Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jim Gordon was a simple man. All he wanted was to do his job, and to do it right.

Batman wasn’t as simple.

Being an unexpected figure, cryptic in both nature and appearance, it was no surprise that something about him just felt wrong.

Gordon couldn’t really blame himself for being wary of Batman at first.

High quality weapons that could easily kill, the theme his persona would always keep (the guy even had an animal motif just like all the other villains), and what seemed to be an inexplicable rage - he had all the qualities he needed to be another one of the bad guys.

And yet he wasn’t.

There was one thing Batman and Jim Gordon both had in common, and that was the need to save Gotham.

So that’s what they tried to accomplish. Gordon started working with Batman, despite the cautionary tales he had been told.

Batman was not the type of person anyone would want to work with, but he got the job done, and he got it done properly.

Sure, he wasn’t really the most talkative guy Jim knew, and sure, that did make him hard to cooperate with. But that didn’t matter when Batman managed to stop more criminals than any of the police in the city.

He didn’t stop all of them, though.

Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, the Joker - they all remained.

There was one thing that the both of them could do about it. Continue to fight back.

They had built some sort of routine, albeit a very pliant one. Batman would occasionally show up during Gordon’s night shifts, or they would meet in an alley whilst trying to track down the same criminal.

It was nice. Crime rates were still high, but they began to slow down. It was working.

In fact, it was beginning to work a bit too well.

Most of the villains still continued to cause chaos. But one major competitor seemed to just… disappear. The Joker.

He was missing.

The Joker hadn’t attacked for months. Everyone was starting to take notice. Including Batman.

He was hard to analyse - and there was no use in pretending that he wasn’t - but Jim Gordon considered himself to be pretty observant, without meaning to brag.

The once stoic and cold Batman now seemed more tumultuous, like he was brighter somehow.

He still felt like the same distant man that Gordon always knew, but something had changed.

Something - or someone - had cut him open, and all his emotions were slowly bleeding out of his wounded, frigid exterior.

A part of Jim Gordon wanted to figure out the cause, but a part of him knew there was no time. The city was still a dying whore, and she still needed his help to keep her living.

He had been given a new call, a new threat. Something, someone only Batman could stop. The Joker.

It sounded simple in theory. Arrest the goons, diffuse the bomb, watch the Joker run away again.

But this wasn’t a theory. This was reality. And in reality, the Joker wouldn’t stick to their goddamn routines.

“Good to see you’ve arrived.”

Gordon didn’t need to turn over to know that Batman was behind him.

He didn’t hear Batman arrive (he wished he’d stop sneaking up on people like that; there was simply no need to) but he still knew he was there. Be around Batman long enough, and you’ll be able to tell when he’s close. As long as he wants you to know, of course.

Batman began to speak, his voice rough and monotone. “You need my help.”

That was straightforward. But it was true.

“I’ve gotten a call. Apparently the Joker-”

“The Joker’s threatened to set off a bomb. I know. I’ll handle it.”

This adamance wasn’t unexpected, but it was frustrating. Gordon was fully under the belief that Joker couldn’t be stopped alone - so under to the extent he considered it a fact.

“I’ll send some men over to the location. They’ll arrive soon. Armed, of course.”

“There’s no need to.”

Adamance to this extent was unexpected of him.

Gordon’s voice faltered slightly, but he still continued.

“Are you sure? You can’t do this just by yourself, you know.”

“I’ll make him stop.”

And then Batman left.

He left to go on what was definitely a suicide mission.

And he returned from said suicide mission almost 2 hours later.

Could Jim Gordon believe it? Probably. This was the Batman after all. Did Jim Gordon want to believe it? Not really.

His anxious pacing and mumbling was interrupted by the quiet sound of a cape rustling in the wind.

His head turned rapidly to see a masked figure standing behind him.

“You- you’ve returned.”

“I dealt with the Joker.”

He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t show any sign of injuries or regret or anything being wrong at all.

He just left as quickly as he had appeared.

But Jim Gordon swore he could see something stain Batman’s cowl.

Something red.

Something too bright enough to be blood.

Something that almost looked like lipstick.

Chapter Text

The Gotham Gazette took pride in being the most accurate newspaper in all of Gotham.

It had not always been that way. Having once been a simple rag, the Gazette had been considered extremely below the standard for most newspapers. It was convoluted and amateurish. Most people just wouldn’t buy it.

This was, of course, not good for their reputation at all. And it certainly showed in their sales.

They became desperate. Started publishing anything they could find. Anything that would increase their revenue, their exposure.

Which, of course, led to them covering the most controversial topic in all of Gotham.

Superheroes. Batman, specifically.

It did, in fact, increase their exposure.

So they continued to publish those stories. And they made sure they would never run out of stories to publish. They took anything that anyone would submit to them, turning tiny rumours into front-page stories.

This caught a lot of people’s attention. Including the wrong people’s attention.

The Gazette was no longer a place for news. It was a place for villains to spread threats and lies.

This was significantly worse for their reputation.

They were back to square one.

Most of the employees quit. Blackcrow, Remarque, Mayne, Dunning. Gone. They all had their reasons. They were struggling financially or had found a higher paying job. But none of those reasons were true. All of them were scared.

All of them. Except for Vicki Vale.

She remained because she wanted to report. To tell the truth. She was devoted enough to stay, and she was devoted enough to resurrect the company.

The newspaper began getting more sales. It happened slowly, but it still happened.

They would still occasionally post about Batman, but only when something significant happened. Instead, they moved towards different topics. Politics. Development. Celebrities.

There was one person who fit all of those categories, and that was Bruce Wayne.

He was a billionaire philanthropist. Everyone in Gotham City knew him. It was hard not to. He had his own company, funded completely through his deceased father’s money.

(It was a shame that Martha and Thomas Wayne had to die like that. The media didn’t do them enough justice.)

He was the perfect person to report on; professional enough for news articles, popular enough for tabloids.

He was also friendly enough to talk with the reporters.

In fact, that’s what Vicki Vale was trying to do. Talk to him - or, in more correct terms - interview him.

He had been nice enough to invite her to a party - no, to a gala, that’s what the rich people called it - and, of course, she was there for one very obvious reason. To research for an article.

The newspapers had been dry lately, though it wasn’t really Vicki’s fault. (She was absolutely ready to tell this to anyone who would listen.) There was just a lack of things to report on.

No large attacks on Gotham, no Batman sightings, nothing. There was only partially interesting thing going on that Vicki would even as much consider to put on the front page.

That was Bruce Wayne.

Specifically, Bruce Wayne’s relationships, or, more accurately, the lack thereof.

With any other person this would barely be important at all. But this was Bruce Wayne.

He had built a reputation for being a socialite, a playboy. It seemed like he had a new woman beside him every week.

That was all until he randomly decided to stop dating altogether.

He didn’t flirt with anyone. But he still connected with them.

He started laughing more, talking more. It was as if he was more relaxed, more like himself.

All those smiles that were once obviously practiced in a mirror beforehand felt less controlled, more emotional, more real.

He rejected every girl with a grin on his face, preparing to engage them in an excited conversation instead. He would talk to anyone who listened about how great everything was and how smoothly everything was going.

Vicki was hoping he would talk to her too.

The first thing she did when she arrived was walk straight towards Bruce. Her high heels clicked arrhythmically as she grasped a pen and notepad in her hands, ready to interview at any moment.

“Hello- Bruce Wayne? I’d like to talk to you if you have a moment. I’m Vicki-”

“Vicki Vale, reporter of the Gotham Gazette,” Bruce turned to face her, his expression unusually friendly, “I know. I’ve met you before. Multiple times, in fact.”

It should have been no surprise that Bruce had guessed what she was going to say. She had met him multiple times, as he had said.

“-As I was saying, I’d like to talk to you.”

“You want an interview with me? What for?”

“Don’t think of it as an interview. There are just a few topics I’d like to discuss.”

Bruce glanced over to the other guest he had previously been talking with, before turning back to Vicki.

“Yes, of course. Let’s move it over there, shall we?”

He muttered a quick “Excuse me for a moment.” to his guest before guiding Vicki towards an empty corner.

“What did you want to discuss with me, then?”

“Well, I was hoping we could discuss something more personal. Not anything about Wayne Enterprises, if that’s what you were thinking about.”

Bruce nodded slightly, only to show he was following along.”

“Go on.”

“It’s to do with your relationship status,” she took a small pause before continuing, “I know it may seem insignificant, but people are really getting curious.”

He remained silent, but Vicki swore she could see a brief flicker of emotion on his face.

“I was just wondering if there was anyone you were seeing - or, well, emotionally involved with, to put it into better terms.”

Bruce paused, very evidently thinking, before speaking up again.

“I don’t particularly feel like this is important enough for me to discuss.”

It should have been clear he was trying to sugarcoat the fact that he didn’t want to reply. But Vicki was too occupied with getting answers to notice.

“People want to know wh- if you’ve been involved with anyone.”

“I don’t need to answer that question. I’m not going to.”

There was hesitancy in his voice. Anger in his expression. It was subtle, but it was there.

“The questions won’t take too long, if you would just take a moment to answer them-”

“I’ve already said I'm not going to answer. If you'll excuse me, I’ll be leaving now.”

He walked off to join the crowd.

Vicki didn’t see Bruce Wayne again for the entire night.

She wasn’t able to publish an article about him that week.

Chapter Text

The Joker had been to Arkham Asylum many times. He had also broken out of Arkham Asylum many times before.

It was his thing. He was infamous there.

His stays at Arkham were short, but they certainly made an impact. It wasn’t uncommon to hear canards whispered in the halls, or tasteless jokes exchanged between prisoners. Clearly he had some kind of reputation, and that reputation was definitely deserved.

He was notorious for being the worst patient in the entire asylum, and he had always kept that notoriety.

This made all the inmates love him. But all the doctors found him insufferable.

Many of them never directly treated him. It wasn’t unusual for him to miss therapy sessions. That was mostly because he was in isolation - or, even worse, actively trying to escape the building. Some might say you’d be considered lucky to get a chance of treating him, but lucky is not the right word to describe meetings with the Joker.

To put it simply, the therapy sessions just didn’t work. There was no use in trying - not when he’d escape a few days later.

It was safe to say that Joker was the worst patient in all of Arkham Asylum.

All of the psychiatrists had given up hope.

Except for one of them.

That was Dr. Joan Leland.

She had attended many sessions with the Joker before. Having been his unofficial - and, probably even official, but she doubted that the Asylum bothered enough about its patients to update the files - she had grown to know, understand him throughout his short stays.

She was the one person there who understood him the most. Sure, he didn’t open up much. (Joan couldn’t really blame him that much, the man probably had been involved in some pretty incriminating stuff.) But, that didn’t mean he never opened up.

He began to tell her things during their sessions. Small snippets of his life - very small ones - that made him feel more than just a blurry mugshot on a criminal record.

She remembered it all.

He’d hide out in abandoned flats despite having enough (stolen) money to afford a decent sized house. He’d cut his wrists open expecting to bleed out but had instead gained ugly scars that ‘definitely matched his aesthetic’ and a trip to Gotham’s underfunded hospital. He knew most of the other patients who he met in various unnamed ways. He used to have a girlfriend - he called her Harley, the name seemed familiar. His real name was supposedly Jack but he preferred to be referred to as Joker anyway. He had an enemy. Batman.

Joan knew who the Batman was. How couldn’t she?

That supposed ‘vigilante’ was everywhere. News outlets, police reports, and, more notably, patients’ confessions.

Arkham Asylum almost entirely consisted of criminals. It would make sense for them to run into the police, hell, maybe even the government, but Batman? A man dressed as a giant bat was just absurd.

But that doesn’t mean he didn’t exist. The criminals explained him in such extreme detail that made it clear this wasn’t some insane case of mass psychosis. Instead, it was reality.

The Joker described Batman in the most detail.

Apparently they were close. Enemies, supposedly - but Joker made it very clear that Batman ‘liked him the most’. Joan wasn’t sure whether that meant they hated each other the most, or something else.

All of their therapy sessions ended up leading to the topic of Batman. Joker would never stop bringing it up.

It could have meant something. Or it could have meant nothing. Joker used to bring up Bruce Wayne a lot as well. Perhaps he was just parasocial.

Every time she had a therapy session with the Joker, she heard about Batman.

She assumed that this time wouldn’t be any different.

“You lookin’ for someone?”

Her coworker - she never could remember his name - had been aimlessly following her down the hall. Surely he had something better to do.

“Yeah. The Joker.” She sighed, almost sarcastically. “Apparently he’s back again. I’ve been trying to find his

“And they didn’t give you a number? They should’ve.”

The coworker’s voice sounded low and scratchy. He was probably tired - none of them ever got enough sleep.

“They usually do. I’m not sure why they didn’t, there’s got to be records of it.”

“Then why don’t ya just check?”

The idea was simple. Why didn’t she think of it sooner?

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I’ll have a look for those now.”

The files were easy to find. Normally, that would be a privacy concern, but privacy wasn’t Joan’s priority at that moment. Her eyes scanned over the drawers - there were a lot of them - until she found the ‘J’ section.

There it was. Joker, no last name, only a grainy mugshot clearly taken years ago. Notes were scattered around the pages, filling any potential gaps. She didn’t bother looking at them, instead turning towards the last - most recent - page.

It took her a moment to properly read the entries.

Patient admitted 10/02/20XX. Left 2 days later.

The Joker was gone. For a moment Joan had assumed he had escaped. It wouldn’t have been unlikely, considering his long history of breaking out of Arkham. But that wasn’t what happened.

Joker did not escape Arkham Asylum.

He was bailed out. His ransom was paid in full.

The benefactor had tried to stay anonymous, but that simply wasn’t impossible. They were required to at least refer to themselves as something. And that is what they did.

Two letters had been entered on the bottom of the chart.

B.W.

Where had Joan heard those initials before?