if he kept his mouth shut. And he seemed really eager to, to accept it, so.”

“Uh-huh. And you went to the studio to deliver it yourself, I suppose.”

It felt like a trap. But when Bruce chanced a look at Lucius’ face, he saw nothing outside of the mild exasperation which Lucius and Alfred both delivered to Bruce on a near-daily basis. So he nodded, and Lucius sighed.

“Do you know where he went?”

“No.” Bruce pretended to think about it for a minute. “He probably left Gotham, though. He might’ve left Jersey altogether, for all I — ”

“And what happens when the money runs out, Mr. Wayne?”

“Then I’ll give him some more.”

Lucius’ mouth thinned at the corners. But the partners walked in then, and by the time the meeting was done Bruce was late for lunch with the head of the Gotham General rebuilding effort, and Lucius didn’t bring it up again.

Three days later Jim Gordon headed out to Montauk along with Marianne Reese, Coleman’s wife, to identify remains which had washed up on the shore. Mike Engel went out there too, and seemed annoyed at having to share the news story with a local reporter. Bruce watched the coverage on the kitchen television. The wind was picking up the end of Marianne’s scarf and winding it through her hair. She was wearing dark glasses and nervously smoking an unfiltered cigarette. They’d left the actual identification off camera — Bruce supposed for law-related reasons, not out of respect — but now Engel stood trying to interview both Marianne and Gordon in turns. He was having very little success with either of them because Marianne kept looking at the coroner and her husband’s body under a white sheet, and Gordon refused to answer about ninety-seven percent of his questions.

“Commissioner, who do you think did this?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss an open case with you.”

“Do you think it was the Joker?”

“I said — ”

“We’re two and a half hours outside of Gotham. That’s an incredibly long distance to — ”

“Mr. Reese threatened to out the Batman’s identity,” Gordon snapped. “We already know how well that went in July. Frankly I don’t know why you allowed him the second interview. Excuse me.” He walked back towards the coroner and the Montauk officers, ignoring Engel’s tightening jaw. Bruce watched a tear track its way down Marianne’s cheek from beneath her sunglasses as Engel turned towards her.

“Mrs. Reese, I understand you’re — ”

“I thought it was weird that he disappeared,” she whispered. “Cole and I always talked about leaving Gotham, but… together. So I didn’t — I mean, I knew something was wrong. When he didn’t come back.” She pushed the glasses up into her hair and pinned her accusatory, wet eyes on Engel. In the camera she looked suddenly fierce, and exhausted. I did that, Bruce thought, vaguely, from somewhere low and lost inside him. I’m the reason she looks like that. He searched for his guilt as Marianne said, unsurprisingly, “This is your fault. If you had just refused him the interview — ”

“Mrs. Reese, really, I’m — ”

“My Coleman is lying dead under that blanket.” Her voice was raised so loudly several seagulls took off from a point beyond the camera lens. “His throat is slit open because you couldn’t resist the f*cking money — ” The feed was live, apparently, because the censor didn’t catch her in time. Bruce switched the set off, the screen going black on Engel’s shocked, furious face. His heart was scraping the sides of his ribs. The landline rang as he was setting the remote down and he hesitated before picking it up:

“Bruce Wayne.”

“I thought you said you offered him money.” Lucius. Bruce took a deep breath.

“I did,” he said. He pulled out the burner just for something to do with his hands, and texted Cornell:

Did u see the news?

“Then why is Marianne Reese on television getting into the back of an ambulance with his dead body?”

Bruce ran his thumb over the side of his burner. “I guess someone killed him for it.”

Lucius sighed. “Who could have known he had it to begin with?”

“Maybe someone followed him out of town and killed him because he said he was going to out the Batman’s identity, I don’t know.” Bruce tried not to let his frustration through in his voice, but it was difficult. It was difficult because this was Lucius, and this was the second time in less than a week he was lying to him, and because, in spite of that, there was still no guilt. It was exactly the same as it had been the night after it happened. There was just… nothing.

His phone buzzed as Cornell texted him back: Yh.

“Is it possible it was the Joker?” Lucius asked, and Bruce’s chest did something weird — stalled, or something. On his phone — thumbs shaking a little — he typed out thx, and then, to Lucius:

“Haven’t they — I mean, since he broke out of Arkham in September? Haven’t they caught him?”

“No,” Lucius said. The tone of his voice vaguely suggested this was Bruce’s fault. “I assume it was his men in that car chase, though, which means he was using it as a distraction to get to his real goal — ”

“Why would you — ” Bruce cleared his throat. “Why do you assume it was his men?”

“I saw a clown mask through the windows of the van,” Lucius said. “And who else would do something so erratic at such an inopportune moment?”

?, Cornell said.

4 cvrng 4 me, Bruce said. W/e u said or did wrkd. So thx. Out loud to Lucius:

“Well, I don’t know how it could’ve been the Joker himself, I mean, no one’s heard about him since that breakout, and — I mean, maybe it’s just some copycats.”

“Copycats of the Joker are trouble, anyway,” Lucius said. “It sounds like you should come out of hiding and suit up, Mr. Wayne — ”

“Lucius — ”

“It’s been four months,” Lucius said. It was similar enough to the conversation he’d had with Alfred that Bruce wondered if they’d talked privately behind his back. “Your vigilantism was despised in the city long before this man came and destroyed your reputation further. You need to — ”

“I’m not going to do anything yet,” Bruce said, and this time he didn’t bother trying to hide his frustration. Or his annoyance. “I’m not ready, and neither is Gotham. I’m — working on something.”

:), said Cornell, as though in reply. Bruce sighed; slipped the burner back into his pocket. On the phone the silence stretched a moment too long. Then Lucius said,

“The last time you ‘worked on something’ and kept it from me, we ended up spending half a billion dollars on a glorified tracking system that hacked into the privacy of half the citizens — ”

“It’s not like — ”

“ — citizens you swore you would protect — ”

“I know what I’m doing.” Bruce’s voice came out sharper than he’d intended, and Lucius was quiet. Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose, tried to breathe. How far are you willing to go? Thomas asked, Bruce asked. Are you going to push everyone away irreparably before this is done? Who will you have to go back to when it’s over? “It’s not like the phone thing, Lucius. It’s something else. It doesn’t involve money or anything. And it’s going to — it’ll make everything okay.” He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. He could hear Lucius breathing on the other end. Finally:

“Consider coming back, Mr. Wayne. That’s all I’m asking. I think we’d all appreciate it.”

“Sure,” Bruce lied, softly. “I’ll consider it.”

“And there’s probably going to be some kind of memorial service,” Lucius said. “You should attend that.”

“Sure,” Bruce said again. He slipped the phone back into its cradle before Lucius could say anything else. When he turned around he saw Alfred in the dining room door, watching him. He braced himself, wary —

— but after a moment Alfred only sighed, and walked into the kitchen to pick up Bruce’s untouched breakfast.

“Master Wayne, may I speak with you a moment?”

It was late in the evening. Bruce had assumed that with Coleman’s death making the news Jude would have scheduled some kind of meeting, and that he’d be heading out for the warehouse by now, but during a tour of the renovated sewage treatment facility in the Lower East Side, Bruce’s burner had gone off with a text letting him know that he had the evening off. He figured either he was on a break out of whatever passed for congratulations in Jude’s mind, or he’d f*cked up without realizing and was about to be killed, and they were all meeting in secret to discuss the best way to go about doing it. Either way there was nothing he could do about it at the moment, so he was sitting here watching Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew and trying to decide if he should be worried about Lucius or not. Throughout the day any time they were in the same room he’d cut sideways searching looks in Bruce’s direction and Bruce could tell he was trying to work things out in his mind. Part of Bruce had wanted to go to Lucius and tell him the truth — not about Coleman, but about working with Jude, just to get the suspicion out of his eyes. But he knew about how well that would go over, so he’d kept his mouth shut. And now Alfred was standing here and using the same tone he’d used the night before Bruce had gone after Ainsworth, and Bruce really didn’t want to face another conversation in the same vein in one day. But trying to ignore Alfred or change the subject seemed even less of a good idea than trying to tell Lucius the truth, so he turned to Alfred and said,

“Yeah, sure. What is it?”

Alfred cleared his throat. He sat down in the chair opposite Bruce. “I wonder,” he began, after a moment, “what it is exactly that you’ve been getting yourself up to these last few weeks.”

Bruce felt the tremors of something resembling nervous energy run down his spine. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t put on the Batsuit anymore,” Alfred said, “now that it’s so much more dangerous for you to be seen as Batman, yet — if you’ll pardon my bluntness, sir, I’m not blind. I know you leave the penthouse almost every night. The last time I asked you about this, you said you go out and drive around the city — ”

“That’s still, that’s all I’m doing — ”

“Until four in the morning?” Alfred raised his eyebrows. “Every night?”

“You know I’m used to it,” Bruce mumbled to his hands, clenched between his knees. “And it’s a big city.”

Alfred was looking at him; Bruce couldn’t read his expression, and he felt his heart begin to try and climb its way out of his throat. It still wasn’t guilt, not entirely, but — he knew. If there was one person he couldn’t lie to. One person he couldn’t hide things from —

Alfred said, “I wonder if it’s enough to occupy your mind just driving around, as opposed to fighting criminals.”

“It — ” Bruce had to clear his throat. “It works okay — ”

“Because you spent many, many years as Batman, sir. I know how important routine is, especially for you.”

“I have — ”

“And it’s my job, sir. To worry about you.”

“Yeah, I know.” Bruce smiled at him, or tried to. It felt stiff on his face, though, and after a few seconds he let it fall. “I’m fine, though, Alfred, really.”

Alfred hesitated. Then he said, “You know, I realized yesterday that you’ve been taking your father’s Mustang out quite frequently. It’s an old car, Master Wayne. So I decided to run it to the inspection station for you, just to make sure it wouldn’t need modifications.”

Bruce’s whole body went cold. Something tightened in his fingers. “What the hell’d you do that for, Alfred, you know I’m good with cars — ”

“It was a favor, Master Wayne.” Now Alfred’s eyes were growing hard. “You were in a meeting, and I did it as a favor. Frankly I’m shocked I was able to even get to the car, you have it so often — ”

“You could’ve asked me, I would have — ”

“ — but when I got in the car I saw a joker card in the glove compartment, and I saw the address on the back. And I saw what was in the trunk, sir.”

The UPS costume. He’d forgotten it. It had only been three days, and there hadn’t been time. “Alfred — ”

“I’m not blind, Master Wayne. When I was in Burma, trying to catch that bandit in the forest, I learned to spot who had worked with him and who hadn’t just by their facial expressions. Men who deal in nefarious schemes have an edge to their eyes, even if they don’t realize it’s there. You’ve had an edge to your eyes for so long from being Batman that it’s taken me a while to realize there is a different one now.”

Bruce discovered his knee was shaking. He had to force himself to untense his muscles to make it stop. On the television they were airing a commercial for this new MTV reality show that was supposed to come out next summer, something to do with pregnant teenagers. “I — ”

“Did you kill Coleman Reese?”

Something in the way Alfred asked made Bruce flinch — the bluntness of the question, perhaps, or just the tone of his voice, that tight anger Bruce knew well. “I — ”

“Don’t insult me by lying, Master Wayne,” he said, and Bruce flinched again.

“Yes,” he said. He made himself meet Alfred’s eyes when he said it.

It was quiet for a long time. He didn’t think Alfred had ever looked at him like that. Finally he said, “Who are you working with, sir? Tell me that much, at least. I’m sure I can guess, but I think I need to hear you say it. I think you need to say it.” He clasped his hands between his own knees, mirroring Bruce. “I don’t think I want to know why,” he added. “Not yet.”

“It’s not any — ” Bruce swallowed — “any bad reasons, Alfred, it’s actually — it has to do with justice, and — ”

“Murder isn’t justice,” Alfred said sharply. Then he took a breath. Bruce watched him visibly steady himself before saying, “But I certainly hope there will be justice involved, sir.” He was still watching him with that same narrow, unreadable expression. “You of all people know how fine a line there is between one side and the other.”

How fine a line, indeed. How far are you willing to go. Bruce wanted to scream. Instead he let the silence envelop him, fill the room, until he was nearly drowning in it. Then — and now he couldn’t meet Alfred’s eyes — he said, “It’s the Joker. I’ve infiltrated the Joker’s gang, and I’m going to take him down — ”

Alfred stood up. “You’re a bloody, reckless fool,” he said. His hands were shaking. It scared Bruce, more than he’d realized it would. “I’m not going to ask you to stop, because I know how much good that would do. But I hope this is going to be wrapped up soon. I’m not interested in watching you destroy yourself over — ”

“It’s going to be wrapped up soon,” Bruce said. He thought of Jude three nights ago, the way he’d looked beneath Bruce, how his back had arched and his muscles tensed. The things he’d said, and the bruises Bruce had left on him. The bruises Bruce had left because Jude wanted them. “It’s going to be over in a month. Maybe less.”

Alfred just shook his head. “You — ” he began, but he didn’t seem capable of continuing. After a moment he turned, walked to the door. He looked so much older than Bruce had seen him even just half an hour ago. Bruce wanted to call to him, but he didn’t dare; the moment felt too off balance. He knew Alfred wouldn’t leave; he hadn’t left when Bruce had become Batman, and this was about the same level of self-involved and dangerous. But Bruce knew also that this was a different kind of dangerous, and how it must look to Alfred, even if he sort of knew why Bruce was doing it.

It would have to be over soon, he thought, watching the door close behind Alfred, feeling the weight of his burner in his pocket. It needed to be. Because he’d seen in Alfred’s face that he didn’t believe Bruce, not really. And Bruce —

— Bruce wasn’t entirely sure he believed himself, either.

For a while not much happened with the gang. Bruce went to meetings at the warehouse when Jude or one of the others texted him. He gave Cornell the UPS uniform, and Cornell made a face at the old dried blood and asked why Bruce couldn’t have just burned it or taken it to dry-cleaning, because he was going to have to get a new disguise now anyway. Staley laughed at Bruce, but Reznor laughed at Cornell —

“f*ck’re you being such a little bitch about it for, Nell?”

— and shot Bruce a grin so devoid of malice Bruce was taken aback. He returned the smile, then glanced at Jude, who was standing a little ways away, discussing something with Cobain and Byrne. He had half his attention on Cornell and the others and Bruce saw his mouth twitch, just barely, in the corner. The tender, raw, half-born creature from the GCN bathroom lifted its head and shifted its claws before settling back behind his ribs. Warmth that had nothing to do with the sweats and beanie spread alongside it. It was the antithesis of the cold, calculated feeling that he let carry him through his interrogations and through the murder — and yet it was the same, too, or anyway it had the same source.

He discovered the longer time went on that it was still easy to not feel guilt over what he’d done. He was more amazed than he probably should have been at the almost complete lack of difference between Coleman’s murder and the things he’d done to other people as Batman. The only difference really was the finality of the murder. Everyone else had walked, or limped, or crawled, or been dragged away from whatever hell he’d put them through. He thought about it as he cleaned Jude’s guns, or counted the boxes that came in shipments of drugs at the wharf, or checked the list of car parts ordered against the actual arrivals in their warehouses. He thought about it, but he also thought about other things: the way Jude’s hair fell against the dark violet of his coat, and how his voice would echo, snapping, off the walls of buildings or the alleyways. The curl to his mouth when Bruce did something that particularly amused him — usually some abrupt and unexpected act of violence during an interrogation. Generally this led to Bruce being invited back to the apartment in the Narrows for sex, and sometimes Bruce stayed overnight, though he was always shunted out in the frozen mornings while it was still dark because Jude “wasn’t going to start buying any of that soy breakfast crap” for him. He would drive back to the penthouse and try to sneak up to change and remove his contacts without Alfred noticing, which worked about twenty-five percent of the time.

Jude still didn’t quite seem to know what to think of his scars — he’d seen the ones on Bruce’s back too, and Bruce had endured several tense, not totally unpleasant minutes of Jude tracing them with his nails. Finally he mumbled something about Chicago being less violent than Bruce’s apparent European adventures and sank his teeth into the f*cking dog bite scar on Bruce’s left arm. Bruce still wasn’t allowed to ask about the vicious, deep scar on Jude’s own arm, but he was learning to know how to pick his battles.

Ten days after Coleman’s body was discovered in Montauk, the service Lucius had predicted was announced. Marianne had had the funeral already, privately, and didn’t bother disguising her anger at the memorial. She thought it was gauche, or something, that the city which had killed and then discarded her husband was mourning his death. She stood in the back of the crowd with her arms folded and a heavy dark coat on, and the sunglasses she’d worn on the news, and she didn’t speak to anyone. Bruce went because he knew how it would look to Lucius if he didn’t. Jim Gordon was there, for some reason, and he asked Bruce to speak, because Marianne wouldn’t; also because Bruce was Bruce and likely Gordon thought it would be good for publicity. Bruce stood looking out over the crowd, the camera crews that had gathered — Mike Engel, he noticed, was conspicuously absent — and clenched his hands around the podium.

“I didn’t work with Coleman Reese for very long,” he said, “but I know he was a good man…” He talked for a while, rote, typical things. Every time he looked down at his hands they were covered in blood, and the nails were bloody, and the knuckles, and he could smell it in his nose and feel it in his hair. Will all great Neptune’s ocean —

He remembered the way Coleman’s throat had opened for him, and afterwards the dark blood congealing over the bright pink flesh, and the stench of death. He must have zoned out during his own speech because when next he was aware of himself he was stepping down and people were clapping. He saw Lucius off to the side give him an approving nod. He supposed part of him felt relief — it had been a good way to guarantee that no one would suspect him. All the same he was glad when he was able to slip away from the crowd without detection. He got in his car and drove back to the penthouse. In the garage he checked his phone.

U look good on TV.

Bruce smiled. Thx, boss.

U want 2 come 2 C.I. tmrw nite?

C.I.?

Coney Isl.

Bruce blinked. Whts in C.I.?

Wrk. A pause. Ur doing good. Big job. Not jst Rx 1234.

It took Bruce a second to realize ‘Rx 1234’ was Jude’s shorthand version of saying ‘drug counting’. He snorted. Ok, he said.

Good, Jude said, after a moment. Will send time, etc. l8r.

Bruce slid his thumb over the screen of his phone, for some reason. He was still smiling as he slipped it in his pocket and ran a hand through his hair before getting out of the car and heading for the elevator.

The following evening Cornell, Kowalczyk, Reznor, and Jude drove by the penthouse and picked Bruce up before heading out to New York. Bruce understood it was likely not in his best interest to voice his opinion that Coney Island wasn’t the most logical place for a meetup, and indeed he was able to keep quiet for most of the ride, but in the end he couldn’t help it. As Cornell pulled into a parking space, Bruce said, trying to sound casual:

“So isn’t it… a little public here?”

In the rearview mirror Jude met his eyes with an expression that clearly said, you’re lucky I still like f*cking you, sweetheart. But he just shrugged and said, “Makes it easier,” and then Kowalczyk said,

“Think of it like this, Wayne: if there’s a crowd, no one’s gonna see what you’re doing. You ever read Gatsby?”

Bruce blinked; he tried not to let his surprise show on his face, but Kowalczyk caught it anyway, and rolled his eyes.

“I have a Master’s in English Lit from Montclair State,” he said. “We’re not all f*ckin’ gutter rats like Nell here,” and then there was a pause while Cornell reached behind him from the driver’s seat to smack Kowalczyk in the shoulder. Kowalczyk ducked away, laughing. The engine cut off and Cornell and Reznor adjusted their guns in their jackets, and Jude his knife. Kowalczyk glanced expectantly at Bruce, who said, slowly,

“Yeah. Couple times.” It had been one of Rachel’s favorites. He could remember deliberately missing the point, age fifteen, because he was trying so hard to compare her to Daisy, already planning to leave by that point, thinking of how he’d return one day, find her waiting…

“So you know that part when Jordan’s like, I love large parties because they’re so intimate? Yeah, so, it’s the same. Fitzgerald must’ve been in the mob.” He grinned, and Reznor rolled his eyes.

“Fitzgerald was not in the mob, Zyk, for the f*cking hundredth — ”

“I can dream, okay.” Kowalczyk glared at him without heat as they piled out of the car. He rounded to the other side so he could stand next to Bruce. The chill from the Atlantic was bracing, and Bruce shoved his hands under his arms. Even in his beanie his head felt too exposed.

“So anyway yeah, it’s like that,” Kowalczyk finished. “There isn’t any privacy in places like the laundromat, or the Falcone restaurants. But here?” He spread his hands out, expansive. “We can get away with whatever the f*ck we want. It’s best on the Fourth and at New Year’s, actually, ‘cause there’s a million fireworks, and no one’s gonna hear the f*ckin’ gunshots.”

Bruce bit his mouth. “Right,” he said. He was watching the crowd; despite the late time of year, there really were quite a lot of people. He caught Jude watching him and braced himself for a lecture, or for another one of those annoyed, knowing looks, but after a moment all Jude said was,

“This is going to be calm, anyway. It’s just an arms exchange. It’s like dealing drugs under the bleachers at a baseball game.”

“Yeah, as long as you don’t try and f*ck around with the first baseman’s girlfriend while you’re doing it,” Cornell muttered, glancing at Reznor, and everyone laughed. Even Jude looked mildly amused. The carnival lights were reflecting on his face; Bruce could see flares of orange and blue and pink in the white streaks along his forehead. He had a sudden overwhelming urge to lean over and kiss the bright patterns they made on his skin. To squash this as they started walking he asked,

“Is that what you did?” and Reznor glared at Cornell:

“Thanks, man,” but again, there was no heat behind it. He launched into a detailed, rather sordid story of how he’d lost and then stolen back his ex-girlfriend — or well, not quite ex-girlfriend, it was massively complicated — to the first baseman of his high school baseball team. He’d been a drug dealer his junior and senior years of high school and was three months from graduating on probation when he’d decided to make some cash by selling china white at a home game. His girl, who had initially cheated on him with the first baseman, wanted a hit, and things proceeded from there. Virtually everyone involved had been expelled. Reznor and the girl still f*cked around from time to time when he happened to visit Hoboken.

As they headed up Tenth Street, and Bruce listened to the story, the familiar cadence of it, and the gentle, familiar teasing that accompanied it, he felt a sudden rush of — he didn’t want to say affection, but it was far too close to use anything else. There was no use for it; it wouldn’t help him win them over, it wouldn’t add anything to his experience or make it easier to hand them over to Gordon. But it was… nice, to walk with them onto the boardwalk, and to let their voices wash over his ears, not arguing, not snapping at him, not discussing big plans or schemes or anything, just… being. Comfortable with themselves and with each other in a way that Bruce himself had not been, alone or with anyone else, in a very long time.

Eventually they reached Nathan’s Famous on the Boardwalk — WORLD FAMOUS FRANKFURTERS SINCE 1916 — pressed in between Famous Famiglia and Lola Star Boutique, and saw Ashland, Rollie, and a guy Bruce didn’t recognize standing against the building, waiting. Rollie was working his way through a hot dog, mustard staining his shirt. The guy Bruce didn’t know — hair dyed a lurid shade of orange, fang-shaped gages in his ears — was nodding off under the awning. Bruce suspected he’d shot up before arriving.

Kowalczyk waved at Ashland, and Ashland glanced up at the movement, then nudged Rollie in the side. Rollie shoved the rest of the hot dog into his mouth all at once and elbowed the orange-haired guy into awareness, and the three of them started forward. They met at the center of the boardwalk and stood for a moment sizing each other up in the crowd.

“It’s f*ckin’ cold,” the orange-haired guy muttered, after a moment.

“Agreed,” Ashland said. “Shall we go inside?”

“I’m not sure what difference that’ll make,” Jude murmured, “since this restaurant is open-air.”

Ashland’s smile tightened infinitesimally at the corners. “Just trying to make everyone comfortable.”

“I’m not planning on being here very long,” Jude said. “How about you, Mascis?”

Bruce shook his head. “No, boss.”

Ashland turned his sharp focus on Bruce. His eyes widened, and he let out a short laugh. “You, my friend, are one freaky-looking motherf*cker.”

Bruce stared at him, folding his arms. Beside him he felt Jude’s tension coiling all along his spine.

“The f*ck’s wrong with his eyes?” Ashland asked.

“They’re contacts,” Cornell snapped, “don’t be f*cking retarded,” and then Reznor said,

“Quit wasting the boss’s time, dude. Give us the shipment.”

Ashland’s eyebrow went up. “Contacts?” He studied Bruce again, more closely this time. “Wait, haven’t we — ”

“I have a lot of places to go tonight,” Jude said, sharply enough that a woman walking past turned to look at him before hurrying on. “So could you f*cking get on with it.”

Still frowning, Ashland turned reluctantly to face Jude. “I’m parked on the other side,” he said. “By the baseball diamond.”

“Why would you park so far out?” Kowalczyk asked, incredulously.

“Coming in from different directions, I guess.” Ashland looked at Rollie, and a shiver of unease passed through Bruce’s mind. He didn’t want to move or do anything to draw attention to himself, so he let it go, but then Jude said,

“You’ll have to drive back over to meet us, then. We’re right there — ” gesturing — “and Cornell’s not moving his car.”

Orange-haired guy rolled his eyes. “For f*ck’s — ”

“Travis,” Ashland warned softly, and then to Jude, “Why don’t we just have the drop off at a halfway point. Let’s say the mini golf on Stillwell?”

“All right,” Jude said. “We’ll meet you there.” But Bruce could hear in his tone that it wasn’t all right, and indeed after a moment he added, “Actually, you know what? Take Mascis and Kowalczyk with you.”

Ashland raised an eyebrow. “What? Don’t you trust — ”

“No,” Jude said easily, not quite smiling. “You made a sh*tty deal in October and you lost me half my shipment. Of course I don’t trust you.”

Travis sighed. “This isn’t — ”

“Trav, hey.” Bruce watched Travis’ hand float towards his jacket, and Ashland’s hand wave him down. He looked between Bruce and Kowalczyk. “What about just the freak?”

Bruce saw Jude’s shoulders stiffen. “Both of them,” he said, quietly. “Or else you can drive your car to the lot by Luna Park. We’ll take either.”

Ashland’s eyebrows drew down over his nose. He glanced at Rollie and Travis.

Jude made a soft, impatient noise. “I have a lot of sh*t to get through,” he said again, “so if you don’t want to cooperate with my terms I’ll take the loss and trade with someone else more — ”

“No.” Ashland had folded his arms; he looked annoyed. “No, it’s — fine. f*ck. I’ll take them both. I’m not hiding anything.”

“Good.” Jude smiled, soft, predatory. It was a smile Bruce would’ve hated to have been on the receiving end of. “Anyway, if you’ve got my shipment in full, that’s a lot of guns. You’ll need all the help you can get.”

Ashland didn’t answer. He flicked his head at Rollie and Travis, and then again at Bruce and Kowalczyk. “C’mon,” he said. To Jude: “We’ll meet you at the golf course.”

“Sure,” Jude murmured, and slunk away, Cornell and Reznor at his heels. Bruce watched them disappear into the crowd and the lights and the noise. Then Ashland was waving him and Kowalczyk forward, and the five of them started down the boardwalk. They walked past multiple shop fronts, some still brightly lit from within, others shuttered for the night. After a while, Ashland half-turned to Bruce.

“So listen,” he said. “You look really familiar.”

Bruce shrugged. “I’ve just got one of those faces, I guess.”

Ashland shook his head. “No, it’s not that…”

“Wouldn’t you have remembered the eyes?” Kowalczyk asked.

“I mean — ”

“He was at the laundromat, boss,” Rollie said suddenly. He had a drawling, slick Southern accent; Tennessee maybe, or Virginia. He was looking at Bruce with cool dislike, and Bruce felt that sliver of unease pass through his chest again. It widened into a crevice when a moment later Ashland’s face split into an unnaturally wide smile — open to the point of looking painful — and he said,

“That’s right,” with such exaggerated relief Bruce knew he’d been lying about not recognizing him. “Why didn’t you just tell me, man?” This was punctuated by a brief, vicious punch to the shoulder.

Bruce stared for a moment down at his arm. So either the contacts didn’t work on everyone, or else they didn’t work at all, and Ainsworth was just so f*cking stupid he hadn’t realized who Bruce was despite sitting through at least a dozen meetings with him. Still, he understood what a ridiculously stupid idea it would be to admit the whole truth, so he swallowed down his nerves, schooled his face into a flat, emotionless expression, and said,

“Yeah. I was at the laundromat. I didn’t think it mattered this much. I’m just here to do my f*cking job. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

Ashland raised his eyebrows. So did Rollie. Travis, slinking along a little ways ahead of the rest of them, stiffened a little along his spine, but after a moment Ashland relaxed his mouth into something slightly more normal, and he said, “Of course it is.”

“Great,” Kowalczyk said, a little too loudly, squeezing Bruce’s shoulder as he walked, with just enough pressure Bruce understood it was a signal: shut up. “Great, good, okay. We’ve established how we know each other and why we’re here. Our boss really is in a hurry, though, so if we could, you know — ” He gestured forward. “I mean not to rush things or whatever but it really is, like — quite a drive back to Gotham.” In fact it was a little under half an hour if there wasn’t road construction. But Ashland didn’t comment on this; he just sighed again, and looked at Rollie, and then he said,

“Yes. Absolutely. Let’s go, gentlemen.”

They made their way down the boardwalk until the shops thinned out. With mounting unease the further they went, Bruce watched the interactions between Ashland and Rollie and tried not to look too closely down the narrow dark paths between the shops, the places the flashing lights wouldn’t reach, the shadows. He disliked alleys enough in daytime, but at least then they were manageable, if unpleasant, places. At night anything long and narrow Bruce couldn’t see into became a trap, the mouth of death. The smell of blood and rain and the shadow of his father’s hand trying to block his mother’s body —

They walked past the carousel and the parachute jump, and ended up on West 21^st, bypassing an arena before finally arriving at the parking lot. The car Ashland led them to was an atrocity: a bright yellow Hummer, oversized, with nearly enough space beneath the carriage for a child to walk without ducking. Bruce flinched involuntarily, looking at it; Travis shot him a look:

“f*ck’s your problem?” and Kowalczyk stepped in, smiling, smoothing things over:

“He collects classic cars. He’s allergic to anything made after like, 1987.”

Travis rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he grunted, and opened the back doors. Together he and Rollie lifted out a case and waited, arms straining, until Ashland brought around a dolly. Then they loaded it, and started back off in the direction of the park.

“There’s no way that has the boss’ full shipment,” Kowalczyk muttered to Bruce as they walked back down Surf Avenue, a little ways behind the others. “Not even half of what we ordered would fit in that.”

“Yeah,” Bruce muttered back. “Something’s off. Keep your gun ready.”

“Always,” Kowalczyk said, and then grinned. “f*ck, hey, now that Cornell’s not here, don’t you think Fitzgerald was in the f*ckin’ mob? I mean, he’s writing about bootlegging and sh*t — ”

Bruce was startled by this pleasantly friendly overture, but he rose to it gamely: “Yeah, because he was writing in the twenties, not because he had actual ties with like, Capone or whoever — ”

“You never know, he had all those f*ckin’ friends in Europe or wherever, the… you know, Hemingway and Stein — ”

Bruce thought he was having a fever dream. “People would have absolutely found out about it by now, you know.”

Kowalczyk’s grin grew wider. “Maybe Zelda was in on it,” he said, “you know, like a crime duo, like uh, Bonnie and Clyde — ”

“What the f*ck are you talking about?”

“Leopold and Loeb — ”

“You are f*cking insane, dude.”

Kowalczyk laughed, loud enough that Travis turned around to glare at him. When he’d looked away again Kowalczyk said, “You know what, Wayne? You’re okay. I dunno how everyone else feels yet, but I like you.”

Again, that feeling of — enjoyment. Inclusion. It was tangled weirdly up in something else Bruce couldn’t examine and didn’t want to, so he pushed it aside, and smiled at Kowalczyk. The plan was still working. He had Jude in his bed — or, well, he was in Jude’s bed, but it amounted to the same thing — and Kowalczyk had just admitted he liked being around him, and Cornell and Reznor were comfortable enough to tease and joke in front of Bruce, and this was exactly what he’d wanted to have happen. He didn’t know why the quiet feeling of — whatever it was, underneath the pleasure — wouldn’t leave. He was right where he was supposed to be. Gordon would —

“You’re way too rich,” Kowalczyk was saying, “and you’re obviously inexperienced as hell, but… I dunno.” Abruptly he became serious, and that weird feeling blossomed further, until Bruce could no longer avoid identifying it: guilt. He was leading them on. Kowalczyk was showing him sincerity and he was lying to his face. He was lying to all of them. But it was what he’d set out to do from the beginning and why the f*ck did it matter? They were criminals, they killed people —

— but he could hardly make that argument himself anymore. Coleman’s body on the bathroom floor, blood spreading, staining the tiles. He’d killed Coleman in the same way as his parents had been killed (not in the execution, but in the intent: ruthless, and jarring, and bloody) and he’d never felt anything over it, not in all this time, because it had just been the job, it had just been part of the job. It was just that same cold, detached violence that he was doing everything else with, and —

“The boss likes you,” Kowalczyk said, and Bruce’s heart stopped, for some reason. “I don’t just mean ‘cause you’re — whatever, sleeping together. I mean he likes you as a person. He’s never said it out loud or anything but we can all tell. Everyone was kind of like, what the f*ck, when he said he wanted you, but no one tells the Joker no, you know? So we let it go, and now it’s been like, what, a month and a half? And he’s still asking you to go places, and he let you f*cking kill that weird little guy… And now here you are. Dealing unregistered arms with us at Coney f*ckin’ Island.” Then his face lit back up into a huge grin: “Oh, f*ck! Coney Island, man! That’s in Gatsby, too!”

This abrupt change of subject gave Bruce whiplash, but it also had the effect of slamming him out of the insane, confusing guilt that was threatening to overwhelm him as he walked on. “I — yeah,” he said, “I remember that,” and from there Kowalczyk launched into an easy, rambling monologue about his favorite scenes in Gatsby, and how he wished they’d make an actual decent movie adaptation of it, and how before he’d joined Jude he’d wanted to teach it in classes at Ivy League universities. This lasted them all the way up Surf Avenue and onto Stillwell. Then Ashland was turning back to them:

“Do you know where the Joker wants us to meet him exactly?”

Kowalczyk shot him a look. “You heard as much as we did, Ash.”

“Well, could we figure it out?” Travis snapped. “I’m f*cking sick of pushing this thing.”

Up ahead they could see the outlines of the mini golf course and adjacent go-kart track, closed for the night. Bruce saw Cornell’s face, lit by soft pink lights in the water under a miniature windmill, and beside him Jude, standing with his arms folded, body a long, tilted line of impatience. They turned left onto Bowery, and Ashland swept his arms out, beaming.

“Here we are!” he said, with just enough forced cheer in his voice to instantly put Bruce right back on the edge. Yeah, something was definitely wrong. The unease he’d felt on the boardwalk wrapped its fingers around his throat, and his hand went to the knife tucked away in his jacket without his even noticing. “Brought your guns and your freaks back to you safe and — ”

“Let me see,” Jude cut in, walking forward. He looked at Travis, who was still gripping the dolly with trembling white fingers. His eyes slid over to Rollie, whose shirt reeked of the mustard he’d spilled on it, and to Ashland, still smiling that overly wide, unnatural smile.

“Why are you lying to me again?” Jude asked softly, and Travis dropped the dolly. His hand went to his gun, and this time Ashland didn’t try to stop him.

“Why would I — ”

“I don’t know.” Jude tapped his finger against his lower lip. It came away smeared in red. “I don’t know anyone else that f*cking stupid. Do you, Mascis?”

“No, boss,” Bruce said, and flinched at his own lie. Why was he f*cking feeling guilty about this?

“Yeah,” Jude drawled, staring at Ashland. “‘cause the thing is, I already gave you two chances. That’s way more than what most people get with me. So I don’t know why you would’ve deliberately f*cked this one up.”

“Hey, man, look, I — ”

“You’ve wasted my time,” Jude said. “I’m finished talking.” He waved his hand at Cornell. “Open it up, Nell. Might as well see what the f*ck we’ve got.”

Cornell and Travis went for the box at the same time. Jude held his knife up:

“Nope. Now I want my guy to Brad Pitt this, okay? So you just stand the f*ck down and let him — ”

Travis pulled his own gun. He thumbed off the safety. Bruce saw Jude’s eyebrows go up beneath the paint.

“Oh,” he said, softly. “Is it like that?”

Ashland sighed. He waved his hand at Travis. “Yes,” he said, “all right, look — you win. I lied.”

Jude tilted his head. “There. Was that so — ”

“But you did too,” Ashland went on. “You promised me half the cut from last time, and then guess what? I never got sh*t! So yeah, I dragged you and your guys out here to make a point. This sh*t — ” he gestured to the box — “this is mine. This is what you owe me.”

Jude’s tongue darted out to wet at his scars. “Mascis,” he murmured, without taking his eyes off Ashland’s face. His voice had hit that dangerous low pitch, the one that sounded like broken gravel. It shot straight between Bruce’s legs, and he swallowed, stepping forward.

“Yeah, boss.”

“Do I owe these guys anything?”

“No, boss.”

“Do I ever owe anyone anything?”

Bruce shook his head. The tension was spiking in the air, coiling, ready to snap. “Never, boss.”

Jude’s mouth twitched. “See,” he said, even more softly. His voice was so pitched he was growling. “Seems like you were mistaken after all.” When he finally looked at Bruce the anger in his eyes was so electric Bruce wondered how he was keeping it contained. “You and Cornell take my guns,” he said, “and I’ll stay here and think about whether I feel like killing our friends or just incapacitating them.”

Bruce nodded. He walked over to the dolly. Cornell was still standing at it; he was sneering at Travis, who had lowered his gun on Ashland’s command, but still glared with smack-dulled hatred at both of them. They each took up an end of the box and lifted it. Bruce could hear the guns rattling inside. He felt the wind from the ocean. He smelled the hot dogs, the saltwater, the popcorn. There was a burst of laughter which carried across the rides, and jaunty carnival music started up somewhere close.

Then he heard the click of a safety being turned off, and Travis’ gun was at his forehead. “Put the f*ckin’ box down,” he snarled. “Right the f*ck now.”

Slowly, Bruce lifted his head. The box wasn’t really heavy, but his arms were burning where he hadn’t been able to get a better grip on it yet. He stared at the long metal barrel, and at the angry twist of Travis’ face beyond it.

“I said put it down,” Travis repeated. “You and your spic friend deaf or something?”

Cornell dropped the box so fast Bruce had to tense his arms in order to not strain a muscle from the abrupt shift in weight. His hand went to his jacket and removed his own gun, which he pointed at Travis’ temple. “How about we cool it with the f*ckin’ racist sh*t, pendejo?”

“Trav,” Ashland said, voice badly masking delight at this turn of events. “This is highly unnecessary — ”

“Why don’t you get your man to take his gun off Mascis’ forehead,” Jude asked, in the same quiet, dangerous voice from earlier.

Ashland turned to him. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, “should he not be trying to defend my territory?”

“Your territory.”

“I don’t recall actually giving you permission to take these,” Ashland said. “Trav just wants your guy to let go of my property.”

“Oh,” Jude said, and smiled. “Sorry, I didn’t realize he had your property.” He looked at Bruce. “Mascis, please hand him back his balls. I’d been wondering where the f*ck they went.”

Ashland’s face twisted into the same angry snarl as Travis’. “You f*cked me over,” he said, loudly. “I was promised f*cking half and I got nothing, did you really think I wasn’t gonna come back for it? You don’t f*cking own the entire east coast, man.”

“Maybe not,” Jude agreed affably, before lunging forward and slashing Rollie across the cheek. The blade went through his rose tattoo and he screamed, sinking to his knees in the grass, clutching desperately at the wound as red leaked through his fingers. Instantly Bruce let go of the box and grabbed Travis’ wrist, jerking it upwards just as he fired his shot. As he struggled to wrestle the gun from him, Cornell’s own gun still trained on his temple, Reznor rushed up and grabbed Ashland from behind. He wrapped an arm around his neck, forcing Ashland to lift one hand to try and get him off. The other hand was struggling to get out his knife. Jude was laughing, staring down at Rollie, who had fallen to his side on the ground. Blood ran down his arms and the front of his shirt, mixing with the mustard stains.

“I’m f*cking dying,” he sobbed, voice slurred — Jude must have cut his tongue, too. “Boss, I’m gonna f*cking die — ”

“No you aren’t going to f*cking die, for f*ck’s sake, don’t be a f*cking baby,” Ashland snarled at him, stepping backwards at Reznor’s feet. Bruce had succeeded in forcing Travis’ arm down and was holding his wrist stiffly between them, locking his foot between his legs. Travis elbowed him hard in the stomach, and Bruce let out a rush of air, but he held on, grabbing at his other arm and trying to force it behind his back. Kowalczyk had run off, probably to get the car. Jude was still holding his blood-soaked knife, flipping it from hand to hand, eyes flicking between Ashland and Rollie like he couldn’t decide who to watch.

“I’d call an ambulance for your man,” he murmured. “Facial wounds hurt like a bitch, believe me,” and his tongue darted out, this time with deliberation, to wet at his scars. “And they bleed out fast, too.”

Ashland was glaring at him. Reznor had worked his knife free of his jeans and was pressing it under Ashland’s jaw.

“Did you really think you were going to come out on top?” Jude asked. “Putting two of your guys up against my four?”

Ashland looked at Travis, then nodded to Bruce. “Give him the gun.”

“Boss — ”

“Give him the gun.”

Travis released his grip on the gun. Bruce took it and dismantled it one-handed, keeping a tight grip on Travis’ wrist with the other, foot still locked between his legs. He slid it into the back of his sweats and grabbed Travis’ other hand.

From the grass, Rollie moaned, spitting out a thick glob of blood. “f*cking call nine-one-one, man,” he panted. “I feel sick — ”

“Oh, shut up,” Ashland snapped at him. “No one can f*cking understand what you’re saying — ”

“You really oughta treat your guys better,” Jude murmured. “This economy is too unstable to risk losing profit like that.” He looked at Travis, then at Rollie. His mouth twitched. “You two might want to consider switching teams. — Ah, well,” when Travis only glared from Bruce’s arms, while Rollie managed a weak middle finger. “My slots fill up pretty quick, anyway,” and then he grinned at Bruce. Bruce rolled his eyes, but he smiled back. Kowalczyk came up Twelfth Street then, and Jude nodded, sort of to himself.

“Now,” he said, “I really do have a lot of sh*t to take care of, so if you’ll excuse us — ” He gestured with his knife at Bruce and Cornell. “Take care of my guns, would you?”

“No problem, boss,” Cornell grunted, and kept his gun trained on Travis’ temple with one hand while lifting his end of the box with the other.

From Reznor’s arms, Ashland growled, “I said you’re not taking my f*cking guns.”

Jude rolled his eyes. “Don’t start that again,” he said, and waved his knife at Bruce and Cornell again: “Keep going.” Bruce released Travis’ arms to get the other side of the box, and they made it maybe five steps toward the car when Reznor grunted sharply in surprise. Bruce spun in time to see Ashland elbowing him in the chest, forcing him to let go. The knife scraped along his jaw but it didn’t catch the vein and before Reznor could grab him again he was pulling his own gun. The passenger window of the car exploded as a gunshot cracked through the golf course. Glass sprayed across the ground and Kowalczyk’s arm flew up to cover his face.

sh*t.

All thoughts of acting the part — if there had been any to begin with — flew clean out of Bruce’s head. It was Batman’s training that got him on the ground, and Batman’s instincts, tight and controlled, that kept his head level as he dropped the box and dove to the side.

— Or perhaps it wasn’t. It had that same cold, clinically detached feeling as when he’d broken Ainsworth’s fingers, or killed Coleman, or even stood here tonight, gripping Travis by the arms, holding him back. It felt like someone else. It felt like whoever he’d met in the bathroom at GCN.

Beside him Cornell was ducking too, aiming his gun and firing. He caught Travis in the leg and there was a shout, a spray of blood. Travis dropped to his knees and Cornell scrambled to the car while Kowalczyk lunged across the seats to open the back door from the inside. Bruce was trying to shift the box with Cornell without getting in the line of fire. As they struggled to hoist the box up into the car the seat by Bruce’s head exploded in another shot, and though his hearing was already pretty f*cked his ears still rang out in sharp protest. The world tunneled down to momentary silence and tinnitus and he watched as though through an underwater lens the movements:

Jude grabbing Ashland’s wrist, slamming his fist into his face —

Reznor jumping up from behind to tackle Ashland —

Ashland spinning, still in Jude’s grip, and knocking Reznor’s knife from his hand —

Ashland’s gun slipping from his fingers as Jude punched his ear —

Travis, still bleeding, scrambling forward on his hands and good knee to grab the gun —

The trigger squeezing —

Bits of Reznor’s sleeve spraying along with his blood as the shot ricocheted off his arm, and his mouth suddenly wide open in an intense grimace of pain —

Jude’s foot swinging to catch Travis in the jaw, sending him sprawling backwards as he himself started towards the car —

Bruce was scrambling into the car along with Cornell, hoisting the box up over the step. Cornell struggled in first, dragging it under the seats, and Bruce went in after, feeling the car start forward as Kowalczyk began slowly to move out. Jude swung wildly with his knife, catching Ashland across the other side of his neck, and this time Ashland fell to his knees. Jude’s foot came out again, kicking him hard in the chest, and then he grabbed Reznor and hauled him towards the car. Jude backed into the seat beside Bruce, gripping his knife. Reznor crawled into the passenger seat, still cradling his wounded arm, and Bruce’s hearing was coming back enough he could hear Reznor whimpering. The second the five of them were all in the car Kowalczyk peeled out, and Bruce had to grab Jude’s collar and hold him hard, pressing his other hand down on the seat, to keep them both steadily in while the door swung open. Cornell had the box jammed between his feet; he fired over the backs of the seats. Bruce couldn’t see if he was hitting anyone, though he did have to duck down yet again, dragging Jude with him, as the back window burst open with gunfire — Cornell’s or Ashland’s, Bruce couldn’t tell.

Kowalczyk drove erratically across the course, plowing into various little props: plastic frogs set to devour the golf balls, wide-mouthed birds that the dark had turned evil, a wooden boy with his legs spread obscenely over the hole. When at last he was able to get straightened out and back onto Twelfth Jude slammed the door shut, body rocketing backwards against Bruce’s for a second before he flung himself forward, and he snarled,

“Drive.” Kowalczyk’s foot went down so hard on the accelerator the tires screamed as he peeled out. Behind them the gunfire had at last ceased. Bruce knew by the time anyone came out to investigate all that would be left would be the decimated golf course and a few angry bloodstains in the grass.

In the front Reznor was still moaning softly, cradling his arm. Jude kicked the back of his seat, annoyed:

“Rez. For f*ck’s sake. Let me see.” He leaned forward over the passenger seat for a moment, then crashed back. “It barely grazed you,” he snapped. “Stop freaking out. You’re not dying.”

“Sorry, boss,” Reznor muttered.

“The worst thing that’s gonna happen is you’re gonna have to buy a new jacket.”

“Yeah.” Reznor blew out a breath, slumping a little further down in his seat. “I know, boss.”

They drove for a while in silence. As they merged onto Belt Parkway Bruce felt his hands begin to tremble; the adrenaline was ebbing out. In the front seat he could see Kowalczyk’s fingers where they curled tense and flecked with blood on the steering wheel. He must have felt Bruce’s eyes on him, or else he was just trying to ease the situation somewhat, because he looked in the rearview mirror and grinned.

“f*ckin’ wild, huh, Wayne,” he said. “Probably just a regular Sunday night for Fitzgerald though.”

“f*ck,” Cornell said, loudly, one foot shaking so hard against the box the guns were rattling inside. “You’re not f*cking still on that, are you?”

“I sure am.” Kowalczyk beamed. “Wayne’s on my side, aren’t you, Wayne.”

Bruce exhaled shakily. Jude was staring out his window, expressionless. Bruce couldn’t read him, couldn’t tell if he was shaken up over what had just happened — though he very seriously doubted it — and as such he couldn’t get a handle on his own emotions. The cold detached not-quite-Batman persona was peeling away with the adrenaline and in its place was an uncertain, fresh, wobbly creature that thought, but wasn’t quite sure, it could stand on its own. It struggled to balance itself, and felt so tender and raw Bruce couldn’t quite decide if he wanted to touch it —

— except he thought perhaps he already had, back at GCN, the day he’d killed Coleman.

He was still struggling to extract the clinging grasp of the creature’s desperate hands, to stow it away for another time when he could fully parse whether it was a more vulnerable part of that thing he’d felt when crouching to avoid Ashland’s shots or something new altogether, when Cornell reached over the driver’s seat and smacked Kowalczyk’s shoulder with the flat of his hand.

“You f*cking dumbass,” he said. “He was just trying to be polite to get you to shut up.”

Kowalczyk, merging onto the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, abruptly juddered the wheels against the reflectors on the shoulder as he spun in his own seat to punch Cornell back. “He was not, I know a kindred spirit when I meet — ”

“Watch the road,” Jude said tensely. His jaw was gritted, fists curled in his lap, the leather of his gloves stretched tight over his hands. He was still staring out the window and the tender desperate rawness in Bruce’s chest opened further, feeling starved —

“Sorry, boss,” Kowalczyk said, turning back to face the front. It was quiet for maybe ten seconds, then he said,

“Okay, but — actually. Wayne. Tonight got pretty intense. You good?”

Bruce swallowed. He looked at Jude, who slowly, almost painfully, turned his head to look back at Bruce. “Yeah,” Bruce said, quietly. “I’m okay.”

“Not too much for you yet?” Cornell asked, drumming his fingers against the seat. “You ain’t gonna quit on us or anything?”

“No,” Bruce said. He still hadn’t looked away from Jude. The tender creature was flayed open and he knew, he knew, it was the same. It was the same clinical cold new person he’d found in the laundromat, and at Ainsworth’s, and at the studio. It was the same quiet focused anger that molded and shaped his rage and his violence into something tamable, and manageable, and —

And —

It was not Batman, but it was not Bruce Wayne, billionaire, either. It was a whole new side of him. It was unnamed, breathing through his mouth, blinking through his contacts. It terrified him, and all the more so because he could see its reflection in the dark glass as Kowalczyk crossed the river, wearing his face, speaking with his tongue. It felt his feelings and used his hands for violence and for pain and it didn’t need or want armor to do it. It just — existed. He was deeply shaken by it. But he couldn’t be, not all the way. Because it was him, too.

Jude was watching him, carefully, eyes searching his face for something. And he must have found it, or some approximation of it, because after a moment he nodded, once, and turned back to face the window. Cornell and Reznor each did the same — Reznor’s nod a little jerky with his pain — and Kowalczyk smiled at him in the rearview mirror. Bruce felt more of the adrenaline rush out of him, and his shoulders molded into the seat. He felt as though he’d just passed some test he hadn’t even been aware of taking.

After, they didn’t speak again until they were crossing into the city, and even then it was only Reznor asking Kowalczyk to drop him off at the unnamed clinic in the Narrows where the doctors turned a blind eye to most crime and as such were good for treating basically anything. In the interim, as they headed down 278 and then onto 440, Cornell rested his head on the window and fell asleep, and Bruce covertly watched Jude, and thought about the evening.

He could have let Jude die, was the thing. Not that Jude had ever been in any real danger of it, but even so — when he’d held onto his overcoat to keep him in the car, or when he’d prevented Travis from wielding his gun, or when he’d held them both down as Ashland attempted to shoot the back window out — any of those times. Any one thing shifted and it could’ve all gone very, very differently. Images stacked on top of each other insurmountably as they streaked across the Kill Van Kull and into New Jersey — Jude dying on the green, choking on his own blood. Jude’s body resting against the Riegelmann for the seagulls and the cops to find in their own time, torso littered with bullet holes. Bizarrely, Jude being crushed between the go karts on the track by Ashland and Travis while Rollie cheered them on through his ruined mouth —

Any of that could have happened. And the thing was, maybe Bruce should’ve let it. He’d already passed the ultimate test in the gang. He’d killed for them; there wasn’t anywhere else he could go from here, no point he had left to pass. Officially he’d done what he’d set out to do; he’d gathered intel, he’d gained access to their private files and personal lives. He had their trust and he knew their inner workings and their secret warehouses and their meetups and clients and colleagues. He could go to Gordon right now, the second Kowalczyk dropped him off in the business district. He could just rush to the bunker and put on the suit and go to Gordon’s apartment and tell him everything. I’ve worked with the Joker for about a month now. I know every single thing about him including where he lives in the Narrows, and you can bust him and his twelve main guys tonight and I’ll give you enough charges to arrest them on they won’t be able to post bail until they’re dead. He could do that. He needed to. After all it was his goal, it was what he’d wanted from the beginning. It was the only reason he’d said yes to this craziness to begin with. Afterwards he could of course also confess to his sins and atone for murder and extortion and all the other things he’d done wrong in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of Batman, who very likely could be tried completely separately from Bruce Wayne, and the tender raw thing inside him that was screaming no, no, don’t —

Jude’s hand closed down on his thigh. At first he thought it was an accident, but when he looked at the side of his face, backlit by the distant city lights, Bruce realized it was very much intentional. Jude was as tense as he’d been when they left Coney Island, his shoulders hunched in and his jaw grinding so hard Bruce could almost hear it. But he’d removed his gloves at some point and now his cold hand was on Bruce’s leg, the long nails scratching against his sweats. His fingers were stained with greasepaint and blood and looked strangely pale against the dark blue fabric. He wasn’t looking at Bruce but his hand tensed against him, and Bruce knew he wanted something. He wanted something desperately, and was either incapable of or perhaps only too prideful to know how to ask for it out loud. Bruce looked, but Cornell was still sleeping, and Reznor was focused on his arm, and Kowalczyk on his driving, tapping along softly with Beck on the radio, and so, chancing it, letting the tender raw self out again, relaxing into it, breathing with it, Bruce reached down, and folded his hand over Jude’s.

Instantly Jude stiffened, but he did not pull away. When after a moment Bruce tucked his fingers lightly beneath the raised points of his hand, Jude sighed, and some of the tension bled almost imperceptibly from his shoulders. He didn’t flip his hand over to hold Bruce’s, but he didn’t shake him off, either. Nor did he remove his hand from Bruce’s thigh. As they merged onto 83 and prepared to take the exit closest to the Narrows Jude shifted his thumb slightly and stroked over Bruce’s pinky. It was just once or twice, and it was so light Bruce knew he was supposed to pretend not to have noticed, but he felt his face growing warm all the same.

No, he thought, as Kowalczyk coasted to a stop at Anderson, and Cornell jerked awake, blinking blearily into the interior of the car while Kowalczyk laughed at him and the string of drool connecting his mouth to the glass. No, he couldn’t have let Jude die. Even if — even if this was the first night. He couldn’t have let him die. Jude’s hand was growing warm against his leg and he was losing a little more of his tension and Bruce could smell him, his awful scent, beautiful and terrible in its familiarity, and Bruce could not pull away. He did not want to.

Kowalczyk dropped Reznor off at the clinic first. It was a small unassuming building carefully hidden between a strip club called Candy and a post office which despite its obviously working lights and active boxes looked as though it had been defunct for decades. After some mild and mostly superficial arguing Cornell went inside the clinic too — “in case you get sick of trying to jerk off with the wrong hand”, which made Reznor slug him, and then wince. He shut the door and called goodbye through the broken window before heading up the parking lot, Cornell slouching along behind him. Once they’d disappeared into the clinic Kowalczyk turned to Jude in the rearview and asked,

“You next, boss?”

“Yeah — ”

“No,” cut in a voice which it took Bruce entirely too long to recognize as his own. Jude and Kowalczyk were both staring at him like he’d asked if they could maybe initiate Mayor Garcia into the gang next. Jude’s hand twitched almost imperceptibly on his thigh, and through the smeared paint his eyebrows lifted.

“You got somewhere more important to be, Wayne?”

Bruce shook his head. “No, I just — f*ck. I think. I don’t think you should go back to your place tonight.”

The eyebrows lifted further. Kowalczyk turned the radio down just slightly. Ma Teresa’s joined the mob and happy with her full-time job…

“You gonna offer an explanation for that scintillating statement?” Jude didn’t sound annoyed, exactly, just slightly confused and more than a little tired. Bruce kept seeing him, the alternative to tonight: his fingers slipping off his coat, and Jude falling, his chest bursting open, shirt soaked in blood. He drew in a breath, flexed his new fingers — Jude’s skin beneath his — and said,

“Ashland’s gonna come for you. He was f*cking pissed and you cut his guy’s face open.”

“Oh, that was a paper cut — ”

“He’s gonna come for you anyway, boss. Maybe not tonight, but soon. He might’ve had us tailed here, for all we know — ”

“I’m not exactly shaking in my shoes at the prospect of — ”

“If he followed us here, he can follow you home. He’ll know where you live. He’ll set the whole Gotham underworld on you for these guns — ” kicking the box with his foot — “and he could come after the rest of the guys, he could bomb you out and you wouldn’t even — ”

“Wayne.” Jude’s voice was even, a little tense. He was evidently controlling himself, keeping himself from losing his temper like he probably wanted to. Bruce didn’t really know what to do with that, so he shut his mouth. “You’re way overthinking this. C’mon. Breathe. He’s not gonna — ” but then his eyes snagged onto Bruce’s face, and whatever he saw there made him stop talking. He sighed; pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. He stared down to where his other hand was still joined with Bruce’s. There was blood on his shirt collar where Rollie’s face had split open and blood on his face and blood in his hair. He’d chewed his lips raw through the greasepaint and his leg hadn’t stopped shaking since they’d crossed the state line and he was gathering tension into his jaw again and abruptly he said, “You know what? Actually, f*ck it. Where do you want me to go instead of to my own damn house that I pay for with other people’s money? What is your bright f*cking idea, Wayne?” He sounded angry, for some reason, but it was completely belied by the expression in his eyes. Bruce couldn’t interpret it exactly, but the tender raw creature opened up to it, and wriggled in joy at its presence, and he said,

“You can come to my place.”

Kowalczyk’s eyebrows lifted up higher than was strictly natural. Jude’s mouth, though, twitched for the first time since they’d gotten in the car.

“Your place.”

“Yeah.” Bruce swallowed. Through the warped glass of Candy he could see pulsating pink and red lights, and the dim shadows of bodies dancing. “You — yeah.”

Jude still had that untranslatable expression in his eyes. For no reason Bruce remembered feeling guilty at Coney Island when Kowalczyk had been chewing his ear off about Gatsby. “What difference would it make whose house we went to if we were tailed here, huh?”

“The — ” Bruce glanced at Kowalczyk, but he was studiedly pretending not to listen, so he said, “I have a massive f*cking amount of security at my place. I live in a penthouse at the top of Wayne Tower. You have to have a card to even get in the elevator, and the top five, well, okay, the top three floors aren’t accessible to outsiders at all.”

Jude tilted his head. His tongue darted out. His hand was still on Bruce’s thigh. “So that’s why I had such a bitch of a time getting up there last month,” he murmured.

Bruce almost smiled. “Yeah, probably,” he said, and now, now Jude was smiling, or anyway the beginnings of it, and Bruce said, “It’ll be easier this time. And a lot more fun, maybe.” He hadn’t meant it to come out quite like that but Jude just raised his eyebrows and quirked his mouth a little higher on one side. Bruce discovered his face was heating up very badly. In the front seat Kowalczyk had become preoccupied with rolling the driver’s side window up and down, over and over.

Jude flexed his hand against Bruce’s thigh. He sighed. He looked out the window for a moment and when he looked back even before he opened his mouth Bruce could see he’d won.

“All right,” Jude said. “Fine. You know what? Just — okay.” Briefly he extracted his hand from beneath Bruce’s so as to hit Kowalczyk on the shoulder. “Take me to Wayne’s f*ckin’ six billion dollar house,” he said, sounding incredibly annoyed.

“No problem, boss,” Kowalczyk said.

“And take the back roads,” Jude added, after a moment. “Just in case Wayne’s right.”

Kowalczyk glanced into the rear view mirror. His eyebrows were still raised, but all he said was,

“Sure thing, boss.”

He backed out of the space. As he turned towards the parking lot entrance Bruce looked at Jude and mouthed: thank you. This earned him what was evidently a long-overdue eye roll, but he also settled his hand back around Bruce’s leg, and gave him an expectant look. Hardly able to comprehend it, Bruce put his hand back, too. He gently squeezed, and Jude didn’t bother with hiding the way his mouth relaxed.

Notes:

ETA 12/21/22: fun fact abt this chapter: the scene where alfred dresses bruce down for committing murder/working w jude is one of the first scenes i ever wrote for this fic in i think either august or september 2020. at that time i had different plans for how coleman's murder was gonna go down (bruce was supposed to trick him into going behind a mob restaurant and shoot him) + i had no plans for the whole richmond subplot so the whole UPS costume thing hadn't even factored into it yet. when i wrote that scene and alfred says "i saw what was in the trunk" i genuinely had no idea wtf he was talking abt; i just wrote the line and figured i'd think of smth later or it would explain itself later. then i ended up changing all the aforementioned stuff and i realized what could be in the trunk and idk i just thought it was so cool how i put that line in without even understanding it. my characters often know sh*t thats gonna happen long before i do and this is one of the more clear-cut examples of that happening

Chapter 6 Chapter Text

By the time they pulled up to the front entrance of Wayne Tower, a record forty minutes had gone by. Kowalczyk had taken every available alternate route, often looping around or doubling back on himself before heading in the direction he wanted, and Bruce, after going through the arduous process of removing contacts without a mirror and in a moving car, had been mildly shocked at how little he recognized of his own city. They reached the curb and Kowalczyk parked, glancing over his shoulder.

“Thanks,” Jude grunted, before tugging his hand out from beneath Bruce’s for the second time and getting out of the car. Kowalczyk waved at him through the busted window, then turned to Bruce.

“I can come pick him up in the morning if you — ”

“No,” Bruce said, maybe too fast, but Kowalczyk didn’t comment. “No, I can take him home. I know where he lives.”

Now Kowalczyk did grin, but all he said was, “Right,” and then, “Listen, it — you were really cool tonight. I’m sure the boss appreciated you not falling apart, or whatever.”

Bruce glanced over. Jude was standing beneath the awning, arms folded as he waited. Half his greasepaint had smeared off over the course of the evening and without his guns and his gloves and his fire, even in his overcoat, he looked — smaller. Almost lost.

“I hope so,” Bruce said. “Night, Kowalczyk,” and then he slid out too. He slammed the door shut — it made an unpleasant sound in the hinges — and watched as the car disappeared down the street. Then he walked up to Jude. He put a hand on his shoulder and felt how tense he was, but even alone he knew better than to bring it up. He gestured at the door:

“Want me to give you the royal treatment? Hold the door and help you inside?”

Jude snorted. “Carry me over the threshold — ” he muttered, and Bruce laughed. He pressed the code in, the doors unlocked, and they walked in together. Jude’s eyes scanned over the ceiling and the doorframe as though it was his first time seeing either; his tongue darted out to wet at his mouth. He looked moderately uncomfortable for some reason, and Bruce tried to get them to the elevators as fast as he could, but as they crossed the lobby Marcus, the night security guard, approached. He glanced between them with an expression of poorly concealed befuddlement. Cautiously, he said,

“Good evening, Mr. Wayne,” though it was probably about four minutes to midnight. “You are — certainly coming in late today.”

It was why Bruce disliked using the front entrance. His schedule as Batman had generally kept him out most of the night and his time working with Jude was proving to be much the same. Of course Alfred was used to it, but the rest of the staff were wholly unaware. Normally Bruce used the elevator accessible through his private garage but he’d never intended on letting either Jude or the rest of the gang know about it — he wasn’t sure it was a good idea, and anyway this was probably just a one-time thing; likely Jude wouldn’t be coming back. Hence the lobby, and hence facing Marcus, who was still looking from Bruce to Jude and back like he thought he might be hallucinating.

“Yeah, I know,” Bruce said. “I’m sorry; I had an out of state dinner with the reps from Neumann and we had a couple of drinks after and lost track of time.”

Jude snorted. Bruce ignored him. He offered Marcus his best ‘stupid Bruce Wayne’ smile, but Marcus was still glancing dubiously towards Jude, who looked back at him with mocking amusem*nt.

“And your — ” Marcus hesitated. “…Guest?”

Bruce drew in a breath. “Look,” he said, “I know it’s late, and I know this is a little — unusual. In the morning, when your shift is over, you should call upstairs and ask for my butler, Alfred Pennyworth. I’m sure he can help compensate you for any inconvenience myself and my — ”

“Very dear friend,” Jude supplied helpfully.

“ — companion may have caused you,” Bruce finished. He kept up the charming smile, and the eye contact, and after another few moments Marcus sighed, and walked to stand again behind his desk.

“I’ll be sure to do that,” he said. “You have a nice night, Mr. Wayne.”

“The same to you, Marcus,” Bruce said, and led Jude over to the elevators. His key pass would’ve gotten them to the penthouse suite without having to bypass security but of course he hadn’t brought it with him and as such had to enter the employee code and head up like everyone else. Once the doors had slid shut Jude leaned against the wall, his reflection warped and weirdly distorted in the metal, and said,

“That would’ve gone a lot faster if you’d just let me get my knife on his throat.”

Bruce sighed. He thought Jude was joking, but he wasn’t quite sure. He also thought perhaps he agreed with Jude, and somehow that made it worse. “Really?” he said. “How would that have looked? CEO of the company walks into the lobby with the f*cking Joker and lets him just threaten all his employees — ”

“Oh, right,” Jude said, and rolled his eyes. “Sorry. I forgot how boring you are when you’re pretending to care.”

Bruce huffed, watching the digital numbers climb steadily up. “I’m not pre— ”

“You rushed to get a knife in that little sh*t Coleman Reese as soon as he stopped being relevant,” Jude said. “You’re pretending to care.” He was not quite smiling, still leaning on the railing, arms folded, and in spite of everything that had gone on that evening — the lingering warmth on Bruce’s thigh where he’d had his hand clasped for the better part of an hour; the images that kept flashing in Bruce’s mind of all the ways Jude could have died — Bruce discovered that a small part of him was still capable of hating the Joker.

The elevator hit the fortieth floor, which was the highest employees could go. The doors slid open and Bruce sighed. “We have to switch,” he said, tensely, walking out. “My penthouse has a separate elevator.” It required a code separate from the rest of the building; to date, only Rachel, Alfred, Lucius, and Bruce’s society guests had ever been told what it was. It still mildly baffled him how Jude could have gotten up there twice, since he changed it monthly, but then Bruce was hardly a stranger to hacking. He punched the second code in and they stood for a moment in silence waiting. When the doors slid open they stepped on, and Jude’s distorted reflection appeared yet again, the smudged makeup around his eyes like pits in the chrome.

“Wayne,” Jude said, as they rode up.

Bruce sighed. When they hit the forty-second floor the elevator stopped again, and Bruce led Jude to the door which led to his actual, private quarters. He scanned his thumbprint and Jude watched with his head slightly tilted. He was looking at the side of Bruce’s face as they started up the stairs and finally Bruce said, “What.”

“You did really well tonight,” Jude said. He sounded like he was forcing the words past some invisible barrier. “You always do — when we’re together. You’re never pretending then. It’s refreshing.”

The thing was of course he was right, and Bruce knew it. He was constantly pretending to be the clueless businessman who dressed fine and had a lot of friends. In the past it had always been a relief to slip on the suit, and to stop f*cking thinking for a few hours. It was a different sort of relief now, going out with Jude and the others, easing off the billionaire mask and not having to put on another one. Releasing all his tension into unobstructed space. But it was relief. He turned a little to face Jude, and he let his face show the agreement he couldn’t voice. Jude’s mouth twitched. Then they moved on.

They bypassed the floor where Bruce kept his exercise stuff — gym, pool, indoor track — and then at last they reached the top floor, and Bruce and Alfred’s rooms. Bruce scanned his thumbprint again and opened the door, feeling a wash of relief when Alfred did not appear in the kitchen. He had no idea how he would explain it. He was already sort of dreading Marcus placing his call in the morning.

When the door shut behind Jude Bruce turned to face him. He looked the same as he had at the curb: strangely misplaced, and off balance. His eyes were darting from one corner of the room to the other as though searching for an exit. Bruce walked to the sink rather than try and crowd Jude; there was blood under his nails, somehow. As he scraped at it he said,

“Do you want — anything, drink or food or — ”

“I’m good,” Jude said. He was drumming his fingers on the kitchen island, staring at the refrigerator, and the stove beside it. Then: “Actually — do you have any cigarettes.”

“Sure,” Bruce said. “They’re in, uh — they’re that way,” gesturing to the hall that led to his room. “Alfred doesn’t know I smoke.”

Jude laughed. It was his nicer one, and Bruce felt the tender uncertain thing take a shaking step forward. He hadn’t realized he was moving with it until his hand closed over Jude’s arm. Through the thick wool of his overcoat his skin felt warm. Jude looked at him, and Bruce let his hand slide down, until he could tangle their fingers together. His heart was racing.

“Come on,” Bruce said, and walked with Jude down the short hallway and into his room. It was about as big as Jude’s entire apartment, and he’d never really been consciously aware of that until now, looking at it through Jude’s eyes. He shut his door, feeling his face heat up. Alfred must have set the dimmer switch, because the light was quiet, a pale rose shade like the earth after rain at dusk. Even with the windows exposed to the city as they always were the room was still enveloped in an intimate, crepuscular glow. Jude tugged his hand gently free from Bruce’s and walked around, examining everything in the mildly curious animal way he had: running his fingers over the furniture, looking at the television from all its angles, testing out the sofa by throwing his coat over the back of it. Eventually he made his way to the bedside table and Bruce told him the cigarettes were in the drawer. Jude extracted the pack, withdrew one, tossed it to Bruce. Bruce took one too, and they walked out to the balcony to smoke. The wind from the river cut Bruce’s skin.

“Forgot the lighter,” he muttered, and started to go back in, but Jude was pulling one from his trouser pocket. Bruce turned so that the wind was at his back and held his cigarette out, cupping it with the other hand. Jude stepped forward, flicked the lighter on. The flame jumped between them, a sharp warmth on Bruce’s fingers, highlighting the skin in orange and yellow. When it touched the cigarette the paper crackled. Bruce inhaled, watching the end curl and burn. The glow of it reflected in Jude’s eyes as he lit his own cigarette, turning them nearly black in the dark. He kept them on Bruce as he inhaled, his scars pulling inward with the motion of his lips. Bruce stared at his mouth. When he drew the cigarette out the end of it was smeared with red. He turned away to blow the smoke out, and they watched it trail over the side of the building, vanishing into the city.

“I meant it, you know,” Jude said, after a while. He was still turned away from Bruce, and his voice had changed pitch, grown lower and hoarser. Bruce had noticed before that Jude dropped the sharp nasal quality almost entirely when they spoke alone. The first time he could remember hearing the difference had been in the interrogation room, back in July. “That you did well tonight.”

Bruce dragged on his cigarette. The air burned going down his throat, like swallowing a campfire, but it felt good, too. Perhaps it was the forbidden aspect of it that heightened his enjoyment, because the taste was still acrid and hot, but he liked it all the same. He didn’t want to look too closely at why. He had enough things to dissect already.

“Thanks,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, though.”

Jude raised his eyebrows.

“I mean because I invited you over here, and you probably didn’t really want to — ”

This earned him a snort. The ember at the end of Jude’s cigarette flashed gold in the dark. “You think I’d be here if I didn’t want to?”

Bruce bit his mouth. “…No,” he admitted, and Jude nodded. His hand was tight around the guard rail.

“No,” he agreed. This seemed to be the end of the conversation, but Bruce couldn’t quite let it go. It was quiet for maybe five seconds, and then he said,

“So you don’t mind that I — ”

“Wayne.” Jude blew out a column of smoke, tilting his neck straight back, reminding Bruce of Tyler Durden at the beginning of Fight Club. “f*ck. I already said it’s fine. What, do you want a notarized letter or something?”

Bruce’s face grew warm. “No, I just — ”

“It was maybe a little bold to ask in front of Kowalczyk,” Jude said. “But he won’t say anything, and neither would any of the others.” Now he hesitated, just a little; the paint on his mouth was badly smudged where it had run off onto the cigarette, and he was looking out over the city. “Anyway,” he said finally, sounding a little amused, “I’m starting to realize you’ve got a really interesting possessive streak under that black-tie exterior, and I’m curious to find out how deep it runs.” He slid his hand down the rail until the tips of his fingers were touching the tips of Bruce’s. The slight contact jolted up Bruce’s arm, and his mouth went totally dry. He felt sudden searing pain against his other fingers, and realized almost too late that his cigarette had burnt down to the filter. He pitched it over the side of the balcony and slid his other hand up Jude’s arm and into his hair. He turned his head so that they were facing each other and stepped forward once, and then again, until they were nearly breathing the same air.

“It’s pretty f*cking deep,” he admitted, and was shocked at how hoarse and f*cked he already sounded, but Jude just laughed. His eyes dropped to Bruce’s mouth, and he reached up and touched the back of Bruce’s hand where it rested against his head.

“Good thing you’re sticking around, then,” he said, “so I can take my time with you,” and then he pulled Bruce forward a little, or maybe Bruce himself leaned in, and they were kissing. Bruce tightened his fingers in Jude’s hair and brought his other hand up from the railing to rest against Jude’s hip, but quickly he discovered that it wasn’t enough and he dragged his hand up Jude’s side, over his ribs, until he was cradling Jude’s jaw. He bit his mouth and sucked on it, dragging his tongue over Jude’s and over the roof of his mouth. He kissed him with biting almost rough kisses until he tasted blood but he didn’t care, he kept going. He kissed him until it felt like he’d devoured his mouth. When he pulled away his lips felt swollen and hot and Jude’s were kiss-slick over the paint and they were both breathing hard. Jude was grinning; he flicked his cigarette over the side of the building and he said,

“Yeah, Wayne, like that,”

and then he was kissing him again, soft little kisses to the sides of Bruce’s mouth and longer, deeper, more aching kisses to the center. He was kissing him and kissing him and kissing him, sucking Bruce’s lip into his mouth, running his fingers through his hair. By the time he pulled away the second time Bruce was more than half-hard. Jude reached up and touched his mouth with his fingers smelling of blood and nicotine.

“Whoops,” he whispered, laughing a little, and Bruce looked at his reflection in the dark window and laughed too, because Jude had transferred his paint onto Bruce’s face. His lips were smeared in red unevenly and his chin and part of his jaw were streaked with white. Jude rubbed his thumb across Bruce’s mouth, and Bruce parted his lips to catch the filthy, strangely uneven skin in his teeth. He felt the nail snag against the inside of his lip and bit down, very gently, on the pad. They stood like that for a moment, staring at each other in the chilled wind, forty-four floors above the city, Jude’s thumb in Bruce’s mouth. Bruce could feel his heart racing and racing like he’d run a marathon. At last Jude withdrew his hand, sliding it down Bruce’s jaw.

“You’re so f*cked up,” he murmured, but it wasn’t cruel. Anyway it was true; Bruce was f*cked up. He was f*cked up, and he was f*cked, tilting his head into Jude’s touch, tasting him in his mouth. He took Jude’s other hand in his, nodded towards his room. Jude’s mouth twitched, and they walked inside. The bed was almost immediately to the right of the door walking back in, and Jude went to it, rounding the bedside table, trailing his fingers over the edge. He was almost absently tactile with Bruce’s things, as though he’d owned it all for years and was merely greeting it after a long absence. At the side of the mattress he began to unbutton his clothes: first his vest, which he shrugged off, then the shirt. It fell away from his shoulders, the pale skin and its map of scars, crossing each other, cartography from hell. The muscles were tight in his neck when Bruce walked to him and pressed down. His jaw was clenched, but of course Bruce knew better than to ask. He leaned in, kissed the tense line of it. Jude almost smiled, or something.

“Can’t get enough, huh,” he said, and turned in Bruce’s arms. They stretched out over the bed, Bruce pressing Jude against the headboard, kissing his neck, feeling his pulse racing beneath his lips. He held Jude’s hand taut against the sheets, stretching his arm up over his head, pinning him as he worked him open. He pushed Jude’s knee up with the other hand, forcing his legs apart, and f*cked into him on his sheets, his very clean, very expensive sheets which he couldn’t give a f*ck about, at all. Jude was arching against him with his eyes shut and his mouth slack. He was working his hand on himself and Bruce watched his strokes get more and more jagged the closer he got. He was filthy, soaked in sweat and blood and it was on Bruce’s sheets and he just didn’t care.

He let Jude’s wrist go to grab him by the hips, and he pulled out long enough to half-stand, balancing himself, one foot on the floor, one knee bent against the bed frame, and he pulled Jude to him by his hips and thrust in again, all at once, slick slide of movement. The sound Jude made Bruce heard in his dreams for three days. He fisted the sheets and jerked himself and Bruce could feel the tension coiling in his own spine, the heat and pressure building and building at the base of his stomach, and the response in Jude’s body, the way he curled himself and breathed out ragged and choppy breaths. Bruce’s thrusts were growing erratic and he could hardly hold himself upright and then Jude’s thumb slipped against his own slit and he came, spine bowing inward, stomach muscles clenching, mouth red and slick and open, bitten from his own teeth. Bruce bent over him while he was still coming and kissed him fiercely, their mouths sticking together. Jude hooked a leg around his waist and Bruce could feel him shivering, coming down from it, and the tension uncoiled all at once and spread out from between his legs in tight heat as he came, hard, shoving into Jude, so that his body jolted and he shouted in genuine, uncontrolled surprise. Bruce pulled out slowly, savoring the feeling of Jude’s ass trying to keep his dick inside. He stretched himself out on the bed, pulling first his arms in, then his legs. He closed his eyes, pressed his mouth to Jude’s shoulder. He was exhausted.

Jude lay beside him for a long time, a lot longer than Bruce had expected him to. At last he nudged Bruce lightly with his hand and murmured, “Is it all right if I use your shower?” Bruce nodded, not really thinking about it. He felt the weight shift on the bed as Jude got up, and then there was a kiss pressed to his temple, and then the sound of Jude’s footsteps receding across the tile floor. The bathroom door shut. The water had started running before Bruce began to feel the residual guilt from earlier seep back in.

The thing was that this wasn’t usual behavior for Jude. At his own apartment they would f*ck around on the filthy narrow mattress, and then they would lie together and share a cigarette, or else stumble into the den to watch a little bit of television, or else Jude would go call his contacts and Bruce would put on a record and snort a few lines. But he didn’t make a habit of showering. He was a filthy f*cking person; it was part of the appeal, weirdly, to have him covered in several layers of sweat and the grime and dirt of the city. He just had sh*tty hygiene; he made more of an effort to brush his teeth if he knew he would be spending time with Bruce — which in and of itself was… a lot — but for the most part Bruce knew that unless there were visible bloodstains on his clothes he wasn’t going to change them for at least a week.

And yet. He was in Bruce’s shower right now, using his soap, probably making a face at the selection of body washes he had, and likely ignoring his shampoos and conditioners. He was washing off the dirt from his skin and the blood from his hair and under his nails and the sweat and all of it because he was at Bruce’s house. They’d f*cked around on Bruce’s thousand thread-count sheets and Jude had decided, for whatever reason, that dirtying Bruce’s bed was not the same as dirtying his own. In short he was making an effort for Bruce, or some semblance of it; he was dragging himself through extra steps, slouching towards Bethlehem, and Bruce —

— Bruce was lying to him.

It was the same thread of guilt he’d felt earlier in the evening when Kowalczyk had opened up to him about Gatsby, or when Cornell and Reznor bickered and teased each other in front of him. He was only doing his job; it was just a job. Getting emotionally involved with the gang as a whole hadn’t necessarily been part of the original plan, but he’d thought it was good this way because it meant they trusted him, it meant they were more likely to open up to him about underworld activities. Getting Jude in bed with him would mean deeper intimacy, which of course in turn would mean deeper secrets revealed. If he was emotionally involved and got a little confused about it then he’d play his role even more convincingly. He remembered coming to that conclusion at some earlier juncture, and then shelving it and letting it collect dust while he ran off and committed murder and f*cked the city’s most dangerous psychopath. It was only ever supposed to have been part of the job. It was what he’d set out to do. It was saving the city —

— except Jude was in his house, and there was nothing about the city in that at all. He was in Bruce’s ostentatious f*cking house, using his ostentatious f*cking bathroom, having sex with him in his ostentatious f*cking bed, and none of it was necessary. Bruce had already far surpassed his quota of what he “had” to do to set things to rights. Jude was the Joker, and he was using Bruce’s things which cost money, and he hated money, he wouldn’t spend it unless it belonged to someone else. Alfred had figured Jude out back in July, though it had taken Bruce until very recently to catch up: he didn’t want anything except destruction, and discomfort. If he had a goal it was to make everyone else suffer; he wasn’t interested in winning so much as he was in forcing everyone else to lose. He couldn’t be hurt because he had zero attachments. He’d figured out how to detach himself from everything. But here he was. In spite of all of it. Here he was in Bruce’s house, accommodating what he thought were Bruce’s wishes; giving up a little part of himself for the night so that Bruce would feel more comfortable… and all the while, Bruce was lying. He’d never been able to detach, not to that degree, and all of this had started because he’d been so f*cking angry with this man, angry because he’d tried to ruin Bruce’s city, angry because he’d taken Bruce’s best friend, the love of his damn life, Rachel Dawes —

— another pang of guilt, realizing he hadn’t thought of her, not properly, not the way he should have, since the day he’d killed Coleman —

He needed to shut this down now. He needed to get out of bed while Jude was still in the shower; get dressed; leave him a note (more lies) saying he’d gone to buy cigarettes or something else plausible and mundane. He needed to go to the bunker and put on the suit and get to Gordon. He needed to hand over all the information he had collected and tell him the truth — not that he was Bruce Wayne, but that he’d run with the Joker’s gang in his civilian persona, and that this was the result. He’d tell him what he’d done to Coleman, and to Ainsworth, and now also indirectly to Ashland, and he’d take his punishment, and take all of it, and wait out a sentence while they rounded up everyone — Jude, Cornell, Reznor, everyone Bruce knew; Jude’s affiliates, the Richmonds, Ainsworth, Ashland’s people — and threw them all in Arkham, or in prison. I did it in the name of justice, he’d tell Gordon, and perhaps while he was telling him he’d convince himself of it again —

The bathroom door opened in a cloud of steam. Jude came out with a towel draped over his shoulders. He was wearing a pair of black shorts which Bruce recognized after a moment as belonging to him. They were tantalizingly loose on Jude. Bruce’s eyes stuck on the sharp jut of his hips, the taut abdominal muscles, and every thought he’d ever had was shoved from his head in shattering free fall, like the drop off Lau Corp in Hong Kong —

“I hope you don’t mind I borrowed these,” Jude was saying, holding the elastic out with his thumb and grinning as he walked forward. He was trailing water on the floor. He’d tied his hair up at some juncture and it fell around the sides of his head in wet dark curls. The majority of it was piled on top in a pale green bun. Most of his greasepaint had come off; there were a few black flecks around his eyelids, and red smeared in the edges of his scars, but otherwise his face was bare, and Bruce could see the freckles on the bridge of his nose. “I just thought it didn’t make sense to put my old ones back on after — ” He gestured over his shoulder at the bathroom, and Bruce pushed himself up against his headboard and reached out. Jude walked forward until he was at the bed; he dropped his towel on the floor and curled their fingers together, and used Bruce as leverage to haul his leg up and sit on his lap. He set his knees on either side of Bruce’s hips and pressed in close.

“Your shower regulates its own temperature,” he said. “Did you know that?” His voice was soft in the space between them, and for no reason Bruce wanted to cry. He reached out with his free hand to settle it on Jude’s hip. His skin was warm, and pleasantly damp from the shower.

“I know,” Bruce said. He watched Jude slowly lift his own free hand to rest it in Bruce’s hair, scratching his long nails through it with surprising gentleness. “It’s supposed to sense your body temperature and adjust the water accordingly.”

Jude snorted. “f*ck’s the point of that?”

Bruce shrugged, watching Jude shift a little with the movement. “It maximizes comfort, I guess,” he said. “You can set it to whatever your favorite shower temperature is and let it recognize your body based on basic biology stuff.”

“Biology stuff.”

“Physiology — ” Bruce waved a hand. “Whatever. You know.”

Jude’s mouth twitched. “You’ve really researched this, I can tell,” he said seriously, and Bruce laughed. As his mouth fell open Jude leaned in and caught it with his own, kissing him slowly, stroking his thumb along Bruce’s temple. He tasted like Listerine; his whole body was soft and warm from the shower, and Bruce ached. He f*cking throbbed with want and with guilt and with something else buried and unidentifiable and he pushed it all down, surging up into the kiss. He disentangled their hands so he could touch Jude’s face. His thumb found his scars, and Jude stilled, the way he always did, before exhaling shakily.

“Wayne,” he whispered.

“Yeah, Jude.”

He didn’t pull away from him, but he stopped kissing him, and sort of rested their mouths together. Bruce’s eyes were closed, but he could hear Jude’s soft breathing, and felt the way he still stroked Bruce’s skin, dragging his nails again and again along the round of his skull.

“This was a good idea,” he said, after a long time. Bruce had almost started falling asleep, and was startled by the familiar warmth of Jude’s mouth against his, the dry catch of skin on skin, and how — safe he felt. That was the most startling part of it all. How f*cking safe he felt. “I’m glad I’m here.”

Bruce exhaled. His heart hurt. He was afraid of what he might say, how he might look, if he opened his eyes, so he kept Jude close, thumb on his scars, and he murmured back, “You’re just happy you could drain my hot water tank,” so that Jude would laugh.

“Master Wayne.”

Chapter 7 Notes:

archive warning applies in this chapter

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

December 2008

At the start of the month Kowalczyk got a tip while distributing car parts at the wharf by the Kill Van Kull. He texted Jude and the others and they met at the usual warehouse. Bruce parked his Mustang across the street from a group of skinny teenage methheads the youngest of whom could not have been older than fourteen. They stared at him with vacant dark eyes as he got out and locked his doors. They were trying vainly to warm their hands in a tin barrel. One of them wiped his nose on his sleeve and stared hungrily at Bruce’s car until his companion jabbed him in the ribs. He whispered something that made his eyes widen. Bruce tugged his beanie lower over his face and walked in.

The tip had been from someone claiming to have large shipments of co*ke. “He wants to meet at Il Sangue Del Drago,” Kowalczyk said, reading off the slip of paper. This was the largest and most profitable of the former Falcone restaurants which Jude had repurposed for himself following his takeover of the underworld. The basem*nt was directly beneath the kitchen and always smelled of garlic. In the pre-Joker days it had been used to launder money for one of Salvatore Maroni’s shell companies in Europe.

“Is he a Falcone?” Jude asked. He was standing so close to Bruce he’d nearly wrapped his arms around his waist. Bruce had worn Jude’s favorite dark plum-colored Burberry and a checkered scarf; he wondered how they looked together.

“He didn’t say.”

Jude’s jaw was tense against Bruce’s shoulder. “You know I don’t like unknowns, Zyk.”

“I know, boss.”

Jude sighed. “Weiland.”

“Yeah, boss.”

“You and Byrne still have that meeting later in Schenectady?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Jude nudged Bruce against his spine and Bruce turned a little bit. Up close the green of his eyes overpowered the hazel; it was nearly overwhelming. “You’re coming, Wayne, obviously.”

“Wouldn’t miss it, boss.”

Jude snorted. Then, “Nell, Rez, and Zyk, ‘cause it’s your tip, and I think that’s enough. Everyone else, if you don’t have a job you can stay here and count our shipments; we just got fresh ammo last Friday.” He looked around: “Any questions?”

“I have a question,” Kowalczyk said. As the others dispersed he glanced at Bruce and the corner of his mouth pulled up. “Are you planning on trying out for a remake of Dead Poets Society?”

“Oh, for f*ck’s sake,” Cornell groaned. “Would you shut the f*ck up with your pretentious ass sh*t?”

“Wayne loves my pretentious ass sh*t, don’t you, Wayne.”

“Dead Poets Society is my favorite movie, actually,” Jude said, icily. “It’s the first one I ever saw in theaters.”

The smile fell off Kowalczyk’s face. For maybe five seconds they were all dead silent; then Jude glanced sideways at Bruce and his mouth twitched, and all of them burst out laughing. Thus Bruce was in a good mood — thus they all were — as they left shortly after in the Suburban. They parked two blocks over from the restaurant. Bruce put his contacts in and slipped his sunglasses over his eyes, and they went through the restaurant and into the basem*nt, where Bruce stood with his back to the wall, arms folded. One arm he pressed to Jude’s. Jude was being quiet, a little tense, the way he usually was when they were meeting someone new. Cornell and Reznor had their guns and Kowalczyk had his knife and Bruce thought everything was going really well.

Then the door to the basem*nt opened. Bruce saw two elongated shadows first, followed by —

“Oh, f*ck,” Kowalczyk breathed softly. Ashland smiled at him, thin and cold:

“My sentiments exactly.”

Beside him Rollie was seething, nostrils flared, mouth curled into an animal snarl. His rose tattoo had been badly f*cked by Jude’s knife; the scar was deep and thick, paleish against his dark skin, and twisted in an ugly way from almost his temple to just shy of his nose. He sought out Jude first and Bruce prepared to step in front of him in case Rollie started shooting, but Ashland put his hand on Rollie’s shoulder:

“Not yet,” he murmured. “Remember what we’re here for.”

Travis came down next, walking to a pool table in the center of the room and resting his hand on the edge. Then the two skinheads from the laundromat walked in and stood like sentries in the corner. Jude pressed his fingertips to the inside of Bruce’s wrist once, then pushed away from him and off the wall. “Trying to intimidate us, huh?” he said. The basem*nt lighting always made his greasepaint stand out, reflecting shadows beneath his eyes amidst the dark makeup, and in the red of his scars. “You didn’t have much luck with me last time, did you.”

“Ashland doesn’t have to listen to this sh*t — ” Rollie started angrily. Jude’s eyes cut to him and his mouth pulled up at the corner.

“Ooh,” he said, “you look like sh*t. What happened, did you have a run in with a baler? Oh wait — ”

Rollie lunged. Ashland grabbed him by the back of the collar. Jude was laughing, sharply. Bruce stepped forward until he was at Jude’s back. His fingers sought his knife in the pocket of his coat. Jude’s favorite coat. What is this, fate? he’d said, when Bruce had worn it to a meeting the first time. Why the f*ck do you have the same coat as me, Wayne? And they’d been relatively alone, and Jude had been looking at him with soft amusem*nt, so that it was very easy indeed to twist his fingers into Jude’s own coat and pull him forward and say,

Maybe I just wanted everyone to see who owns me. Jude’s irises had darkened about ten shades and he’d ended the meeting early so he could get Bruce to drive the two of them back to his apartment so they could f*ck. The truth was Bruce had bought the coat long before joining the gang. But even when he admitted this to Jude quietly afterwards as they lay smoking on his mattress (Bruce couldn’t bear lying to Jude, which he knew was both ironic and cruel) Jude just laughed, and smoothed Bruce’s hair back from his face, and said,

Yeah, but something drew you to it, huh? You knew you were mine even then? And though Bruce had made a show of rolling his eyes and telling Jude not to be cheesy, he thought perhaps there was some truth to the statement.

Jude’s favorite coat. Bruce had never worn it to an interrogation before. He was sure Jude wouldn’t really give a sh*t if he got it dirty — not Jude, who walked around with blood- and grease- and sweat- and gasoline-stained clothes until the stains had faded into the fabric — but all the same, he didn’t really want to. It meant something, though he was sure it wasn’t supposed to. There was no benefit to feeling attachment to an article of clothing, it would serve no purpose in the long run. But here it was. Here it was and here he was, standing behind Jude with his hand on his knife. Here he was staring Ashland, Rollie, and the others down, feeling annoyance with himself — how could he not have seen this coming — and with Ashland for trying this sh*t again. As though he hadn’t had his ass f*cking kicked six ways to Sunday back at Coney Island.

“So you lied to me,” Jude was saying, calmly. He folded his arms and tilted his head. “Again.”

Ashland mirrored his stance. “I didn’t lie before,” he said. “I brought you what I owed you. I kept what you owed me. That’s fair. What isn’t fair is you attacking my f*cking guys for no reason — ”

“My memory of that day is a little different, I guess,” Jude interrupted, still calm, “but I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with you right now, because you’ve wasted my time and now I’m going to have to find another partner to make up for the money I’ll lose thanks to you.” He pulled out his own knife. “You did lie to us about having cocaine, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but — ”

“Good,” Jude said, and shoved his knife into the center of Travis’ hand. “You see,” he said, over the screaming, “you just never f*cking learn. I can keep teaching the same lesson over and over but your guys are probably getting pretty f*cking tired of me maiming them every time we meet.”

“Real easy fix for that — ” Rollie started, angrily, but Ashland held up his hand:

“Don’t you want to know why I lied?”

Jude snorted and gestured at Travis, who was attempting gingerly to extract the knife from the mangled tendons of his hand. “What do you think?”

Ashland’s mouth tightened. “That’s really too bad,” he said, “especially since it concerns your man there,” and he pointed at Bruce. Bruce was glad he’d kept the sunglasses on; he didn’t think he’d quite hidden the panic in his eyes fast enough, though he managed — years of training — to keep the rest of his face neutral. Beside him Jude folded his arms and raised an eyebrow.

“Mascis?”

“See, that’s just it.” Ashland tapped his fingers against his lower lip. “That’s not his real name, is it.”

Cornell made a noise. “Well, none of us are using our real names, Ash — ”

“Well, none of you are as famous as your coworker here,” Ashland said, “are they, Bruce Wayne?” and the brief respite from panic was replaced pretty much instantaneously by deeper, colder glass shards of it. Bruce had thought Ashland was going to out him as Batman, but somehow this was worse. He wasn’t sure how to react or what to say. He thought perhaps glancing at Jude would be a bad idea, so he didn’t. All the same he was aware of the way Jude tensed, and how the amused smile was wiped clean off his face.

“Why the f*ck would I have hired Bruce Wayne?” he asked, after a moment.

Ashland shrugged. “He has a f*ckton of money and companies and his name is on every — ”

“Boss doesn’t give a sh*t about any of that,” Reznor snapped. By the pool table Travis had at last removed the knife and was holding his hand up to his chest.

“Boss,” he whimpered, “I want — ”

“Shut the f*ck up,” Ashland snarled, “you’re fine. f*ck. You’re whinier than Rollie.”

Rollie’s mouth briefly twisted downwards. Bruce reached up and pushed his sunglasses into his hair. He’d imagined this conversation, under vastly different circ*mstances, if anyone had ever called him out while he was Batman. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Wayne’s a nice guy but we don’t look or act anything alike… have you seen his billionaire act? He’s insufferable.

“In fairness I don’t think I would have guessed it if I hadn’t seen you at the laundromat before you got those contacts,” Ashland said. “Everyone else I talk to on the east coast is f*cking terrified of you two — the Joker and his f*cking freak — ”

“Do not,” Jude said, quietly, “ever f*cking use that word in front of — ”

“ — his freak sidekick, but I figured it out. It’s taken me way too long, but I’ve figured it out. You’re Bruce Wayne. You’re Gotham’s favorite philanthropist and you’re slumming it up in the sh*ttiest part of town until you get bored — ”

“Hell of an assumption to make,” Bruce said. His hands were shaking where he’d shoved them into his coat pockets. His throat felt like ice.

“You can’t prove this, Ash,” Cornell said.

“No one would believe you anyway,” Kowalczyk said.

Ashland shrugged. “Then it’s a good thing I’ve had Mitchell recording this whole conversation.” He pointed to one of the skinheads. Jude sighed.

“Nell,” he said, and Cornell pulled out his gun and shot the other skinhead in the chest. He was dead before he’d hit the floor, eyes and mouth wide in shock, blood pooling from beneath his starched white shirt.

“I already told you I don’t mind teaching you the same lesson again and again until you get it,” Jude said, watching Ashland’s face run through a gamut of emotions the chiefest of which Bruce recognized was fear, and then anger. “I don’t give a sh*t what you do to me. It’s been a long time since I figured out how to stop caring what happens to me.” He walked forward one step, and then another, until he was at Travis’ side. He took his knife from the pool table where it was still resting and wiped the blood on Travis’ shirt. Travis watched him, pale, furious, still clutching his hand to his chest. Jude took the knife over to Ashland and touched the tip to his chin. His tongue came out to wet at his scars. Softly:

“But I’m not especially a fan of people threatening my family.”

In the corner, Mitchell collapsed to the floor beside his brother’s body, hands trembling as he pulled from his ruined shirt the remains of a recording device. Ashland’s jaw tightened against the knife. Bruce saw him hold his hand up again to stop Rollie from moving forward, but barely.

“I can still go to the press with this,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll be really curious to hear how Bruce Wayne stood by in the basem*nt of a mob restaurant and watched a man get killed — ”

“What’s your f*cking point, Ash,” Cornell asked, sounding exhausted. He’d trained his gun on Rollie.

“I just want what you owe me,” Ashland said. He was still staring Jude down across the blade of the knife. “I’ve never been paid back for all the sh*t you’ve taken from me. So I’ll take my guns, or I’ll take the equivalent in money — I know you have endless amounts in your daddy’s trust fund, Bruce, it’s all I can think ab— ”

“Be pretty hard to tell the press sh*t if you can’t talk,” Jude murmured. Ashland’s eyebrows furrowed over his nose. He opened his mouth to respond and Jude slammed his foot down on Ashland’s, wrenched his jaw open further with his free hand, grabbed his tongue, and sliced clean through the middle.

The next few seconds — Rollie lunged at Jude. Cornell knocked him out with the butt of his gun. He went down simultaneously with Ashland, who was making horrible choked sounds, blood spilling from his mouth. Travis pulled a gun from his jacket and shot Jude in the shoulder. He started laughing as Bruce took out his knife and rushed forward to grab Travis’ wrist — the already-f*cked hand. He slammed it down on the pool table again and with one swift movement cut the tips off three of his fingers.

“Hope you don’t jerk off with that hand,” Jude cackled as Travis sank to the floor, screaming. Ashland was trying to spit blood but his mouth wouldn’t work right; the blood came out thick and ropey mixed with his saliva. Even through that Bruce could tell he was still trying to get Travis to shut up. Himself he was only concerned with one thing. But as he moved to Jude’s good side and got an arm around his waist to try and lead him out, as Reznor and Kowalczyk rushed ahead with their guns out just in case while Cornell moved to open the door, Bruce heard a noise from behind him. He spun, and as though in a dream he saw Mitchell aiming his brother’s gun for Jude. He didn’t have time to check if one of the others had already seen. He shifted his position, reached into Jude’s overcoat, and grabbed his gun. The whole world tunneled down into the perhaps half-second it took him to take off the safety — hand trembling violently. Then he shot Mitchell through the throat. He made a series of choked noises similar to Ashland’s and fell first to his knees, then on his face. Bruce shoved the gun back into Jude’s coat, tightened his grip around his waist.

“C’mon, boss, we have to get out of here,” he gasped. Jude was leaning slightly into him, still laughing. Ashland and Travis were both screaming as Bruce got Jude up the stairs and through the basem*nt door. The few kitchen workers inside stared as they came up, panting, soaked in blood. Bruce threw a wad of hundreds on the floor:

“Clean up down there and keep your mouths shut,” he said, and he and the others rushed out into the frigid night.

Outside they moved fast and didn’t stop moving until they’d gotten into the car. “Boss, f*ck, I’m sorry,” Kowalczyk said, as Reznor pulled away from the curb and headed north. “I f*cked everything up — ”

“You didn’t know, it’s fine,” Jude said.

“Boss, you wanna go to the clinic?” Cornell asked.

Jude had been leaning increasingly hard against Bruce’s side the farther they walked, and after they’d all gotten seated. Now gently he extricated himself from Bruce’s arm so as to inspect the gunshot wound. When he pressed down the torn fabric darkened again with a fresh stain of blood in the passing streetlights. Bruce winced, but Jude didn’t seem to notice. “Bullet’s not in there,” he said, with remarkable calmness. “So I think I’m good.”

This seemed impossible to Bruce who had seen Travis shoot Jude from a distance of about half a foot. But he didn’t say anything. For some reason he kept seeing in his mind the spray of blood from Mitchell’s throat. It hadn’t been anything like Coleman’s. His throat had — exploded, or something, like a Tarantino film, and Bruce had done it. Bruce had killed one of Ashland’s men and he didn’t feel anything except relief that Jude was here now because of him. Jude was leaning against him again breathing a little unsteadily and Cornell was saying,

“How about you, Wayne? Are you good?” and Bruce heard himself say yes as though from a great distance. Kowalczyk laughed:

“‘course he’s good, Nell, he’s just channeling Gat— ” and Cornell reached back from the passenger seat to smack ineffectively at his shoulder.

“We’ll have to take care of this,” he said to Jude. “If Ash lived he’s going to send people after you — hell, even if he didn’t live Rollie’ll probably — ”

“Get Rez to turn the car around so you can go back in there and shoot all of them if you’re that worried,” Jude interrupted. He sounded borderline annoyed. In the dim glow of the passing streetlights Bruce could see faint lines of tension forming between his eyebrows. “Look, it’s late, I don’t like that I’ve been f*cked over a third time by the same man, and I’m tired. We can discuss strategies tomorrow.”

“Boss — ”

“Tomorrow, Nell,” Jude repeated, and then he looked at Bruce. “You got any late-night soirees going at that penthouse of yours, Wayne? Or can I get in as your plus-one?”

Reznor snorted. Bruce’s heart kicked into overdrive. “Of course you can come over, boss — ”

“Then it’s settled,” Jude said, and raised an eyebrow pointedly at Cornell until finally he sighed and turned back to face the front. They rounded three more corners in silence until at last they reached the warehouse, and Bruce got out. He tried not to help Jude out but it was difficult. He was holding his arm very stiffly against his side. Bruce slammed the Suburban door shut and Reznor drove away. When the car was gone Jude made a noise and Bruce realized he was leaning against him now with his full weight. His breathing had gotten even more unsteady and he said,

“Does your old man still hate me?”

“I — yes, I’m sure he — ”

“So he won’t want me taking a bullet out of my arm in his bathroom.”

Bruce didn’t yell because it would’ve been counterproductive, but it was a near thing. “It’s my bathroom,” he said, “so he’s not going to — ”

“You got first aid sh*t in there?”

Bruce swallowed. He wondered how suspicious it would look if he said yes. Then again Jude was asking, and it was close to midnight, and he’d said he was tired —

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t know if I have everything you’ll — ”

“It’s fine,” Jude interrupted. “I know how to make sh*t work. I was in nursing school for three semesters. You drive, though. I’m — ” he paused; licked his mouth — “I don’t want to wreck your pretty f*ckin’ car,” he said, finally, which was how Bruce knew he was in a fair amount of pain. He still didn’t say anything, though, just nodded and helped Jude round the car to his passenger door. He wanted desperately to ask about nursing school — had it been in Chicago? Or here in Gotham? Or somewhere else? It occurred to Bruce as he shut the door and walked back to the driver’s side that he still knew very little about Jude. It was probably counterproductive even to wonder about this sort of thing. In the end it would add nothing to his case, or to convincing either Gordon or the rest of the city that he’d infiltrated the gang undercover to bring it down. Finding out intimate details of the Joker’s past was not on anyone’s list of top priorities. It should not have been on Bruce’s.

“Getting to your place sometime tonight would be good, Wayne,” Jude said, jerking Bruce out of — whatever the f*ck was going on in his head. Jude had been in nursing school. Bruce had killed someone tonight. He’d killed a person for the second time in his life and all he felt was relief that the man who had talked him into it the first time was still sitting next to him now. Jude was sitting there in Bruce’s father’s Mustang looking at him and his tone had been mostly gentle and so was the expression in his eyes, though it was tinged slightly with impatience. In the far distance Bruce thought he heard sirens, and at last the tender raw creature knocked him out of the way and turned the key in the ignition. Under the roar of the engine and the radio he heard Jude say,

“There you go, champion,” and as he pulled away from the curb and headed for the business district he discovered he was smiling.

Jude sat stiffly for most of the ride. He couldn’t lean against the door with his arm and even alone he was clearly trying not to show any signs of discomfort. At a stoplight Bruce said,

“I can pull over and get some fentanyl out of the trunk if you — ” and Jude said no, grinding his jaw, and Bruce left it alone. By the time they reached Wayne Tower his breathing had gone short and sharp like a wounded animal. Bruce kept feeling his heart trying to climb its way into his throat. He parked in his private garage and helped Jude out of the car. They walked together — Jude still leaning — to the elevator. Bruce scanned his thumbprint.

“Bet you use that to impress all the ladies,” Jude mumbled, smiling against Bruce’s shoulder.

“Yep,” Bruce lied. In fact there had only ever been one lady Bruce had shown his private elevator to. Rachel hadn’t exactly been what Bruce would call impressed, but that was hardly a surprise. Sometimes he’d caught himself wondering what it was he’d have to do to make her say good job, Bruce. I’m proud of you. Let’s get married.

The elevator doors slid open and Bruce helped Jude on. Jude grumbled a little but also didn’t shove Bruce away. Bruce hit the button and they started up. Jude rolled his shoulder experimentally.

“It’s not bad,” he said. “I’ve had worse.”

In the cramped space the iron stench of blood was much more apparent, as was the sweat, and the fried odor from the restaurant. “Why did you lie to Cornell?” Bruce asked. “He would’ve taken you to the clinic.”

“I know,” Jude said. “Ainsworth has guys there sometimes, though.”

Bruce frowned. “Really?”

“Uh-huh. I just don’t ever feel like dealing with all that.”

Bruce felt his ears pop. He swallowed. “Why do you hate him so much?”

Jude gave him a look. “Why do you think?”

Something cold crawled into Bruce’s throat and lay down. “Does he hurt you?”

Jude didn’t answer.

“Jude — ”

The elevator stopped. The doors slid open. Bruce’s private elevator came out on a different part of the penthouse than where Jude and the others had appeared back in July, but Jude still grinned, looking around:

“This looks familiar.” As they stepped off the elevator he said over his shoulder, “Sorry I f*cked up your pretty house, Wayne.”

Bruce thought about fighting the subject change, but there wasn’t a point. He’d done it to Rachel enough times. Besides it was Jude’s favorite thing, and it said more about whatever the situation than if he elaborated. Bruce made a mental note to look into Ainsworth more closely after — everything — and said,

“It’s all right. You can just give me half our earnings to pay off the damages.”

Jude snorted as Bruce led him around the corner to the stairwell. He put his thumbprint in again and the lock clicked. As they stepped inside Jude tugged one glove off and reached up to wipe something off Bruce’s jaw. His finger came away bloody.

“The way you talk to me…” he murmured, familiar, almost wonderingly. “Didn’t you just learn what happens to people who go behind my back?”

“Oh, I’m not too worried,” Bruce said. “I think you like my tongue too much to cut it out,” and Jude laughed. It hitched a little as they started up the stairs and Bruce tightened his grip around Jude’s waist, feeling his heart tighten as well when Jude leaned into him again rather than try and shake him off. They made their slow way up the stairs, past the gym. Bruce could feel heat radiating off Jude’s arm. He saw again the way Mitchell’s throat had just exploded open. It had been easier this time. It was only the second time, but it had been easier. He hadn’t even had to think about it. There had been a threat, and Bruce had taken care of it. And it had been easy with Travis, too; he hadn’t even had to channel the tender raw creature, it had already been there, furious, possessive — how dare you hurt him, how dare you shoot him. You have no right. He remembered the way he’d focused and felt the black rage of Batman when he’d broken Ainsworth’s fingers back in October. And how cold it had felt without the suit, and how methodical. It had been much the same in the restaurant. The blade had sunk through Travis’ fingers and he hadn’t hesitated and he hadn’t even really thought about it. It was just another part of the job, but he’d wanted it. There had been a triumphal burst at the moment when the blood spurted out across the pool table and Travis started screaming — and as ever all his anger funneled outward, so that he was acting on blank, focused instinct —

They reached the door to his suite and Bruce put his thumbprint in again. The lock clicked and he pushed the door open to the kitchen. Alfred was standing at the counter wiping down some pots from his dinner. He half-glanced up and started,

“You’re early, Master Wayne — ”

Then his eyes lit on Jude.

Bruce shut the door behind both of them. He couldn’t quite look at Alfred’s face.

“I know I usually keep him out much later than this,” Jude said. As he stood still mostly within the circle of Bruce’s arm a trail of blood ran down from inside his coat sleeve and dripped dark syrupy crimson on the floor. “Sorry, Mr. Pennyworth — ”

“I’ll take care of it,” Alfred said, with only the barest thread of tension underlying his voice. “Unless you require my assistance, Master Wayne — ”

“No,” Bruce said. “It’s — we’ll be fine, Alfred, thanks — ”

Jude’s sharp greenish eyes were flicking between them with interest. “Do you two need a minute?”

“No,” Bruce said, at the same time that Alfred said,

“Yes, actually,” and Bruce tried not to sigh. Jude raised an eyebrow at him, and he must have made a face, because Jude said,

“It’s okay, I remember my way around,” and slipped down the hall. Bruce listened for the sound of his bedroom door snicking shut; then he turned to Alfred, feeling defensive:

“There wasn’t anywhere else I could bring him,” he said, “he wouldn’t go to the clinic in the Narrows and he’s still got the bullet lodged in his arm and — ”

“I suppose this is still part of the plan,” Alfred said, walking to the sink and retrieving the bleach and a rag from underneath. His tone was mild, but there was an accusatory flavor beneath it Bruce disliked.

“Of course it — ”

“You must understand how it looks, Master Wayne,” Alfred said. “It’s been well over a month by now, sir.”

“I know.” Bruce glanced down the hall. His door was shut. He wondered if Jude found it strange that he had so much medical paraphernalia in his bathroom cabinet. “It’s just taking longer than I thought — I have to make sure, you know, that there’s no suspicion, and that I’ve gotten enough information…” The defense sounded pathetic even to his own ears. The plan only crossed his mind every few days, like remembering a half-forgotten dream and thinking momentarily it was real. He looked at Alfred who was wiping the blood off the floor with his rag before pouring bleach on the spot where it had been. Something clenched behind his ribs. Alfred straightened up and looked at Bruce with that same mild disapproving expression.

“If the point of this charade is infiltration and exposing the Joker’s gang, sir, I feel that you should be interested in obtaining his identity — ”

“He’s not in any of the databases, Alfred, you won’t find any records of him through bloodwork — ”

“I’m sure that you’d be capable of running a simple scan to override the databases — or perhaps you could ask Mr. Fox to — ”

“No,” Bruce said, panic stealing into his voice, “Lucius doesn’t know anything that’s going on, you know that — ”

“Then might I suggest, Master Wayne, that you get on with your plan. I know you have a tendency to get lost in the details — ”

“I’m not lost in the details,” Bruce muttered. He sounded — and felt — twenty-two again, placing call after call overseas to Alfred, midnight in France, six in the evening in Gotham. I know it sounds crazy, Alfred, but if I can just train enough —

And what is “enough”, Master Wayne? How will you determine the stopping point?

I — In the room next door someone had knocked something off a shelf and let out a string of curses in sharp unrecognizable dialect. When I’m better. When I’m the best.

Alfred hadn’t said anything. But he hadn’t needed to. Bruce had heard the skepticism well enough in his silence, and two years later in Rachel’s, when he’d called her from Amsterdam to tell her the same. He couldn’t moderate; he’d never known how. The end goal was always larger than the details and as such many of the details became overwhelming in their quantity and in their unexpected appearances. He had not expected so much obsession to develop in perfecting whatever martial art or fighting technique he was learning at whatever moment. A large part of why he’d stayed away for over a decade had been simply because he couldn’t stop picking at the scabs of anything he didn’t do right immediately — which, it turned out, was basically everything. It had been exhausting essentially bleeding himself out trying to be better at Batman every day, trying to stifle the urges he felt to hurt and to maim and to rip apart compounded by the black furious anger and the long-compartmentalized hurt and aggression left over from that night in the alley. None of it had any place in the long-term effect he was trying to achieve, and so he pushed it aside and shoved it down and told it to stay behind the mask and the cape and in the tight coil of his fists and the violent swing of his legs. It was less exhausting living this way with Jude. It was less exhausting to just have the rage there, and to let it come and go as it pleased. And to use it as an excuse to say: but I haven’t found enough information yet. But I haven’t infiltrated enough yet. But I don’t have enough of his trust yet.

Alfred was watching him now with his mouth thinned out and the bloody rag still clenched in one hand. “I certainly hope not, sir,” he said, and then, “You’d better head back now. You don’t want your guest to start getting suspicious of your whereabouts.”

Bruce swallowed. Nodded. Swallowed. “It’s going to be over soon, Alfred,” he said. “I’ll make up for all of it when it’s over.”

Alfred didn’t say anything in return. After a moment Bruce turned and walked down the hall. There was nothing else he could do. When he was nearly to his door he paused. He felt something frigid and terrified run down his arms, but he couldn’t help himself from turning back anyway, and saying,

“You know, he’s already told me who he is. I don’t need his blood. I know his name,”

and then opening and shutting his door, very quickly, on Alfred’s surprised, furious face.

The bathroom door was cracked open. Jude had deposited his overcoat, his shirt, his suspenders, and his shoes on the floor directly outside. The room already reeked of blood and the fabric was all torn and stained to hell where the bullet had gone through. Jude was standing at the sink as Bruce rounded the corner and peered inside. He’d taken from the cabinet a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and a pair of tweezers and was attempting — leaning against the sink, tongue stuck in the corner of his mouth — to remove the bullet from his arm. It had slashed through the other, older wound, the one Jude had claimed he didn’t remember its source. He had his elbow halfway in the sink and Bruce stood for a moment — helpless — and stared at the lines of his body, and the scars running across those lines. Jude’s eyes caught onto him in the mirror and he smiled and —

— Bruce was so f*cked.

“Want some help?” he asked, stepping over the tiles and coming to face Jude. He twitched his good shoulder up, which probably meant yes, or at least that he didn’t care. Bruce tugged on a pair of gloves, took the tweezers and Jude’s arm, and wiped the skin down again to clear off the excess blood. The wound was still radiating heat and as Bruce pressed down with his thumb to try and feel the bullet Jude winced.

“Sorry.”

Jude shrugged again. “Your butler really hates me,” he said.

Bruce worked the tweezers into the skin. He was used to doing this to himself and bracing against the pain but seeing it from an outside angle was a wholly different experience. When he got the metal on the bullet Jude’s eyebrows pinched together; beyond that he seemed almost relaxed. Bruce remembered beating Jude half to sh*t in the interrogation room, and how rough he liked their sex. He wondered how high Jude’s pain tolerance ran.

“He’s just taking a while to get used to the idea,” Bruce said, as he carefully extracted the bullet from the ruined flesh. Blood ran down from the wound and over Bruce’s gloves and he had to continuously stop to refresh his alcohol wipe and rub at it again and again. “I mean, you are the Joker, after all.”

Jude made a sound. It might have been a laugh. Bruce pulled the bullet completely clean from Jude’s arm and dropped it in the sink. It landed on the ceramic with a quiet clink.

“Hold this steady to the wound, okay?” Bruce said. “I’m gonna get the stitches,” as he switched his hand with Jude’s to hold the alcohol wipe over the bullet hole. He reached into the medicine cabinet again and fumbled for a moment before finding the needle and thread. “Is blue okay?” he asked, “or would you prefer green, I’ll have to go to another room to get that — ”

“Whatever you’ve got is fine,” Jude said, watching Bruce’s fingers. His eyebrows were furrowed. “Why do you have all this sh*t in your bathroom,” he asked.

“I, uh — ” Bruce sterilized the needle and began threading it. “When I started going out more with you I figured I’d better stock up.”

“Huh,” Jude said.

“And I already knew a bunch of stuff about first aid from when I was training in taekwondo,” Bruce said, sticking the needle into Jude’s skin. This earned him an eye roll, which was a relief; he never knew how well his lies would go over, and they were getting harder to think up and to maintain. He finished stitching the wound up and tied the thread off before tearing it neatly — as he did his own — with his teeth.

“Sexy,” Jude said. Bruce laughed. He put up the alcohol and the stitches and he threw out the gloves and the needle and the wipes and then — his heart slamming in his throat, not really thinking — he leaned in and kissed the skin just above Jude’s wound. It was still overheated and tasted faintly antiseptic, and like blood and sweat. His mouth fit on the old scar where it was bisected by the new one; the skin was ridged and knotted beneath his lips. Jude went completely still and Bruce thought he’d made a mistake, but then Jude said Bruce’s name. It was barely audible in his throat. Bruce kissed his skin again, a little to the right this time, and then picking up his head he kissed his temple.

“You’re part of my life now,” he said. “Whatever I have to do to fit you in — ”

Jude rolled his eyes again, but he tilted his head like a dog so Bruce would kiss his hair. Then he said, “Hang on a second, I want to take this sh*t off — ” gesturing at his face — “it’s itching.”

“Sure,” Bruce said. Carefully he extracted himself from between Jude and the sink and moved past him and back into the bedroom proper. He stripped off his clothes, tossing them on top of Jude’s. He pulled on clean shorts and a pair of sweats and collapsed onto the couch. He shuffled through the stations until he found a cooking channel. Jude came out some time later with his hair pulled up and his face mostly clear of makeup. He sank down onto the couch beside Bruce, still in his dark violet trousers and obnoxious socks. He rested his cheek on Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce tried not to feel guilty.

“Did good today, Wayne,” Jude mumbled, after a long time.

“Thanks, boss,” Bruce said. On the television Rachael Ray was chopping onions.

Jude slid his hand down Bruce’s thigh; tangled their fingers together between their legs. He was a solid warm weight against Bruce’s side. It was dark and quiet and Bruce could have fallen asleep like this.

“How’d it feel this time?” Jude asked. He didn’t have to specify what he meant.

Bruce exhaled, softly. He shifted his shoulder a little so that Jude would lift his head, and then he turned his own and kissed Jude’s temple again, and then the corner of his scar. The skin was rough and ragged beneath his mouth where it had healed badly. Even bare it still tasted like greasepaint. He saw Jude’s eyes close. I love his scar, he thought suddenly. He loved both of Jude’s scars, and all the ones on his arms. He wasn’t sure when that had happened. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it either, except that there was a lot of it, and he wanted it. Whatever it was, he wanted it.

“Extraordinary,” he told Jude, and felt the scar lift beneath his mouth as Jude smiled.

At four in the morning Bruce wandered into the kitchen to get some water for himself and Jude and found Alfred sitting at the counter. Old instinct tightened Bruce’s chest — when he’d been a teenager Alfred staying up this late never meant anything good — but Alfred only smiled wanly as Bruce entered.

“Morning, Master Wayne.”

“Morning,” Bruce replied cautiously, walking to one of the cabinets and retrieving two glasses. “Have you slept?”

Alfred’s smile grew even more wan. “It is difficult to sleep with that man in this house,” he said. Bruce flinched.

“Alfred — ”

One hand went up. “Please don’t apologize,” he said. “I know you wouldn’t really mean it. And it won’t change anything, will it. You’ll still continue on this — suicidal path.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened, and he turned away to fill the glasses. “Yes,” he said.

Alfred sighed. “I only hope you know what you’re doing.”

Bruce shoved down whatever bitter response threatened to crawl up his throat and said, “I want to start having some of the meetings here.”

To his credit Alfred barely reacted. “The meetings with the Joker’s gang?”

“Yes.” Bruce shut the faucet off and turned. “I’m so close, Alfred. I just — if I could just do this one more — ”

“One more what?” said Jude’s voice from down the hall. Bruce flinched again, listening to his footsteps pad softly on the wooden floor. Momentarily he appeared in the kitchen doorway with his hair rumpled and Bruce’s pajama bottoms hanging off his hips. The bruises Bruce had sucked into his neck and his chest were wine-dark and glaringly obvious even in the dim light.

“I want — ” Bruce had to clear his throat. “I want to start hosting some of our meetings here. Not big things,” he added, noticing the expression on Jude’s face. “Just — some stuff. Some small stuff. It’s — I told you you’re part of, of my life. I’m — if it’s okay with — ”

Jude walked over to take his glass, then leaned against the counter on his elbow, watching Bruce with his head tilted. “I wouldn’t mind,” he said, voice oddly soft. “If your old man doesn’t mind.”

They both looked at Alfred. Please, Bruce begged with his eyes, but he could already see he’d won even before Alfred nodded. He looked exhausted, the same way he had the morning he’d found them in bed together. Bruce couldn’t decide what he felt guiltier over: lying to Jude, or lying — however subtly — to Alfred.

“Sorry if I interrupted,” Jude was saying as he tilted his glass back against the broken line of his mouth. “I just — wanted to apologize again for bleeding on your floor.”

Bruce watched Alfred push something down. He raised an eyebrow at him, but said only, “It’s quite all right, sir. Master Wayne has tracked mud through my kitchen for thirty-three years.”

Jude laughed, delightedly. “Bet you’ve never given him one day off, either, have you, honey,” he said, and it took Bruce a shocking few seconds to realize he was being addressed. He felt his jaw working around several incoherent answers before at last settling on:

“He’s never volunteered to take one, so.”

Jude whistled.

“I doubt you could take care of yourself or this house on your own, sir,” Alfred said, a bit dryly. Jude laughed again, a sharp sort of hysterical cackle. Bruce elbowed him in the ribs to get him to walk back to the door, but he couldn’t help glancing at Alfred, smiling tentatively, and was relieved to see Alfred’s face slightly relaxed. He was looking from Jude to Bruce with something unreadable in his eyes.

“Night, Mr. Pennyworth,” Jude said, as he and Bruce walked back down the hall. “Thanks again for offering us your house.”

Bruce looked back for Alfred’s reaction. He still had that unrecognizable expression on his face. “Goodnight, sir,” he said to Jude. “Goodnight, Master Wayne.”

It wasn’t until after he and Jude had drank their water and crawled back into bed that Bruce realized that the look which Alfred had given him had been bordering on the verge of tolerance. Tolerance which had no place in a temporary infiltration plan.

But terrifyingly, helplessly, it made Bruce hopeful, anyway.

Very quickly it became apparent that Jude’s idea of hosting “small things” at Bruce’s penthouse was not the same as Bruce’s. Two days after the conversation with Alfred Bruce was trying not to fall asleep during a shareholders’ meeting for the new psychiatric wing at Gotham General — Ainsworth had his fingers still bandaged, for some reason, and splayed out on the table in an obvious and rather pathetic attempt to garner sympathy — when his burner phone buzzed with a text. Cornell:

Boss says ur vegan.

Yes, Bruce texted back, one-handed; keeping his eyes on the director of the board in hopes she wouldn’t declare the project null and void due to a lack of interest on his part.

“The west wing is nearly done with initial construction,” said the foreman. “If you’d care to look at the blueprints — ”

“Yes,” Ainsworth said. Bruce echoed him automatically. As the PowerPoint was being set up his phone went off again:

U like chi tkot?

Chinese takeout.

Bruce almost laughed. On the projection screen the foreman was pointing to various developed sections of the hospital, and Bruce watched with one glazed eye and glanced at his phone with the other:

Yes.

Ok, said Cornell, and then that was it. The meeting ended and Bruce endured several long minutes of discussing logistics with Ainsworth who kept staring confusedly at his face, which made Bruce feel at once both concerned and also kind of powerful. He thought about asking Ainsworth how his hand was but decided against it. Then he left, and Bruce drove out to meet with the Neumann branch, and to look at his tech building. As he walked through the facility looking at the various unused machines and parts an idea began to form itself vaguely at the back of his head. When he left it was after six, and he called Jude as he got in his car.

“Speak of the devil,” Jude drawled, sounding pleased.

“You were talking about me?” Bruce asked, as the heater began to warm up the car. Little frost particles diffused slowly along the edges of the windshield.

“Just a little,” Jude said. In the background Bruce heard Reznor yell “hey Wayne!” and he smiled.

“Anything good?”

He heard Jude smile, too, without seeing him, which felt — he didn’t know how, precisely. “Nothing I couldn’t repeat in polite company,” he said. Then: “What’s going on?”

“I have, uh — a business proposition.”

“What a coincidence,” Jude said. “So do we.”

“Oh?” Bruce reached over and turned down the radio where Jude had left in his Jesus Lizard cassette: Tonight at the knife stick-up place, I spoke as a child and choked on that line…

“Yeah, but it has to be discussed in person,” Jude said.

“Sure,” Bruce said. “I’m already downtown — ”

“No,” Jude said. “Not at the warehouse.”

Bruce watched a single snowflake drift down across his plane of vision. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” Over the phone Jude shifted. “Is your butler still okay with us coming over?”

Something felt spinning in Bruce’s mind. It’s working, he wanted to think, he trusts me, they all trust me, but instead he felt genuine excitement, and underneath it a thread of the familiar guilt. “Yeah,” he said, “yeah, he’s — ”

“Great,” Jude said. “Can Nell take the Suburban into your garage?”

“Yes,” Bruce said.

“Okay,” Jude said. “See you soon.” He hung up. Bruce blew out a breath. Then he put the car in drive. He arrived at the private garage and waited for the Suburban to show up so he could let Cornell in; then the four of them rode up together in the elevator. Cornell was holding a bag of Chinese takeout. Reznor seemed impressed by the thumb scanners.

At the top of the stairs Bruce hesitated, but it was only momentary. He hadn’t called Alfred; he would have to just ride it out. This was the easiest way in any case to prove that Alfred was okay with this, with Bruce’s lifestyle and with his choices. He let them into the kitchen where indeed Alfred was standing as per usual with Mike Engel on the television talking about a factory which Bruce was pretty sure Cobain and Staley had blown up just north of the city. Alfred turned and to his credit his expression did not slip.

“Master Wayne,” he said. “Are these your — guests?”

“Yes,” Bruce said, forcing himself to maintain eye contact. “Cornell, Reznor, this is Alfred.”

“Nice to meet you,” Reznor said, and shocked Bruce by stepping forward, hand outstretched. Cornell set the bag of Chinese on the floor and said,

“It’s nice of you to let us come over. I hope you don’t mind I brought food; Wayne said you cook most of the time but I thought we shouldn’t impose.”

What the genuine f*ck. Bruce was pretty sure his mouth had fallen open; Jude was standing beside him with a small, amused smile. Gently he nudged Bruce in the ribs as Alfred cleared his throat, dropping Reznor’s hand and shaking Cornell’s:

“It’s — quite all right, sir. I believe I’ll take my dinner in the dining room and allow the four of you to get on with your business.” He raised his eyebrows at Bruce, then retrieved a pan from the fridge and walked out of the room. Reznor waited until the dining room door was shut behind him before turning to the television and pointing with a grin:

“Boss, look.”

Cornell rolled his eyes as he bent down to pick up the food. “He can f*ckin’ see it, Rez, sh*t — ”

“This is a nice f*ckin’ house, Wayne,” Reznor said, looking around. “This where you grew up?”

“No,” Bruce said. He glanced a little at Jude as he spoke, wondering if he remembered the manor. He thought perhaps Jude had come over once, when Bruce was in junior high. Leo had been visiting for the summer and there had been a massive banquet, the first since Thomas and Martha’s deaths. Bruce had spent most of his time pretending he wanted to be there in the crowd, pretending every second spent in his parents’ massive ballroom without them didn’t make him nauseous, pretending there wasn’t a glass wall between him and the rest of the world which would never come down… He’d seen Jude, or a flash of his curls, at some point, but by then he’d been exhausted and, unable to stand it anymore, excused himself from one of Thomas’ business partner’s sides and ran upstairs. He was eleven and spiraling and people were already after him to head the company someday. “My family’s home was out — ” he gestured in the direction. “It burned down in the spring.”

“sh*t, that’s rough,” Cornell said, pulling out the paper containers with their red lettering.

“It’s all right,” Bruce said, and was moderately surprised to find he wasn’t entirely lying. “It’s convenient to live on top of the tower. People can’t get up here ‘cause of the scanners, and when the day’s over all I have to do is go upstairs.” Also, weirdly, it felt symbolic to have the new house in conjunction with his new life in the gang. He didn’t know if Alfred would have been as open to him inviting them over if they still lived in the manor. He didn’t know if he himself would have been as open — at least, not with the others. With Jude, maybe… but in any case the penthouse was wholly separate from his life Before. He’d been Batman only eight months when the incidents in July had happened, and his world had crashed down once again. And only four of those months spent here.

They talked for a while about the various parts of Wayne Tower. Bruce got Reznor to talk about Cobain’s job on the news to irritate Cornell, who apparently had been stationed elsewhere at the time, despite wanting very badly to blow the factory up himself. The food Cornell had brought was good; he’d gotten Bruce veggie chow mein and steamed rice which he shared with Jude. Bruce offered to pay him back for his meal and Reznor snorted while Cornell went three different shades of red before explaining that he had a “thing” with the line cook and would go down on her and/or snort co*ke with her behind the restaurant after her shift later in lieu of actual money.

“It’s not weirder than your f*ckin’… whatever, thing with that bitch from your high school,” Cornell finished, glaring at Reznor, who just laughed harder. Beneath the kitchen island Jude tangled his foot up against Bruce’s ankle. There was no reason for it, he was clearly just comfortable, perhaps even content, and Bruce didn’t know what to do with that beyond pressing back with his own foot, and smiling when Jude did.

Eventually when the food had been finished and the takeout boxes thrown away Jude reminded Bruce he’d had a business proposal. Cornell was closest to the television and reached over to turn the sound off — the news was over; they were playing Wheel of Fortune, and Reznor had been mouthing along guesses to the answers — and then Bruce said,

“I was downtown today at Wayne Tech, and I noticed we have a lot of unused material there, like car parts and electronics. So I was thinking — I don’t know if we already have something like this here but we should set up a shell company. And since my company’s legitimate we can use it as a front and launder money or ship out parts from the tech building.” He’d been using parts of the Enterprises as a front for his Batman-related stuff for eight months now without repercussions. Of course there was no way he could tell them he already knew his company served as a very good shell without giving too much away but the only person who would suspect anything amiss would be Lucius, and of course he was only in charge of R&D, and that had gone unused for months now… He looked around at their faces and was relieved to see that none of them looked suspicious. Jude looked sort of amused.

“What?”

He shook his head. “Vegan underworld CEO,” he said, and Cornell and Reznor both laughed. Bruce shrugged, trying to stay nonchalant; he said,

“Like I told you the other day, boss. I’ve done research.”

“Well, I think it’s a good idea,” Reznor said. “We’ve got a f*ckton of warehouses already completely full anyway, and Wayne’s got a point, this is a legitimate company. So we could claim taxes or whatever.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works, idiot,” Cornell said.

“The f*ck would you know, you haven’t filed taxes in your whole f*ckin’ miserable life — ”

“So it’s a good idea,” Jude interrupted, glaring at Reznor until he sighed, and shut his mouth. Jude looked at Bruce in this way that dug the guilt in worse, because it was impressed, and trusting, and something else Bruce didn’t have the words for. How far are you willing to go, Thomas whispered in his ear, first time in a while. How far have you already gone. Can you come back. And then another voice, more like Bruce’s own:

do you even want to.

After that night Jude started coming every day, or nearly. Bruce would get off work at four or so and there would be a text waiting for him: in lby, or sometimes, got brd, brk in2 ur grg :) This would have been exasperating except that when Bruce got down to his garage Jude was always standing there in civilian clothes, sans makeup, hair tied back, looking a little frayed and a little desperate, so that it was easy, easier than it probably should have been, to let it go, and to let him up on the private elevator, or else to go up from the lobby, ignoring the people who stared. Bruce made him a key card which he could only access the lobby elevators with, and afterwards he sometimes showed up unexpectedly in the elevator lobby at the topmost public floor. More often, though, he still simply broke into Bruce’s garage and waited there, playing Snake and scratching his knife back and forth along the concrete floor, until Bruce showed. The first time Alfred gave Bruce a look which clearly said, what are you doing, Master Wayne. But by the end of the first week of December Alfred was no longer giving Bruce looks. He mostly stayed out of their way, electing to be on the gym floor or else on the guest penthouse floor when Jude would arrive. He spoke civilly to Jude when Jude addressed him; otherwise he didn’t interact with them at all. Bruce didn’t push. He had no idea what he was doing.

“What are you doing, Master Wayne?” Alfred asked, one evening when Jude didn’t come due to some holdup in Atlantic City. He and Bruce were sitting on the pool deck; the water was heated, but Bruce hadn’t gotten in, except for half of one leg.

“What am I doing?”

“With the Joker, sir. And his men.”

Bruce bit his lower lip the inside of which tasted bizarrely of chlorine. “I told you, Alfred, I’m gaining — ”

“I think you’ve more than gained their trust, sir. And the information you need.”

Bruce opened his mouth, but the words he wanted — he didn’t know what they were, but they were stuck in his throat, regardless. He stared at the reflection of the water on the ceiling; the antishadows of it moved and stretched and waved, something out of Hitchco*ck. After a moment he heard Alfred sigh, and then he said,

“Just make sure you’re keeping your head about this, Master Wayne. And be careful. That’s all I ask.”

“I’m being careful, Alfred.” Bruce slid his hand across his stomach, over the old scar where Jude’s shoe-knife had cut him open in July, and where just two nights ago Jude had sucked and bit the skin until it bruised and bled once again through his ministrations. The bruise was the exact shape and size of his mouth and Bruce wasn’t stupid enough to hope Alfred hadn’t seen it but all the same he finally slid into the pool and kicked away from the wall. “I’m used to this sh*t, remember?”

“Language,” Alfred murmured, though Bruce was thirty-three. Bruce smiled at him.

“Thank you for keeping my secret,” he said.

Alfred didn’t smile back. “Don’t make me regret it, Master Wayne.”

The following evening Jude came over to have Bruce take his stitches out. Bruce asked why Jude couldn’t do it himself or else why they couldn’t have done it at Jude’s apartment and Jude said, I didn’t hire you to ask f*cking questions, Wayne, and things somehow devolved from there. By the time Bruce got around to actually performing the task at hand it was nearly three in the morning. Jude had bruises sucked into his neck and shoulders and nail marks running down his back where Bruce had scratched him when he’d asked. Bruce was marked up similarly and his hair was f*cked and his hands were shaking from overwork and so he f*cked up the stitching removal. He had to call Alfred in to help fix it but when he pressed the intercom button Jude leaned against him from behind, a solid warm line, and dropped his face on Bruce’s shoulder, so that the knots of his mouth scars fell on Bruce’s skin. Bruce was therefore distracted and when Alfred said,

“What’s wrong, Master Wayne,”

Bruce said, “I f*cked up Jude’s stitches,”

without thinking. It wasn’t until Jude had gone still against him that he realized what he’d said but Alfred was already saying he was on the way. After he clicked off Bruce winced, turning:

“I’m sor— ”

“‘s all right, honey,” Jude said. The nickname felt like a wash over Bruce’s ribs. “I don’t think I mind if your old man knows,” and that was all that was said about it. When Alfred arrived he cleaned the wound and pulled the rest of the stitches, and bandaged it up, and didn’t comment on the state of their skin, or their hair, or Bruce’s bed, where the sheets were rucked and half on the floor. As he was preparing to leave Jude said,

“Thanks for getting up, Mr. Pennyworth, I know it’s late,”

and Alfred said, “It’s quite all right. If I’m not overstepping any boundaries I am curious — are you Mr. Leo Baker’s son?”

Jude kind of — stiffened, or something. Bruce braced himself, wary, but after a moment Jude said only, “Yeah, that’s my father,” and Alfred nodded, and said goodnight, and walked out. An hour or so later Jude announced he wasn’t sleeping, he was too hungry; he wanted breakfast, and did Bruce want to accompany him. Bruce was so relieved Jude wasn’t angry with him for revealing his name he said yes, despite it was barely twenty degrees outside, and they pulled on their sweats and Bruce his beanie and headed down to the garage. Jude directed Bruce to a Denny’s in the Narrows where he introduced him, shockingly, to a pretty young waitress he said he’d known for almost a year. Her name was Evangeline and she was studying organic chemistry at Hudson County in Jersey City. She called Jude “Mr. Joker” and told Bruce shyly that her younger brother really looked up to him. By the time they left Denny’s the sun was rising in salmon pink gradient behind the business district. Bruce dropped Jude off at the warehouses, then drove back to Wayne Tower to wash off the night. As he stood in the shower, face turned to the spray, eyes shut, taste of coffee still bitter in his throat, he thought about how well the plan was working. Jude was coming over all the time. Cornell and Reznor liked Alfred, and Alfred tolerated all three of them. Bruce hadn’t yet received death threats or woken with a knife to his throat. The plan was going really, really well —

— except that this was the first time Bruce had thought about the plan since discussing it with Alfred at the pool.

He dried his hair staring through the fogged up mirror at his reflection. Without the white contacts in he was still only Bruce Wayne, but he was the sort of Bruce Wayne he’d sometimes envisioned existed when the suit was fully on and the mask was down. The Bruce Wayne that had no public face and lived behind the shadows. The Bruce Wayne that reveled in violence. The Bruce Wayne that celebrated cruelty.

He covered the most visible of the hickies with foundation before heading downstairs for his first meeting of the day, but he couldn’t stop pressing his hand to his neck all morning, feeling the dull ache beneath his skin, in the exact shape of Jude’s broken, beautiful mouth.

Notes:

check out picrew art i made of my ocs (and their film counterparts when applicable) here

Chapter 8 Notes:

warning for non-graphic (although i guess detailed) discussions of past rape

Chapter Text

In retrospect Bruce realized: of course it would happen this way. There really was no other way for it to happen and in any case its happening was inevitable, and Bruce could not have gone on indefinitely living what was essentially a triple life. He was lying to so many people now he had no idea how to keep it all separate. Eventually one of them would have to go.

Lucius stopped him after a very long, very exhausting meeting. He had gotten a text on the burner phone midway through and though he’d tried to check it surreptitiously beneath the table he felt Lucius’ eyes on him, almost burning into him. It hadn’t even been from one of his regulars, it had been from f*cking Corgan, who Bruce had spoken to maybe twice, and he was asking Bruce if he wanted to start up a f*cking chess game through text. It was insanely distracting — though not, Bruce supposed, for the reasons it should have been. If random members of the gang were texting him casually to ask did he want to play a f*cking game with them then he was in way deeper than he’d meant to get. He needed to get out but he just couldn’t, not yet, there was still too much left to figure out, there were still too many intricacies… In any case he couldn’t stop thinking about the text and he was distracted and he could see that Lucius could see it. The representative from Neumann was talking extensively about things Bruce wished he didn’t understand like corporations and taxes and he could feel his eyes glazing over long before the meeting had finished. So when Lucius stopped him initially Bruce thought he was going to just get scolded like a child or something for being so distracted and probably kind of rude.

“Mr. Wayne,” Lucius said. “Do you have a minute?”

“Yes,” Bruce said, checking the time on his phone as he swung his coat over his shoulders. He thought maybe he remembered there was a meeting tonight but he wasn’t sure. He wondered if Jude would get mad if he picked up food for all of them. Cornell would probably appreciate not having to f*ck around with the line cook at the Chinese place for once… “Yeah, is everything — ”

“I wonder,” Lucius said, in a tone Bruce didn’t recognize, “if you are ever planning to put on the suit again.”

Something cold draped itself over Bruce’s ribs and tightened around his lungs. He put his thumbs over the lapels of his Armani rather lamely with a little smile — Lucius did not smile back, and Bruce swallowed.

“I know the last time we talked about this you said you were working on something,” Lucius said. “But that was nearly a month ago.”

“Yeah,” Bruce said. He cleared his throat, he felt like he wasn’t getting enough air. “I’m still — I’m still working on it, Lucius. It’s turning out to be bigger than I thought and it’s just not done yet — ”

“It doesn’t seem like anything could take up so much of your time that you would be incapable of doing your work for this city — ”

“I’m almost finished, Lucius,” Bruce said. His hands were shaking where he’d hidden them in his pockets. “It’s — I’m so close — ” It didn’t sound right when he said it to Alfred, and it sounded somehow even worse now, because Lucius and Alfred — for all their similarities — were wholly different people. They did not take the same approach to Dealing With Bruce and they would not take the same viewpoint of this because they hadn’t taken the same viewpoint on Batman. Alfred had worried — Bruce had been able to feel his worry across the Atlantic — and he’d asked a lot of very pointed, very parental questions like ‘do you know first aid? because you really won’t be able to go to a hospital with the kinds of injuries you’ll sustain if you’re planning on becoming a masked vigilante — ’ and he’d made sure that Bruce was always stocked up on minor things like stitches and alcohol and bandages and that he never lost his head, or got too far into it —

— the way he had with this —

— and he’d been as supportive as he possibly could, because he’d always supported Bruce; he’d supported him for thirty-three years and especially since that wild staticky night, 1985, when the world had ended…

Lucius had of course taken a more professional approach to it. Bruce had said something like, I need you because you’re really good with technology. My dad really trusted you and you’ve been with our company for years, but you have to keep it absolutely secret; only Alfred knows —

— and Rachel, though Bruce hadn’t bothered with mentioning her —

— and Lucius had said, of course, and, if you want to be able to jump off buildings you need to be aerodynamic… He’d stuck it out, in short. He and Alfred had both seen his need for violence and they’d accepted it — although perhaps that wasn’t entirely true, because Bruce’s violence as Batman had translated into vigilantism, which was… not easier to understand, but perhaps more acceptable. The vigilantism, the savior complex, helping the city — justice at any cost —

He became aware that Lucius was staring at him waiting. “ — Just give me a few more days,” he said. He could hear a whine threatening to form in the back of his voice. “Weeks. Maybe two weeks. I don’t know.”

Lucius sighed. “You have a habit of getting stuck in the details,” he said. “That’s also the same thing you said last time.”

“Yeah, but — ”

“But you really mean it now?” Lucius gave him a wry smile. “Mr. Wayne, I like to think I know you pretty well. It’s always just a little bit more with you, isn’t it. It started off just with martial arts. Then you wanted to go skydiving. Then you said you had to have a fully-functional weapons division concealed within Wayne Enterprises.”

“It’s for — ”

“It was for Gotham,” Lucius said. “For a while. Whatever this is — ” he gestured at Bruce, the tense line of his shoulders, his hands still trembling in his pockets — “this is for you.”

“But it’s no different,” Bruce protested. Outside he could hear a siren wailing down the street, and the cathedral bell three blocks over tolling the hour. The collective evening song of his city. The hurried packed constant of it winding around and through that black gristle heart that had never cared what he gave but just kept taking devouring consuming like cancer, like black tar… The cacophonous hum of the people hiding their f*cked desires. “It isn’t any different, Lucius.”

“What is it, Mr. Wayne?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s justice,” he tried, weakly. At any cost.

“Is it the same kind of justice as hooking up everyone’s cell phones into a sonar machine?”

The answer stuck in his throat.

“Is it the same brand of justice Batman serves?” Lucius asked; his tone was veering into dangerous territory, Bruce really should stop this conversation — “Or is it the same as the Joker?”

The cold thing in his lungs filtered into his heart and ran down his arms and up his temples in silver shivery nausea. “Lucius — ”

“You covered up for yourself well,” he said. “Of course, that’s hardly surprising, given your experience with lying about your identity as Batman. But after Coleman’s death I got suspicious. I wasn’t able to uncover any security tapes from GCN, so I had you tailed.”

Bruce became aware of a hollow drumming which after a moment he realized was his own heartbeat echoing in his ears. He couldn’t speak. He licked his mouth.

“My contact followed you out to the Narrows,” Lucius said. “To a warehouse. Where he told me you parked your car, knocked, and were let in by none other than the Joker himself.”

When he plunged from buildings in the suit, there was always this moment — split second, like blinking, like the last shred of consciousness before sleep — when Bruce was tipping forward and the last fractions of his toes were leaving the edge and he thought, spreading out his arms, letting his cape spread out, that perhaps the wind wouldn’t catch him this time. When he pitched off the building and began plummeting towards the ground perhaps the release would get stuck. Or perhaps the draft would be going the wrong way and veer him badly off course. It had never happened before, but there was always the next time. Or the next. He’d never been able to tell — not all the way — if he wanted it to happen. But standing here with Lucius felt not dissimilar. And there was no quick ending. There was only Lucius, and Bruce, and Lucius’ disapproval; the sky slowly darkening outside — it was nearly the winter solstice — and Bruce’s heart caught up in scouring wind in his throat.

“It’s not,” Bruce tried, when he realized Lucius wasn’t going to say anything else; his voice wouldn’t work right, and he had to clear his throat several times, the draft still caught in his chest amid the cold slithering nauseous thing, before he could speak: “It isn’t what you think.”

“It isn’t?” Lucius said, sounding — not so much like he was asking.

“I’m — ” Bruce exhaled, slowly. He could do this; it was fine. “In October the Joker came to me, to my penthouse. He said he wanted to recruit me to his gang.”

Lucius gave him a look. Bruce shrugged helplessly.

“It — he said he wanted to prove something. It was like, it was the same way he talked about Harvey. He wanted to prove I wasn’t above falling to his level.” He discovered he could no longer stand with his hands at his sides and so he folded his arms and turned towards the window. The sun was setting over the banks of the Passaic, spilling bloodily over the buildings like dropped honey. Bruce imagined himself in the street, in his car, heading out into the west. “So I thought about it, and I thought what a good opportunity it would be to infiltrate his gang, and take it down from the inside, and I said yes. And since then I’ve been working with him — he trusts me, they all do, and — ”

“What information have you gotten?” Lucius asked. Bruce bit the inside of his mouth; after a moment he said,

“Names… addresses…” and Lucius said,

“And what exactly are you planning on doing with all of it?”

Bruce hesitated. “I’m supp- I’m going to Gordon. I’m going to tell him everything.” Outside the sky was turning lavender along the edges of the sunset. In another ten minutes or so it would be dark. Bruce dug his nails into his arms until he could feel them through the sleeves of his coat. “Even the crimes I’ve committed. I’m sure he’ll give me pardons for all of it.”

Lucius’ mouth was growing steadily thinner. “What crimes, Mr. Wayne?”

Bruce flinched. He knew — he was sure Lucius knew. Indeed when he told him Bruce could see in the reflection in the window that there was not much change in his face. But he said, “This is not justice, Mr. Wayne. I stand by what I said. This is for you.”

“It’s going to save — ”

“You are already far too involved in it.”

“I pull myself out of Batman’s headspace all the time — ”

“And maybe you’ll pull yourself out of this, too. But you’ve taken a life. It’s too much, Mr. Wayne. I told you I wouldn’t be part of your invasive overly complicated schemes anymore, and I meant it.” He reached into his inner coat pocket and withdrew from it his Enterprises badge. “I’m going to have to quit.”

It did not feel surprising, and Bruce supposed that made it even worse. “Lucius — ”

“If you ever get your head on straight, call me,” Lucius said. “Otherwise I’m not interested.”

“It’s just — so close, I’m going to go to Gordon soon, it’ll all be over — ”

“Tonight,” Lucius said. “Right now.”

Bruce could feel his teeth grinding together in the back of his jaw. He didn’t speak, but he supposed his answer was in his face, because Lucius’ mouth thinned even further, and he stepped away from the desk.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wayne.”

Bruce turned away from the steadily darkening city. “I’ve got it under control,” he said, final desperate bid for salvation — though from what, he didn’t know. Lucius’ mouth twisted; he pushed his employee I.D. further across the desk, and he said,

“I’m sure you think you do, Mr. Wayne.” Then he turned, and he walked out. The door swung shut behind him. After a moment Bruce realized his hands were shaking so badly it had caused his teeth to start chattering. Momentarily he sank into the chair behind the desk, and dragged his fingers through the short ends of his hair.

Justice at any cost. Vigilantism at any cost. Revenge and order. Lucius had accepted or at least tolerated his need for violence as an outlet for his anger when he was Batman. But he wouldn’t accept it here. He wouldn’t accept Bruce as a mobster though the purpose was the same, the motives were the same…

He’d joined Jude’s gang — the Joker’s gang — for the purpose of justice at any cost. He’d infiltrated his ranks and gotten close to the leader and to select of its highest members and he was in so deep, he knew so many secrets and he had their trust, he had Jude’s trust which was the most important… he knew Jude would never suspect him of betrayal, he could still come out of nowhere and turn them all in… This was no different to his acts of vigilantism as Batman. No different to what Lucius had tolerated and condoned and even encouraged — except for how it really, really was, because the violence had a wholly different purpose, far less translatable. When he’d beat bad guys up in the suit it meant something else and it felt like something else. And even when he’d killed Coleman it had had a purpose, it had been to gain Jude’s trust, to keep the operation from going under too quickly —

— but killing Mitchell had served no purpose. It had been unnecessary. He could have blown out his kneecaps or else incapacitated him in some other way but he’d shot him through the throat and he’d done it because he’d wanted to. He’d done it and it had felt f*cking good and he’d do it again. He was in too deep. He was far under and he might at some point have been trying to claw his way up the sides and back to the surface but he’d long since let go the handholds and fallen. And he’d fallen into the dirt and the sweat and blood and gasoline and the arms of the monster caught him and held him close and pushed back his hair with trembling dirty fingers and rocked him back and forth, back and forth…

He should have quit sooner. He knew that. He should have quit after he’d broken Ainsworth’s fingers. He could have gone to Gordon with that information, told him about how the psychiatric head of Arkham was involved in shady underhanded dealings with the Joker and if Gordon just went to find him and brought him in for questioning it was very likely he’d get the Joker and his men locked up within the hour. Or maybe —

— maybe he should have quit when he found out Jude’s name. He was sure he still had records on file of Jude’s father working for the Enterprises and as such there would be some type of record of Jude himself existing. Or if there wasn’t Gordon would have just had to contact Leo and say, I need some information because your son is a domestic terrorist, and then it would’ve all been over. Bruce remembered vaguely thinking at the time that it was too soon; it had only been three or so weeks into it, and he remembered being surprised Jude had told him, but glad, too. He remembered thinking, triumphantly, that it was working, that he was finding out more and more and any second he could go to Gordon —

— except of course he hadn’t. He had the names of their contacts and he had the addresses of every place they frequented in the Narrows. He knew Jude’s actual name and address, and the nicknames of every gang member. He could identify all of them on sight. He knew what specific deals and/or trades they made, having made over half of them himself at this point, and he knew where they shipped and received packages from and he knew what kinds of cars they all drove and he had enough. He had more than enough. He was stalling. He reached up; put his hand over his mouth. For a long time he couldn’t move, so he didn’t. He sat there, head down, eyes closed, until the last of the sunlight was leached from the sky and the room was lit only by the artificial ceiling lights, and the lights of the city outside. Then — he didn’t know quite what he was doing, he couldn’t really focus — he pulled out his burner phone, although even then he wasn’t sure of his intentions until he’d gone into his contacts and keyed over the familiar name. He hit the center button. The line clicked over five rings later:

“Wayne, hey — ”

“I need to see you,” Bruce said. There was a pause. Jude said something muffled off the line. Then, to Bruce:

“We have a meeting tonight, seven-thir— ”

“I need to see you, Jude,” Bruce repeated, and he didn’t bother trying to keep the desperation from his voice. “Please.”

Jude said something else to whoever he was with. Then he said, “Give me half an hour, okay? I’m in Metuchen. Meet me at my place, it’s closer to where I am.” He hung up. Bruce threw on his coat, snatched up his keys. With the office phone he dialed the penthouse and told Alfred he wouldn’t be home for dinner, probably. There must have been something in his voice he couldn’t hear because Alfred drew in a breath which had suspiciously inquisitive tones and so hastily Bruce said he had to go and hung up. Then — he was running on autopilot; Lucius was gone — he found himself in the garage, and then in his father’s Mustang. The heater blasted him in the face as he peeled out. On the radio they were playing Faith No More: you want it all but you can’t have it, it’s in your face but you can’t grab it… The f*cking anthem of the day. He thought about turning it off but this was Jude’s favorite song and as such Bruce found he couldn’t. So he left it on and drove out into the Narrows going maybe sixty miles an hour. He pulled up to the familiar curb and sat with his engine idling and the DJ playing Alice In Chains’ “Rain When I Die”, and then Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm”. When it cut to a commercial advertising something to do with Wayne Enterprises Bruce shut the radio off and listened to the soft hiss of the snow falling until at last his phone buzzed with a text:

There in 5. He craned his neck. His heart was racing. At last he heard tires on wet asphalt and then a car came careening around the block. Bruce was afraid — one heart-stopping moment — that the car would crash into his. But the driver coasted to a crawl and the back door opened and Jude got out. He called something laughing to the inside of the car and then it drove off and he walked to the Mustang. He had on a dark violet cashmere sweater

(at least Bruce thought it was cashmere, it might’ve been fake)

and, bizarrely, forest green sweats. His makeup was applied but it had been badly smeared. Bruce’s hands shaking he got out of his car, locked the door, and walked towards Jude. He smelled like guns and sweat and blood and he looked relaxed and quiet and Bruce was nearly in tears. When he reached him he lifted one hand and touched Jude’s jaw. He couldn’t help himself. Right in the middle of the street he reached up and touched his jaw. Am I doing the right thing? he wanted to whisper, have I picked the right side? but he thought he already knew the answer, and anyway asking that in that way would just open up a whole host of questions he wouldn’t have answers to. So he just stroked Jude’s paint-smeared jaw and ran his fingers up into his hair until at last Jude said, kind of softly,

“I’m pretty sure we’ll be warmer if we go inside, honey,”

and Bruce’s whole heart melted. He nodded and let himself be led across the street — the snow falling harder — and inside Jude’s dilapidated familiar hideous apartment complex. They passed unconscious junkies on the stairs and Helena, chatting up one of Jude’s neighbors, waving at them over her shoulder. They got to Jude’s door and he retrieved from inside his sweater his gaudy keychain. He inserted the key into the lock and pushed the door open. Inside the heater was clearly working its sluggish way into oblivion because it wasn’t very warm, but it was warmer than outside, and it was where Bruce wanted to be, desperately. Jude shut the door behind himself and said,

“Okay, now, what’s going — ”

“Why did you give up your life from before?” Bruce hadn’t realized it was what he was going to ask until he asked it, but it felt like an okay question. Jude’s eyebrows furrowed together slightly:

“My life before?”

“When you were Jude Baker,” Bruce said. “You gave up — everything. Your parents’ money. Your whole life. I — what were you — how did you do that?” A pause. Then the ultimate question: “Do you regret it?”

Jude looked at Bruce for long enough Bruce started thinking perhaps he’d made a mistake. But he could see in Jude’s eyes he understood what Bruce was asking, if not why. At last he said, “Not especially, no. I did what I did for particular reasons and if I hadn’t I’d be living a whole different life now.”

“Yes,” Bruce said, “but an easier one.”

Jude raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to tell me ease equals comfort?”

Bruce didn’t answer right away, and after a moment Jude sighed. He reached out and touched Bruce’s face where Bruce had touched Jude’s own in the street. “It’s not a trick question, Wayne,” he said, softly. “You can answer honestly. I won’t be mad.”

Bruce leaned his focus deliberately into the tender quiet scratch of Jude’s overlong nails against his skin. “I — sometimes. Yes.” He looked around the apartment; it wasn’t a bad apartment, but it was shabby, and they both knew it. It was the way Jude had chosen to live but the heater wasn’t really working despite it was just above freezing outside and Jude had never fixed the broken floorboard by the kitchen or the spot of mold by the laundry room. There were piles of dirty clothes and rags everywhere and Jude’s knives and his guns and an empty grease-stained pizza box on the sofa which may or may not have been the same pizza box Bruce had seen on his first visit here. Bruce knew Jude liked being at his penthouse because he came willingly, he came willingly and he never did anything without wanting to and — “I just can’t see how you could — I mean has it been worth it?”

Jude was watching him with his brow still furrowed. “You don’t have to give up your company and your cushy house to be with me, Wayne, if that’s what’s — ”

“No,” Bruce said, “no that’s not — I mean more the people. The people you knew before. Your parents.” Leo and Nina. Bruce had a very vague memory of Nina and Martha having tea together at the manor on one of Leo’s visits to Gotham; Nina had been showing Martha Jude’s baby pictures. Leo had asked Bruce if he wanted siblings and Bruce had said no, not really, and everyone had laughed. It was summer 1981. In another four years both of his parents would be dead.

Jude’s mouth twisted. He took his hand from Bruce’s face and walked to the couch to sit. He knocked the pizza box to the floor with one foot as an invitation for Bruce to join him. “My parents are in Chicago,” he said. “When I came back from Dymphna’s for my senior year I got the impression they didn’t really know what to do with me. They were kind and all but when I said I wanted to come out here for nursing school I could tell they were relieved.”

“You were here for nursing school?”

“Uh-huh. I went to William Paterson.” He smiled. “It’s in Wayne.”

Bruce smiled too. Then he said, “When’d you graduate?”

Jude’s face didn’t so much shift as it — flickered, or something. His eyes tightened a little at their centers and he smiled again, a little ruefully. “Arkham got me before I could,” he said.

Bruce tried not to wince. He remembered the last conversation they’d had like this, and Jude’s reaction: I don’t like pity, Wayne, so he rearranged his face as best he could and said only, “Why didn’t you go to school in Chicago?”

“I just really — needed a change,” Jude said. “Like I said my parents weren’t exactly thrilled to have to deal with me — ‘oh sorry Mr. Baker, we can’t fix your son, personality disorders don’t respond to medication…’ Anyway I liked Gotham when I was growing up. I wanted to be near so I could visit. And when I went back home after Arkham my parents had split up, so — I guess being away from their f*ck-up son didn’t help their marriage after all — ”

“Jude — ”

“I don’t miss any of it, no,” he said, a bit sharply. “I don’t miss the pity or the staring or my parents f*cking tiptoeing around everything they said to me so they wouldn’t set me off. I don’t miss only being convenient to have around when whatever issues could be paid off. People are really f*cking interested in fixing other people when it can be done with money. Pills and therapy and whatever the f*ck. Otherwise you’re just a lost cause. They didn’t give a sh*t at Dymphna’s once they realized. They’ve never given a sh*t at Arkham. Your pal Ainsworth — ”

“He’s not — ”

“ — your f*cking coworker Ainsworth hated that doping me up doesn’t do sh*t. Didn’t f*cking stop him from trying, though — ”

“That’s the third time you’ve — ”

“ — so my point is I don’t give a sh*t about my life before. There isn’t a reason for me to visit my parents. I don’t give a sh*t about them and they probably don’t want to see me. If I, if I really wanted to have all that back there would be so much — it wouldn’t be me, you understand? The Jude my parents knew, the Jude you remember from sixteen years ago — that isn’t me anymore. I’d have working hot water and a flatscreen and a walk-in shower like you — but I can just go to your place for that sh*t. It isn’t me. And I don’t, I don’t want him back.” He exhaled; Bruce noticed his hands were shaking where he had them resting against his knees. “I don’t want him.”

He was quiet for a while after. Bruce put his hand palm up on the cushion between them. Jude looked down and his mouth twitched; he curled their fingers together. His nails were flaked with blood. Bruce wondered what he’d been doing in Metuchen. Finally Jude said,

“People who won’t accept people without forcing them to change are sh*t. People who try to use money as an excuse — people who are only interested as long as it’s beneficial — ”

When the chips are down, these, uh, these “civilized” people? They’ll eat each other. Bruce squeezed Jude’s hand. I had no idea, he wanted to say, wished he could say, remembering also a similar conversation they’d had at the penthouse, the night they first met — no idea you were speaking from experience.

“ — dealing with that is not worth it. Nothing from my old life is worth that. But like I already told you, you don’t have to change anything about your life to stay. I don’t care. As long as you’re happy.” He glanced sideways at Bruce, and Bruce swallowed. Nodded.

“I’m happy,” he said, quietly. It didn’t feel like a lie, and that made it worse. “I am.”

Jude’s thumb stroked slowly over the backs of Bruce’s knuckles. It was a shockingly gentle motion; it was always shocking to Bruce how much tenderness Jude was capable of, and how much violence.

“So what’s the purpose behind you coming here and talking to me about this sh*t?” he asked. “Or are you just trying to figure out my evil villain backstory.” He snorted, and Bruce laughed too. Then he sighed.

“I, uh — I had… a colleague of mine quit today.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, uh — your dad might’ve known him, actually, he was with the company for a long time… Lucius Fox? — anyway he — we were friends, and he quit.”

“Huh.” Jude shifted a little, so that he was leaning against the back of the couch. “Wasn’t he old, though? So why is it — ”

“He quit because he found out that I’m with you,” Bruce interrupted, more sharply than he’d intended. Jude raised his eyebrows. Bruce exhaled; he closed his eyes. “…Sorry.”

Jude didn’t say anything.

“We were friends,” Bruce said. “I thought there wasn’t a limit to what he’d accept from me. But he just — he said he couldn’t condone…”

“I am the Joker,” Jude said, a bit dryly.

Bruce gave him a look. Jude sighed. He pressed down a little more firmly on Bruce’s knuckles.

“I told you,” he said, but softly. “It isn’t worth it.”

For some reason Bruce felt his chest tighten. Jude was looking at his mouth.

“Why did you come over?” he asked.

Bruce hesitated. Then: “I don’t know.” It wasn’t entirely a lie; as seemed to be the case more and more often around Jude he couldn’t quite tell what he was feeling. But the little he was able to glean he couldn’t say out loud, not yet. It was too embarrassing, and too exposed. He’d come to try and figure out — was it worth it? Was this what he really wanted? He’d lost Lucius — it was supposed to only be temporary, but still, Lucius was gone. The man who had inadvertently caused it to happen was sitting next to Bruce on the couch, holding his hand, trying kind of gently to hook their ankles together. He had blood under his nails and in his hair and he smelled like gasoline and sweat and he’d enticed Bruce into killing not one but two people —

— though Bruce knew that wasn’t entirely true either, since he’d been the one to pull the trigger, metaphorically and literally, both times —

— and Bruce wasn’t supposed to want this. He wasn’t. That hadn’t been the plan. That wasn’t supposed to be the plan now. But Lucius hadn’t believed that, and Bruce didn’t really either. Not like he used to. Lucius’ skepticism had been entirely justified. Bruce had no f*cking idea what he was doing.

Beside him Jude was watching him with almost no expression. He reached out with his free hand and touched Bruce’s cheek. “You don’t need anyone who tries to tell you what you can or can’t do,” he said, still softly. “I’m sorry about your friend. But you can’t change who you are.” His nails scratched gently at Bruce’s skin, along the fold of his ear. “This is who you are, Wayne.”

Bruce closed his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. He thought of the suit, waiting for him underground, and of Lucius’ face when he’d said yes, he’d killed Coleman. The tender creature who fit under his skin so much more easily and completely than Batman ever had… “Yeah, you’re right, Jude.”

Jude leaned in further and kissed Bruce’s temple. The lost, uncertain feeling was still there, but it became — as it always had — so much more manageable under Jude’s mouth. Bruce supposed it made him very selfish indeed, but he couldn’t give this up. He wasn’t ready to give this part of it up.

Two hours later, as they lay tangled together on the mattress:

“You never told me what happened.”

“When?”

“With the guy I replaced. The guy you killed. Remember? You said — ”

They were laying with Bruce’s head on Jude’s arm, their ankles hooked together, so of course Bruce felt Jude stiffen. It was barely perceptible but Bruce noticed because it wasn’t something that happened often if ever, and he had to work at not reacting. Rather than answer Jude took a pull on his cigarette and offered it to Bruce who took it, deliberately allowing their fingers to brush. Jude was staring at Bruce’s face, watching for something — Bruce didn’t know what. After a while he rolled over, the sharp edge of his toenail digging into Bruce’s calf as he uncrossed their ankles. He tugged his arm out from beneath Bruce’s head and sat up. The scars — the one long scar on his arm, and all the others — the bruises, the burns all crossing his back. Bruce reached out to touch and felt Jude stiffen again.

“Does it really matter?” he asked. “You’re here now. You’re better at the job than he was. He was a waste of space and my time and you aren’t.”

Bruce understood what wasn’t being vocalized which was that Jude didn’t want to talk about it. What he didn’t understand was why Jude was being weird about it. Usually he wasn’t shy as to his feelings if Bruce overstepped in some way, though of course of late that had been happening less and less. But still he didn’t hide things from Bruce, not the way he used to. Bruce pulled on the cigarette and ashed it out against the sheets before sitting up too. He tripped his fingers up the base of Jude’s spine. He said his name, quietly.

Jude got up, sheets falling off his hips and winding down his legs to pool tangled and disheveled at his feet. “We’re late,” he said. “Text Nell and tell him we’ll just meet him there.” He wouldn’t look over at Bruce as he tugged his shorts out from the heap of their combined clothing. Bruce couldn’t read him as well this way but he was smart enough not to press. He got his phone out of his own discarded pants pocket and shot off the appropriate text. Two minutes later Cornell replied:

Ok c u soon.

Jude had already dressed and gone into the bathroom to touch up his greasepaint. Bruce slipped on his own clothes and headed in to join him. His face appeared in the mirror over Jude’s shoulder. When Jude saw him he shoved down whatever expression was threatening to come onto his face.

“Jude — ”

“Make yourself useful, Wayne. Get the nine millimeter, it’s in the silverware drawer.”

In spite of himself Bruce was briefly distracted by this seemingly inane statement. “What the f*ck’s it doing there.”

“Dunno, just where I left it.” In the mirror Jude’s eyes were bisected by a little crack and the pointillist splatters of his toothpaste. They were arch in their look, and pointed. Bruce sighed. He couldn’t help dropping a kiss on Jude’s shoulder as he walked out and was relieved when he was allowed, and more so still that Jude didn’t stiffen again. Perhaps Bruce had imagined it. Or perhaps it just didn’t mean anything in the first place.

In the kitchen he grabbed the gun and made sure it was loaded. Through the window he could see where the sun had gone down. He heard the Narrows waking, the whor*s calling from the sidewalks, the dogs barking, gunshots. Eventually Jude appeared from the bathroom looking marginally less like a trainwreck. As they walked together out the apartment and down the stairs Jude took Bruce’s hand, and Bruce tried to wipe his mind clean of everything except the job, because he knew Jude wanted it that way.

The meeting and subsequent interrogation went down as usual. At least the interrogation part of it did. Jude was off, though — he was quiet. Generally if he came to a job and didn’t speak he still walked around, pacing hyenalike and tense, shoulders caged and hunched, growling softly and threateningly and playing around with his knives. Tonight though he stood in the corner watching the proceedings with his arms folded and eyes narrowed. It served to throw the victim even more than usual, so it worked fine, but it threw Bruce too. He couldn’t stop looking over at Jude being so still and quiet. Cornell had to jab him in the ribs to get him to focus and even then he couldn’t stop. All the same he got the job done and afterwards Reznor and Weiland headed out to pay a visit to the ex-wife so as to demand money from her. Cornell, Kowalczyk, and Vedder stayed behind to clean the bloodspill. Himself Bruce was willing to do whatever but after he’d wiped his fingerprints off everything and pocketed the gun and his knife Jude grabbed his wrist — shocking him, the most he’d moved since they’d arrived — and tugged him towards the door.

“We’re going early,” he said, without turning nor even hardly slowing down. “Don’t f*ck anything up.”

“We won’t, boss,” Cornell said. As they walked out he glanced at Bruce with his eyebrows furrowed and all Bruce could do was shake his head, clueless. Kowalczyk mouthed, good luck, and then they were out. The air bit Bruce’s skin. His feet and Jude’s crunched in dirty snow as they made their way to the Mustang. Fresh snow fell jaggedly in the streetlight. Bruce watched Jude watching it. He seemed distracted as he had all evening; Bruce had never seen him like this, not for this long, and it scared him. He wasn’t sure how to broach the subject primarily because Jude had almost entirely stopped being reticent with him; he was out of practice with it. So he didn’t; he just got in the car, turned on the heater, and didn’t say anything. Jude asked could they get Burger King and Bruce went to the drive thru and let Jude lean across his lap to order. The food came quickly and Bruce started to pull out of the parking lot but Jude told him to stay, so he pulled into one of the empty spaces, turned down the radio — Seether’s “Fine Again” — and waited for Jude to talk. For a long time he didn’t, sitting in silence, munching on his fries, picking at the bread around his burger, sucking pickle juice off his fingers. Finally though he glanced over at Bruce and gave him a look of clearly feigned surprise that he was sitting there watching him eat. He held out a fry smeared with ketchup:

“Wanna break your stupid diet and share?” He was smiling a little but Bruce could see it faltering, ready to break like shattered glass. His makeup was running despite he’d just reapplied it and he looked tired beneath the bravado and the constant manic edge. He looked f*cking exhausted and Bruce reached out — hesitantly, remembering the way he’d stiffened earlier — and took his hand. Momentarily Jude stilled against him; then he flipped his hand over beneath Bruce’s. He took a final sip of his co*ke, rolled the window down, and tossed it out along with his burger wrapper and his half-empty carton of fries.

“Hey — ”

“You gonna start a fundraiser to have them install trashcans in every empty parking lot space, Wayne?”

Bruce snorted. He squeezed Jude’s hand a little and Jude glanced down:

“Wanna f*ck?”

“No, I — ”

“I mean I’m not really sure this is the most ideal place but — ”

“Jude — ”

“ — you know I think maybe we better take it to the backseat, more room to spread out — ”

“Is everything okay?”

Jude gave him a look. “Yes.”

Bruce gave back the same look. Jude rolled his eyes. He was quite good at it. With him it still hadn’t lost that teenage edge of petulance.

“Jude.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“You’ve been weird all evening.”

“Aren’t I always.”

“What?”

“Weird. I’m always weird, Wayne.” He grinned. It caught manic sparks in his eyes. The knife edge of violence. “Or haven’t you noticed.”

“Jude, c’mon.” Bruce turned the radio off entirely, then winced — it had been playing Smashing Pumpkins — but Jude didn’t make a big deal about it which was perhaps the most concerning thing of the whole evening. “I — look, I just want to talk to you — ”

“I don’t know what else you would call running that pretty mouth of yours for so long — ”

Bruce sighed. He was frustrated and he could see in Jude’s face he was glad. He thought perhaps Jude wanted a fight; perhaps he thought it would make it easier for Bruce to forget. Or perhaps he wanted to f*ck so Bruce would forget. Or perhaps he wanted both. Oftentimes their sex did feel like both: bloody and bruised knuckles and skin slapping and teeth on the shoulders, fingers pulling, hair gripping, bruises dug into ribs into hips into the waist — the easiest part of Jude to grip for support, and anyway it was impossible for Bruce to support himself any other way than grabbing him. He liked sex with Jude and he knew it was being offered now as an easy out and a distraction but Bruce couldn’t let go the clear evidence something was wrong. He’d seen Jude high and he’d seen him angry, crawling out of his f*cking skin with it, boiling out of himself, raging violent unhinged cackle as he tore open another wound in the metaphorical walls of the city. He’d seen Jude close to overdosing on chlorpromazine —

— the first fatalistic meeting, so long ago now it was another life —

— and then coming back from it, the brilliant glowing lucidity returning to his eyes, the irises sharpening, the anger returning, the pulsating fury running subcutaneous and constant through him. Constant unless he was asleep and even sleeping sometimes he was twitching and growling under his breath like a dog. Bruce had seen him like that for a long time now but he’d never seen him like this, restless and uncertain, not to this degree, not to the point where he hid whatever it was from Bruce. He didn’t like it; it unsettled him, which in and of itself was unsettling because Jude hadn’t had that effect on Bruce in a long time. Bruce knew he needed to take care of this, whatever it was, because he was pretty sure it was his fault — Jude had gotten weird after Bruce had asked that question at the apartment. Shockingly Jude hadn’t pulled his hand away yet and so Bruce squeezed again and said his name, and then he said,

“Look, I know, I remember we just had a conversation about this the other day, I know you don’t like pity. I know you don’t want to be fixed. I’m not trying to — And I’m not trying to press. But if something’s wrong.”

“Yes, something’s wrong.” Jude glanced at Bruce sideways. “You haven’t eaten yet.”

“Jude — ”

“I know you’re not gonna eat Burger King so c’mon, drive us to f*cking… I don’t know, c’mon, let’s go to Denny’s. Eve’ll give you free pancakes if you show her that bruise — ”

“I am not f*cking going anywhere for anything until you — ”

Jude arched an eyebrow. He extracted his hand and Bruce watched him begin to pick at the dead broken skin under the beds of his nails. “I don’t remember telling you you could negotiate anything with me, Wayne.”

“Yeah? Well, you’re the one who wanted to leave the scene of an interrogation early, Jude. You never leave anything early, you’re always the last one out, but you were acting like you couldn’t wait to get out of there tonight and you’ve been weird all evening and don’t f*cking say that sh*t again about how you’re always weird because it’s different tonight.”

“Maybe I was just horny.”

“So why didn’t we just go back to the apartment, or to the penthouse,” Bruce said.

Jude didn’t answer. He still wasn’t looking at him; he was staring down at his lap, his stupid f*cked ruined hands, the skin smeared with greasepaint, the nailbeds bloody and torn up like disturbed gravesites. Bruce reached out and took his jaw so as to turn his head and force him to look. He tried to keep his hand gentle on Jude’s skin; after all he was still the Joker. It was easy to forget sometimes, because they were in each other’s beds every night and Jude liked him, but he was still that rabid feral dog fighting wild and unhinged with his knives and his fists, and one wrong step was all it would take. Bruce turned the dangerous paint-smeared face to his with as much gentleness as he was capable of and he said,

“If you really don’t wanna talk about it we can just go f*ck and I’ll forget it. I won’t bring it up anymore. But I need you to say that. Out loud. Looking at me.”

Jude’s eyes skipped over Bruce’s face, down to his mouth, back to his eyes, then to his forehead. Again Bruce could see him searching for whatever it was he wanted to see or not see. After a moment he jerked his head out of Bruce’s grasp and fumbled for the door latch. Bruce popped the locks and Jude stumbled out into the bitter snow. He stood for a moment like he didn’t know how he’d gotten out of the car. The occasional passing car smeared light down his back, graying out the purple of his vest, washing out the green of his button down. He stood there long enough snow began to gather on the leather seats of the Mustang.

It’s cold, Bruce wanted to say, c’mon, Jude, you’re being f*cking stupid, but he knew about how far that would get him, so he forced himself to sit, hands clenched on his thighs, waiting. At last Jude slid back into the car, shut the door, and sat there, just sat there shivering, shaking his legs up and down. Bruce reached over to rub his hands and he jerked away, glaring at the dashboard.

“I’m gonna say this one f*cking time, Wayne, and then you’re never going to bring it up again, so I hope you’re f*cking listening.”

“Okay — ”

“Don’t f*cking talk.” He turned his glare from the dashboard to Bruce, who instantly bit down on the inside of his mouth. At last Jude said,

“The guy you replaced was named Stipe. He was with me for — I don’t know. A year, maybe. In and out of Arkham a lot. Your friends on the board had a hard time pinning him down. Ainsworth liked him — ” the tone nearly lilting. “We both got thrown in around the same time after all that stuff I did last summer. You remember, with the ferries and all.”

Rachel. Slowly Bruce counted to ten in his head. “Yeah, I remember.”

“So in September I busted out but he stayed. By the time he got out it had been almost another month and he was annoyed with me for not trying to rescue him. Like he was some f*cking princess locked in a tower. I said it’s not my f*cking job to get you out and you’ve never had an issue with it before so why are you bitching about it now. You know — ” indicating Bruce — “how I feel about dissention in my ranks so I told Stipe whatever problem he was having he’d better clear it up or else he’d be out of a job. But he started showing up late to meetings and not going on drug runs or whatever assignments I gave him. He botched everything pretty badly so I told him he could pack his sh*t and leave.

“That night we had a job transporting a huge batch of co*ke out of Hoboken. We were supposed to be doing work with the Ricardo family. The job was big enough I went but I brought Nell and Rez because I’m not a f*cking idiot. We went into a warehouse to get the stuff and I got knocked out. Next thing I know I’m on a mattress on my back handcuffed and gagged and Stipe’s standing over me saying he’s been a Ricardo all along and he was just infiltrating my gang for information — ”

Bruce winced; thankfully Jude didn’t seem to notice —

“ — and now I’m gonna get what I f*cking deserve. He got — ”

His hands started their incessant picking again —

“ — he turned me over and I couldn’t, whatever drugs he gave me were strong and I couldn’t resist. Cornell and Rez were knocked out in a corner and Stipe got, he pushed my face into the mattress, he — I tried telling him, you know I love being bound and helpless, this isn’t exactly torture, but my mouth wasn’t working or something and I couldn’t talk, and he — ” Jude’s knee was pistoning; he wrenched his sleeve up, the fabric tearing a little, and showed Bruce the scar, the long knotted line of flesh Bruce had long-since stopped trying to ask about — “with a knife, with a knife I’d f*cking given him, and I guess I made a noise because he said, he said ‘but I thought you liked this’, and I couldn’t, I couldn’t move, he was there, I felt — every f*cking thing he did, and then it was over but he was a f*cking idiot — ”

He drew in a breath. Outside the snow was still falling raggedly.

“ — he took the cuffs off after and told me to get up and get him a drink of water. So I was still pretty out of it and there was f*cking, there was blood all over everything but you know me, Wayne. What did I do.”

Bruce’s mouth was totally dry. He had to swallow a few times to get it working again:

“You killed him.”

“Bingo,” Jude said softly. “I killed him. I used that same knife and I took his organs out one at a time and I pinned them to his body. Nell and Rez woke back up and we took care of the whole Ricardo family. We burned the warehouse down. We lost that shipment of drugs.” His hands were twisting over and over themselves. He was grinding his jaw so hard Bruce could hear it, the enamel of his teeth scraping together. The hard pain in his eyes. “So that’s why I had an opening in my ranks in October and that’s the last time I’m ever f*cking talking about it.”

Bruce was having trouble breathing or something. He knew Jude didn’t want sympathy or pity; he’d be furious if Bruce tried to say or do anything. He was trembling a little in the passenger seat, holding himself tense, staring at the snow and at his hands and at the floor of the Mustang. Bruce didn’t know what else to do except turn the radio back on and put the car in drive. So he did that. The DJ was playing Mudhoney’s self-titled album. Bruce’s hands were shaking on the wheel. The snow was falling. Bruce wished this Stipe f*cker was still alive so he could gut him. He’d do it in a way that Stipe would live through at least part of it. He’d hold his intestines up to his eyes —

“Wayne.” Jude’s hand was on his arm. He realized he was driving in the center of the lanes, straddling the line, going seventy. “Hey. Do you need to pull over.”

“No.” Bruce forced himself to slow, to stop grinding his jaw — the pain bursting out along his teeth, familiar dull ache. He got into one lane and eased up on the gas pedal until he was practically crawling. “No, I’m okay.”

But the further he drove the worse he felt. Finally three miles out from the business district he pulled over, wrenching the ignition off and slumping over the steering wheel. He was shaking so hard his muscles were cramping. Jude put his hand on his shoulder:

“Wayne. I don’t want this. Okay? I need you to stop. I told you. It’s over now. That’s enough.”

Bruce looked at him. He had that familiar beautiful stubborn look on his face, the one that brooked no argument. Bruce knew he wanted him to nod so he did. Jude’s fingers slid up from his arm to his jaw and tilted his face downwards. He kissed him across the console, the slow wet heat of his mouth, the grease of his dinner, the slick of his facepaint, the rough edges of his scars. He fumbled his fingers in Bruce’s hair, long nails scratching gently at his scalp. Bruce pressed his own hand into Jude’s hair, the long unwashed locks of it.

“It’s getting cold,” Jude said finally, after a long time. They were just sitting there breathing into each other’s mouths more than kissing. It was close to midnight and they were basically alone on the street. The most dangerous criminal in Gotham and he was in Thomas Wayne’s car closeish to Christmas with his hand in Bruce’s hair and Bruce’s hand on his scars. Bruce used to fight people like him, he used to fight him, but now he’d fight for him, he’d kill for him. He had killed for him. It was growing more and more difficult every day to imagine turning him or any of them in to Gordon, pretending he cared about what he’d done. Pretending he was the same Bruce Wayne who stood in the hallway of his own penthouse in October and thought about making the Joker crumble. When he crumbled now for Bruce it was in a wholly different way than Bruce could’ve ever imagined wanting or enjoying, but he didn’t want it any other way now. He didn’t want anything else.

He tightened his fingers in Jude’s hair. He remembered one of their earlier conversations; Jude had asked him if he had a possessive streak or something, and Bruce had said yes. That had been weeks ago, back when Bruce was still immersed in his own lies, but he hadn’t been lying about the possessiveness. It was still there now. It was stronger than it had ever been for Rachel. He’d killed to keep Jude safe. He’d do it again. He’d kill just for Jude’s entertainment, he’d kill as a gladiator in the Colosseum. He’d stand with his arms at his sides, chest soaked in blood, dead slaves and dead gladiators strewn around him. His eyes on the emperor, and the emperor’s eyes on him, and the approving raised thumb — and Bruce’s arms and his head and all of him lowered in deference, in obedience, not blind, not faulty, but out of desire, and out of gratitude for the new wholeness within him —

“We’re going home,” Bruce said. His voice was shockingly rough; his fingers still curled in Jude’s hair. Jude’s tongue came out to wet at his mouth, and he grinned. He pressed his forehead to Bruce’s, and Bruce pressed back, stroking his thumb over Jude’s scars. Then he released him, turned the ignition over, and pulled back onto the road.

The suit was still in the bunker. For some reason this surprised Bruce. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, if perhaps he’d thought that lack of use or lack of interest would cause it to deteriorate or else just magically vanish from existence. But it was still there and all his stuff was still there with it, his computers and his incinerators and the other medical supplies he hadn’t brought up to his own bathroom in the penthouse. The firing range which he’d used to try and find the owner of the thumbprint the day Jude had tried to assassinate Garcia. And when he pushed the button the container came out of the ground and the suit was inside its metallic mesh walls along with his grappling hooks and his throwing knives and all of it. Everything Lucius had made for him.

He walked over to it as its doors opened. The suit was covered in a thin layer of dust after having been unused and underground for so many months. The mask glared at him from behind blank and accusing eyes. When he reached out to touch the suit itself the Kevlar felt cold beneath his hands. Beneath his nails he saw for the first time a faint layer of greasepaint, also perhaps blood, left from the interrogation. Just half an hour ago he’d been curled up in bed with Jude, nose tucked into his neck, breathing in the warm familiar scent of his skin. He’d been trailing his fingers down Jude’s ribs and over Stipe’s scar on his arm and Travis’ bullet wound which bisected it. Everyone had left their mark on Jude, everyone had tried to ruin him or take ownership of him in some way but he was only Bruce’s. Before anything else he was Bruce Wayne’s.

He took down the mask because it was the lightest and he looked at it. It was cold in his hands. In the penthouse half a mile away Jude was waiting for him; Bruce had promised him Denny’s, and said he might be a while getting it because he needed to check on some of his side companies while he was out. It was just one more lie to feel guilty over though of course it wasn’t as bad as this. Nothing really was as bad as this. Well, this combined with the fact that Bruce had joined his gang to f*cking infiltrate it and ruin his life, no better than his f*cking rapist. He’d wanted to ruin Jude’s life and Cornell’s and Reznor’s and all of them. People he loved. His family, and he didn’t know when it had changed. It had been so gradual coming on he hadn’t noticed until he was in that hole in the ground and unable to claw his way out and not wanting to.

He turned the mask over. The rubber ears looked ridiculous; the whole thing looked ridiculous. He remembered that Halloween shop where he’d bought his contacts, the fake suit on the wall. There was very little difference between that and this. He couldn’t even remember how it had felt to put this on anymore. To hide his face and commit violent acts under the guise of justice and goodness when all of it, every single time he went out, every building he threw himself from, every punch he landed, was all born from his own selfish desperation. He was Bruce Wayne now, and he was Mascis, and they were one in the same. He didn’t need this sh*t anymore. He didn’t need it.

He threw the mask on the floor of the cage and pushed the button again. The doors slid shut. The container rattled a little going back in the ground. Bruce watched until the top of it had sealed completely into the concrete again. Then he rode back to the surface and drove out to get a plate of sausage biscuits for Jude and pancakes for himself.

Chapter 9 Notes:

graphic descriptions of what i guess could be considered self-harm in this chapter

Chapter Text

Jude had partially put Christmas lights up by the time Bruce got to the apartment. They hung in red and blue and green strands around the walls and draped over the television. Jude was wrapped up in part of the cord, trying to loop it over the record player without blocking his way to his albums. He was blasting Faith No More’s Album of the Year.

“You need help?” Bruce asked, shutting the door behind him and stepping over a mess of wires and filthy clothes.

“Uh-uh,” Jude muttered, but one of his arms was stuck straight up over the side of the bookshelf his record player rested on. Bruce walked over to him and slid one hand slowly down the back of his shoulder, over the ridged scar. Jude stilled. Bruce felt him press back minutely into his hand. With his other hand Bruce reached over and turned the volume down just enough to where he could hear himself talk.

“If you lift it here — ” Jude mumbled, shifting his shoulder where the cord had gotten tangled into a vicious knot. Bruce pulled and tugged at it and Jude ducked his head down and between the two of them they were able to get the wire over his head and settled properly against the shelves. Bruce’s fingertips brushed the back of Jude’s neck, the soft pale skin and the whorls of dark blond hair. Jude exhaled once, softly. He turned partway in Bruce’s arms. He was holding the rest of the cord in his hands like a fragile animal.

“I didn’t know you liked Christmas decorations,” Bruce said.

Jude raised an eyebrow. “What,” he said, “I can’t be festive?” He stepped away from and around Bruce, and Bruce felt his chest tighten slightly. It hadn’t gone wrong yet but it was apt to at any moment. For some reason it was difficult to remember he was dealing with someone who thought and felt very differently from everyone else. Usually it made him wonder if perhaps it was so difficult because he also thought so differently from everyone else.

“No,” he said, keeping his voice quiet and turning to watch Jude as he started stringing the lights up over his own bedroom door. He turned the volume down further and Jude shot him a look, but didn’t seem overly irritated. “I just meant — ”

“Think really carefully how you want to end that sentence, Wayne.”

Bruce sighed. “You’re not exactly the first person I think of when I think about Christmas cheer,” he said, a little flat. It surprised a laugh out of Jude, though, and the set of his shoulders relaxed slightly, so Bruce figured it was okay if he walked back over and put his hand on Jude’s neck again.

“I just like the colors,” Jude said, after a moment. “At Dymphna’s they were big on art therapy, and I figured out really fast which colors made me feel… calmer, and which didn’t.”

“And these — ”

“Yeah.” Jude seemed reluctant to move from Bruce’s grasp this time, so Bruce took advantage of the moment to lean in and press a kiss to the side of his neck. His breath shocked in his throat, or something. He had these pretty tendrils of pale greenish hair against his neck and Bruce couldn’t resist touching them with the tips of his fingers.

Jude made a tight noise. “Did you just come over ‘cause you thought I was gonna f*ck you or something?”

Bruce couldn’t — quite — tell if he was joking, so he backed away a second time. “You asked me over,” he reminded him, as gently as he could. Jude gave him a look, like, don’t f*cking backtalk, but he also set the lights on the floor in a puddle and took Bruce’s hands in his.

“We can if you want,” he said. “You know I like your mouth.”

Bruce dropped his eyes to the aforementioned part of Jude’s face. It would be easy to just go with the warning signs and give over to Jude’s suggestion, because it was clear he wanted to distract Bruce from — something — but he couldn’t quite make himself do it. Still with their fingers tangled he let Jude walk him past the record player and to the sofa. Jude hooked his ankle around Bruce’s and put his hand on his thigh.

“Why these colors?” Bruce asked.

Jude paused. His eyes flickered over the lights. They were reflecting on his skin and in his hair because he didn’t have any other lights on and it was getting dark outside.

“I really like Patton’s vocals,” he said, glancing at the record player. “Did I ever tell you when I was like eight or nine they used to play ‘Epic’ basically on loop on MTV — ”

“Jude — ”

“ — I was obsessed with that sh*t for so long, you know, and — ”

“ — if you don’t want to tell me it’s — ”

“ — I read in Hit Parader one time that he has the largest vocal range of any singer in the rock industry, which, you know, you can tell I aspired to emulate — ”

“Jude,” Bruce said again, and Jude blinked. He wet his mouth.

“Yes?”

Bruce took a breath. “If you don’t want to talk about it it’s okay, you can just tell me, you don’t have to — ”

“Sweetheart, weren’t you paying attention to dear Dr. Ainsworth during all those board meetings? I have all sorts of unhealthy coping mechanisms and defense strategies I just can’t let go of no matter how many drugs they force down my — ”

The nails of his other hand had been digging into Bruce’s palm as he spoke and one of them at last broke the skin. Bruce winced without meaning to and Jude looked down, as though just noticing that he was grasping Bruce’s hand. His eyebrows furrowed together over the bridge of his nose and he brought the hand slowly to his mouth and kissed the wound. When he let Bruce’s hand go his mouth — bare of paint — had a spot of blood at the center, and the sight of it made Bruce’s throat go completely dry. They were both quiet for a while, looking at Bruce’s hand. Then Jude sighed.

“I don’t know,” he said. “About the colors. I don’t know. That’s just — through trial and error. Whatever. I liked watching TV there. They had one in the rec room for the good little girls and boys when we took our meds and said please and thank you and didn’t make the doctors have to work too hard.”

Bruce’s chest tightened at the hard, scathing undertone. He squeezed Jude’s hand.

“Better than Arkham, though,” he said. “No one on disturbed ever got to watch TV.”

“You weren’t on disturbed at Dymphna’s?”

“Uh-uh. That was back when everyone thought I could be managed.” He shot Bruce a grin. “But we know better now, don’t we.”

Bruce wanted to lean in and kiss his cheek. He wanted to stroke his hair or squeeze his hand again or say something generic and comforting. But he knew Jude would get angry with him for it, for anything resembling pity, so he just smiled back. “Yeah,” he said. “We do.”

Jude’s hand flexed slightly where it still rested against Bruce’s leg. “You know how TV light is always blue. So that was the first indication. But also I’ve liked green since I lived in New Orleans — ”

“You lived in New Orleans?”

Momentarily Jude froze. Bruce watched him visibly untense the muscles in his neck. “For a little while, yeah,” he said, finally. His eyes were focused somewhere off Bruce’s shoulder. “After 9/11.” He pulled his hands away from Bruce and started digging one thumbnail into the bed of the other. Bruce said,

“So wait — why green for New Orleans, then?” and Jude shot him a look that was so nakedly grateful Bruce was incapable of doing anything but smiling at him.

“Mardi Gras,” Jude said, and gestured at himself. He was wearing a dark green button down over dark violet skinny jeans. His favorite color combination. It clicked into place and Bruce laughed, surprised.

“Really,” he said. “All this time — ”

Jude was smiling again too, just barely and tucked mostly into his cheek. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “I have a reputation or whatever.”

“Of course,” Bruce said, lifting Jude’s hand to his mouth to kiss the paint-stained knuckles. Jude curled his hands down and against Bruce’s. Outside somewhere glass shattered against concrete.

“And the red?” Bruce asked, after a while.

Again, Jude’s eyes darted over to the lights. It was pitch-black outside now and the reflection of them on his skin was otherworldly and strangely erotic.

“Rage,” he said, after a long time. “Anger.” His eyes went to Bruce’s mouth. “I don’t need to explain to you of all people why that’s calming, do I.”

Coleman’s blood on the mirror. The stumps of Travis’ fingers soaking his palm and his clothes while he screamed. The wild spill of Mitchell’s blood from his throat. The cold, naked rage, maskless and suitless and unhinged — and the staggering, euphoric relief afterwards —

“No,” Bruce said, softly. He touched Jude’s scar with the pad of his thumb, and watched him close his eyes. “No, you don’t.”

“And where are these from?”

They were lying the following morning in a heap together on Jude’s mattress under his threadbare filthy sheets, winter sun pooling over their bodies, onto their exposed legs, onto the floor. Jude made a querying noise and shifted and Bruce touched his cheeks, running his fingers over the ridged and prominent scars.

“These. The ones you like talking about all the time.” It was meant to make Jude laugh but he only sighed, and Bruce swallowed. Okay, different tactic.

“Look,” he said, “you’ve already told me about the worst one,” trailing his hand down to the scar on Jude’s arm, then back to his face. “Unless — ”

“No, it’s fine,” Jude said. All the same he shifted, forcing Bruce’s hand to fall away, and sat up so that the blanket pooled around his lap. The sunlight caught in his hair, turning it chlorine green, pretty sparkling ethereal color. Bruce wanted to put his hands in it, his fingers in the soft curling strands. Instead he lay there looking up at him, the tension in his jaw, the way his fists curled against his thighs. At last unable to stand it anymore Bruce reached up and touched the base of his spine:

“Jude — ”

His throat moved jerkily as he swallowed. “What.”

“You don’t have to tell me if — ”

“I said it’s fine,” Jude snapped. “You’re so f*cking lucky I like you as much as I do else I would’ve killed you weeks ago for continuing to say that sh*t to me.” He swung his feet over the side of the mattress, shoving the blanket away as he stood. He stretched his arms over his head and the joints and the bones popped along his spine and his neck and his shoulders. He walked to the closet and pulled from the hanger on the door his favorite robe: purple and green terrycloth, soft to the touch, smelling of him: warmth, cigarettes, blood (sometimes), the chemical scent of his hair dye, his greasepaint. Bruce himself had worn it a few times here and there after sex when he wanted something from the kitchen and didn’t feel like putting his shorts on. Wearing it now Jude looked smaller, infinitely smaller, like a different person almost. He seemed to shrink inside it. He wasn’t looking at Bruce and Bruce hated himself for it, for what he always seemed to do to Jude, upsetting him in whatever various ways. Jude left the room and Bruce heard him moving around outside and after a few seconds he got up, tugged his shorts on, and went to Jude where he was standing in the laundry room by the defunct washer, staring at the wiring. His hands trembled against its sides. Bruce walked up to him and said his name very, very quietly, and Jude tensed.

“I need to fix this,” he said.

Bruce stayed quiet. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say.

“It’s been broken since I moved in basically; I spend a f*cking fortune getting my sh*t dry cleaned, I need — ”

“Jude — ”

“ — to fix this, I need — ”

“Hey, it’s fine, look, what is it, do you need money or some— ”

The fist against his jaw was unexpected, cracking pain like lightning all down the side of his neck, exploding into his skull. “Shut the f*ck up,” Jude snarled, “stop f*cking making me into a f*cking charity case, Wayne.”

Reeling: “I’m not — ”

“I’m not a f*cking something you can f*cking maneuver and put into a container, I’m not — ”

“Jude, I didn’t — ”

He hit him again, harder this time. “Don’t f*cking interrupt,” he growled, and this time Bruce stayed quiet. He tasted blood in his mouth; he ran his tongue over it, then turned and spit onto the concrete floor. He stared at it. Jude stared at it. Then Jude said,

“I hate that you think I need to depend on you for every single f*cking thing because I don’t. I was just fine for years. What the f*ck do you think you’re doing to me, Wayne.”

Bruce had absolutely no idea where this was coming from. His jaw was throbbing.

“I just want a working washer/dryer set,” Jude said. “I can steal the money from the bank if I need to, I can take it out of the savings I — ” but he cut himself off, jaw clenched as tight as Bruce’s felt. Abruptly he banged his fist onto the washer and it echoed hollow and metallic through the room. His fist lashed out again, punching through the drywall behind it, hitting the brick underneath. Bruce winced because Jude did; he reached out and Jude snapped,

“Get away, get the f*ck away from me,” but Bruce was grabbing at his wrist, at his hand, pulling him closer:

“Let me see, just let me see — ”

and Jude was struggling and then he wasn’t. He was tense and angry in Bruce’s arms like a feral caged animal and then he was boneless and trembling. His knuckles were bloody and already swelling up, badly bruised, but nothing was sprained or broken. Eventually they both slid to the floor, Jude in Bruce’s lap, Bruce holding him, rocking him, just —

— holding on, feeling him breathe, feeling his heartbeat, feeling his skin fever hot and alive. Jude was shuddering, gasping, hand flexing in Bruce’s, face turned into his collarbone. He wasn’t quite crying but Bruce could feel dampness against his skin from Jude’s eyes. At last with a sort of shaking breath Jude drew back, pushed his hair from his face, and said,

“Well, huh.”

Bruce wanted to kiss him, but he was afraid of the reaction that might provoke, so he stayed quiet. He sat there looking at Jude in his lap, folded into his arms, shivering in his robe, staring blank and unseeing at the washer, the dent in the wall, the plaster on the floor. His blood on the floor. His blood on Bruce’s mouth. At last he reached out and wiped at it with his thumb, hand trembling, and he whispered,

“Wayne,”

and drew Bruce to him, pressing their foreheads together. “I’m sorry. I — ”

“It’s okay,” Bruce said. “I pushed too hard. I always push — ”

“Shh,” Jude said, “no, no self-pity here. It’s f*cking annoying and it’s boring.” He wiped Bruce’s mouth again before leaning in to kiss the sore swelling place he’d hit twice. Then he shifted out of Bruce’s arms and stood, stretching again, to hold out a hand for Bruce to hoist himself up on. When both of them were standing Jude said,

“When I get like that. It’s hard to remember where I am. What I’m doing. Who I’m with. I need — ” but he cut himself off again, looking sideways, teeth sunk into his lower lip. At last Bruce reached out and touched Jude’s shoulder. He whispered his name and Jude looked at him, eyebrows creased.

“You need,” Bruce prompted gently.

“I need…” Another pause. Then: “I need you here when it happens. I need you to keep me grounded.” Deep breath. “I need you to anchor me.”

It was the same cavernous drop Bruce always felt when Jude handed him things like this, things he couldn’t touch. When he gave him parts of himself nakedly, raw, flayed open, vulnerable; parts that had never seen the light of day nor been looked at even by him. With no way of supporting themselves they stood coltishly on wobbling legs, scared uncertain newborn things like the tender unself that had been born the day Bruce killed Coleman, the thing that breathed with him and thought for him and moved his hands and wore his face and answered to his name, the thing that was him only greater, only bigger, only more —

— it was in Jude too, it was him, but tender, raw, uncertain, and willing to step into Bruce’s hands, willing to trust, and Bruce was f*cking him over, lying to him —

He was looking at Bruce with his mouth twisted and tension building in his jaw so Bruce hurried to cup his jaw and say,

“How, Jude. Tell me,”

and then Jude was kissing him, biting his lower lip, sucking it into his mouth. He had his hand in Bruce’s hair which Bruce knew he loved; he was always playing with it, commenting on its length, and Bruce knew he should really get it cut. He shouldn’t keep it long the way he was doing, this wildness, it was too much. It should’ve been over weeks ago, Bruce should’ve turned Jude and all the others in to Gordon, should’ve taken up the suit, taken his punishment —

“Hold me,” Jude was saying, “I’m real when you’re holding me,”

and another part of Bruce fell away.

After a while Jude kissed Bruce’s cheek and leaned back against the washer. Bruce was expecting a change of subject; he knew how much Jude hated baring his soul, being naked and raw like this. He was therefore shocked when Jude said,

“I just get — ” pause — “weird when I think about this — ” gesturing at his scars — “I don’t know, Wayne, you do sh*t to me that — ”

“Jude, I promise if you’re not comfortable — ”

“Let me talk.” Jude held up his hand until Bruce quieted, then nodded once, tightly, not looking at him. Bruce was reminded viscerally of the day Jude had told him about Stipe. There was a sinking feeling in his chest, streaking down his arms, lightning hot and wary.

“I went to Dymphna’s the first time when I was seventeen,” Jude said. “The summer after my junior year of high — actually, no, it was right before school let out; the end of April ‘98, because I woke up one day and I couldn’t think. Or actually that’s a really simplified version of it because I was deteriorating all that year. Do you know how hard it is to feel like your mind is out of your control? I mean it’s hard enough now at twenty-seven but imagine it as a f*cking teenager, I just — ” he paused again, staring at the stain of Bruce’s blood on the floor. Bruce put his hand on Jude’s shoulder; he whispered,

“Sweetheart,”

and Jude looked at him for a long time — just looked — and then he said,

“I didn’t so much try to kill myself as I just wanted it to end. I don’t know; it was getting to a point where I couldn’t function in school and I couldn’t — ” he made a vague gesture at his head — “so I got a knife out of the drawer one night and — ”

Bruce drew in a sharp breath. Jude glanced at him sideways and let out a sort of breathless chuckle.

“What, is this too much for you, Wayne? Too much scary bad stuff for the — ”

“For f*ck’s sake,” Bruce snapped, “you know it’s not, keep f*cking going,” and Jude gave him the usual raised eyebrow which meant Bruce might be in trouble later, but he went on:

“ — so I got a knife and I took it in my bathroom and I ripped my face open. You wouldn’t f*cking believe the amount of — oh wait, yes, you would,” and he started laughing, glass sharp and painful — “of course you know, you — ” he hit Bruce’s shoulder a little, not hard, but Bruce could see the manic edge sliding back into his eyes from earlier and he hurried to get a hand on his wrist —

— I need you to anchor me —

— and he said his name. Jude looked at him. His tongue darted out to wet his mouth. He was looking at Bruce and trembling and after a moment he said — only slightly more calm —

“I must’ve made a sound or something because my mom found me slumped over on the floor, blood f*cking everywhere — I mean everywhere — and I remember her crying and I remember her calling the hospital but nothing beyond that. Like my memory’s just blank for a few days. The next thing I really remember is waking up at Dymphna’s and seeing my roommate and thinking, oh man, oh man, this is the real —

“But you know, none of those kids liked me. Right from the start none of them liked me. It was sh*t; I had this black thread in my face, I don’t know who the f*ck picked black f*cking stitches but I had this whole side — ” gesturing to the scar on his left cheek, the one that lay a little flatter and more parallel to his mouth — “done up and I wasn’t really all that attractive with it and no one forgot I guess. I had to deal with it even after I had the stitches out two or so weeks later, I just — and you know, we were at a f*cking psychiatric hospital, you’d think they would’ve been, I don’t know — ” he made another gesture, angrily, kind of jabbing —

“ — but I got them in the end.” Suddenly his voice dropped to that low rough tone, the one that crawled under Bruce’s skin and terrified him — and turned him on — and he saw Jude’s knuckles going white. “Yeah,” he murmured, “yeah, I never realized how hard it is to break, like really break a bone until — ” he glanced at Bruce; there was something in his eye Bruce couldn’t decipher — “and that’s why I’m still f*cked up over what you did to the dear doctor.”

Bruce’s heart didn’t so much stop as it skidded to a crawl.

“That f*cking taekwondo really got you, huh,” Jude said. Bruce couldn’t tell, he couldn’t f*cking tell if it was a trap, if Jude knew, if he’d figured it out somehow, despite everything… He looked at Jude’s face and Jude was looking back at him with his head tilted, the usual patient amused half-smile on his lips, and Bruce chanced it, he said,

“In fairness, I’m also thirty-three, and you were seventeen, so.”

Jude snorted. “Is that supposed to be an insult or.”

“What if it is.”

“It’s a weak one.” He reached out and hooked his fingers into the elastic waist of Bruce’s shorts. The mania had faded almost totally from his eyes and in its place was only affection. Affection Bruce felt guilty over stealing. Affection he didn’t deserve. Affection he knew he didn’t deserve.

“Well, that’s a weak response,” Bruce said back, forcing his eyes to stay on Jude’s despite the trembling which had started up in his chest. He stared at Jude’s scars as the meaning of the moment slowly sank in; the weight of what Jude had shared with him: broken bones, his first real act of violence — his insecurity and his long-buried anger and the things he felt, the things he’d felt for years, which he’d kept repressed, which had kept him trapped and suffocated.

Jude snorted again. “The way you f*cking talk to me, Wayne,” he murmured softly, almost admiringly. He leaned forward a little more still and pressed their mouths just barely together. Bruce could feel the raised edges of his scars and he whispered,

“What happened after?”

Jude sort of stilled against him. “After.”

“After you broke that kid’s arm or whatever.”

“Oh, yeah. Well I was on my way out anyway, so in the end they had to decide between actually reprimanding me and maintaining their image. Drainage got a bad enough reputation anyway, so — ”

“Drainage?”

“Yeah, where I lived.”

Bruce shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, “wait, are you f*cking with me?”

Jude pulled back enough Bruce could look into his eyes. “It’s a suburb of Chicago,” he said. “Dymphna’s kind of between it and Chicago but Drainage claims it for itself because Chicago has like five others and every small town has to have something.” He paused. The left side of his mouth pulled up. “Too bad I can’t tell everyone back home what I’ve been up to since I left our fair city. You think they’d put my face up on a billboard between the water tower and the strip club?”

“Probably,” Bruce said, and Jude laughed. Then he said,

“Yeah, so, they decided to just let it go, and of course getting to see the inside of my dad’s checkbook didn’t really hurt either. So I went through senior year with this f*cking scar on my face. And it’s funny, you know, thinking back on it, how many friends I had before vs. after; you know, people will show you who they really are when it comes down to it; people don’t much like freaks like you or me — ”

Bruce’s heart skidded again sort of. Don’t talk like one of them. You’re not.

“ — and they’re only willing to tolerate us as long as we act like they want us to. So of course you can imagine about how kind of a reception I got when I came back doped up and angry looking like roadkill — ”

“Yeah,” Bruce said, couldn’t help saying, “but like — sexy roadkill.”

Jude stared at him for a few seconds. Then he laughed. It was that same low, warm, lovely, unexpected thing Bruce knew, had gotten to know. He didn’t deserve this, either.

“Wayne, you charmer,” Jude said, and kissed the place behind Bruce’s ear.

Later Bruce was falling asleep curled against him on the sofa. The television was on low and the Christmas lights flickered behind his eyelids. He was warm and comfortable, arm around Jude’s waist, the soft rise and fall of his stomach beneath Bruce’s hand. Bruce’s face was tucked into Jude’s neck. At first when Jude started talking it was so quiet it was barely more than a vibration of his throat and Bruce thought perhaps he wasn’t supposed to hear:

“I did everything everyone asked of me for four years. I was medicated and I stayed quiet and I let people call me freak and hit me and stare and stare and stare and whisper and it still wasn’t enough. And once I realized it would never be enough, not for anyone, not my parents, not Chicago or Drainage or Gotham — not anyone — I decided to quit wasting my time. You know what I mean, don’t you, Wayne.”

Half-asleep Bruce could feel his fingers where they were curled around his and how they tightened infinitesimally. He could smell Jude’s awful beautiful scent in his hair and on his skin, sweat and blood and gasoline and chemicals. He lifted his head a little tiny bit so as to nuzzle his nose against Jude’s ear like a dog.

“Yeah, Jude,” he whispered. “Of course.”

It was the most honest Bruce could be with him, but it still gutted him alive.

The job itself was pretty routine, nothing big. There was blood everywhere afterwards because Weiland had kind of messily cut the woman’s throat open. Bruce and Cornell stayed behind to clean and dispose of the evidence while Weiland, Cobain, and Staley headed out to give Jude a report. Bruce was trying to hoist the woman’s body onto a plastic tarp so he and Cornell could wrap her up and put her in an incinerator. His hand slipped without his meaning to and streaked into the blood which had congealed along the floor. It left skidmarks like a movie crime scene, the whorls of his fingertips clearly etched into the tile. Cornell winced, glancing down:

“Rough,” he said. He tossed Bruce the container of Clorox wipes and a pair of latex gloves. “Sometimes I think the boss had the right idea.”

“The right idea?”

“Yeah.” Cornell wiggled his fingers, and Bruce remembered — lightning strike — in the seconds before he said it, overhearing at the MCU in July Gordon saying, no matches on prints, DNA, dental… “He scoured them off with acid or something. It was like that before we met and I never asked but like — he wears the gloves just to be safe but he really doesn’t need to. Can’t believe you’ve never noticed.” He gave Bruce a grin which Bruce rolled his eyes at as he slid the gloves over his own hands and began to clean his prints off the ground. Ignoring Cornell laughing softly in the background he scrubbed and thought about it. He’d always worn gloves as Batman mostly for protection against diving off f*cking buildings but also to avoid anyone saying, wait a second, aren’t those Bruce Wayne’s prints? When he’d started in on this job he’d never thought about doing it again, except when he’d killed Coleman; he’d mostly avoided situations where his prints might get left at a scene and the contacts had proven effective enough he hadn’t thought he’d need any other type of disguise. Anyway until recently he’d assumed the job would only last a little while and if Gordon ever did run his prints through the system and make the connection he could just terminate the plan early and go confess everything. But now —

He wasn’t sure why the idea was more than a little appealing. It wasn’t like this was going to be forever; it wasn’t supposed to last past the new year. It wasn’t supposed to be something he’d do for the rest of his life. He had his thumbprint scanners at home and there would be no need to hide his identity once Gordon knew everything and had locked Jude and the rest of them up —

— if Bruce told him; if he could go through with it, if he could forget that feeling when he’d gone into the bunker and seen the suit and felt nothing —

He was still thinking about his fingerprints as he left half an hour later. He drove out to Jude’s apartment where he was himself just getting home from his own job and from talking to the guys about the hit. Bruce saw his eyes focus on the Mustang and the small, private smile that curled his mouth in the streetlight. When Bruce got out and went to him he said,

“I heard there’s supposed to be a documentary on Princess Di tonight, wanna come up and watch with me?” and Bruce said yes, helplessly, softly f*cked and not caring. They went up together to the third floor and Jude scrubbed off his makeup and put on his favorite outfit — yellow tank, purple sweats — and together he and Bruce curled up on the sofa and turned on A&E. Bruce took Jude’s hand in his and turned it over, palm up. In the dim light from the television and from the Christmas lights he saw for the first time the ruined rough skin. It looked permanently sunburnt, and weirdly smooth despite its texture. Bruce ran his fingers over it, slowly. Jude’s hand twitched a little and he glanced at Bruce with his eyebrow raised.

“You wanna suck on it too, Wayne?” he asked. Bruce snorted. He lifted the hand to his mouth and kissed the fingertips, one by one, and Jude exhaled, gently. He shifted closer to Bruce who kissed the curling soft hairs at his temple.

“Look at that f*cker,” he grumbled, gesturing with his free hand at Prince Charles on the television. The camera had him at an angle where it was obvious he was glaring at Diana while she smiled at the crowd. “f*cking viper.” He picked up a rolled crusty sock from where it was wedged into the cushions and threw it at the screen. “Hope f*cking that pasty-ass piece of sh*t behind your wife’s back was worth it, Chuck!”

Bruce laughed. Jude grinned at him. He folded his fingers down on top of Bruce’s. Beneath the long ragged nails Bruce could feel the catch of his skin. It was faint, but it was there. He couldn’t believe he’d never noticed before.

It wasn’t something he could ask Alfred about. He couldn’t and didn’t want to imagine the reaction Alfred would have: the tight mouth, the disapproval in his eyes. Did Master Baker put you up to this? and Bruce would have to hold back from snapping, if you hate him so much why the f*ck is he “Master Baker” now? Likely Alfred would ask if there was a point to doing this when it was an extremely permanent and unalterable change to what was supposed to be a temporary problem, and Bruce would get flustered and further argumentative because he had absolutely no answer. If nothing else Alfred would haul out all the old lectures and warnings against Bruce hurting himself from the earliest days of Batman and Bruce didn’t really feel like listening to all of that again. He’d jumped off buildings and flown around Hong Kong and Gotham using his own arms and legs and he hadn’t died. He’d had a dog’s teeth in his skin and a knife in his stomach and he hadn’t died. And besides if what Cornell had said was entirely true Jude had put f*cking acid on his skin and he was still here using his hands for innumerable things. So it couldn’t possibly be that bad to do it. Bruce would just have to be careful which of course he would be.

He went down to the Gotham Public Library rather than look anything up on his computer — his laptop was encrypted, but he wasn’t sure if Lucius might still have eyes inside and he felt weird about it. So he went into the 300s and found forensic criminology books and sat in the back in a worn leather chair reading. It was the same chair he’d sat in as a child during school trips, sneaking away from the teacher when she was showing the class research tactics on microfilm or how to look things up in the card catalogues. No one ever said anything to him about it because no one ever said anything to him about anything, period. Sometimes it made him want to scream, because he knew it was born entirely from pity, but on those particular days it worked to his advantage.

The smell of the chair now was the same: dust, and leather, and old books. The feeling was the same, too: that bone-deep ache, the pinch at the back of his throat, when he looked up and saw the Thomas and Martha Wayne Foundation symbol on the far wall. But the chair was smaller now and Bruce’s intent was different, at least to a degree; he was still escaping, but into something. The last time he’d sat in this chair he’d had no direction. And now the direction hardly something he would have envisioned as a child.

Eventually he found what he was looking for and marked it down on a scrap of paper from his pocket before returning the books to their shelves and walking out. There wasn’t much information on fingerprint-removal; there were select few ways it could be done effectively, and none of them were foolproof, even hydrochloric acid. But Bruce didn’t want to cut off his fingertips and he didn’t want to cut into them, either, and aside from acid the most effective thing he could find in the book was something he had had daily access to since joining Jude’s gang.

There really was no point to this, he thought, walking back along the street towards Wayne Tower. It would serve no purpose once he was done, once Jude and the others were in jail. If anything it would make his life very difficult because he would have to constantly explain to people why he no longer had valid fingerprints and likely it would make his story harder, not easier, to sell to Gordon —

— if you even do, whispered the hybrid ThomasBruce in his head —

— but Jude would like it. Jude would trust him more. The whole point was for Jude to trust him implicitly, as much as possible. Justice at any cost. How far are you willing to go.

He’d killed twice. He could do this, too.

Bruce went into the gym to perform his surgery. There was an air filtration system there to prevent the air from getting too musky with sweat; it would lessen the chance of Alfred noticing any weird smells, though Bruce was sure if nothing else he must know by now Bruce smoked, he wasn’t stupid. He sat on one of the weightlifting benches and retrieved from the pocket of his sweats a pack of cigarettes, and his lighter. Then he sat for a while staring at his hand curled into a fist on his thigh trying to psych himself up for it. It was just pain. It was just pain and he’d gone through worse, broken bones and deep gashes and every fistfight he’d ever been in since 1986 or ‘87 when he discovered how much physical violence took away. The books he’d looked at said people did this sort of thing a lot, perhaps not as much as fiction showed but enough. Jude had done it; he’d mutilated his f*cking skin and he was still able to function. And though it was not the first time Jude had mutilated his own skin Bruce knew his tolerance for pain was about the same as Jude’s. They both felt it in different ways and needed it for not entirely unsimilar reasons but the basics at the core were the same.

He opened his hand and stared at the tendons on the back. He flipped it over. His leg was shaking and he drew on the cigarette, listening to the paper crackle, hot smell of ash and woodsmoke, the taste in his lungs. He exhaled and stared at his fingertips and at the scars which littered his arms and then — desperate plunge, diving off the side of a building — he brought the smoldering end of the cigarette down onto his skin.

The pain — the self-harm he’d indulged in high school, all the fights and the sleeping pill abuse and the anger, the rage, the constant burning go go go — it was not dissimilar and it was not even as bad as having his flesh ripped open by the dog’s teeth or by the sharp edges of his suit when he’d rappel too fast or slam his arm wrong on something. But Bruce supposed because it was deliberate and because it was intimate and he was alone hunched up on his bench in his gym with no daylight and no one even knew he was here and no sound aside from the rapid gunfire beat of his own heart inside his ears, the nauseating slam of it against his ribs and the base of his throat — it hurt so much worse. The smell of searing flesh was pretty terrible but the burning on his fingertips — the sensitive skin jerked away instinctively and Bruce had to force his hand steady on his leg. Some of the ash fell on his sweats but because he had to dig the end of the cigarette into the flesh in order to penetrate the epidermis — the book had said this was important — he couldn’t move it and it burned a hole in the fabric. It touched his leg and he jerked again. Sweat ran down the back of his neck and pooled at the base of his spine. He licked his mouth which tasted of salt and of fire and he thought for a horrible dizzying moment he might vomit but he pressed it down and at last lifted the cigarette from his finger. In a distantly removed way he thought the burn looked like an eclipsed sun. He was momentarily frightened of how prominent and bloodred it was and how evident the scorch marks on its outer edges before he realized in time it would heal and it wouldn’t look much different to any of the other strange scars on his body.

He lifted — he tried to lift — his hand to his eyes to inspect the damage more closely. But the pain was numbing and when his finger got about a half inch off his thigh it started to shake uncontrollably and as such he could only sit there for a while and breathe through his nose like a wounded animal. His cigarette was burning down close to the filter; he took another drag off it, then pitched the end onto the ground and crushed it with his heel. He took another from the pack. There was blood on his sweats where the wound had begun oozing. It hurt — so f*cking much. It felt as though it were consuming his whole hand though it was only on the tip of one finger. Staring at it made it worse, so he curled his finger inward — bright sparks racing down the joints — and lit the second cigarette. He had to inhale on it to get the fire started. The closer it got to his finger the worse the heat felt — on top of the heat already coming off his first finger it was making him want to cry. Indeed by the time he’d penetrated the epidermis and utterly ruined the skin of the second finger tears were streaming down his face, though he couldn’t be positive it was from the pain and not because the smoke was irritating the sensitive layer of his eyeballs. He had to look away momentarily, gasping. His right hand — the one holding the cigarette — had begun shaking, too.

He thought about quitting. But of course he could not. He remembered mountain climbing to reach Buddhist monasteries in Thailand, and how much strain his shoulders had taken, and the sharp bite of thinning air scouring his throat. He’d climb without any support or protection and it had been a sort of precursor to when he’d swan dive off buildings later in the suit: part of him hoping the wind would catch him at the wrong angle, or a foothold would prove too shallow, or he’d misjudge the distance between one rock or another. Of course he never had but by the time he reached the summit it hurt like a knife plunging to breathe. Then there would be a time — days, sometimes weeks — that he would stay isolated, a sip of water a day, a ration of bread or rice every three days. Not allowing himself to fall totally asleep and hardly breathing or conscious of his heartbeat. When he emerged he was rejuvenated. It was not unlike people who staggered into the desert and came out the other side reborn, eyes wild, fresh. He focused on those memories. He channeled it; the long waiting, the tension in his muscles. There was always a moment when the hunger would break and the thirst and he’d feel a sense of clarity. He supposed someone else might call it dehydration. Himself he only called it triumph.

Half an hour later the pack of cigarettes was half-empty and all ten fingers had been burnt. The skin was swollen and red and the smell was awful, charred flesh and pus, but it was done. It had been done and he couldn’t take it back. He’d wanted to do a fire walk when he was in Asia but never found the chance. He supposed this could be counted as a sort of equivalent.

He tried to stand. Failed. His heart was racing that giraffe-kicked punched-out feeling and he dry-heaved twice. Eventually he discovered his hands wouldn’t bend anymore and so he lay down on the bench and closed his eyes. He couldn’t rest his hands on his shirt and he couldn’t hold them up so he let them dangle onto the floor with the knuckles against the concrete. He could feel blood welling up in the cracks of his skin. He closed his eyes. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, but the pain spread out over his whole hands, and up his arms, and after a little while he found he’d dissociated from it, because it was numb. Another wave of dizziness rolled over him and he was afraid he’d lose his balance and fall to the floor. Instead he lost consciousness.

When he woke it was to the feeling of his burner phone vibrating insistently in his pocket. He had to lift his arm in increments and could not uncurl his fingers and so it took four tries before he was able to get the phone to just fall from his pocket onto the floor. By then of course it had stopped ringing but it started up again and Bruce — staring down with aching, swollen-feeling eyes, taste of ash in his throat — managed to pick it up awkwardly kind of in his palms and from there to flip it open with his teeth. It was Jude. Bruce jabbed three buttons at once because he was using his elbow, but he managed to get him on speaker.

“Wayne,” Jude said. Bruce tried to respond, but the words caught in his throat and so he couldn’t. He sat there with his nose a little close to the phone and breathed raggedly and after a few seconds Jude said,

“What the f*ck are you doing, are you jerking off? You couldn’t wait for me to — ”

“No,” Bruce managed, and then Jude was quiet; he must’ve heard the sharp catch of Bruce’s voice, because he said,

“Is everything okay?”

“I, uh — ” Bruce breathed out. “I did something dumb.”

There was a rustling sound on the other end. “Where are you?”

Bruce told him, and Jude said he was coming, and then he hung up. Bruce listened to the fadeout of the dial tone because he couldn’t get the strength to shut his phone again. He was trying to focus on the pain rather than ignore it. He remembered in Thailand after his climbs when he was cramping and hardly able to breathe he found it marginally easier to bear if he let it consume him. He’d had a trainer in Bangladesh who had him rub salt in the wounds he accumulated during fights rather than bandage them right away. It would burn and sting viciously but there was always a certain measure of calm and clarity afterwards which had not been achieved during the actual cutting process. So he sat for a while with his hands curled into fists on the bench trembling and trying to focus on the terrible heat in his fingers. He was sweating and still faintly nauseous, and his hands hurt so much his throat felt sore. After a time he remembered Jude’s keycard only let him up to the guest area of the penthouse and with an effort managed to get himself up — leaving his phone — and down the stairs. He collapsed on a duvet near the elevator and leaned back against the wall breathing unsteadily. He shut his eyes. And he must have fallen asleep or passed out without realizing because when next he looked up it was to the sound of footsteps, and a sharp inhale.

“Wayne…” Jude. He was stepping off the elevator in his Joker regalia; he’d come straight from a job. His makeup was smeared badly like he’d tried to scrub it off on the way, and he was pulling off his gloves as he walked forward. “What the f*ck did you do.”

Bruce’s throat was tight. “I — burned my fingerprints off.”

Jude shoved his gloves into one of the pockets of his overcoat, then shrugged it from his shoulders before kneeling down. He knelt on the floor at Bruce’s feet and took one of his wrists in his hands. His skin was cool and dry but Bruce still flinched, which made Jude flinch, too. His hands felt like clubs.

“Wayne…” Jude was looking from Bruce’s ruined fingertips to his face, over and over. “Why did you do this, honey?”

“I — ” Bruce swallowed. “I’m Bruce Wayne. I have recognizable prints. When Cornell and I were on our job earlier I slipped and my hands got in some blood on the floor. He kind of… reminded me you did it once so I thought — ”

Jude’s mouth was slightly open, for some reason. He was stroking the inside of Bruce’s wrist over the hot rapid pulse and it probably should’ve hurt or something but it felt f*cking good. “You thought?” he prompted, after a moment, and Bruce said,

“I needed you to see I’m serious about this, Jude.”

Jude raised his eyebrows.

“Like, that I’m sticking it out,” Bruce said, with anxiety and guilt a swirling nauseating mess in his stomach. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Oh, honey…” Jude shifted up so that he was sitting next to Bruce on the duvet. “Wayne, I — this — ” He swallowed, too. “I know you aren’t going anywhere. You didn’t have to — ” He touched Bruce’s palm; Bruce flinched again, and Jude sucked in a tight breath.

“We need to get this clean,” he said, voice suddenly sharp. “I’m not having you get infected because you wanted to do some dumb sh*t for me.”

Bruce snorted. Jude glared at him, though the heat was mostly superficial. “Do you have any of that first aid sh*t down here?”

“Uh-uh.” Bruce tilted his chin at the ceiling. “It’s all — but I can’t… I mean my hands… the security system isn’t going to let me up there anymore…”

Jude gave him a look. You absolute f*cking idiot, his face said. “Is your old man gonna let me up?”

Bruce bit down on the inner corner of his mouth. “I — he doesn’t know.”

Jude closed his eyes, momentarily. He pulled out his Nokia and got Bruce to tell him the landline number for the penthouse. He dialed it one-handed because he was still loosely grasping Bruce’s wrist with the other.

“Alfred,” he said, after a moment. “It’s — yeah. I need a favor.” Pause. “I’m downstairs, actually… no, in the guest penthouse… yeah, I’m with Wayne.” Jude glanced at Bruce. For the first time Bruce noticed a fleck of blood in the corner of his mouth, or perhaps it was only residual greasepaint. Not thinking he tried to lift a hand to wipe it off. He whimpered a little; pressed his face into Jude’s neck.

“He did some really dumb sh*t,” Jude was saying. “Can you bring — f*ck. Cuticerin gauze, and hydrogen peroxide, and…” he sucked in a breath, thinking — “Silvadene, if you have it, or Bacitracin. And Tylenol — not Ibuprofen — and water, and — ” Another pause. “Yes. That’s — yes.” His mouth twitched; Bruce was sure he was hallucinating. “And antimicrobial soap, because I’ll need to clean the wounds first.” His thumb stroked slowly over the inside of Bruce’s wrist. “ — Yeah,” he said, after a little while. “Okay. Thanks, Alfred.” He hung up, then put the phone next to him on the duvet. He set his hand on Bruce’s thigh.

“Your butler says you’re a f*cking idiot,” he said.

Bruce’s neck was damp with sweat. He lifted his head from Jude’s shoulder. “He doesn’t even know what I — ”

“He’s pretty smart, Wayne,” Jude pointed out, a little dry.

Bruce sighed. “I’m more nervous about the fact that you’re on first-name terms with him suddenly,” he said.

“Oh, huh.” Jude tilted his head a little, consideringly. “Yeah, I didn’t even think about that.” He almost smiled. Then he said, “You are, though.”

“What.”

“A f*cking idiot.” He kept staring at Bruce’s fingers. “Nell probably should’ve kept his mouth — ”

“I wanted this,” Bruce said, and in spite of the overheatedness and the dizziness and the faint feeling like his throat was sore (though he knew it wasn’t) he managed to sound clear and focused. “I thought about it, and I wanted it.” He wasn’t sure why, but Jude didn’t need to know that part. “It’s not my first injury, you know.”

Jude’s eyes dropped to Bruce’s arms, where the scars were; he liked to put his mouth on them, or his fingers, when they were cuddling. “No, I know,” he said. He looked like he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to laugh or be angry. After a moment he just stroked over Bruce’s palm again; it still hurt, but Bruce forced himself to stay still. He forced his hand not to tremble or flinch away and he sat and pressed the side of his foot to the side of Jude’s.

“You would’ve made a great nurse,” he said, softly. “You still remember all that stuff from school.”

Jude shrugged. “I’m more suited to this,” he said, but there was a look in his eyes Bruce couldn’t place. After a moment he leaned over and kissed Bruce’s temple. Bruce ran his tongue over his mouth, which felt totally dry from the excess heat and sweat.

He’d wanted this. It wasn’t a lie. He’d wanted to burn off his fingerprints and it was too permanent and it was completely unnecessary and he had no idea why, or what he was doing. But he’d wanted it. What are you trying to prove, whispered Thomas in his head — weird surreal echo of how he’d spoken to Jude in July on the Prewitt Building, watching the ferries… What were you trying to prove, that deep down everyone’s as ugly as you? It was so much more complex than that, he realized now. And it wasn’t untrue as he’d claimed, as he’d told himself, as he’d lied to himself. He pressed his foot harder to Jude’s, feeling terribly guilty. He bit back every apology because none of them would’ve made sense. He and Jude were still looking into each other’s eyes unspeaking maybe four minutes later when Alfred came down from the penthouse with the bandages.

They were in the bathroom for a while. Alfred departed after leaving the first aid supplies and giving a pointed ‘this isn’t half over’ look at Bruce’s hands. He’d brought down everything Jude had wanted and Jude didn’t seem especially suspicious of the fact though he did make a throwaway comment about billionaires not needing so much first aid, and of course he would know, having once been one himself. Bruce for his part was standing at the sink of the bathroom on the guest floor shaking while Jude stood to his side and held onto him and fixed his hands. He had one of Bruce’s wrists in his hands and he was being very gentle.

“You would’ve made a great nurse,” Bruce said again, watching while Jude ran his fingers slowly under coolish water.

“I know,” Jude said, taking care to rub gently with the soap at the worst of the burns where the skin had been mostly fried off.

“I can see you walking around at Gotham General in like, in lavender scrubs — ”

“I tried for an internship at Meadowview right before I dropped out,” Jude said. “They were like, well, but don’t you have a psych history already, and I said, yes, so that would make me great for this program because — but they didn’t want me. Which turned out to be good because as it turned out I was already on the verge of f*cking losing my mind anyway. So.” He finished cleaning Bruce’s wounds out and began to apply the Silvadene. Bruce watched the faint tightness at the corner of his mouth for a moment. Something about the constant pressure of Jude’s fingers or else the coolness of his skin or else just the soap and ointment was lessening the pain somewhat — though perhaps also it was just Bruce’s own salt-in-the-wound focus.

“What — if you — can I ask — ”

“You want to know what happened.” It wasn’t a question, but Jude flicked his eyes querulously to Bruce’s anyway. Bruce nodded, then winced as Jude massaged the cream into his skin. He paused, soothing his thumb circularly over Bruce’s knuckles. Bruce could see in his face he wanted to say something again about him being an idiot, but after a moment he said only, “I started at William Paterson in the fall of 2000. I took a year after I graduated high school ‘cause of everything but that was when like I told you my parents got — weird about me being around. So I enrolled and moved out here and everything was fine for a while. People still stared and they were completely sh*tty but I had an apartment off campus I got to escape to. I wanted to beat the sh*t out of everyone honestly because I knew they’d probably f*cking leave me alone then but I knew I’d probably get f*cking expelled if it got around that I was the one sending kids to class with bruises or whatever so I just… like I told you I stayed quiet. I was a good little sedated kid. But then — other hand, please — put your wrist here, it’ll help slow bloodflow and whatever — then 9/11 happened. So.”

Bruce swallowed. “You moved to New Orleans after that,” he said, remembering.

“Yeah, but not right after.” Jude was using his hand around Bruce’s wrist as a compression, Bruce realized. It felt ridiculously good. “I was — I wasn’t in Manhattan but I was where I could see the skyline so I saw it happen. The planes and the fire and all.”

Bruce nodded. He’d been in a remote village in Vietnam when it happened. When he got to Hanoi it was on television, and in the papers. He’d called Alfred and Rachel on a satellite phone to make sure they were all right.

“So we had a week off school because a bunch of kids had parents who worked in the World Trade Centers, or else just because we were all so shaken up, and I think even though we were far from ground zero they were afraid of the toxins in the air… but we went back eventually. And it was still fine for a while — can you rest your hand on the bandage while I pull — yeah, like that. It was still fine but I kept dreaming about it, and I felt… that same deterioration from high school. The skin on my scar was pretty dry most of the time back then so I used to pick at it pretty much constantly. I couldn’t focus in class. I stopped turning in my assignments on time… it was all very stereotypical, like, I remember thinking how the f*ck is this real, because I’m acting like a movie character.

“I missed a dose one day right after winter finals. And then I kept missing doses. I asked my parents if I could take a semester off and come back home which was how I found out they were splitting up. My advisor was like, Jude, you just need to try harder, because you’re a very bright young man and your grades are slipping and they shouldn’t be. So I realized no one was going to take me seriously because I wasn’t fitting in with their agenda anymore of like — a stabilized maladjusted young man, or whatever, so — and the other hand, just five more fingers, you’re doing so good, honey — so I went into one of the chem labs and I got, uh, lye — I guess I thought I was Tyler Durden or something, I dunno, I was watching Fight Club kind of nonstop around then, but anyway I stole a bottle and brought it back to my apartment and dipped my fingertips in it. And — ” here he paused in his ministrations to lift his hand, to show Bruce the deep, faded scars like pale bruises, hidden beneath smears of greasepaint but still clearly visible. “It f*ckin’ hurt, but it’s what I wanted. — and you’re done, by the way,” setting Bruce’s hand down on the edge of the sink beside the other. He’d wrapped his fingertips up in bandages so that Bruce’s hands resembled when he’d tape his knuckles before a fight. Beneath the tight pressure of the bandages the pain had receded into a dull, persistent throbbing. The fingers were still stiff, like claws, but he could tell he’d be able to move them a little soonish.

“Once everything healed I dropped out,” Jude said, as he put the first aid implements into the medicine cabinet behind the mirror. “I basically told my advisor to go f*ck himself and I went out and got sh*tfaced for the only time in my life. Some f*ck came onto me and when I said I don’t f*ck strangers he got mad and said freaks like me shouldn’t be so picky about who they suck off. So I got a knife on him and we had a fight in the back alley and he stole my wallet and knocked me out. C’mon,” as he finished putting everything up and took Bruce’s elbow, “let’s go sit back out here for a minute, you need to rest.” They sat on the duvet. Bruce’s hands throbbed with the movement and Jude took them and laid them gently on his own thigh.

“Joke was on him,” he said, “‘cause I pretty much paid the authorities back in Drainage to completely purge my identity from the system right before I dropped out, my dad’s name still had a lot of sway and no one was gonna say no to that amount of money… so all my cards were invalid. But when I woke up everything was gone and I was still drunk enough to where I started having kind of a crisis; it was the middle of January and it was freezing and I didn’t have anywhere to stay, I’d lost the apartment, my schooling, I — without my meds I was having episodes and I guess being drunk exacerbated it because I kind of blacked out again and when I woke up I was on the bridge and the police were like, yelling, and I was like, well, I’m gonna do it, boys, except one of them pulled me back so I guess he could make the news for being so heroic and I got put in Arkham.”

“Who — ” Bruce cleared his throat. Jude was staring off into the middle distance, chewing the inside of his mouth, idly shaking the opposite leg from where Bruce’s hands were resting. “Who put you there?”

“Oh, me.” Jude flashed him a grin. “They brought me to the station, they asked me where I lived, a bunch of sh*t, I said I didn’t know just to f*ck with them, but they thought it was real and they ran a psych eval on me and decided I was a danger to myself and others and said did I want to be put under an involuntary seventy-two hour hold or a voluntary stay and I was like, yes, yes, the second one, because I kind of figured I’d get out just based off my charm and good looks. Except I ended up staying for six months. Whoops.”

Bruce couldn’t lift his hands — in part because Jude was very gently holding them down by the wrists — so he leaned in and kissed the edge of Jude’s scar. Jude went momentarily still. Then he said,

“I got the other half of my face cut open two weeks after I got there. My cellmate was obsessed with symmetry.”

Bruce drew back slightly. A chill wrung up his spine. “I’m sor— ”

“I like it better this way anyway,” Jude mumbled. He was still smiling, down at his hands now. “My cellmate sucked a guard’s dick to get a glass bottle which he broke after lights out and cut me open. I asked him where he went to art school ‘cause he did a better job than me. Then I killed him.”

Bruce closed his eyes. He could see Jude — he would’ve been around twenty-one at the time, black stitches on the other side of his face, the scar swollen and soaked in blood, dripping down his jaw, over the floor. Jude daring everyone to come near him with the glass shard in his hand cutting a groove into his palm. Jude’s fingers with their lye-smoothed surfaces and his hair a half-grown mess on top of his head. I’m different, he was saying. I’m different and I’m not f*cking changing it anymore. His heart in his throat he leaned in again and kissed the scar a second time, then Jude’s temple, then the sensitive reddish skin over his eyelid. How brave he was. How brave, and how alone. Bruce shifted closer to him:

“And you went to New Orleans — ”

“When I got out in the summer. Like I told you my parents were divorced and there wasn’t anything left here. New Orleans sounded like the best option and it was for a long time. I met Nell there actually; when he wasn’t dealing drugs he was selling art in the Quarter. So we got in sh*t together and I got pretty invested in Mardi Gras like I told you, and then Katrina hit and once we’d looted everything there was to loot we started heading back up towards the northeast. It was just coincidence for a while we got here again. But Drainage isn’t big enough to do anything in and Chicago’s already got enough gangs. And I know Gotham, and I — ” He stroked his thumb over Bruce’s knuckles. “You know how you can miss a place you have nothing but bad memories of?”

Bruce glanced over towards the window which had broken when Rachel fell. “Yes,” he said, quietly.

“So I’m glad I settled here,” Jude said. “So that’s everything that’s ever happened to me. Or well, mostly. I can’t reveal all my secrets in one sitting. Gotta keep you interested, huh? Keep you around a little while longer?”

Bruce’s mouth twitched. You couldn’t get rid of me, he wanted to say, sappy though it was, but he couldn’t make himself. It wasn’t supposed to have been like this. They were cuddling on the duvet in his penthouse. Jude — the f*cking Joker — had just helped him bandage and disinfect major wounds on his hands which could never be reversed. He was supposed to be counting the days until he had enough info to give to Gordon. But there wasn’t any desire for it. It felt like a foreign idea; like something belonging to someone else entirely.

“I guess I’ll stick around for a couple more days,” he mumbled, faux-grudgingly, and Jude laughed.

Half an hour later Bruce and Jude left the penthouse for the evening. Jude had called Alfred back downstairs at Bruce’s request and Alfred hadn’t exactly reamed him out but it was a near thing. Bruce was begging him with his eyes to keep quiet and Alfred’s mouth was so thin it was bloodless, but he didn’t speak, except to say yes sir when Bruce asked him to please see about having eye scanners installed by the time he returned the following day. It wouldn’t be difficult, it was just a matter of changing the coding and the setup, and Bruce could enter in his own iris print when he got back. He could see Alfred’s disapproval in every line of his body, but when Jude said,

“If it’s all right with you, Alfred, I’m taking him back to my place so he doesn’t do anything else f*cking retarded like this,”

Alfred just said,

“Please do, Master Baker. And feel free to shoot him in the leg if he tries anything.”

Bruce’s mouth dropped open. Jude cackled. As he and Bruce walked towards the main elevator he said,

“I f*cking love your old man,”

and Bruce said,

“I am so f*cked,”

which just made Jude laugh again.

Downstairs the lobby was mostly empty except for the night guard who deliberately ignored them and a janitor who sort of raised his eyebrows at Jude’s scars but didn’t say anything. Bruce had his hands shoved into the pockets of his sweatshirt despite it aching to have them pressed to cotton because he didn’t want anyone to see. Jude had parked the gang’s Suburban illegally on the sidewalk in front of the building, a little bit askew beside a ‘no parking’ sign. He snickered as he opened the passenger door and helped Bruce climb in before walking around to the driver’s side. The radio was on Cornell’s favorite Top 40 station; it was Pink’s “So What”, which both Bruce and Jude disliked, but the Suburban had neither a tape deck nor Jude’s selection of cassettes, so they tolerated it. This turned out to be a pretty good choice as the next song was Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown”, which they both liked better. They drove through the sludgy remains of snow on the side of the road and the bitter dark cold — Bruce pressing his fingertips to the window to soothe his skin. At Jude’s apartment he helped Bruce up the stairs and inside. He made more of a fuss over Bruce and gave him some oxys which Bruce was reluctant to take until Jude reminded him he hadn’t taken any of the Tylenol. Then they lay together on the mattress and Jude pulled the blanket over them — it was freezing; the heater was still defunct — and kissed Bruce’s forehead.

“Don’t do stupid sh*t like this again, Wayne,” he whispered. In the dark and the warmth of the blanket his voice was very low, and very close. “Not without me there. I know you think you’re a f*cking… whatever, martial arts expert, but you’re really still just an inexperienced dumb rich asshole.”

Bruce smiled a little. “Sure, boss.”

Jude kissed his fingertips over the bandages. “You’re a f*cking idiot,” he said, but kind of gently.

“I know, boss,” Bruce said. He could feel the oxys in the back of his mind trying to pull him under. “I’m sorry.”

Jude sighed. He touched Bruce’s jaw. “Can you sleep like this or do you need anything.”

Bruce shifted his hands experimentally. “I think I’m okay.”

Jude nodded. He kissed Bruce’s fingers again, then rolled over into his favorite position, back to chest. He drew Bruce’s arm around him and kept pressure on his hand against his ribs. Bruce tucked his face down against Jude’s shoulder blades, and closed his eyes.

In spite of the oxys he couldn’t sleep. He lay with his mouth against Jude’s shoulder thinking, trying to pace his heartbeat with the steady rise and fall of Jude’s waist. He didn’t know why he’d done it. This wasn’t like buying the contacts and it wasn’t even like killing Coleman or Mitchell. This was something permanent which he could not undo nor could he erase it from his body physically. He also could not undo the murders but just to look at him in the street no one would know about them. Now the thing was he had no more fingerprints. He was sure Alfred was pissed at the inconvenience of having to install eye scanners. If he did turn them all in to Gordon he’d have to think of some kind of excuse why he couldn’t roll his prints in ink at the station. His hands would be sore for weeks, stiff and difficult to use. There was nothing — no reason for him to have done this. I need you to know I’m serious, he’d said, but the thing was Jude already believed that. It wasn’t like he’d been standing around tapping his foot saying hurry up, Wayne, convince me. Jude already trusted Bruce, otherwise he wouldn’t have let him into his house and his life and his bed. Bruce had burned his fingerprints off and as he lay on the mattress beside the unmoving lump beneath the blanket he knew with calm clarity he wasn’t going to do it. He wasn’t going to turn Jude in and he wasn’t going to go back to being Batman. And though he’d had thoughts in a similar vein recently — finding no meaning in the suit, feeling guilt from lying — to think it in such concrete terms for the first time felt — it felt —

— like relief.

He knew he would have to tell Jude eventually. He’d have to tell him everything, the Batman thing and the infiltration thing and all of it. But he couldn’t do it. He tried to imagine the conversation. It was different from how he’d imagined it back in November, after Coleman’s death; more raw. I need to tell you something, he’d say, and Jude would give him his usual gently curious look, and Bruce would be unable to form the words, until Jude would finally lean in and shove at his shoulder:

Not getting any younger here, Wayne,

and Bruce would sigh, and say, It’s kind of… big. Jude would shrug:

Okay? It’s not gonna be as bad as you f*cking torturing yourself over it. He’d take Bruce’s hands in his and his fingertips would be cold against the pulse in his wrists and he’d say, Look, the worst thing you can possibly have to say to me is that you want to break up, in which case there, congratulations, I’ve already put it out in the open. Is it less awkward now? and Bruce wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry, because in a way yes, this was worse, this was far worse. He’d shake his head, and steel himself, and tell him, and he could — f*ck, he could see Jude’s face, the rage that would boil over, exploding outward, loud and sharp and violent:

You f*cking lied to me? and they’d fight, vicious and wild, and Bruce would have to fight back so Jude wouldn’t kill him, and then Jude would leave, and they’d never see each other again —

— or else maybe Jude’s anger would be cold. His mouth would tense and he’d narrow his eyes mistrustfully: That isn’t f*cking funny, Wayne… and Bruce would say,

It isn’t a joke,

and Jude would fold his arms and cross over to the window and stand staring out at the city until Bruce’s heart was in his throat and he thought he might be sick on the floor. He’d say Jude’s name, tentatively, and Jude wouldn’t respond, so he’d walk over, put his hand on his shoulder… Jude would stiffen, and pull away, and he’d tell Bruce he needed some time to think about this, and then he’d leave. The next day Bruce would have a note delivered to him by Alfred:

Don’t try to find me,

and that would be it. Jude wouldn’t forgive this. He wouldn’t forgive Bruce for lying, for joining him under false pretenses, for attempting to break apart the gang… But I don’t want that anymore, Jude, he’d say, desperate, and Jude still wouldn’t look at him; everything about him would be tense, and he’d say,

How do I know I can trust you?

Bruce closed his eyes. He pressed himself — selfishly, cruelly — closer to Jude. The second he found out —

He couldn’t go through it again. He’d already lost Rachel, and it had been — nearly impossible, his parents all over again, that same blank, blind terror, his chest hollowed out, mind unfocused, surreal.

— Rachel —

He wondered if perhaps he was stalling for her, too. After all if Jude found out Bruce was Batman he’d remember how Bruce had been (obsessed with, possessive of, longing for) Rachel. After all Jude had made such a big deal over it; he’d tricked Bruce into letting her die, he’d known she was his biggest weak spot. Before Jude stopped speaking to him they’d have to talk about her and Bruce didn’t think he could do that, either. However long or short of a conversation it ended up being he couldn’t do it, any of it; he thought he’d forgiven Jude but he didn’t want to confront it and find out for sure and he didn’t want Jude to know he’d lied and f*ck, he couldn’t do this. His fist tightened a little without his meaning to and Jude sort of rolled over:

“Wayne…” he mumbled, sleep-slurred, kind of confused. “‘s matter?”

Bruce squeezed his eyes shut tighter. I want to stay. I want this life. I tried to trick you and I ended up falling in love and I can’t lose you but you’re going to hate me, you’ll never trust me again. I want to stay so badly and I’m sorry, I’m sorry I lied, you got me out of a life I didn’t realize I hated, please don’t make me go…

“I — my fingers still hurt,” he said, which was mostly true. Jude sighed; it was a little exasperated and a little affectionate and a little too much for Bruce to handle. Jude rolled further and took one of Bruce’s hands in his and kissed his fingertips over the bandages and said,

“‘s gonna be fine, honey. ‘m gonna take care of you,”

and tucked his face gently into the crook of Bruce’s neck as Bruce’s heart swan-dived and shattered.

He’d tell him after the new year. There was no sense in ruining Christmas, too.

Chapter 10 Notes:

archive warning applies in this chapter

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

A week or so before Christmas there was a meeting at which among other things it was revealed that the Richmonds were late again on their car parts shipments. The dance recital had fallen the month previous and the shipment had been delivered on time then, but apparently without the immediate threat to any of his grandchildren Josh was less than cooperative — he’d owed parts on the twelfth, and they had not come through. So it was that Bruce found himself standing in the freezing warehouse with his motorcycle jacket and a red scarf wrapped around his neck, contacts waiting in the glove compartment of his Mustang, receiving orders from Jude for his first solo mission which was to take care of Josh Richmond by way of Alice, because Jude was not in any way interested in having multiple slipups on his hands. “I mean you saw what I did to Ashland,” he said, and all of them laughed. Bruce laughed too, automatically, but it felt wildly shaking down into his very bones that Jude was entrusting something solely to him. Not “and I want you on a mission with Cornell/Reznor/whoever”. Not “let’s go take care of this thing together in A.C. and we can play the slots after ‘cause I know you need the money” (to make Bruce laugh). But “I need this taken care of and I trust you to do it alone”. He’d broken Ainsworth’s fingers and killed Coleman and Mitchell and he’d tortured others for information and dealt drugs and guns and Jude thought he was doing a good enough job he could go on his own. Jude trusted him absolutely. Jude had a place in his life and Bruce had a place in Jude’s and Bruce had been lying to him, the plan had worked entirely but Bruce didn’t want it anymore, and he was so, so terribly f*cked —

He became aware that Kowalczyk was congratulating him, and so was Weiland. Reznor muttered something to Cornell that sounded like “I bet Wayne’s old man threatened the boss into promoting him” and they both snickered, even when Bruce and Jude glared at them. Byrne said please kill this f*cker because I’m f*cking sick of dealing with him anyway and Bruce said he would if it’s what the boss wanted. Jude shook his head, but he was laughing, and then he assigned everyone else their jobs of cleaning the weapons or terrorizing and/or making deals with whatever various unlucky clientele and the crowd dispersed. When it was only Bruce and Jude, Jude turned to him and tilted his head.

“Do you feel ready?” he asked. “I can reassign it if you’re not sure, or I can ask Nell to go with you again, the Richmond bitch’ll probably sh*t her pants if she sees him a second time — ”

“No,” Bruce said; his hands were shaking, and had gone numb with the excess of feeling. “No, it’s — I’m ready, boss. I am.”

Jude reached up and touched Bruce’s jawline with the tip of one finger. “You always do so well for me, Wayne,” he murmured.

You’d hate me, Bruce thought. If you knew, you’d hate me. You will hate me, and I used to want that, I used to not care. But I care now. I only want to satisfy you. I wish it hadn’t happened this way. “I try, boss,” he said back, tilting his face enough to where it was just leaning into Jude’s hand. He saw Jude’s irises darken; he tightened his grip slightly in the short strands at the back of Bruce’s head, and he drew him down and kissed him. He tasted like cigarettes and like greasepaint, freshly applied, and Bruce licked the inside of his mouth, fisted his hands in the lapels of his coat, drew him closer. Jude was sucking on his tongue when there was a crashing noise from the right; Kowalczyk had stuck his head back in to get ammo and dropped the box on the ground.

“Sorry,” he called, waving sheepishly, “sorry, I’ll just — take care of this later — ”

“f*ck off,” Jude called back pleasantly, and Kowalczyk shot him a middle finger before ducking back out. Bruce ducked his head against Jude’s shoulder and snorted into his neck.

“If he says some sh*t later about equating this to Gatsby Cornell’s going to f*cking murder him.”

“I’ll murder him first,” Jude grumbled, without heat. He nudged Bruce’s head back to his and kissed him again, once on his bottom lip, very gently, and then on the tip of his nose, and Bruce had to shut his eyes to keep from crying.

Two nights later he and Jude were laying together on Jude’s mattress. Bruce was trailing his finger down Jude’s arm over and over, down the long ragged scar Stipe had left, and the knot of flesh from the bullet above it. They’d been out all day on separate jobs, Jude in Newark at a gun drop off, Bruce establishing more particulars within the shell company at Wayne Tech. He’d conducted interviews since the start of the month in the Enterprises and after some investigative searching discovered Jacqueline Hudson, who had worked closest under Lucius in the R&D department even after it had been partially overhauled to accommodate Batman. According to the records she appeared to have asked few to no questions and had either ignored or been ignorant of several minor accounting discrepancies. Indeed when Bruce called her in for an interview she admitted she was very good and experienced in leadership and very terrible with numbers. When he hired her he did not so much say in words that he wanted her to keep secrets but instead implied in roundabout ways that she would receive an annual salary of six figures if she didn’t ask questions and didn’t look too closely at the details. Already being paid around $75,000 per year she agreed readily. When she asked when she would start Bruce faltered; after a moment he said after the new year. For all intents and purposes it would look very much as though he simply didn’t want to start her at a new job until after the winter break. But the truth of course was if everything fell through Bruce wouldn’t have any need for a shell company. He would get rid of the excess in Wayne Tech and keep Jacqueline at her current job, and everything would stay the same. So he’d been down at the tech building today to start setting things up — just in case things did not fall through, which seemed maybe twenty-five percent likely — and to get Byrne and Kiedis started on establishing the false side of things. Then there had been a money drop at the laundromat, and then Jude had texted Bruce to ask would he come over, and now —

He’d sucked Bruce off pretty much the minute he’d walked in the door, then dragged him in his room where Bruce had jerked him off, hand shoved into his shorts. Now they were sharing a cigarette; Jude took it from Bruce, his long fingers catching against Bruce’s palm. He inhaled for a long time, then stubbed it out on the carpet where already there were several scattered faded burn marks of various sizes. Then he rolled over in Bruce’s arms and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. When he closed his eyes Bruce felt his lashes brush his skin.

“What are your plans for Christmas?” Jude asked.

“Actually — ” Bruce curled his fingers against Jude’s where they rested on his stomach. Jude’s mouth was warm and split open against his skin and he’d removed his greasepaint sometime in the interim between when he’d been in Newark and now and he was making quiet Jude-noises against Bruce’s arm. “I don’t really do Christmas.”

Jude lifted his head a little and offered Bruce a curious eyebrow.

“I’ll do a party for work,” he said, “‘cause they expect it, and I do an annual New Year’s gala which I’ll be hosting at the penthouse for the first time now… but my parents were nominally Jewish, so if I saw anything religious growing up it was menorahs around Hanukkah. Alfred’s Anglican but after they died he didn’t want to force anything on me, so. Like I’m sure he’d be fine with it if we started decorating for Christmas but it’s just never been a thing.” Holidays had been hard for a long time after Thomas and Martha’s deaths; Bruce had felt as though he would be punished, somehow, for celebrating anything so mundane as a societally-appointed festivity, and so he hadn’t. Even now after so many years he went through an annual December-guilt fest when he saw things like Christmas trees or menorahs or anything holiday-related in the stores or the streets.

“I didn’t know Thomas and Martha were Jewish,” Jude said.

“It was just nominal like I said,” Bruce said. “We didn’t celebrate anything really or go to temple.” He stroked over Jude’s knuckles. “Do you have plans?”

“Uh-huh,” Jude said. He’d ducked his head further against Bruce’s shoulder so that the long greasy hair was brushing his collarbone. It wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as it should have been. “Yeah, so, my parents were nominal Catholics; we went to church maybe twice a year, but mom was big on Christmas, and Zyk and Nell were both raised Catholic and I’ve been friends with them and Rez the longest so we’ll usually get a tree. I think this year though I’ll have to wait until after I’ve taken care of Ashland just — ”

“Wait.” Bruce felt his eyebrows draw together. Beside him Jude had gone totally still. His hand was stiff beneath Bruce’s where it rested on his stomach and his breathing was deliberately slow. “You — you’re going to — ”

“It’s fine,” Jude said, very quickly. He propped himself up on one elbow and pushed his hair back from his face. “It’s gonna be fine, Wayne — ”

“I had no idea he’d even lived,” Bruce said, pushing himself up too. “You f*cking, you cut out his tongue, there was so much blood — ”

“One of Nell’s sources saw him in Manhattan,” Jude said. He was looking and sounding sorrier by the second he’d brought it up. Bruce watched the way he worried at his lower lip with his teeth. “Him and Rollie and Travis are still — ” he gestured outwards — “and I need to go make sure they’re all still keeping their mouths shut — or, well, the other two, I know Ashland can’t say sh*t, I made f*cking sure of that — ”

“Jude.” Bruce was trying to keep his voice even and in his efforts his heart began to pound against his ribs with sickening regularity. “Please tell me you’re just kidding.”

Jude sighed. When he sat up the sheets pooled around his waist. There was a long scar which ran the length of his lowest rib and Bruce had never asked about it despite he’d had his teeth and his mouth on it multiple times in the past months.

“I can’t have him talking about you,” Jude said. “I can’t risk that — you can’t risk that.”

“I — Jude, I need to go with you if you’re going to do this.” Bruce sat up too. His hands were shaking and he was staring at the side of Jude’s face where he could see the muscles in his jaw tightening along the scars. Outside he heard the L train rumble by; it vibrated through the walls. “I don’t — you can’t go alone — ”

It was the wrong wording, and he knew it. Jude’s jaw clenched even further; he let out a frustrated huff, and he said,

“Look, I know we’re close, Wayne, but you don’t tell me what I can or can’t do. Okay? I’m still in charge. Do you understand?”

“Jude — ”

“You either understand or you don’t.” His hand was fisted around the sheet; his knuckles were white. Bruce wanted to say okay; he wanted to let it go. He wanted to press Jude back into the sheets and apologize for overstepping. Of course you have it under control, he should say, because it was what Jude wanted to hear, and because Bruce had gotten very good at telling Jude things he wanted to hear. You’ve been at this game longer than me. I won’t try and stop you again. But he could not. In his mind he kept seeing flashes of images superimposed like a 3D photograph: Jude facing off with Ashland at Coney Island. Jude ripping Ashland’s tongue out. The false memories from Coney Island of Ashland and the others destroying Jude, killing him on the putt-putt course, and the true memory of his parents in the alley. The blood had pooled beneath Thomas’ shirt and he’d stared up at Bruce with it flecked across his jaw and his skin drained of blood and grew steadily paler and he whispered, everything’s going to be okay. Then his eyes unfocused.

“I can’t,” Bruce said. Jude’s eyes hardened; he hadn’t been expecting that. “I’m sorry, I — he has no reason to be gentle with you — ”

“Well then it’s a good f*cking thing I’m not going to meet him for f*cking sandwiches, Wayne, what the f*ck — ”

“He hates you, Jude. You understand that? He hates you, he’ll kill you — ”

“Pretty much every single person on the east coast hates me,” Jude said. He was detangling himself from the sheets. There was a fading bruise on his hip. “It’s not exactly an uncommon occurrence — ”

“Yeah, but you’ve hurt all his men — ”

“That’s not new, either — ”

“You have no reason to — ”

“I told you my f*cking reason. I’m doing this to keep your identity secret. Or would you rather everyone in Jersey know what the f*ck Bruce f*cking Wayne gets up to in the evenings — ”

Bruce fought down a bubble of hysteria. “I just.” He had to pause, clear his throat. Jude had stood and was tugging on his shorts, so Bruce stood too. “I don’t — there has to be another way, and I don’t understand why you have to go by yourself — ”

“I don’t f*cking understand why you’re so hellbent on keeping me from this,” Jude snapped. “This isn’t the first dangerous situation either of us has put ourselves in. I’ve got you on an important job — ”

“Yeah, to keep me out of the way — ”

“Wayne.” Jude was growling, pitched and dangerous. “Stop f*cking talking. He didn’t die when he was supposed to, and I’m going to take care of it. If I have to kill all three of them then I’ll f*cking kill all three of them, why the f*ck should I care? I’m eliminating a problem because I don’t have the time, the resources, or the energy to deal with it over and over. I’m not going to listen to you bitch about it any more.”

Bruce tugged his sweats over his hips, folded his arms across his chest. “I’m coming with you,” he said.

“No, you aren’t — ”

“Jude, for f*ck’s sake, if I wasn’t in your f*cking gang Ashland wouldn’t even be a threat to you to begin with!”

Jude narrowed his eyes. He licked his scars. For the first time in weeks it looked predatory. “Maybe I’ll just kick you out instead, then,” he said, softly.

Bruce’s heart, which had been giraffe-kicking his ribs, stopped abruptly altogether. “I — ”

“If you’re gonna f*cking try and control me I don’t want you around anyway,” Jude snarled. “I told you I’ll do whatever the hell I want. So get the f*ck out of my apartment.”

“Jude, don’t — ”

He was lunging for the knife on his dresser before Bruce saw him move, and Bruce barely had time to duck before Jude was launching it at the wall behind him. “Get out,” he said again, same harsh violently deep tone he’d used to intimidate Brian Douglas, and Bruce pulled on his sweatshirt and his beanie, and he stepped into his shoes, and he got out.

He knew he was being a hypocrite. As he walked to his car in the searing frigid air he understood the stupidity of his argument. Jude had kept the truth about going after Ashland from him likely because he’d known Bruce would react badly — as he had — and Jude hadn’t wanted Bruce to fret over it — as he had. Bruce was keeping things from Jude too, and they were far bigger, and more permanent. Jude could take Ashland, Rollie, and Travis on his own. He’d been right, this was far from the first dangerous thing either of them had ever done. But it didn’t stop Bruce from worrying and it didn’t stop his anger and his annoyance.

When he got back to the penthouse it took him two tries before he remembered he’d installed eye scanners to replace the fingerprint scanners, and then another two tries before he could get it to recognize his iris. Frustrated he banged his hand on the wall before pushing the penthouse door open. Alfred looked up in some surprise.

“You’re home early — ”

“How,” Bruce started, then stopped, frustrated; he couldn’t verbalize this thing that bothered him and he couldn’t even fully verbalize why it bothered him so much. He couldn’t explain it to Alfred without revealing every single thing they’d done with and to Ashland which seemed — unfair, to say the least, to put such an enormous burden on the old man’s shoulders, and to detail this part of his life which Bruce was sure Alfred was still not entirely or even at all comfortable with. So after a moment he said, “How did you deal with me going off when I first started doing Batman stuff? Or like even before that, when I went to Europe alone.”

Alfred’s brow was slightly creased. “How did I deal?”

“Yeah,” Bruce said. He was shaking; he could still taste Jude in his mouth. If he’d just shut the f*ck up when Jude had hinted for it he’d still be at the apartment now, and they’d be f*cking out their frustrations instead of — this. “You were worried about me, weren’t you?”

Alfred gave him a look. “Every single day, sir.”

“But you let me go anyway.”

“It hasn’t been a matter of me ‘letting’ you do anything, Master Wayne. I watched you suffer through your parents’ deaths as a child, and I watched you become more self-sufficient for it. I was more than a little wary of you making the trip overseas, and then upon your return I was wary of you taking on the role of vigilante. But I watched it give you self-discipline. And now — ” he hesitated, looking down at the mug of tea between his hands — “I was wary of you joining the Jok— Master Baker’s gang for infiltration, I thought it was a foolish and reckless decision, but I have seen… a tremendous change in you since October. It seems that every decision you make is far more beneficial for you than either I or anyone else believes. So I am more inclined now, and have been growing steadily so since your return, to trust that you are capable of making what seem like rash choices turn into choices with good outcomes.” He smiled at Bruce, tremulously, and Bruce’s throat tightened. He couldn’t think of how to word the feeling welling in his chest; he opened his mouth not knowing what he would say and so was mildly shocked when what came out was:

“I’m not infiltrating anymore, Alfred. I’m done with that. I’m not going back to Batman. I’m staying with Jude.”

Alfred took a breath. Slowly he rose from his seat and crossed the kitchen to Bruce. He clasped his shoulder, and he said,

“I know, sir.”

The next afternoon following his work at the Enterprises Bruce was doing some intense illegal stalking of the Richmonds to see what the best tactic would be to frighten either Alice or Josh. The second-eldest daughter had a lacrosse match coming up after Christmas and would likely be at practice the next few days. He supposed he could go and take care of Alice tomorrow. He was making a few notes when his phone buzzed; his heart jolted, and then again harder when he checked the preview screen and saw it was Jude:

U free?

Yes, Bruce wrote back.

The response, immediate:

Cm ovr.

Bruce shut his laptop so quickly he was afraid he’d cracked the screen. He raced down to his car, out the garage, and into the Narrows. When he parked at the corner he sat for a minute hands shaking on the wheel and then he got out and walked to the door. One of the regular junkies who hung out on the steps recognized him and let him in; he took the stairs two at a time and knocked on Jude’s door.

“It’s unlocked,” Jude called, and Bruce stepped inside.

Jude was at the stove fixing a fried egg. His shoulders were tense and he wouldn’t look at Bruce and his knuckles were white against the countertop. Bruce folded his arms across his chest and bit his mouth. He didn’t know what Jude wanted him to do, so he didn’t do anything, just leaned against the door with his foot on the wood. Finally Jude said,

“Do you not, like — touch meat or anything,”

and Bruce said,

“No, I can,”

and Jude said,

“Come over here, then,”

so Bruce walked into the kitchen where Jude had laid out beside the toaster a package of sausage and a cutting board. “Chop that up,” he said. “I’m having my like, one meal of the week,” and Bruce shrugged off his hoodie and the gloves he wore to protect his still-sensitive fingertips from the frigid burning cold and took from the cabinet a knife. For some minutes they stood side-by-side in silence, except for the soft shucking sound of the knife slicing through the sausage and the sizzling of the eggs in the pan. Eventually the eggs were done and Jude took out a plate to put them in while the sausages cooked. His eyes dropped to Bruce’s hands while he watched him fixing the food and something crossed his expression.

“Your fingers look better,” he mumbled, reaching out to take the diced sausages from Bruce and put them into the pan. The meat hissed at the new temperature shift and the fire jumped beneath the grills because Jude had a gas stove. After a moment Bruce realized he hadn’t answered and so quickly as he wrapped up the rest of the sausage to refrigerate again he said,

“Yeah, they, uh — I’ve been putting ointment. They hardly hurt anymore.”

“Good,” Jude said. He still hadn’t quite looked at Bruce but some of the tension was leaving his shoulders. At last as Bruce finished washing his hands he said,

“Look, you don’t — I mean, if you thought… yesterday, when I told you to leave. You don’t have to leave. If you want to you can you know I’m not gonna stop you but you don’t have to.” He reached up with one hand to tuck his hair back behind his ear. It had been some weeks and the green was starting to fade again. “I just — said that. I wasn’t thinking.”

“I know,” Bruce said, softly. At last this got Jude to look over at him and Bruce was startled at the expression on his face: stark, naked relief, which he didn’t bother hiding. Bruce’s throat tightened sharply and catapulted down into a hollow raw place somewhere in his chest. He was pretty sure this was worse than anything he’d ever done (or not done) to Rachel. He’d controlled or attempted to control nearly every aspect of her life and he’d expected things from her she’d very clearly tried to show him she was not ready for or capable of or willing to give to him. He’d built up a fantasy idea of her which she didn’t match up to and refused to see anything that fell outside the strict boundaries and lines he’d set up for her. He’d expected her to just go along with whatever, all the sh*t he did, all the dumb f*cking dangerous decisions he made. Alfred had learned how to tolerate and live with it, but he was Alfred, he was sort of obligated to. Rachel hadn’t had to and so she hadn’t, and Bruce hadn’t understood that, her lack of acceptance or desire. He hadn’t understood and so he’d refused to believe in or see it. But Jude — Jude had given Bruce everything. Everything he’d once desired from Rachel, everything he’d thought he needed from her. Every particle of Jude’s soul, every secret, every part of him he refused to or was otherwise incapable of showing to the world because it was too raw, or too humiliating, or otherwise just too human: all of it belonged to Bruce. Every ounce of it was in his hands and he was pretending to return it in kind —

— and the weird thing was he was sort of returning it, at least in part; after all the tender creature would not have been born without Jude’s influence, and nor would Bruce’s realization that he’d been miserable, trapped, stifled by his own hard and unreasonable limitations —

— but not all the way. Not the biggest things. Jude would be so, so angry — no, angry wasn’t even the right word. He would be furious. He’d rage. Likely he’d attempt to kill Bruce and Bruce would deserve it. Certainly he’d never speak to him again and it was possible Bruce would have to set up security and move locations and perhaps even leave Gotham entirely. He’d gone into this lying, he’d gone into this attempting to trick Jude, and the worst thing was he’d succeeded, even if it was no longer for the same reasons. He’d succeeded, and Jude was going to be beyond fury, beyond everything, when he realized Bruce could get under his skin and maneuver him, him, the f*cking Joker —

“Wayne.” It occurred to Bruce Jude had been saying his name for some time now, kind of gently. When Bruce looked up Jude was still watching him, sheen of grease on his nose. The sausages had finished cooking and lay faintly burnt in the pan.

“Sorry, yes, what — ” Bruce cleared his throat. No wonder Rachel wouldn’t go with him; even if he’d managed to dial back the intensity and the possessiveness he could have never had her without damaging her in some irrecoverable way. No one who ever entered a relationship with him would ever come out on the other side undamaged. ”I was, like, a thousand miles away, what’s going on?”

Jude looked faintly amused, which was probably good except that it broke Bruce’s heart even further. “I asked do you want anything, like toast or something. I’m about to eat.”

“Oh, oh yeah, sure,” Bruce said. He took the loaf of bread out from where Jude was pointing and stuck a couple slices into the toaster. Jude got out a fork for his eggs and sausage and walked over to stand beside Bruce while he waited for the food to cook. He pressed his shoulder to Bruce’s. He was wearing a sleeveless tank, and the rough ragged edges of his scars rubbed against Bruce’s bare arm.

“So you think you’re gonna stick it out?” Jude asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Bruce said. Something throbbed in his temple. “Someone’s gotta be here to carry out all your good plans.”

Jude laughed. The toast finished cooking. Bruce put one slice on Jude’s plate and kept the other for himself, and they walked together into the den and sat on the sofa. Jude had an ancient and slightly worn VHS recording of an early episode of Headbangers Ball which he’d been in the middle of watching. He pressed play, and then he pressed the side of his foot to the side of Bruce’s.

“Glad you’re back, honey,” he said, after a long time. Bruce exhaled, quiet. He leaned over and pushed his nose into the crook of Jude’s neck. I’m sorry, he thought, over and over, static eternal pointless loop. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

“So’m I,” he said.

Some time later with their food eaten and Bruce’s head in Jude’s lap — he was stroking his hair — Jude said,

“So I don’t know when you were planning on going after the Richmonds — ”

“Tomorrow,” Bruce mumbled against his thigh.

“ — that’s great actually, that’s when I have my meeting with Ashland.”

Bruce tried not to tense, but he must have anyway because Jude sighed, his fingers stilling momentarily against his scalp. “Wayne — ”

“No, I’m not — I’m not trying to keep you from doing it anymore. I’m just — why the f*ck did he agree to meet with you. You cut out his f*cking tongue. And I cut off his guy’s f*cking finger — ”

“Yes,” Jude said, with remarkable patience, “which is why he thinks he’s meeting with Vedder and Staley. They’re neutral and as far as I know he’s never dealt with them before. I told him I — like, myself, the Joker — was willing to renegotiate some of the terms of our previous deals like with the guns and that co*ke he lied about in exchange for a ceasefire between us, so I’m sending two of my guys to settle a peace treaty.”

Bruce stared at the television where a very young Marilyn Manson was sitting awkwardly on a stool talking to the reporter. “Are you really negotiating anything with him?”

“Sure,” Jude said. “He leaves you alone or I kill Travis. He leaves you alone or I kill Rollie. He leaves you alone or I finally f*cking end his life like I should have three weeks ago — ”

“Jude.” Bruce pushed himself up into a sitting position, so that their shoulders were brushing again, and their thighs. He saw Jude’s frustration but he plowed on: “He’s not going to listen to you. He’s going to kill you as soon as he realizes what you’ve done — ”

Jude squeezed Bruce’s hand. “I can take care of myself fine, you know.”

“Yeah, but you’re going up three against one — ”

“Look — ” Jude huffed; he pushed his hair back again. “What if I tell you where we’ll be? Huh? Will that make you shut up?”

Probably not, Bruce thought, but he said yes to placate Jude. Indeed this earned him a small smile, and then Jude turned the television down and said, “We agreed to meet at the subway up by where 78 crosses over to Manhattan; it’s sort of a halfway point. It’s still in Gotham so it gives me an advantage but it’s not far from where Ashland’s apparently based now so it makes it look more like I’m acquiescing. So I’ll text you when I’m done on my end and we can meet back here. Or else you come here by midnight and if I’m still not here then something went to sh*t and you’ll know where to go to help. Okay?”

Bruce wanted to ask the most obvious question which was, I thought you said you were confident in this plan being foolproof, so what could go wrong? but he knew about how well that would go over and so he said, “How am I gonna come here if you’re not already here?”

Jude slid his plate onto the overfull coffee table and stood. His muscles bunched beneath the soft cotton of his shirt as he stretched. He cracked his neck and then he walked to the dish where he kept his keys and retrieved from inside another key on a thin silver ring. When he dropped it in Bruce’s lap Bruce’s whole brain went static.

“I wanted to give it to you for Christmas,” Jude said, “but it’s close enough and you don’t celebrate anyway — ”

Bruce tangled their fingers together with one hand and lost the key temporarily in the couch cushions while he lifted the other to fist Jude’s shirt collar and drag him forward. He kissed him starving and messy and desperate and sorry and Jude’s fingers came up to rest on his jawline where he liked them because he could feel all the movements of Bruce’s muscles under his hand.

“You like it, huh,” he said, when Bruce managed to pull back.

“I — ” Bruce’s voice stuck in his throat. He dropped Jude’s shirt so he could fish around and find the key again, and then he shoved it in the pocket of his sweats and pressed their f*cked fingertips together. His skin still burned and stung faintly along the unhealed lines and cuts but he didn’t care. He didn’t care. “I don’t deserve this, Jude…”

Jude stroked his thumb slowly down Bruce’s cheek. “‘course you do, honey,” he said.

Bruce swallowed and managed a kind of shaky smile for him. Then he said, “So you want me to come here if you haven’t texted me by midnight tomorrow?”

“Yeah. I’ll probably be here and just have lost my phone or some other dumb sh*t, might get it shot — hell, I might get shot — ”

“Don’t say that,” Bruce whispered.

“C’mon, Wayne, you have to be a little bit adventurous — ”

“Just promise me you’ll be careful, Jude.”

Jude rolled his eyes. “Yes, all right,” he said.

“I mean it.”

“I said I would.”

Bruce sighed. Let it go, he told himself, it’s not worth it, but he couldn’t, because he wasn’t good at much except f*cking things up, so he said,

“Look, why don’t you take me with you?”

“Because I need you here, Wayne.”

Bruce dug his nails into his palm. They’d gotten long; he hadn’t realized. They were nearly as long as Jude’s now. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d bothered to trim them. “Then take Nell or Rez.”

Jude raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t we literally just f*cking have this conversation about how you don’t tell me what to do — ”

“Look, I just — I don’t want to fight again, I just don’t understand why you won’t take care of yourself.”

“I’m taking care of myself. I told you where I’ll be and I said you could come intervene if sh*t goes sideways — ”

“Yes, but it might be too late by then — ”

“Yeah, and?” The flat careless tone caught Bruce off guard. Like being hit with a sledgehammer he remembered the way Jude had cackled as Batman threw him from the top of the Prewitt Building. How excited he’d been to fall with no way of stopping himself. It was the same feeling Bruce sought after when he dove from buildings in the suit and hoped the cape wouldn’t deploy —

Bruce froze. He stared at Jude. In the background faintly the television was still going.

“You don’t care.”

Jude’s mouth had thinned out. He had the same caught-rabbit look as when Bruce had slipped and used his name in front of Alfred, or when he’d slipped just yesterday and spoken about Ashland.

“That’s why you want to go on your own, you don’t f*cking care if you — ”

“Is it really this big a surprise, Wayne?” Jude stood a second time and flicked the television off. “C’mon, you’ve seen my lifestyle. You know what the f*ck I do. It’s the same as what I told you about why I got sent to Dymphna’s. I’m still not actively looking for a way out or anything but if one presents itself — ”

“Jude,” Bruce whispered. His stomach was plummeting to the floor. “I — I can’t lose you — ”

“I just said I’m not gonna f*cking kill myself, Wayne,” Jude snapped. He pulled his hands through his hair a third time, so aggressively the band holding it back snapped off. He let out a frustrated growl and stormed into the bathroom to get a new one. “f*cksake, this is why I didn’t want to tell you.”

Jude had let Batman beat him to sh*t in the interrogation room. Jude had fallen laughing from the building. Jude had stood in the street screaming at Batman to just hit him —

“Anyway you’re a damn hypocrite,” Jude snarled. His face was hidden in the bathroom behind the cabinet, voice tense. “You — I see how you look, the way you f*cking talk. You want it just as bad as I do, you wouldn’t have agreed to join up with me so quickly if you gave a sh*t about your life — ”

Don’t talk like one of them; you’re not. Even if you’d like to be. Bruce wondered if Jude had recognized it in him even before, when they’d still only been Batman and the Joker. If he’d been so desperate to get Batman to fall because he’d seen their similarities and felt that same aching clench — the gratifying and long overdue wash of acceptance —

— a whisper, barely audible below the L train and the scream of police sirens: so this is how it feels. So this is what I was waiting for…

“I told you I don’t like hypocrites and I don’t like people controlling what the f*ck I do or how I feel so if you’re going to start that sh*t now you’re welcome to leave any time.” Jude’s voice had hit a peak in its tension and broke. Bruce still couldn’t see his face, so he took a breath and stood. He walked to the bathroom where Jude was leaning against the sink clutching it tightly with his fingers. He’d gotten out a new hair tie and wrapped it around his wrist and was just standing there breathing unsteadily with his head dropped down and the scars, the beautiful scattered scars laddering his arms and the ragged uneven lines on his cheeks. How lonely he had been. Even in the cradle and comfort of his violence and his anger, even growing up with both parents and friends in school. Reaching out against a wall he could neither see nor touch which nevertheless grew daily in height and thickness until at last it was unscalable and unbreakable. And then suddenly he’d found Bruce and a door appeared in the wall along the lowest parts where they could both reach —

Bruce put his hand on Jude’s shoulder and Jude stiffened. Bruce stroked his ruined fingertips over the scars and Jude turned to look at him with that same naked raw desperation from before and Bruce felt his breath catch in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know — I’m sorry. You don’t have to be anything else for me. You don’t have to try or pretend to be anyone else.” He slid his nails down Jude’s arm. He tugged the hair tie off his wrist and stepped fully behind him. He gathered Jude’s hair up in his hands and smoothed out the knots and the tangles and wrapped the band around it until there was a little tail, mixed pale green and dirty blond. He kissed the back of Jude’s neck and curled their fingers together against the sink counter. Jude was trembling. Bruce swayed him back and forth, over and over, as gently as he could. He dropped his forehead on Jude’s shoulder and he said,

“I don’t need anything from you you can’t give me,”

and Jude shifted his thumb out from beneath Bruce’s hand, and pressed the pad of it against the side of his hand. It felt like ‘thank you’. It felt like something else for Bruce to feel guilty over, but he wasn’t sure how much longer this would last. Certainly not past New Year’s.

So he pushed it down, and squeezed Jude’s hand tighter.

In the morning when Bruce woke Jude had already left. There was a note on the mattress, and a cigarette.

I didn’t want to wake you up, the note said, in Jude’s strange, jagged, scarcely legible writing. Remember when you go after the Richmonds Josh owes $14k in car parts so if he doesn’t want to give the parts he can write us a check. Try not to worry about me, it’s sweet of you but it’s just gonna distract you and you’ll do a sh*t job.

I’ll see you when I’m done. If it’s early enough I’ll text you to meet me somewhere and we can go on a road trip in your pretty car. - JRB

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and his forefinger. Slowly, he sat up — the bruise Jude had sucked into his thigh the night previous twinging — and took Jude’s extra lighter from the dresser. He lit the cigarette and sat for a while staring at the painting Jude had put up of the Erebus and Terror, post-wreck. He tried not to remember the hatred on Travis’ face when he’d shot Jude, nor the way he’d looked when Bruce had sliced off his fingers. Nor the way Ashland had looked at Jude when he’d cut out his tongue. Nor the way Rollie had looked at Coney Island…

Outside the snow had started to fall. Bruce finished his cigarette and pressed it out on the carpet. Then he shrugged his clothes back on, made sure he had his new spare key in his pocket, and headed out.

Suzanne’s lacrosse team met for practice at the soccer field behind Wayne Memorial Library. Bruce watched, pretending to be reading a book behind his sunglasses, while the kids ran around in the filthy sludgy snow and shivered on the sidelines. He was wearing an old Enterprises badge backwards, modified to look like something worn by a library worker. Eventually he caught sight of Alice, reapplying pale pink lipstick in a faux-fur coat. The other two Richmond kids were chasing each other and the other team members’ siblings around the outer edges of the field. Bruce watched Alice check her phone several times, offer Suzanne Gatorade when she was called off the field, and at one point surreptitiously try to light a cigarette before being glared down by another mom in a tracksuit. When practice was over the kids gathered for a huddle and the parents headed off to get their cars warmed up. Bruce set down his book and walked over to the parking lot. As he approached Alice he saw her smile a little warily and he dropped his shoulders and stopped on the sidewalk. He pushed his sunglasses up into his hair and saw her visibly flinch — the contacts had startled her.

“Alice Richmond?” he said.

Her mouth twisted at the corner. “You aren’t allowed to solicit here,” she said. “There’s a sign.”

“I’m not soliciting,” Bruce said. “This’ll only take a second, I promise.”

Her eyes dropped to his badge, and then back to his face. “If this is a promotional for one of those library things I promise you I don’t have time for it, my kids are already involved in enough sh*t, my father-in-law can’t cart them off to more things. Anyway we’re going out of town for Christmas and — ”

“Oh?” Bruce raised his eyebrows. “Really? That’s too bad. Josh will have to work fast to get his job done on time if you’re leaving that soon.”

Alice had been walking towards her driver’s side door in a not-subtle attempt at shaking Bruce off; now she froze. On the lacrosse field her kids were still playing — Suzanne was listening to her coach, and Stella and Daniel were chatting with a couple other kids bundled up in sweaters and hats. Bruce saw her glance reflexively towards them and he said, softly,

“Alice. I’m not going to hurt your kids. But you are going to listen to me. Don’t scream. Don’t move. Look at me. All right?”

Her eyes slowly swiveled back to his. He saw her nod once, a tiny infinitesimal thing.

“All right,” he said. “Now, I know we were in contact with you a few months ago about Josh’s business. And he delivered what he was supposed to before Stella’s dance recital in November, so that’s — ” he waved vaguely — “over and done with. But Josh is a week late on his next payment and my boss doesn’t tolerate multiple slipups.”

“Well, I — ” Alice cleared her throat. “My father-in-law is, he’s really quite busy; his wife broke her leg and he’s had to deal with helping her so I’ve had the kids more and it’s just all really hectic and — ”

“I’m sure, and those are all fine excuses, but the fact remains he’s late on his payment. If you don’t pay your water bill on time then they shut the water off, right? So no more hot showers for you and the kids. No more homecooked meals. So it’s the same thing with the car parts your father-in-law owes us. He didn’t pay one time and we came after him and then he dragged his f*cking feet about it, and now guess what, a pattern’s developing. The boss doesn’t like it. I don’t like it. I don’t like when people waste my boss’s time. So why don’t you tell Josh he’s got — what, when are you leaving for your trip?”

Alice swallowed. On the field the coach was doing a headcount and wrapping the practice up. “The, after the twenty-seventh. That’s when Suzie’s game is. So it’s really more a New Year’s trip.”

“Oh, that’s great, Alice,” Bruce said. “That’s not for another five days minimum. So you tell Josh he’s got a little under a week to get the parts to us, or else fourteen thousand doll— ”

“I’m sorry?” Alice interrupted, her eyes widening. Bruce rolled his own, gesturing at her BMW, the faux-fur coat, her Fendi purse:

“That cannot be a shock to you, Alice. You obviously have money. Don’t be stupid, okay? I don’t have time for it. Just tell me you’ll pass the message along.”

“I — ”

“Just yes or no will do.”

Her mouth tensed in the corners. The kids were heading towards the parking lot now. Suzanne was holding Stella’s hand and they were skipping.

“Alice — ”

“Yes,” Alice snapped. Her voice was shaking with nerves beneath her anger. “Yes, I’ll tell Josh that he owes you. Now leave me alone.”

Bruce slid his sunglasses back down over his eyes. The wind was picking up again. The sun glared off the snow and the cars. “The sooner the better,” he said. “You don’t want your vacation ruined.”

Her mouth tightened further, but he could see the fear in her face. “I’ll tell him,” she said again.

Bruce stepped back from the car as the kids approached. “And let him know the boss won’t have this conversation with him a third time,” he said. “I’m sure Josh knows the rules of baseball.” He lifted one hand to wave at her, her trembling hands and her furious, borderline-panicking face. As he walked off he heard one of the girls say,

“Mom, who was that?”

He walked back to the library. He shot Jude a text when he was within signal range again:

Tkn care of. C U 2nite. He waited for a text back as he headed to his car. He waited as he slid into the driver’s seat, removed his contacts, and let the heater warm the car. He waited as he pulled out of the lot and started back for the business district. By the time he’d pulled into his private garage there was still no text waiting for him, but he told himself it was fine. Jude had had a harder job today than he did. He was just being thorough.

By eleven Bruce had run five miles on his treadmill, done five reps of twenty pushups, four reps of twenty bicep curls on a thirty-pound weight, four reps of ten chin-ups, and then proceeded to collapse on the gym floor where he promptly chain-smoked his way through half a pack of cigarettes. The whole time he was fiddling with his phone as though perhaps that would cause it to buzz or ring but it did neither. He thought about swimming laps in the pool but it was running through one of its self-cleaning cycles so he went back upstairs. He was growing to like the eye scanners but he could barely keep his eyes still for them tonight; he kept compulsively wanting to check his phone, though it had never gone off. Alfred had already gone to bed and Bruce made himself some coffee, drank half of it, then threw the rest down the drain. He called Jude’s number. It went to voicemail. He bit his nails; he called again. Voicemail. In the end there wasn’t anything much he could do except to slip the contacts back in — just in case — and leave a note for Alfred: Heading out. Back in the morning. He’d parked a little crookedly in the garage so it took some maneuvering to get out; by the time he was on the street again it was eleven forty-five, and his heart was doing that horrible giraffe kick.

He drove out to the Narrows, taking several of the turns fast enough he went up on the curbs. He had his phone in one hand which he was intermittently clasping to his mouth to keep from screaming. The radio was on nearly at full volume: Jude’s Spiderland cassette, which only served to amplify the panicky unreal feeling. Bruce was sure when he got to the apartment and let himself in he’d find Jude spread out on the couch or on his bed and Bruce would yell at him a little and then Jude would say something like, C’mere. Breathe, weirdo. Here, I saved you half my f*ckin’ pack. You’re welcome, and Bruce would take the cigarettes and Jude’s lighter and he’d smoke a little and then they’d f*ck. They’d f*ck and things would be fine for a while until Bruce had to tell Jude the Truth at which point he had no idea what things would be like or if there would be things at all but he couldn’t worry about that now, he was barely able to focus on driving if he worried about things like that on top of everything else he had to worry over so he didn’t, he shoved it back into his mind and eventually he was on Jude’s street and then he was at Jude’s apartment. It was pitch dark — the streetlight had burned out — and the open space where the bomb had gone off looked especially menacing, a mouth open to the void, starving and empty and swallowing its own hunger in the blank black night. As Bruce parked the car and got out he heard the tarp as it shook in the wind, the hollow sucking noise it made as it tried to wrench itself free from the wall only to be caught and slammed back down. Bizarrely, Helena was standing in the doorway of the building opposite Jude’s, wrapped in a heavy coat, smoking a cigarette. She waved at Bruce and called a greeting to him which the wind snatched away. He rushed across the street to the front door and shoved it open with his shoulder — the lock was broken again — and then up the stairs. At Jude’s door he had to pause to get his car keys back out because he’d put the apartment key on them but his hands were shaking so much and numb and clumsy with cold he could barely get a grip on them. He shoved the key into the lock and twisted and it opened —

— and the lights were all off. The apartment was empty but, pointlessly, Bruce checked the rooms. The doors were all open but he checked anyway: Jude’s bedroom, the bathroom, the laundry room, the kitchen. The apartment had a hollow feeling to it the way places did when they’d been empty for a while. In the bedroom Bruce saw the lighter where he’d left it that morning. So Jude hadn’t come back all day.

Bruce bit down on the inside of his mouth. He checked his phone; it was ten minutes after midnight, and there were no texts, nor calls. Jude was not here and certainly he hadn’t gone to the penthouse because Alfred would have called or else Jude would’ve used the landline if his phone was defunct. Jude was not here but Bruce could smell him, his scent had been trapped in the apartment all day and it was dizzying, distracting. Jude wasn’t here and Bruce could smell him and hear his voice echoing and something was wrong. He’d promised Bruce he’d be there by midnight and if he wasn’t Bruce could come. He cast one final, sweeping look over the apartment, as though he expected Jude to jump out from behind one of the sparse pieces of furniture which lined its walls. Then he left, locking the door behind him, and ran back down to his car.

He drove first to the warehouse — it was on the way out of the Narrows and Bruce needed to get ammunition and also to regroup his thoughts. His hands were shaking so badly he nearly wrecked the car twice and when he pulled up alongside the warehouse he almost couldn’t turn off the ignition. If Ashland had killed Jude Bruce would cut his body into a thousand pieces and force-feed him to Travis and Rollie before slitting their throats. He would do what he wished he could have done to Stipe and pull their intestines from their bodies and hold them up to their eyes before they died. Then he would take his father’s car and drive into the woods in upstate New York, and abandon it on the side of the road, and get out, remove his clothes, and walk. In the afterlife perhaps Jude would greet him first, coming to him and touching his cheeks, and Bruce would say, I guess you were right about me, and Jude would roll his eyes and huff out a laugh. Perhaps —

But as he walked to the front door and prepared to push it open he froze, and all thoughts were swept from his head. Wedged into the crack of the door there was a joker card. The end had bloody thumbprints on it, and Bruce — his breath coming suddenly short and sharp — pulled it out. It was a fresh card, slight crease in the middle. When he turned it over —

Cut out my tongue. But I can still write. BRUCE WAYNE BRUCE WAYNE BRUCE WAYNE. Come to the subway. Tick-tick. Then a crude drawing of a stick figure tied to a pole. Bruce thought he might have made a noise, but he wasn’t sure. He stood for a moment longer at the door of the empty warehouse, listening to the wind rushing inside. He was hardly aware of turning away from it, walking back to his car. The next thing he knew he was driving fifty miles per hour down Anderson towards Lexington, then onto Broadside where he took a left instead of a right. He wasn’t consciously aware of where he was going until he realized he was at the docks.

At the entrance to the bunker he left the car running, driver’s side door flung open as he raced through the false dumpster door and down the elevator. He stood for a moment as the lights came on, breath coming choppily, hands shaking at his sides. He was running on automatic, adrenaline coursing through him, making him burn. His thoughts were static and blank and he could have been here to get Batman’s weaponry but he knew even before he started walking again that wasn’t what he wanted. Of course it would happen this way, in the end. He understood he had been barreling towards this conclusion and it was inevitable and now it was here. The choice of when to tell Jude had been ripped from his control the second Ashland had taken him. The second Ashland had involved a bomb in it — and what else could his note on the card mean except that. He’d kidnapped Jude — he’d kidnapped the f*cking Joker and there was no other option. Potentially Bruce could’ve called Cornell and Reznor and brought them as backup but even with the three of them there with machine guns and hand grenades and Jude’s f*cking bazooka there was no promise they’d make it out any of them alive. The purpose was to make it out alive. The suit would guarantee that. Even as it destroyed everything else, it would guarantee his and Jude’s lives.

Bruce walked forward from the entryway, dread seeping down into the soles of his feet. The suit was where he’d left it, still in its underground cage, glistening black, waiting for him to reappear. His hands were shaking so much he almost couldn’t get it on; his muscle memory faltered, he could barely remember how to do it. He popped out his contacts first; then fastened the cloak over his shoulders. When he pulled the mask on it felt like it was caging him in, suffocating every breath he tried to pull from his lungs, as false and unreal an identity as it had seemed when he’d come down here at the start of the month. He took up a gun and thought, forgive me; he didn’t know who he was pleading to. He thought about calling Alfred and informing him of the situation but decided against it. Alfred would just tell him to let Jude go, because doing this would be too dangerous, but that wasn’t an alternative. Alfred hadn’t understood his obsession with Rachel — or rather he had, but not as completely as he might have thought. Bruce knew, therefore, that there was no real way Alfred could understand the way he felt about Jude. He would have cracked open his own ribs and given his heart to Jude, stuffed it into Jude’s own chest himself, if it meant keeping him alive.

He walked out of the bunker feeling sick. After this there would be no going back. He got back in his father’s Mustang and put it in drive. There would be no going back. He peeled out onto Broadside and began the race downtown to the subway station. No going back. The Kevlar itched his skin, unfamiliar after so long out of it.

No going back.

Ashland, Rollie, and Travis were standing at the entrance to the subway. Bruce came walking up to them so fast — the cape billowing behind him — they didn’t even notice until he’d shot Travis in the head. His brain exploded out the back of his skull and he fell as the gunshot cracked and echoed in the still night. Rollie spun around gaping. The streetlamp closest threw an ugly shadow beneath his facial scar where the rose had been bisected.

“Batman?” he started. “What the f*ck — ”

Bruce grabbed him by the back of the neck. The tender creature was boiling its rage inside him thick and viscous and the suit despite feeling foreign on his skin was slamming him with memories and the combined force of the twin angers was such that he thought he might explode. “Where is the Joker?” he growled, his voice pitched so low he thought he might start spitting blood.

“How the f*ck do you — ”

With his other hand Bruce broke Rollie’s nose. Over his nasal screams Bruce shouted the question again, and Rollie pointed down the stairs into the subway.

“Is he alive?” Bruce roared, and when Rollie nodded, frantic, blood spraying everywhere, Bruce gripped his jaw and snapped his neck. The body dropped into the snow and then Bruce was in pursuit of Ashland, who had started running as soon as the first gunshot was fired. He grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and flung him down onto his back on the pavement. Ashland let out a strange, wheezy gasp, muffled around his lack of tongue. He stared up at the blank black sky. Bruce stood over him, foot on his ribs. Batman’s boot weighed half a pound and the sole was an inch thick; Bruce pressed in on Ashland’s chest and he made more of those strange, gagging noises.

“You don’t f*ck with my family,” Bruce growled, the wind whipping his cape around his shoulders. He knelt, still with his foot on Ashland’s ribs, and pressed the gun to his temple. “You do not ever, ever f*ck with my family.”

Ashland said something garbled and breathless. Bruce shoved the barrel of the gun harder into his temple; he snarled, “Can’t f*cking understand you, Ash,” and Ashland’s eyes widened just as Bruce brought the gun down on his skull. Ashland screamed, and Bruce brought it down again, this time on his weakened ribs. He heard a sick crack, and blood spurted out from Ashland’s throat. Bruce hit him again in the skull, and he went quiet, but Bruce hit him again, and again, and again, until his head was a bloody f*cked caved-in mess. His hands shaking he dismantled his gun and put it in the trunk of his car. Then he raced down into the subway.

Jude was visible almost as soon as Bruce got to the bottom of the stairs. He was tied to one of the concrete poles holding the station up. His head lolled to one side and blood trickled slowly from his nose. His makeup was smeared over his face. There was blood on his clothes and in his hair.

Bruce knelt beside him. Batman’s gloves were thick, clumsy things, but he managed to get his hands on the bomb attached to the ropes wrapped around Jude’s wrists. He had about ten seconds to think perhaps this would work in his favor; perhaps he could dismantle the bomb and be out of there before Jude woke. But then Jude shifted; his head rose slowly, the neck popping, and Bruce sighed. He watched Jude swivel his head around, tucking his chin against his shoulder so he could look behind him. Something flashed in his eyes; Bruce couldn’t read it. Then he said,

“Oh. It’s you. I was beginning to wonder where you were.”

Bruce felt an ice pick of something resembling fear or perhaps only anxiety in his heart. He didn’t answer; he was focusing on the bomb. It was the exact sort he’d disassembled multiple times as Batman in the past. His hands were shaking so badly he thought he might trigger it accidentally. There was no going back from this.

“Have you been sulking off in some corner since I killed your attorney friend?”

“Shut up,” Bruce growled softly. It was easier to feel his anger towards Jude as Batman. It was easier to hate him this way, dressed like this, with his voice all low and gravelly and his face hidden. He wondered if he never took the suit off again would it remain easy for the rest of his life, knowing how much Jude was going to despise him after this. Would he be capable of losing everything he was losing in this moment purely by proxy of the suit? Perhaps the protection of the suit would combine with the protection of the tender raw creature as they had outside in the snow and he’d never feel a single thing again for the rest of his life.

“You know — ” Jude started, shifting a little, clearing his throat, and Bruce had to snap,

“Sit still,” which made Jude arch an eyebrow. Bruce winced; it was too close to the way they talked to each other normally.

“You know,” Jude said again, “you’ve been missing out on a lot of things happening in this city. I’ve managed to raise the crime rate by a full fifteen percent.”

“That isn’t something to be proud of,” Bruce lied. He had the wires straightened out and if he could just get his hand in the box he could cut the right one. He’d need to take his gloves off to do so; he knew Jude would recognize his hands, the burnt f*cked fingertips, but he knew also that Jude had probably already figured it out. Or if he hadn’t, he was going to soon. There was only so much Bruce could do to prevent it.

“I think you’re just jealous,” Jude said, “because you’ve effectively disappeared, whereas I’ve managed to build up an entire empire. You know I told you I wasn’t going to lose Gotham’s soul to someone like you. I didn’t really expect you to just hand it over to me so easily. But I gotta say — it’s been fun.” He had a smile on Bruce knew really well; his mouth half-quirked, eyes flashing with dangerous heat. Bruce had taken the gloves off to clip the wires. “I’d rather you put up a little fight next time, though. I don’t like being the only one who puts in any effort.”

Bruce didn’t say anything. Sweat had built up under his mask and in the collar of his cowl. In another few seconds he was done with the bomb and he untied Jude’s wrists and picked the bomb up. It was dismantled but it could still be triggered by remote or if he dropped it. He’d worn the suit for this exact reason, for safety above all, but it still felt like he was stripping himself naked, exposing himself, when he carried the bomb to the far end of the station and took it apart the rest of the way.

“You could’ve done that closer to where I was sitting, you know,” Jude said, when Bruce had finished and was walking back. He was still sitting where Bruce had left him, sprawled out on the concrete, hair a mess, eyes a little out of focus where they’d hit him to knock him out. He ran his tongue over his teeth; Bruce watched the movement beneath his lips. “You could’ve killed both of us.”

“I don’t want to kill you,” Bruce said. He took Jude’s arm — his hand was still bare, and he watched Jude’s eyes track it — and hauled him up. He wasn’t used to being so much taller than Jude anymore and it disoriented him. Jude was looking at the lower half of his face. His eyes were narrowed. His tongue shot out to wet at his scars. He said,

“You tried to run me over five months ago — ”

“You were f*cking begging me for it,” Bruce said. “And I saved your life back in September. I could’ve left you on that highway, you know.” He wanted to say, I should have, because it would be so incongruous with the rest of him, but he couldn’t make himself do it; even here, now, in this state, with everything sliding out of his hands. Even with Jude staring at him, working it out as they stood there in the dark humid passageway. He couldn’t lie like that. Not about that.

“No, you couldn’t have. You’re incapable of deliberate destruction. It’s why you’re here now. You’re too much of a bleeding heart,” Jude said. “You’ve never been able to just let me go.” There was a pause. “You know what you are? You’re a villain with a martyr complex. You think your self-righteous act is going to grant you pity one day. You think everything you hide will stay hidden.” He wrenched his arm out of Bruce’s grasp and started for the stairs. Bruce followed him, footsteps echoing in the silent tunnel. When he’d gotten his hand on the frozen railing he asked,

“What am I hiding?” His heart was going to shatter inside his chest.

Jude turned to look at him. Bruce recognized the expression in his eyes now; he was begging, the way he was best at with Bruce, the way they usually liked: please don’t make me say it, you f*ck, please — But they weren’t apologetic and certainly not to each other. They weren’t ever going to be what Bruce had spent all this time pretending, and so Jude said,

“How could Batman have possibly known where I was? This wasn’t something I broadcasted. Ashland took me, and only one person in this city knew about my coming here to meet him in the first place.”

Bruce could taste the snow in the back of his throat when he inhaled. He wanted to close his eyes, but it wouldn’t be fair to Jude. Bruce deserved to see it, every devastating raw expression on his face.

Jude folded his arms. He looked furious, also scared, also unbearably, painfully heartbroken. “Bruce Wayne,” he said, very quietly, and Bruce reached up, pressed the release, and took off his mask.

What happened next: Bruce had been expecting it, yet it still took him by surprise. Perhaps he was allowing it to shock him, he would think later, so that he could punish himself. He was only really good at self-martyrdom. Jude withdrew his gun; he pointed it at Bruce’s chest. He gestured with it to make Bruce keep walking up. His hand was shaking; it was faint. Bruce could barely see it in the dim, cloudy moonlight.

“You lied to me,” he said. His voice was barely above a whisper, echoing in the cavernous expanse of tunnel at Bruce’s back.

Bruce swallowed. “Yes.”

“You’ve lied to me for months now.”

“Yes.”

They had reached the top of the stairs. When Jude shoved him down, Bruce was again not so much truly surprised as forcing himself to be. His face smashed into concrete and he felt the burst of blood against his mouth. The hot salinic taste of it mixed with the damp pale taste of snow. “You thought you could hide this from me forever,” Jude was snarling from behind him, voice thunder in the still night. “You thought I’d never figure it out.”

“No,” Bruce whispered, but his voice was muffled by the blood and the snow and he doubted Jude had heard him. He heard Jude click off the safety of his gun. Slowly, eyes swimming in gray bursts, the pain radiating like lightning from beneath his nose and his mouth, he struggled to his feet. Blood dripped onto the snow beneath him. The red looked like visible sin against the stark white.

He turned, careful not to slip on the icy step. He found he was not looking at the barrel at all, but at Jude’s eyes. In the darkness of the tunnel’s entrance they were black.

When Jude spoke, his voice was quiet again, dangerously, deceptively soft. “Why — ” he began, but it was not the question he wanted to ask. He shook his head, started over: “This must not have been much of a stretch for you, Bruce Wayne. You were already destroying people’s lives long before you set foot in mine.”

“I — ”

“Batman never saved anyone. You only killed people, or you delayed their deaths. And you kept saving and saving, trying to make up for the people you lost, the ones you cared about. There were only a few of those, weren’t there. Your friend the lawyer, and his piece of tail — ”

Bruce closed his eyes. “Jude — ”

“I almost can’t decide if I want to make it quick or not,” Jude said. “If I use this gun, you won’t suffer. I’m sure most of this city would want you to suffer. Especially when they see who you’ve been spending all your time with.”

“It — ”

“Did you really think f*cking me was going to make me complacent?” Now he was yelling, or nearly. His voice had taken on a manic, knifelike edge Bruce hadn’t heard directed at him in a long time. “Did you think if you lied to me enough I’d forget what Batman is? And what I am to him? We’re destined to only destroy each other. That’s all, Bruce.”

“I didn’t mean to — ”

“You know,” Jude said, almost casually, “I’ve always really f*cking hated your sentimentality,” and then he pulled the trigger. He pulled it twice, but the ringing from the second shot, and the explosion of pain across Bruce’s arm, only registered a few seconds after the fact. The first shot had streaked across his side, just below his ribcage; the suit deflected it, but it still felt like being punched with a hammer. He felt the heat of his blood begin to seep down his skin, through the tear in the fabric and the tears in his flesh. He doubled over, gasping. By the time he straightened up Jude was gone.

He dumped the bodies first at the docks they owned on the Passaic. He would have liked to have cut Ashland in particular into further smaller pieces or taken him to be corroded with acid or something else but his forehead was throbbing and his arm and side were going numb and irritated from the abrasion of the suit and so he settled for making sure Ashland’s mouth was open as he went under. Let the fish eat what was left of his tongue. Then he drove to the bunker where he parked and raced down, hands shaking. There was still a bit of first aid stuff down here for emergencies and Bruce hurried to kick off the boots and get out of the body of the suit so as to begin stitching along his ribs. The sharp scent of alcohol kicked his brain and forced his thoughts to slow. He could still taste the snow and blood where Jude had shoved him down. There was gravel in his knee somehow. When he inspected his arm he found it wasn’t as bad as his side; it would just need a bandage. Bruce’s hands were still shaking as he finished sterilizing everything and started in on cleaning the wounds. Through the numbness in his mind he could feel what he wanted, and what he wanted was Jude. He wanted Jude’s cold dry fingers on his skin and his voice in his ear:

Let me, honey, and then he’d lean over and thread in a tight, tiny row of stitches, and then he’d kiss Bruce on the side or something, and say, There, now we’re even. Be more f*cking careful next time, huh? and Bruce would just nod:

Sorry, boss,

and Jude would kiss his forehead. He’d kiss his forehead and smooth a bandage over his shoulder and Bruce had no idea why he’d thought he could lie forever. Likely he should’ve never lied to begin with, he thought, as he finished cleaning both bullet holes and patching them up appropriately. There was fentanyl of which he took two before slumping back in the chair beside his wall of computer monitors. There was blood everywhere from when he’d dripped it onto the floor but he didn’t have the energy to clean it. After a moment he forced his undamaged arm to reach out and grab the landline phone which connected to the penthouse. Alfred picked up on the third ring:

“Master Wayne? I got your — ”

“Jude’s gone,” Bruce choked out. His voice shattering glass in the stillness. It was harder to breathe down here than he’d remembered; the air was stale. He didn’t know if it had always felt this oppressive or if it was just because he was used to the warehouse now, the cavernous ceilings and the fresh air —

“ — mean, he’s gone?” Alfred was saying, and Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose, the healing burns rough against his skin. f*ck, what an idiot he’d been.

“I mean he’s gone, Alfred. He knows who I am. Who I used to be. He figured it out and he shot me and he’s gone.”

There was a rustling sound on the other end. “Where are you, Master Wayne?”

“I — ” Bruce licked his teeth, tasting blood. “I’m in the bunker, but — I need to be alone. I don’t want you to come.”

“Are you s— ”

“Yeah. Yes.” Bruce started to nod before he remembered Alfred couldn’t see him. “I’ll be home later, I — I’ll be home.”

“Yes, Master Wayne,” Alfred murmured. His voice was the same grave soft tone as it had been the morning after Rachel died. And Bruce the same amount of lost — sitting in a chair, suit thrown across the ground, slumped over, chest empty —

The line clicked. Bruce set the receiver back in its cradle. For a while he sat staring at his security cams, mind blank. The fentanyl was working its way through his system, pushing out the pain, trying to drag him under, but he fought against it and after a while when he thought perhaps he could stand it he got up and walked with the crumpled blood-soaked suit to its compartment in the ground. It was still up from earlier because he’d been in a hurry and hadn’t bothered with putting it back. The iron grill gates were open and waiting. Bruce — hands still shaking, skin tight on his ribs and beneath his bandage — started to drape the mask over the bars. Then he stopped. He stopped and he stepped back and stared at it. His ears were ringing. The fentanyl was ringing in his blood against the pain and the fear and the anger of the night and the previous evening and because he couldn’t think around it or through it he dropped the suit to the floor and then himself beside it. His bare knees smacked the concrete but he barely felt the sharp shooting resultant pain through the drug. He clenched his fist a little against his thigh. His jaw was gritted; he didn’t know when it had started.

He must have drifted a little because suddenly his head jolted up from his chest and when he opened his eyes the suit was still there. The suit was still there and so was Bruce. Both of them were crumpled heaps on the floor, the concrete floor Bruce never saw anymore, surrounded by steel and chrome and all the other fake f*cking sh*t Bruce never used anymore, hadn’t used in months. All the things that had defined his life, that he’d spent money and time and resources on, for no f*cking reason. The things he’d used to shield himself from himself, the barriers he’d put up. The things he no longer needed or wanted. The things that he’d pretended were doing other people good to disguise from himself that he was just wasting his f*cking time. He was kneeling there surrounded by all of it, naked, breathing unevenly, feeling the pull of his injuries. It wasn’t the first time he’d been shot and it wasn’t even his worst gunshot but still it hurt worse than anything else he could remember.

He should have told Jude, was the thing. He should have f*cking told him, f*ck everything, f*ck the risks. He could have told him back in October when it first started. Hell, he could have told him back in September when he’d picked him up on the side of the road. He could’ve removed the mask on the highway in the rain and said it’s me, it’s always been me. And Jude might’ve killed him or he might’ve just walked away but at least they wouldn’t have all this history. Or perhaps —

— perhaps he would’ve been more receptive to it. He might’ve even found it amusing. At some point he would’ve found out Bruce went commando under the suit and made fun of him:

Doesn’t the leather chafe your dick, though, Wayne? Isn’t that counterproductive to what we do together?

and Bruce would’ve had some lame response like, It’s Kevlar, because it would’ve made Jude laugh. It was just another stupid thing, though. There was no real reason for him to have gone commando in the suit. He’d had padding installed in the crotch, but even so regular shorts would’ve fit and wouldn’t have acted as any sort of hindrance. Jude would’ve thought the whole setup was stupid and he would’ve told Bruce so. He would’ve listed all the innumerable issues he had with Batman and asked why Bruce was wasting his life for people who obviously did not care, and Bruce might’ve come to the conclusion he had a lot sooner. He should have f*cking told him.

He flattened his hands against his thighs and stared at them. The scars on the pads of his fingers. They were mostly healed over now. Bruce could still see the expression on Jude’s face when he’d come up on the elevator and seen his ruined fingertips for the first time. He could still hear the low familiar cadence of his voice as he stood with Bruce in the bathroom fixing his skin and now he’d shot him. He’d shot him and he’d never speak to him again. Bruce could almost hear Rachel in his head laughing: see, I was right. You can’t f*cking stop. You never know when it’s enough and now you’re paying the price —

He struggled to his feet. He gathered the suit up in his arms and walked to the incinerators which lined the far wall. He pushed the code in for one and opened its door before throwing the suit in. The stupid little metal bat symbol, the gloves, the mask, the cape. The titanium-dipped tri-weave fiber Lucius had spent millions of dollars on. Bruce wasn’t sorry. He pressed another button and the fire kicked on. It leapt in the dark eye holes of the mask. It curled the ends of the little bat ears. It was still licking up the sides of the cape when Bruce slammed the door shut.

Notes:

edit 02/12/22: i canNOT believe i never thought of doing this before but if you wanna see a handwritten version of judes letter to bruce! now you can! (by handwritten ofc i mean i did it on paint 3D lol but you know what i mean.) i even added cigarette stains and a blood stain to it for Authenticity

Chapter 11 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

In the morning he woke and momentarily allowed himself the leisure of pretending none of last night had happened. That it had all just been a terrible nightmare, and when he looked at his burner phone there would be a text or two from Cornell detailing their next run, and maybe a text from Jude with stupid suggestive innuendo that would make Bruce laugh and type out a sleepily half-formed reply about where he could put his fingers to better use. Or maybe he’d roll over and find Jude lying beside him, a soft f*cked-out lump beneath the sheets, face pressed into the pillow. Bruce would run his fingers slowly down Jude’s spine and Jude would wake and smile at him and whisper his name so that Bruce would tuck his fingers beneath his jaw and kiss his scars and his mouth.

Instead, unsurprisingly, when he rolled over the other side of the bed was very cold and very unslept in. His phone was blank, too, screen dark, no notifications. There was a little indicator in the side to show his battery was nearly dead, so he plugged it in, cracked his spine, and slipped into a dark violet chamois robe he was sure had at one time belonged to Jude. It no longer smelled like him, of course, except for the lingering scent of his specific brand of cigarettes, which even that was hardly an indicator of Jude as Bruce smoked the same brand. All the same he wrapped it very tightly around himself, ran a shaking hand through his hair, and stumbled down the hall into the kitchen. Alfred was at the stove fixing pancakes.

“Good morning, Master Wayne,” he said. His voice was gentler than Bruce had been expecting, so that Bruce felt his throat tighten, embarrassingly, and had to busy himself at the French press for something to do with his hands. For a long time they were both silent — Alfred flipping the pancakes over, adding strawberries; Bruce watching the water heat, retrieving the packets of coffee — and Bruce thought somehow, miraculously, he’d gotten out of needing to offer an explanation. But then Alfred said,

“I believe that it would be unwise for you to watch the news for the next few days, sir,” so of course Bruce had to turn the television on, and there it was. Grainy security cam footage from the subway. There was no audio, and the feed was in black and white and terribly lit, but there was no mistaking his suit’s stupid massive shadow. He watched himself on GCN as he stormed up to Jude, knelt down at his side, and started messing with the bomb. He flinched, watching the way his hands hovered restlessly over the wires and over Jude’s bound wrists.

f*ck, he hoped the rest of Gotham didn’t think it looked so — tender.

Frantic.

He saw Jude’s head rising as he woke from his stupor and jerked his gaze away. The water in the press was boiling now and he took it as an excuse not to look at Alfred as he poured the coffee grinds into the filter.

“f*ck,” he said, softly, and Alfred said,

“My sentiments exactly, sir.”

Bruce swallowed. He supposed he’d been very, very naïve to not even consider the possibility that there would be CCTV footage. Hesitantly he looked back at the set in time to see the footage end and Mike Engel return to the screen. He had a self-satisfied expression that made Bruce want to punch him, violently.

“Well, I think it’s safe to say this is certainly not the comeback Gotham has been anticipating,” he said. “Batman’s return has been looked for with a certain toxic mixture of dread and hope, but I’m sure few of us would have expected it to be quite like that — ”

Bruce switched the set off. He slammed the remote down so hard the battery flew out and landed under the cabinets on the other side of the kitchen. His jaw was so tight his molars hurt, but he couldn’t unclench it, because he knew if he did he would start screaming. After a moment he heard the fire on the stove shut off, and then there were footsteps, and then Alfred’s hand was on his shoulder.

“Tell me what happened, Master Wayne,” he said, and Bruce breathed out. Every inch of him was shaking. Piece by piece he let the story unfold — what they’d done over the months to Ashland’s gang, and the kidnapping, and the joker card, and his fear, and how he’d thought at the time there was no other option but to wear the suit. He couldn’t quite bring himself to tell Alfred what he’d done with the suit in the end, but he thought perhaps it would be all right — Alfred knew he was no longer going to run as Batman anyway. Besides with his perceptiveness there was a chance he already knew. When he was done talking Alfred stood for a while in silence, looking at him. Then he walked over to get their pancakes and dole them onto plates. Bruce watched his businesslike, practiced gestures, letting his mind zone out, until Alfred brought the food over. Then Bruce poured them some coffee and they sat at the island.

Alfred said, “Master Baker will come around, you know.”

Bruce let out a short, brittle laugh. “He f*cking hates me,” he said. “Did you not hear everything I just told you. He knows I’m — I was Batman, he wants nothing to do with — ”

“Pardon me, sir, but that is not what you just told me.”

Bruce stared at him. “What — ” His hands clenched around his coffee mug. The scalding heat of it grounded him, dragging his mind out of the snow and the bloody pavement. “Yes, it — I f*cked it all up, Alfred. Like I do with everything. Like I did with Rachel. He’s not — he’s never going to — ”

“I have observed the two of you,” Alfred said, quietly, “for a long time now. Much longer than you think I have, in fact. And you are not giving Master Baker or yourself nearly enough credit.”

“He shot me — ”

“And you tried to beat him senseless once in the police station. Your relationship is not typical, Master Wayne. It defies my logic, and it’s taken me a long time to process it, and all its unconventionalities. But process I have, because I will not leave you, and certainly not over something so uncontrollable as falling in love.”

There was a quiet, steady roaring in Bruce’s ears. He drank his coffee without tasting it. “I just — ”

“If you truly believe Master Baker will be incapable of ever accepting this, then you do not know him. Of course he’s angry, sir. He’s the Joker, and he’s been blindsided. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t thinking about it. Or that you shouldn’t allow him some time.”

Savagely, Bruce speared a strawberry. “He — ”

“He’s angry,” Alfred repeated, but gently, “and it has been less than twenty-four hours. Let him come to terms with this. I promise you, this is not the end. For either of you. He isn’t going to leave. Not after everything else you’ve done for each other.”

Bruce didn’t tell Alfred he’d already had thoughts along the same lines once, when he’d still been debating whether or not to tell Jude at all. He remembered the black rage in Jude’s eyes as he’d stood in the mouth of the subway and spit vitriol, and he thought, for once, Alfred was wrong. But he knew he couldn’t say any of that, and he was tired, and he was tired of arguing, so he forced himself to smile. He squeezed Alfred’s shoulder, too. He ate his pancakes and sucked on an orange, and then he went to his bedroom and dressed in his suit and tie. As he brushed his teeth he stared at his reflection until it warped, and he no longer recognized the man staring back at him.

He tried to forget everything.

In spite of the world ending he still had business meetings to attend. He had to oversee the basic management of his company and make sure it was still running properly. There were charities he needed to fund and plans to improve the roads — especially those in the Narrows. Gotham General was still being rebuilt. There was no real time for him to just sit and think about what had happened, especially not during the day when he was running around from one end of the city to the other. The news kept up the stories about Batman’s mysterious return for a few days, but gradually its timeslot got pushed further and further back, until finally it was dropped from GCN altogether and wound up as an extra segment on one of the smaller local stations. Bruce tried not to pay attention regardless; the new year was coming up, and he had his annual charity gala to prepare. This year, of course, he’d meant to invite Jude —

— and therein lay the crux of the problem. Because even with no time to think about it, it was everywhere, in everything he did. It grew tendrils and spread into the house, every room Jude had walked through, every piece of furniture he’d touched. It was with Bruce in his in-home gym and in the passenger seat of his car — he’d stopped driving the Mustang, but the car he’d chosen in its place was another antique, leather seats and wide steering wheel, and not much better for his mentality. It crawled through the songs he tried listening to and it buried itself in the few bites of food he managed a day. It clung to his back during meetings and spilled out through his pen when he doodled in the margins of his planner instead of paying attention to the board members. It was in his clothes and his hair and his shower. It was with him in bed and when he brushed his teeth and it looked out through his reflection and whispered things in the fluorescent glare of four a.m.

It woke up with him and climbed out of his bed and looked out the window over the derelict remains of the city. It combed his hair and helped him pick out a suit for the day and folded over his fingers as he did his tie and it stared at him through the mirror as the feeling moved like a shock of electricity through his ribs. He remembered this feeling from immediately after Rachel’s death, how much of an effort it had been even to open his eyes, much less get his legs over the side of the mattress. The despairing desperate clench when consciousness returned after an unknown amount of time under the Ambien and he remembered he couldn’t call her. She wasn’t going to answer any more texts and she wasn’t going to show up at his house to yell at him or to talk or to share a coffee or to offer advice from her lawyer’s point of view. Snatches of phrases would float through his mind throughout the day associated with whatever various things and he’d instinctively reach for his phone before he remembered he couldn’t tell her. For a long time it was a struggle to see the window where Jude had thrown her from his balcony, because despite the long-repaired glass when he looked in that direction he still saw her in that dress, with that look on her face, and he remembered how angry she’d been, how if he’d just been unselfish for one f*cking second in his life she’d be here now —

But even through all that there had been a sense almost (guiltily, and gone unacknowledged for months) of relief. Because for all he missed her, for all he blamed himself, she was still dead. Nothing could change that. There wasn’t any sort of anticipatory well, maybe today… because Rachel wasn’t choosing to not communicate. She just couldn’t. This, on the other hand…

This was everything he’d felt in the summer multiplied by a thousand. Jude had his burner; Bruce knew he wasn’t going to get rid of it. He was just choosing not to talk to Bruce. To avoid dealing with this particular unpleasant sliver of reality Bruce had shoved his own burner into the back of a drawer and promised himself he would only look at it once a week. Often, however, it ended up in his hand seemingly of its own volition. And Bruce would stare at it and dig his nails into his palms and flip the phone open and shut until his anxiety had branded his lungs and cemented his heart to his ribs.

The thing was Jude could change his number. He could change his number and Bruce wouldn’t know. He could go another three days, or three months, or three years, or the rest of their lives without ever speaking to Bruce again, and Bruce had no way of knowing which option he’d pick. Sometimes he found he was staring at a wall and not breathing. Jude was in the city, he was alive and doing things Bruce couldn’t see or feel or touch or know. Jude wasn’t going to allow Bruce to fix any of this, and they both knew that.

It followed him down on the elevator to his meetings. Jude hates you.

It rode with him in his car. You pushed him away because you’re incapable of normal relationships.

It sat with him while he went over plans for the gala with Alfred. You’ll always be alone.

You’ll never find forgiveness.

You should have told him.

He dreamed he was at the bus stop on the corner of Edmonton and Burnside. When the bus pulled up ejecting thick black smoke into the air its doors swung open and Jude came rushing up from behind him to get on. Bruce moved — the way he did in dreams, fluid and seamless — and grabbed Jude by the wrist. He hauled him off the bus, nearly dragging him to the ground. People were staring. The doors shut. The bus lumbered away.

Bruce and Jude stood for a moment in the street, breathing each other’s air. Jude looked furious in a way he rarely had in real life, preferring to mask it behind amused indifference or outright laughter. Then Bruce said, “You’re f*cking coming with me,” and began pulling him down the street, without looking to see if Jude could keep up. Like a disobedient dog on a leash. He felt Jude stumble; white-hot anger surged through him, and he jerked his arm —

— and woke, shivering, jaw grinding so hard it took fifteen very measured seconds before he could unclench it.

By New Year’s 2009 Bruce was in a functioning catatonic state, wherein things happened around and to him of which he was peripherally aware but to which he couldn’t muster up the energy to react. He felt like he was watching the world through a glass wall on which he beat his hands and screamed but no sound got through. Alfred watched him all day with concern etched in every tired line of his face as Bruce walked around the penthouse observing the preparations for the gala. Bruce saw him, and tried to smile, but he could barely get his facial muscles to register his brain was giving them a command.

He was going to have invited Jude to this. He’d even sort of picked out an outfit for him from the men’s catalog for Lord and Taylor: dark emerald button-down, and pants such a rich, deep shade of violet as to appear almost black. He’d planned on making a special invitation for him and giving it to him at the apartment, maybe, or on one of their long drives back from A.C. Jude could have put concealer on his scars and used his temporary blond dye and stood in the corner with Bruce all evening while they made fun of the various guests and ate hors d’oeuvres to keep Alfred happy.

Instead at half-past six he discovered he couldn’t breathe. Alfred had to guide him to a side room where the waitstaff had been instructed to put extra chairs and tables, and then onto the floor, pressed against the wall, head between his knees, while Alfred went and poured him a glass of water. He sat down next to Bruce in the dark and put his hand between Bruce’s shoulder blades and rubbed while Bruce drank slowly and tried to remember how to do basic functions like blink and inhale. He was sure they looked ridiculous together — two grown men on the floor, in black tie outfits, knees jackknifed against their bodies, one doing breathing exercises. But thankfully no one walked by the room for a long time, and eventually when Bruce’s head had stopped making white noise and his glass was long drained Alfred got to his feet and said,

“I’m going to go check on the progress of the evening, Master Wayne. Will you be — ”

Bruce waved a hand at him vaguely, nodding. He listened to Alfred’s footsteps retreating across the tile. Then he exhaled. He dragged his hands down his face. He counted down from five hundred against the throbbing pulse of his heart. Then he struggled to his feet, and he walked out. From there it was undifficult — at least for a while — to turn it all off, and to mingle, and pretend to be normal and pleased at the year’s progress and anticipatory of the year to come. He saw Ainsworth from a distance, holding his long-uninjured hand in an affected way near his chest. It was clear even from across the room he was still trying to get people to ask questions about it. Bruce wondered what sorts of stories he came up with.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned. Jim Gordon was standing at his elbow, along with his wife, Barbara, and their children. Bruce didn’t know what he was doing here, because it wasn’t like Gordon and Bruce Wayne were friends, but he pulled the corners of his mouth up, and shook his hand.

“This is a great thing you’re doing,” Gordon told him. “Rebuilding the hospital, I mean.”

Letting his Lamborghini fishtail to save a man he’d put six feet under not two months ago. He felt a laugh begin bubbling up, high and hysterical, so he cleared his throat and snatched up a glass of sparkling cider from a nearby tray. “Thank you for your support,” he said, taking an unnecessarily long swallow. Gordon nodded.

“Of course, we’ll still have to keep an eye out for anything going amiss now that Batman’s come back,” he said, and Bruce choked on his drink. Barbara instantly rushed to pat him on the back and he felt his face growing hot from the lack of air and from embarrassment. Gordon stood there awkwardly, his kids staring from behind him, until at last Bruce was able to get his breathing back under control. It took longer than he would have liked.

“I feel like if anyone’s a threat to Gotham General it’s the Joker,” he said. “I mean, considering.”

“Well, of course,” Gordon said. “But why does the Joker even terrorize this city to begin with? Because Batman provokes him.”

“Yes,” Barbara said. “I mean, he disappeared for what, five, six months, and then he comes back and he takes a bomb off the Joker in a subway? And we’re supposed to believe he’s ‘just’ a vigilante? I’d tighten security on your new hospital, Mr. Wayne.”

Bruce offered both of them a smile he knew didn’t reach his eyes. He could feel the ragged beginnings of a headache gathering in his temples. Momentarily he looked down to try and catch his bearings, but his eyes fell on the kids, and he realized with a jolt how much they reminded him of Jude at his parents’ functions: bored, confused, hemmed in by trained politeness. The comparison was so violent and sudden it made him nauseated. He set his drink down on a table and said,

“It was good to see you, Commissioner, but you’ll have to excuse me,” and without waiting for Gordon’s reply he stumbled away. As at the gala back in October no one noticed him weaving his way through the crowd and onto the balcony. He didn’t realize he was shaking until he was alone, the bitter air digging its nails into his skin. It had been cold like this the night Jude found out the truth. His nose and forehead ached with the memory. He leaned against the railing, head in his hands, and let one sob choke him, and then another.

You should have told him. Now all you’ll ever be is alone, talking to people like Jim and Barbara, and aren’t they just nice, and isn’t it wonderful how they’ll never f*cking understand you —

From his pocket he withdrew his pack of cigarettes and a lighter he was pretty sure he’d stolen from Cornell. His fingers brushed his phone but he refused to take it out and look. He pressed a cigarette to his mouth instead, and lit it in the sharp wind starting up from below the building. He had to try twice before the flame would catch. The warmth of the cigarette against the frozen air was good; it served to make it taste even more bitter than usual. Bruce pulled on it reflexively, exhaling smoke again and again until it was down almost to the filter. Then he flicked the end of it against his thumb and watched it sail through the air, ember flashing in the dark, to land on the street forty floors below. He closed his eyes against the chill. As he turned to walk back inside he thought he smelled snow. The balcony door swung shut behind him, sucked in by the draft. He started for the drinks table, but before he could get there a woman on his board of trustees got hold of his arm. It was the one Jude had shot and though the injury was on its way to healing it was still painful and he had to strain himself not to wince.

“Kathleen,” he said, politely.

“Where’s our speech, Bruce?” she said; she was a little bit tipsy, and the undercurrent of Texas in her voice was drawn out.

“Speech?” Bruce repeated blankly. It was harder to pull out the dumbass Bruce Wayne persona when he was like this, dissociated and unmoored. Even here in this ballroom where dumbass Bruce Wayne was all anyone had ever seen — where Jude had come surging into his life five months ago and ripped his skin open —

— f*ck.

“Yes, darling, a speech,” Kathleen said, not noticing the way Bruce faltered, staring at the far wall, remembering Jude’s hands on Rachel’s face. “Like you give every year? We’re all expecting it, you know, and you do make such nice ones…” She ran her hand down his arm and smiled at him in a way she wouldn’t have if she were sober. And he tried to respond in kind but it must have looked off because her smile went a little unsteady and she took another sip of champagne. She patted his arm and backed away, saying, “Well…” and it hit him suddenly: he needed to do this. Because if he didn’t, they’d know something was off. Gotham might have entirely rejected Batman but it still liked Bruce Wayne, billionaire, and he couldn’t afford to lose that. Not right now. Not a single person here — with the obvious exception of Alfred — would understand the sorts of things that until two weeks ago he’d gotten up to every night, and lost himself in, and enjoyed. He would lose his charities and the hospital and his position on the board at Arkham and his father’s company and he just — he couldn’t. If he lost those things he’d have nothing, no fallback, nothing to distract himself. So he steeled himself, and made his smile broaden into something more genuine. This time it must have worked because Kathleen relaxed. She stepped aside to let him past and he walked to the front of the crowd and said,

“Excuse me; if I could just have a minute of everyone’s time.”

The faces of the crowd turned expectantly to him. Off to one side he saw Jim and Barbara and — yes, their kids, looking sleepy, ready to leave. Kathleen, encouraging, lifting her glass, smiling at him — and he tried, he really did, to smile at them all, to channel that energy he remembered from Harvey’s fundraiser. When he’d walked in with Sarah and Natalie and Laura on his arms and he’d looked out over the crowd — mostly these same people — and through the bitterness and the animosity managed to carve out a very (sort of) sincere speech for Harvey. I am giving my city to you, he had been saying. I do not want this responsibility anymore. Please take it from me. Please take these people and go. But Rachel had seen through it then, and now as he looked at everyone he saw a different face, one that was still disapproving, looking right through the veneer, one that was not physically present but every bit as real as Rachel had been that night —

Jude. You lied to me. You’ve been lying to me for months. Jude, who would have hated every second of being here, but who might have put up with it for Bruce’s sake. Jude, who fought with every ounce of his feral vicious strength to force down the walls the city put up around itself, to force down the walls Bruce had put up around himself. Jude, who had in the end succeeded at both. Jude, who looked through the glass darkly and saw what Bruce was really capable of, and what he truly was at his core, and loved him anyway.

Jude, who he’d lied to.

Jude, who he’d never see again.

He cleared his throat. “This year’s been pretty — intense, hasn’t it,” he said, and a ripple of understanding self-effacing laughter ran through the crowd. “I mean, right here, in July — ” The explosion of the gun Bruce heard through the walls as he stormed off to get the suit. The rush, the release of tension, when he’d hit Jude’s guys and then later Jude himself. Rachel, falling —

“ — it got bad,” he said, and there was more laughter, but its tone was slightly mocking now. Bruce Wayne, the idiot. He was aware he was stalling too much; Gordon was giving him an odd look, and so he pressed on, “But here we are. And I want to, to congratulate all of you on that achievement. Because it truly is a fine thing to breathe again after trauma. Isn’t it.”

In the corner Alfred raised an eyebrow. No one said anything. Bruce fumbled in his pockets for his cigarettes before he remembered he wasn’t supposed to be smoking. “I — we’ve all gone through a little bit this year, I think, maybe a little more than we were expecting to. But it’s taught me something, and maybe it’ll sound familiar to some of you — there’s no limit on how fast things can change. How fast you as a person can change. Months, weeks, days — you can become a completely different person by the end of the week and not even realize it. But it happens. And it happens with our circ*mstances, too, all the time, faster than, than you want to give permission for. And that’s — this year for me. So thank you all for listening, and please enjoy the rest of your evening.”

No reaction. Kathleen’s eyebrows were slightly furrowed. Near Gordon Bruce saw one man mouth what? at his companion, who shrugged. After a moment people turned and began talking to each other again, until the buzz of idle chatter had filled the room, and Bruce took the opportunity to slip away. He grabbed another smoke on the balcony, watching the light dusting of snow gather on the railing and on the sleeve of his suit when he held out his arm. Then he stumbled back inside. Alfred walked past with a tray of hors d’oeuvres and an expression Bruce did not especially like.

“That was an interesting speech you gave, Master Wayne.”

“Well,” Bruce muttered, “I mean, it’s true.” His hands were shaking, so he shoved them into his jacket. “I changed.”

Alfred just looked at him. But this was neither the time nor the place for a real discussion and they both knew it, so after a moment all he said was, “Take some vegetables, sir. I know you won’t eat otherwise,” and Bruce was too tired and too drained to protest. He took a sprig of celery and a few carrots and put them on a plate, and then he wandered around through the groups of people, checking to see if everyone was having a good time, did anyone need anything, was the temperature comfortable. Around nine Jim and Barbara left with their kids. Jim clasped Bruce on the shoulder — again, it was hard not to wince.

“I’m on vacation until the third,” he said, “but then I’ll be more than happy to take any calls about possible tightening of security on the hospital, as my wife so intelligently suggested.”

Bruce had to think back for a moment to remember their conversation — Batman’s return, and the threats it posed. “It’s definitely a good idea,” he said, “but I don’t know, Batman hasn’t shown up since that night, and — ”

“Oh, give him time,” Barbara said, and there was something bitter and brittle in her voice Bruce didn’t like. “He’ll start up again. He always does.”

Bruce remembered the anger in her voice the day they’d all thought Jim had been killed. How she’d screamed at him from in the circle of Stephens’ arms, and the helplessness and the guilt that had risen in his chest. But now he was only tired. He wondered if he would be subject to insults about Batman for the rest of his life, as long as people couldn’t let go of what he’d done to the city. He wanted to tell her, not this time, but he couldn’t, so he only nodded once, tightly, and told Gordon he’d be in contact with his office. Then they left, and again Bruce slipped away. It was too much; he couldn’t do this all night. He stood in a quiet corner and stared out into the darkness, the snow falling more steadily now. Several times people approached him to congratulate him on the progress with the hospital, or to discuss other endeavors they had in mind, and Bruce smiled and nodded and gave all the right answers and didn’t hear a single thing anyone said.

When it was five minutes to midnight everyone gathered around the television set. Its volume was on higher than Bruce knew Alfred liked; one of the guests must have turned it up in a state of drunken revelry. Someone had the presence of mind to change the channel to ABC, and Ryan Seacrest’s face filled the screen, along with pop stars Bruce didn’t recognize — the Jonas Brothers, maybe. Dick Clark was there too, and Bruce had a sudden and strangely vivid memory of being four, and going to New York with his parents to see the program live. Thomas had put him on his shoulders so he could see over the crowd. When the ball dropped, he’d leaned over to kiss Martha, and his hands had squeezed around Bruce’s legs to keep him steady.

On the television and in the penthouse, they were all clamoring about the new year. Bruce watched through the glass wall — fists out, screaming — and thought maybe in another month or so it would get easier. He couldn’t remember anymore the exact timeline for getting over Rachel, even though it had been so recent. But it had happened then, and it would happen again. This thing would stop clouding every decision Bruce made, every sentence he said, every thought he had. He’d be able to look at his burner without wanting to throw up. He’d keep himself occupied with his charities and the hospital and the business and it would be fine. If the first change had come on without his even noticing, this one could too. And without either the false darkness of Batman or the true darkness of the tender raw creature to fall back on —

They were counting down in Times Square now. Bruce watched the digital numbers flash by and smiled mechanically when Kathleen touched his arm as she walked past.

“Ten! Nine!”

He could just be Bruce, billionaire, now. Maybe this was his punishment for trying to embrace the ragged and violent side of him. Maybe this was what was intended all along.

“Eight! Seven! Six!”

Tomorrow he could clean the Mustang out and put it on the market.

“Five! Four!”

He took a breath.

“Three! Two!”

He closed his eyes.

“One! Happy New Year!”

The gunshot blasted at the same time as the crowd cheered, and for a moment Bruce thought he’d imagined it, or maybe somehow it was on the television, a terrorist act. But then someone screamed, and Bruce knew, even before he’d opened his eyes. He imagined he could smell him from across the room, that familiar gritty mixture of sweat and gasoline and blood, intoxicating and awful. Certainly he could feel the pull of him without having to look, as though their DNA was bound and linked together.

Someone turned off the television, and it was suddenly very quiet. When Bruce looked he saw Jude standing against the far wall. He’d shot off his nine millimeter, but it was tucked away somewhere now. Instead he had a knife pressed to Kathleen’s throat, his arm around her neck, keeping her close against his body. His makeup had been dragged across his face in stark, fresh lines. He bared his teeth. Bruce could almost hear him snarling.

“Hello, everyone,” he said. His voice was the same as it had been that night in July — layer upon layer of rage, badly concealed under barely passable joviality. “I’m your surprise guest for the night. Batman just couldn’t let me die in that subway, could he. So you’re all going to have to put up with me for a while longer.”

Against him Kathleen was rigid. All the laughter and tipsy flirtation had gone out of her eyes. Jude was scanning the crowd in that familiar animal way he had. His tongue darted out to wet his scars.

“I’m here to talk to Bruce Wayne,” he said, and Bruce felt a sharp spark explode in his chest. “Where is he?”

For a moment Bruce couldn’t move. He couldn’t even breathe. He felt dizzy with everything all at once — relief, and fury, and fear, and exasperation, because of course Jude wouldn’t make any of this easy on him. Jude’s patience lasted about three seconds, then he tightened his grip on Kathleen and pushed the knife in harder at her skin. The point of it rested against her jaw. Even from a distance Bruce could see the flesh turn stark white.

“Did I get the wrong address,” he said. “Isn’t this Bruce Wayne’s penthouse? I wanna talk to him. Now. Where is — ”

“I’m here,” Bruce said, and for all the shakiness in his chest and his legs his voice came out remarkably steady. He stepped forward and Jude’s eyes darted to him. Bruce couldn’t read his expression.

“Why, hello, Mr. Wayne,” Jude said, mouth curling. “So nice of you to talk to me finally. I was starting to worry that this beautiful guest of yours wasn’t gonna get to go home tonight.”

Bruce walked slowly to the front of the crowd. He couldn’t tell whether Jude was being serious or not. He looked at Kathleen, then at Jude. He was close enough now he could see that Jude’s hands were trembling. The knife jumped against her pulse point.

“I’m very willing to talk to you,” Bruce said, evenly. It was so hard to pretend he didn’t know him. He wanted to grab the knife and slam Jude against the wall and tell him to quit being so f*cking stupid. As it was all he could do was stop not quite within touching distance and say, “You’re the Joker, right?” remembering their first meeting in October, one room over from this one. How hard he’d been pretending then, too, for so many different reasons.

Jude’s tongue darted out again. Bruce wondered if he was also remembering. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s right. I guess you saw that little stunt on the news about the Batman saving my life.” He shifted Kathleen in his arms; her breath hitched, and he shushed her. “What do you think about that, Mr. Wayne? He disappears for months, then he comes back and puts a murderer like me back on the streets so I can come and ruin your little party.”

Bruce had to consciously relax his fist. “I don’t know enough about crime-fighting to have an opinion,” he said. “I’m just a businessman. I want to talk to you. That’s fine. But I’d appreciate if you’d let my guest go.”

“Can’t have blood all over your nice clean shiny floors?” His tone was flippant, but Bruce could see the anger still radiating off every inch of his body. He was coiled so tight Bruce thought the air around him would snap, or catch fire. He wished he could read Jude’s expression. He wished he could hit him.

“I’d prefer not to, yes,” Bruce said. “How about if we go in another room and you can tell me whatever it is you came here for? Just you and me,” he said. It was as close as he dared go to what he really wanted to say.

There was a long, long silence. Jude was looking at him, breathing measuredly, his hands still shaking where he gripped the knife. Bruce stared right back, feeling unmoored, caught in a shipwreck, his heart pounding so hard he was nauseous with it. Every beat threatened to climb out of his throat. He watched Jude grind his teeth, the familiar clench of the muscles. He watched the stark white color of Kathleen’s skin slowly fade. Then, abruptly, Jude shoved her away. Bruce knew better than to try and catch her. He kept looking at Jude. The hollow black anger in his eyes, and in the tension around his mouth. Finally he said,

“It’s your house, Mr. Wayne. You lead the way,” and Bruce walked out, listening in the massive silence to the echo of Jude’s footsteps as he followed him.

They ended up in the spare room where not six hours ago Bruce had been fighting off a panic attack. Jude shut the door and Bruce opened his mouth to say — what, he didn’t know, and suddenly he was pinned to the wall. The knife was against his throat now, the steel cold, the blade sharp. Jude’s breathing had gone ragged in his chest.

“Are you happy?” Bruce asked, feeling Jude’s heartbeat through the layers of their clothes. Up close Bruce could see the exhaustion in his eyes beneath the rage. He thought Jude might have lost some weight. “You — that could have gone really, really — ”

“I’m not interested in making small talk,” Jude snarled, and dug the blade in harder. Bruce felt the skin break.

“Then why are you here?” Bruce said. “You haven’t tried to contact me in two weeks, and now you show up at my house and tell everyone out there you want to talk to me, so — was that just some theatrical bullsh*t you put on for their benefit? Because that seems a lot like wasting your time to me.”

“Oh, but Bruce, I like the attention,” Jude said, and then he let Bruce go. Bruce hadn’t even fully registered it yet before Jude hit him, hard. Pain exploded beneath his eye. “Or didn’t you remember that from all that time you spent hunting me?”

“You’re not here because you like attention.”

Another hit, this one to Bruce’s jaw. “Don’t you f*cking tell me why I do anything,” Jude said. “Don’t pretend like you know a single f*cking thing about me.”

“I know plenty — ”

“You don’t know sh*t,” Jude said, and he dropped the knife and lunged. Bruce grabbed his wrists before he could get his hands around his throat and for a while they grappled together, Jude growling in his ear like a dog, digging his heels into the floor, pushing, trying to get Bruce against the wall again. Bruce dug his fingernails into Jude’s knuckles and held on, shoving back, kicking his knee up, trying to make contact with Jude’s abdomen — not that he thought it would make much difference. Then — feeling stupid — he aimed a kick at Jude’s shin. Jude didn’t exactly let go, but his balance was shifted off, and in the few seconds of surprise that followed Bruce managed to twist their arms and get Jude pinned instead. He kicked the knife further away; it skidded under a table. Jude struggled against him until Bruce grabbed him by the shirt collar, pulled him forward, then slammed him back against the plaster. When his head made contact with the wall he started laughing, off-kilter and manic. It slingshotted around the room and dug a needle into Bruce’s eye.

“There’s that fighting spirit,” he whispered. “But is it the killer? Or Gotham’s savior?”

Bruce closed his eyes. “Why are you here?” he asked again.

Jude didn’t answer. When Bruce looked at him he was staring at a point over his shoulder. His breathing had gone choppy in the miniscule space between them.

After a while: “Do you know why you’re here?” Bruce asked.

No answer. He watched Jude’s throat muscles flex as he swallowed. Gradually he became aware that he’d let Jude’s collar go, and they were both just standing there, breathing in each other’s space, hands clenched, jaws tight. Bruce stared at Jude’s mouth because he couldn’t help it. It was the brightest focal point in the room, blood-red slash, and so familiar Bruce could taste it. He felt dizzy again. His heart was rushing in his ears.

“Jude,” he said, and was shocked at how rough his voice came out. “Do you know why you came here?”

Jude looked at him. He wet his lips. For a moment Bruce thought he would speak, but then he reached out and shoved Bruce away by the shoulder. He walked around him and out of the room, and slammed the door shut before Bruce remembered to breathe.

The knife still lay under the table, and Bruce bent to pick it up. He slipped it into his jacket. He walked to the door and pushed it open, but Jude had already disappeared. Quietly, Bruce shut the door again behind him, and leaned against the wall. He stood looking down the corridor for a long time.

Around four in the morning Bruce gave up on trying to sleep. He slipped out of bed and into his familiar dark sweats and a beanie. He put Jude’s knife into his sweatshirt and left a note for Alfred on the refrigerator explaining he’d be back later, and asking him to please make sure the remaining guests all got out safely. Most of them had gone home, but a few — the out-of-town commuters, mostly — were still downstairs, sleeping off their champagne and their fear in his various guest rooms. He took up his keys and made his way down to the garage. The snow had accumulated in the night over the sidewalks and the buildings. The street sweeper was making its lumbering way down the street, its engine the only noise in the stillness. Bruce watched for a moment at the jagged sideways fall of the snow. Then he got in his car, and he drove.

He went to Denny’s first. As usual it was empty except for a lone trucker in one corner, nursing a burnt coffee and toast. Evangeline walked around the counter when Bruce came in and smiled at him.

“Happy New Year, Mr. Wayne.”

“You too, Eve,” he said, and tried to smile back.

Her eyes darted over his shoulder. “You eating alone today?” she asked, and for a second, once again, Bruce couldn’t breathe. Something must have shown in his face, or else his silence must have spoken for him, because Evangeline’s expression shifted; her mouth softened and she reached out and squeezed his shoulder. Her nails were painted and chipping and her skin was warm and Bruce thought he might cry.

“What do you need?” she asked, gently. It was the same tone Alfred had used the morning after it happened; it was the tone he imagined she used with her little brother when he was upset about bullies at school. It washed through the sticky cobwebbed mess in his mind just enough he could straighten his thoughts out and remember how to plan. He ordered their usual breakfast: vegan pancakes for himself, with strawberries, and a plate of bacon and hash browns for Jude. Evangeline brought it to him in Styrofoam boxes, with complimentary orange juice in takeaway plastic cups.

“How’s school?” he managed to ask, as she was ringing him up. She shrugged, smiling at the cash register.

“It’s okay,” she said. “We’re starting classes again next week. I’m hoping we can get better Internet at the apartment soon.” She handed him back his card and the receipt and offered him another one of those soft, understanding looks. “You take care of yourself, okay, Mr. Wayne? And whatever’s going on — ”

“Yeah,” Bruce said, nodding, taking his food and tugging his car keys out. “Thanks, Eve. See you.” He walked out into the parking lot, lit by its usual single grainy streetlamp. His car had snow on the windshield and on the roof and while he waited for the interior to warm up he stared through the granules at the Narrows, the blank black windows and the broken exteriors of buildings. The waning moonlight reflecting off the gutters. Then he drove on.

He wound his way down the familiar streets, passing at least five drug deals one of which he was pretty sure was being conducted by Cobain, and celebration streamers strewn across the sidewalks, their bright colors muted in the darkness and dampened by snow. The empty canisters of firecrackers. A child’s bicycle overturned on the curb, its upper wheel still turning in the wind. The bleak, stark shadows the buildings threw over his car as he crept through the neighborhood. It was a terrible place. But it was the most at home he’d felt in two weeks.

At last he reached Jude’s apartment and parked around the corner — he didn’t want to chance Jude looking out his window and seeing him pull up. The front lock was broken again; Bruce shoved his shoulder against the wood, familiar ritualistic movement, and went inside. He walked up the stairs, feet finding the familiar worn grooves at their centers, the years molding them into their shapes. When he got to the third floor he paused, looking down the hall. He wondered if he was making a mistake. His heart was beating so hard he felt sick from it. The loops of the bag where he was gripping it felt slick with his sweat. But even if it was a mistake — Jude had come to his party first. Jude had shown up and bruised him and Bruce wanted answers. So he walked on until he got to Jude’s door. He hesitated again, but the chill from outside had seeped in through the bricks and Bruce only had Jude’s knife on him for protection, so he steeled himself, and he knocked. For a long time there was no answer and Bruce thought how stupid he must have been not to even consider the possibility that Jude wouldn’t be at home. He was considering taking out his phone and asking Cornell where Jude was when the door opened. The chain stopped it from going very far, but Jude’s eye, ringed sweatily in black, was unmistakable. He looked around the frame and seemed unsurprised to see Bruce there. He didn’t speak. There was nothing on his face to suggest what he might be feeling, so Bruce took a breath, and he said,

“Can I come in?”

No answer. Jude’s eye darted momentarily to Bruce’s cheek, where he knew a spectacular bruise had formed. Then back to his eyes.

“I brought Denny’s,” Bruce tried again, and held up the bag. Jude looked down at it; his mouth thinned out, but he still didn’t say anything. Finally:

“It’s f*cking freezing out here,” Bruce said. “And I’m exhausted.”

This earned him an eye roll. But then Jude shut the door, and Bruce heard the chain slide in its latch, and when he opened the door again it was all the way. He still didn’t say anything, but he left the door open, so Bruce walked in, and set the Denny’s down on the floor by the television. He shut the door and turned, opening his mouth to speak, and Jude punched him. His fist connected with Bruce’s mouth and Bruce stumbled backwards, legs hitting the television. One of his teeth caught against his lip and he felt the blood burst on his tongue. He spit it out on the carpet and snapped his head up to level a glare at Jude:

“What the hell — ”

This time Jude hit him across the jaw, in the same place from four hours prior. It exploded pain down his neck and into his gums and okay, okay, he could still be baited. He swung his fist out and smashed it against Jude’s nose. Blood streamed out over his upper lip, coating the greasepaint, running into his scars. His lips curled into something savage and ugly and he said,

“All right, now we’re f*cking getting there,” and as he had at the penthouse, he lunged for Bruce’s throat. Bruce caught his wrists and aimed his knee at Jude’s stomach, but Jude dodged it, swinging his arm low to punch Bruce’s side. It was the place where he’d taken his stitches out not two days ago and he felt the skin pull. He punched Jude in the face again; it hit his mouth this time, matching Bruce’s injury. Bruce felt Jude’s teeth and the heat of his blood as it ran out, mixing with the blood from his nose. He was laughing, the sound nasal and choked.

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s it, Bruce.” Goading. Sneering. And Bruce fell into it. He fell right in. It was exactly the same as it had been when they were Batman and the Joker. It exploded like fireworks. It wiped everything else out.

Jude still fought the same way he ever had: rabid, untrained, unhinged. He used his legs more than his arms and he dodged and threw himself from one side to the other and Bruce could barely keep up with him even in this small cluttered space. His hands were aching and Jude’s were covered in blood, as was his shirt and most of the lower half of his face, and he was still f*cking laughing. He lifted his leg again, foot heading for Bruce’s chest, and Bruce grabbed his ankle. He jerked, and Jude went down, landing with a crash on the threadbare carpet. It took him a second to get the momentum to swing himself back up but in that second Bruce managed to slam himself down on top of him. He sat on Jude’s thighs, pressing his full weight against him, and he brought the knife out from his sweatshirt. Jude’s eyes tracked it. His tongue darted out.

“Stop,” Bruce panted. His heart was slamming against his ribs, in his throat. He was dizzy with it, and with the rush the fight had given him. “Just — stop.” He pressed the knife against the jumping pulse in Jude’s own neck and Jude’s teeth flashed in a feral smile. He pushed himself up a little bit on his elbows — it was the only freedom he had in his movements — and rocked his crotch up against Bruce’s. He was hard. His tongue shot out again to wet at his mouth and Bruce felt something heated and dark uncoil in his stomach and slither down. He wanted his tongue there, on the blood, on the scars. He bent down, pressing the knife in harder at Jude’s throat. He said,

“You absolute f*ck,” and then he threw the knife to the side and he kissed him. It was savage and brutal; their mouths together ached with the cuts and the swelling, but Bruce didn’t care. He gripped Jude’s face with both hands and dragged him up a little further, biting his lips, tasting his blood. He dragged their co*cks together and even through the layers of their pants it was nearly unbearable. Jude was breathing sharply into his mouth. He lifted his hands to grip Bruce’s arms and Bruce dropped his own from Jude’s face to catch Jude’s wrists and slam them back down.

“I didn’t say you could f*cking move,” he growled.

Jude barked out a laugh. “Is that an order?”

“Yes,” Bruce said, “now shut up,” and he shoved him back down to the floor. He kissed him to keep him quiet, but also because he couldn’t bear not having their mouths together. After nearly two full weeks without any sort of physical contact the rush was unbelievable. He dragged his hips forward again; Jude hissed out into his mouth, and his hands twitched in the circles of Bruce’s fingers, like he wanted to reach up and grab hold. They were both trying to bite each other’s mouths, and the pain was blistering, a constant bone-deep strain beneath the skin, but it was good, too. Like the fight, it felt like the first real thing Bruce had done since the subway.

Eventually he let go of Jude’s hands so he could push himself back up enough to undo Jude’s pants. Jude watched him; his breathing was ragged, his makeup smeared across his face. The blood had started to dry and cake into the lines. His jaw was tense, but he still managed to laugh when Bruce slid off his thighs and pulled his own sweats down to his knees.

“You gonna — ”

“I said shut up,” Bruce repeated, pressing his hand over Jude’s mouth. It came away red, and he wiped it on Jude’s pants before grabbing his hips to flip him over. He tugged Jude’s pants down enough to expose his ass and pulled him to his knees. He watched Jude’s arms tremble where he was holding himself up. Bruce spit into his hand and stroked himself. He was shaking too, and to cover it he curled his fingers inside Jude, feeling the tight heat of him. Jude made a noise. His head was hanging down, his dirty hair nearly touching the floor. Suddenly Bruce couldn’t stand it. He withdrew his hand and held onto Jude’s hips, gripping him so hard the skin of his knuckles stretched out over the bones, and he positioned himself, and he thrust in. It was slow going, because the spit hadn’t really done much by way of lube, but he knew Jude liked it, and part of him did too, the way his ass wouldn’t quite take Bruce all the way in for a while, until he forced it, and the splintering pain that followed, so closely laced with arousal, and how it felt like punishment Bruce was sure he deserved. When at last he’d bottomed out in Jude he knelt for a moment panting, half bent over his back, still holding his hips. Jude’s head was hanging even closer to the ground and he was making these tight, punched-out noises that sent shockwaves through Bruce’s chest. Bruce pulled out a little, then thrust in again, and he saw Jude’s hands tighten against the carpet, the long nails digging into the fabric.

“Is that really f*cking all — ”

Bruce lifted his other hand and smacked Jude’s cheek. He didn’t do it as hard as he could have, and he knew Jude knew that, but Jude also pushed back against him, and shut his mouth. At last Bruce started f*cking him in earnest, holding his hips for leverage with one hand, twining the other into Jude’s hair. It really was f*cking filthy and disgusting and he tugged on it. Jude made another one of those sharp, curious sounds, and Bruce realized this wasn’t going to last long for either of them. He could feel inside him the same dark, primal heat that had started coiling the minute he got his fist on Jude’s face. His thrusts grew erratic. He slid his hand off Jude’s hips and down to wrap around his co*ck. He squeezed the base roughly and jerked his hand up and pulled on Jude’s hair at the same time. He felt him tighten around him; then his body folded and he came, hard, hips jerking forward. The feeling of him spiraling out was enough to send Bruce over the edge, too; he came, shuddering, his body moving almost without his permission, the waves of it rising up through the roots of his teeth. It was always f*cking good with Jude but now it felt blistering, dirty. The wall rose up and crashed. Bruce kept thrusting until he was oversensitive, until he’d softened enough to slip out. Then he leaned back — his thighs were shaking — and let Jude’s hips go. Instantly Jude fell forward onto the floor. For a long time neither of them moved nor even spoke. Their breathing was choppy and inconsistent in the silence. Far away Bruce could hear a motorcycle. At last Jude turned his head a little so that his mouth wasn’t pressed right to the carpet, and he said,

“Did you say you brought food?”

Half an hour later they were sitting cross-legged on the floor by the television, picking their way through their respective breakfasts. They’d both changed into clean shorts — purple and green plaid for Jude, black for Bruce — and washed their faces. Bruce had done it in the kitchen, but Jude had gone in the bathroom, and he’d been a while, finally emerging with his face wiped clean not just of blood but of his greasepaint as well, so that only a few lines remained: a white streak on his jaw, and black edging around his eyes. His mouth was bruised and a little swollen, and Bruce knew his didn’t look much better. It hurt to eat, but he was making himself do it, because it was easier than talking. He’d torn the pancakes into shreds with his fingers and bitten off the ends of each strawberry. Beside him Jude was halfheartedly chewing maybe the third strip of bacon on his massive pile. He was staring at the wall behind Bruce’s head, drumming his fingers against his knee. Bruce could see the bruises on his hips where he’d gripped him. They were the exact shape of his fingers, and that thing coiled in his stomach again, wanting.

When Jude set his food aside Bruce steeled himself. They hadn’t spoken since they’d gotten up from the floor, though Bruce hadn’t been stupid enough to believe they could go all morning like that. And indeed Jude had a calculated, wary expression on his face as he finally slid his eyes to meet Bruce’s. He dug one long nail into the palm of the other hand. Then he said,

“The thing is — you lied to me.”

Bruce set his food aside too. Jude’s voice was the same saying it now as it had been the night it happened; too soft, too shattered, too disbelieving. Even with it echoing over and over on repeat in Bruce’s head for two weeks it still wasn’t any easier to hear. “I know,” he said.

Jude seemed for a moment to be gathering his thoughts into themselves. When he spoke again his voice was laced with more irritation. “I don’t like being f*cking surprised like that. I don’t like being lied to by my own people. You f*cking know I hate liars. I won’t tolerate it.” He reached out and shoved Bruce’s arm. As with Jim and Kathleen, it was directly over the gunshot wound, but this time Bruce found he didn’t mind the ache. “Don’t ever f*cking do that again, do you understand?”

Bruce swallowed. The word ‘again’ slingshotted across his brain, back and forth, undeserved. “Yeah, boss,” he said, quietly. “Yeah, I understand.”

It was quiet again. Then Jude tilted his head a little. “I still don’t understand,” he said. “How long did you think you could have kept it from me? Do you — were you going to just let it play out until someone else figured it out, and then I was going to look like such a f*cking idiot, the Joker working with Batman for all these years, he must be slipping — ”

“No,” Bruce said, around the desperate clench in his chest, “no, it wasn’t like that. Not — not exactly,” he amended, and Jude gave him a look.

“Well then what, exactly?” he said, and Bruce swallowed. Steeled himself. He couldn’t bear to tell him — and yet he knew he had to. Jude deserved the truth now. From now on, for the rest of Bruce’s life, no matter what. Jude only deserved the truth.

“I was going to infiltrate your gang,” he said, carefully, watching Jude’s face, “and take you down from the inside. When you offered me the position back in October it just…” He breathed out. Jude’s expression was inscrutable.

“Everyone still hated me — I mean, they hated Batman, and at the time it seemed like the worst possible thing. I wanted to get back in good with the city, and I thought — maybe if I destroy the Joker’s people, and put him in prison for the rest of his life, Gotham will let me come back. I was going to gather intel on all of you and bring it to Gordon. I didn’t — nothing that happened was supposed to happen. But I think I lost control of it a lot quicker than I told myself. So it was doomed from the start.” He rubbed the back of his neck. Jude was still staring at him, not moving. His mouth was tight at the corners. He reached over and took the paper napkin from his breakfast. He started to shred it into little pieces like snowflakes.

“And that was important to you?” he asked, after a long time. “Getting back in Gotham’s good graces?”

“At the time, yes.”

Jude tore a hole in the napkin with his nail. He let it fall to the floor between them, stained with bacon grease. “Why?”

Bruce breathed out. He hadn’t really thought about this, not in so many words, but he knew even without a real plan what he wanted to say. “I didn’t like — what I saw I was capable of. The violence I was capable of. I thought containing it behind the mask was the answer. I had these two personas and neither of them really fit all the way and I thought if I could just force one back into place I’d feel more settled. I spent my whole life telling myself there was a difference between me and you. Not you specifically but people like you. Like the guy who — ” He stopped; he couldn’t say it, he couldn’t bring up his parents, not in this context, but he could see in Jude’s face that he understood, so he went on, “I put all my rage and my violence into vigilantism. And I justified every cold, terrible decision I made by pretending it was for anyone other than myself. I had no idea who I was. What I was really doing.”

“And you know now?” Jude asked. His voice was barely above a whisper.

“Yes.”

“And you like it better now?”

The truth. Absolute. It was hard to look directly at Jude when he was like this, calculating and intense, but Bruce owed him that, too. He forced his gaze to stay steady.

“Yes,” he said.

A long silence. They sat there maybe five minutes, just looking. Jude’s unwavering stare, Bruce’s badly concealed uncertainty. Finally Jude got up. He took his and Bruce’s Styrofoam boxes into the kitchen. Bruce heard him drop them into the trashcan. When he walked back in he sat on the couch, and it was quiet for a while longer. Jude was staring at the blank television screen. His legs were spread open and from this angle Bruce could see up his shorts to the thatch of dark blond hair at his crotch. The thing in his stomach tightened in a fist, and he looked away.

At last, as though from a distance, Bruce heard Jude say, “If you don’t come sit up here, your back’s gonna start hurting, and you’re gonna bitch about it all day, and I’m gonna have to f*cking listen to it. And I’m not in the mood to deal with your entitled sh*t right now, so get your ass on my f*cking couch.”

Bruce looked over at him. He wasn’t smiling, but the tension in his face had softened marginally, and Bruce scrambled to his feet and onto the couch before Jude could change his mind. They sat together staring at their reflections in the television screen. The light in the window was turning gray with the oncoming dawn.

When Jude spoke again his voice was like a gunshot in the stillness. “You were Batman,” he said, and then paused. This statement seemed to require a response, so Bruce nodded, and Jude continued, “So you knew that girl? The one I blew up?”

Bruce had known it would have to come out eventually, and he’d prepared himself for it, and he’d avoided it for this exact reason, but even so it felt like being punched all over again. He tensed almost without realizing he was going to. Beside him Jude was breathing a little too quickly, running agitated fingers over his legs.

“Rachel,” Bruce said, quietly, and Jude nodded as if to himself. He smiled a little bit, like he was remembering a private joke, and Bruce had to fight against the tension rising further.

“Yeah,” Jude said. “I told you I was sending you after her, didn’t I.”

Bruce closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“I had to see who you were going to pick,” Jude said. “The city or yourself. And you did such a beautiful job. You were just as selfish as — ”

“What is your f*cking point, could you please get to it soon,” Bruce snapped. He’d thought he could sit here and talk about Rachel with Jude but he was rapidly discovering that even falling out of love (or obsession, or whatever) with her over the last few months had done nothing to appease the roaring beast inside him which flared with possessiveness and intent at the mere mention of her name. He wondered how long it would take for that to die. He wondered if it ever would.

“You hate me for it,” Jude said. His voice had downshifted into something quieter. He didn’t sound angry or malicious or anything other than tired. “Don’t you.”

“No,” Bruce said, instantly.

Jude scoffed. Licked his mouth.

“I used to,” Bruce said. “But not anymore. Yes, you did it. You orchestrated her murder. But I played into your — ” he hesitated. “The things, what you said. Proving I was selfish. I blame myself just as much as I blame you and I could hate us both for it but what’s the f*cking point? After everything else you’ve given me. After you showed me how it could be, to wear the darkness instead of trying to shove it under something else. That it didn’t have to be something ugly and forced down.”

Jude didn’t say anything. And then Bruce remembered — like being shot, like falling from the top floor of a building — what he’d wanted to tell him for two weeks now.

“I burned the suit,” he said. Jude’s eyes snapped to his. For the first time he looked genuinely surprised, and he couldn’t hide it. “I burned it the night you found out. I stopped needing it a long time ago, but I hadn’t realized — I made it to hide myself. But you forced it off. You made me. And I owe you everything for that, Jude. Everything.”

“I — ” Jude tensed his fingers. He stared over Bruce’s shoulder. He didn’t seem to know what to say, and the vulnerability of it swan-dived in Bruce’s stomach. He couldn’t read the expression on Jude’s face — or rather he didn’t want to make the mistake of misreading it. He was shaking his legs a little where they rested against his coffee table; his arms were folded, shoulders hunched in. Bruce tensed his own arms and stretched his hands out against his thighs. Neither of them spoke for a long time, until the silence began to feel spun out and fragile, like warped glass, and Bruce started to feel afraid to even breathe. Finally, chancing it:

“So you really had no idea.” Outside the sky had lightened to the point of brightness, and he could hear car engines starting up. “You never guessed, or anything?”

Jude was quiet, still, for long enough that Bruce began to think asking had been a mistake. But then:

“There were a few times when — I don’t know.” He looked frustrated, as though debating with himself how much to tell Bruce, or perhaps even how much to tell himself. “I always thought it was kinda weird how good you are at interrogations,” he said, finally, “considering you’re just some trust fund socialite with a lot of charities, or whatever. That whole thing about you being a f*cking — vegan martial arts CEO… And I guess I noticed that Batman had disappeared and it was weird that no one was really talking about it…” He frowned down at his hands, then snapped his eyes back up to Bruce’s. They were flint hard and dangerous. “I don’t have to see anything I don’t want to, you know,” he said. Bruce nodded.

“I know.” He let the silence go for a beat. Then: “Do you — I mean, what, how do you want to go forward from here?”

Jude didn’t look over at him. He chewed the inside of his cheek and darted his tongue out to wet at his scars. Bruce closed his eyes, exhaled slowly.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asked, but Jude was still quiet, until finally Bruce had to look over again. He was sitting, just sitting, staring straight ahead as he had been, brow furrowed, idly scratching at the inside of his elbow. His mouth jerked; there was a tense set to it Bruce didn’t entirely recognize. At last he said,

“There’s a shipment coming in next week through one of Falcone’s old restaurants. I just found out about it yesterday and we already have sh*t to take care of at one of our casinos down in A.C. So if you want to you can go with Cornell or Rez to check it out.”

“Yes,” Bruce said, louder than he’d meant, almost before Jude had finished talking. “Yes, that’s — yes, I’ll do that, absolutely.” He breathed out. He felt almost dizzy. Jude was not smiling nor even close to it but there was a hint of relaxation in his face all the same that made Bruce feel like weeping. He didn’t know if he could reach out to touch and so he didn’t. But Jude looked at him, and now the hazel in his eyes was warmer, closer to what Bruce liked. They sat again in silence for a while, just looking at each other. At last Bruce cleared his throat.

“I guess I’ll just — ” he started, gesturing at the door, but Jude shook his head. For the first time since that night in the subway he looked uncertain, in the way Bruce knew only he’d ever been allowed to see, and it made something explode in his chest, until he felt like he could have floated away.

“I tried dyeing my hair last week, after — everything,” he said, “but I was upset, and I think I missed a huge chunk in the back.” He turned a little away and held up the ends of his hair so Bruce could see. The dye was fine, it covered all his roots and was pretty bright, but Bruce knew what he was really asking. He swallowed again, his throat catching a little bit, and he said,

“I can fix it for you, no problem.”

Jude let his hair fall and turned back. He was nearly smiling now. Bruce knew in another couple of seconds he was going to start crying or something stupid like that, so he cleared his throat, stood up, and said,

“Do you want it in the bathroom or in the kitchen sink or what.”

Jude raised his eyebrows. “What the f*ck, ‘the kitchen sink’, that’s f*cking disgusting, Wayne,” he said, and laughed a little. He stood too, and curled their fingers together. He drew Bruce closer, and pressed his forehead to his shoulder before moving past him to the bathroom. It was only for a few seconds, but Bruce felt the warmth of his skin for a long time after.

-- -- --

…just one more pinprick in the constellation of hungers that brings you back
to this arbored byway again and again
gap-mouthed and lust-struck as a murder of crows despite yourself
despite how many times you’ve killed the animal inside you only to meet it again in the morning
breathing out of your own mouth

— “The Poem Climbs the Scaffold and Tells You What It Sees,” Natasha Oladokun

Notes:

red in tooth and claw
11/27/19 - 02/14/21
if you care to, you can check out the original draft of this fic here. it's much, much shorter and extremely incomplete, and i think it's fun to compare the two versions, but it's up to you

red in tooth and claw - itallstartedwithdefenestration - Batman (Movies (2024)

Chapter 1

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Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

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Chapter 5

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Chapter 6

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Chapter 7

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Chapter 8

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Chapter 9

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Chapter 10

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Chapter 11

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