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Joker managed to nab Robin outside Wayne Manor.
He was in a hostage taking kind of mood, and he’d tailed the kid from the latest crime scene. Batman and the GCPD were still preoccupied with the giant armadillos equipped with squirting flowers he had deployed.
With some duct tape, bubble gum, and his natural agility, Joker had the squirming, struggling Robin in his clutches. He had even rented a nice sinister dark cave for the occasion, too.
“You won’t get away with this, Joker!” Robin said, tugging futilely at the duct tape and bubble gum. “Batman will stop you. I know he will.”
“Oh, he can try,” Joker said, with his manic clown grin. He knew he looked eerie in the semi-blackness of the cave, the only available light throwing his shadow across the walls. “That’s what I’m counting on, little Boy Blunder. You’re my handy bait. ”
“He won’t fall into a trap so easily,” Robin bit back loyally, but that only made Joker’s smile widen.
He had so many plans in mind for Batman. Their Nemesis Anniversary was coming up, marking a milestone date, and Joker was doing a build-up countdown thing. Like the Twelve Days of Christmas, but with less maids-a-milking and more Gothamites-a-screaming.
He had even gotten a pair of matching rings to commemorate the occasion. The rings were both silver with four tiny gems embedded on the outside: black, yellow, green, purple--their colors, of course.
Simple but elegant. Joker almost wanted to go all-out, maybe give Batman a locket with his picture inside of it, but Joker didn’t want them be like those nemeses. Too obnoxiously obsessed over each other, you know the type.
The ring box would definitely be left on top of a bomb that Batman would be racing to defuse, but Joker wasn’t sure yet if it would be laughing gas or a regular bomb.
“I’m bored,” Robin announced. His high-pitched voice echoed shrilly through the cave. He kicked his red booted feet, making a clunk noise against a rock.
Irked at the interruption of his Nemeversary thoughts, Joker snapped, “This is a kidnapping, not a daycare.”
“Don’t you have TV?”
“No.”
“How about a supervillain computer? Batman has a superhero one in his cave.”
“I rented this cave. I only had the time to set up the robot piranhas, the lasers, and the giant mallet, but not hook up a supercomputer. Jeez, kid.”
“Well, it is the twenty-first century,” Robin pointed out. “How about a smartphone?”
“Of course I have a phone,” Joker said. He had tried to check the news to see if Batman had finished with the armadillos yet. “...I didn’t set up WiFi and the guy in the cave next door locked his,” he admitted.
“Great,” Robin sighed. He dejectedly kicked his boot on a rock again.
Joker really didn’t want to hear more of Robin’s whining. It was getting on his nerves. Like always, he had that antsy warm feeling tight in his chest whenever he was anticipating Batman’s attempts to thwart his plans.
To calm himself down, he toyed with the velvet box in his pocket, which currently held Batman’s ring. He knew Batman would put it on when the day came; he knew. He thought of Batman saying I hate you against the backdrop of the setting sun, their hands clasped together.
“Hey, kid,” Joker said out loud, deciding to divert the conversation to random and less whiny territory, “what’s up with Bruce Wayne? Batman--”
He was about to remark on the weirdness of Bruce Wayne and Batman being roommates, because there was something absurd thinking about the billionaire CEO and the grumpy dark knight co-existing in the same place.
Robin froze, a panicked look in his eyes. “They’re my dads!” he blurted out, and Joker stiffened.
“What?" Joker said.
Robin fidgeted--well, as much fidgeting one could do when restrained by duct tape and bubble gum. “Um. Yes. Not the same person or anything. They adopted me and they’re really happy together and stuff. Just recently married.”
Joker knew, logically, that this news shouldn’t affect him at all. It wasn’t as if Batman had picked up another nemesis--he hadn’t fled to Metropolis to confusedly duke it out with Superman. It wasn’t like last time, when Batman didn’t acknowledge Joker’s importance in his life, and Batman had finally made up for that.
But Joker still felt like he had been punched in the gut. Not one of Batman’s punches, black-gloved and furious, familiar as a kiss, but rather an unexpected blow that left him breathless and vulnerable.
Joker wilted. A physical manifestation of wilting, anyway, his posture slumping over and the ring box clattering from his grasp across the stony ground.
He began to walk out of the cave dejectedly, deftly ducking and swerving to avoid the giant mallet and laser traps.
Robin cried out, “Hey! You forgot about me! Where are you going? What if the piranhas get me? This is lousy kidnapper behavior. Batman wouldn’t approve.”
Joker ignored the kid.
He needed to think things over.
Having a nemesis is supposed to mean a lot of things. It means that he’s the person who you’re supposed to engage in frantic chases across rooftops; it means that he’s the person who you practice your villainous monologues for the night before, the white face paint and red lipstick in place as you soliloquize in front of a mirror.
You’re supposed to both build walls of crazy for each other, black and white newspaper photos pinned to walls, red string connecting incidents, etc. You’re supposed to see him in your dreams, and he sees you back in his, taunting him for his weaknesses.
Joker mulled this over: the definition of what it meant to have a nemesis.
And now--what did it mean that Batman was married and what if he probably did see someone else in his dreams?
Joker was sulking in one of his lairs--non-rented, one of his own digs with adequate WiFi, thank you very much--with today’s issue of the Gotham Gazette laid out in front of him. He glared at a picture of Bruce Wayne and fought down the urge to draw a mustache on it.
“I can’t believe Bats is doing this to me,” he said out loud. “To us. Right before our Nemeversary.”
Drastic times called for drastic measures.
Wayne Manor, the next morning...
“Master Bruce, Joker appears to be skywriting various Adele song lyrics while on a purple jet. He hasn’t bombed anything from it.”
“Hmm. He must be planning something dastardly soon. Our Nemeversary is coming up.”
“He was in a weird mood when he kidnapped me. Maybe he’s cheered up. And thank you so much for saving me, Bat-dad! When I grow up, I hope I can hammer robot piranhas with a giant mallet just like you.”
“You can hammer all the robot piranhas you want right now. I took them back to the Bat Cave. See, Alfred, I told you I’ve got this parenting stuff down to a fine art.”
Message thus delivered, Joker resolved to infiltrate the charity ball that Bruce Wayne was attending this evening. He wanted to see Wayne himself. Maybe even take him hostage out of pure pettiness.
He knew he had to confront Batman soon, but he didn’t feel up to it yet.
A good disguise to the ball would cheer him up.
Hmmph, Bruce Wayne probably thought he looked so good in those black suits of his. Well, Joker could wear suits, too. Still purple, but more formal and without polka dots.
He washed the dye out of his hair, fumbled with a solid green tie, and donned a purple top hat.
Bruce Wayne wouldn’t see him coming.
“That guy in the purple suit looks familiar,” Bruce said, who was hanging out by the appetizer table with Dick.
“Magneto?” Dick suggested. He was currently squinting at a tiny block of cheese speared with a toothpick.
“Don’t be silly,” Bruce scoffed. “We’re DC, not Marvel.”
“Iron Man sucks,” Dick said automatically.
“That’s my boy.”
Bruce tried to identify the recognition he felt at seeing the strange man at the ball. It was kind of like being dogged by a fly who wouldn’t stop buzzing. It was...annoyance, but also a sense of resignation.
“Hey!” called someone, and of course it had to be the stranger in a purple suit popping by the appetizer table. “Bruce Wayne, right?”
“That’s me,” Bruce said, puffing out his chest on instinct. He had accepted by now that he as Bruce Wayne didn’t look half as cool as Batman (because of his cape’s dramatic swishing action and everything else), but he was still, you know, a high society Gotham bigshot.
Maybe he could try to see if Bruce Wayne could get away with wearing a cape for once. He could establish a Wear Your Cape to Work Day at Wayne Enterprises.
“So,” the purple-suited man said with a glint in his eyes, breaking Bruce out of his cape-wearing fantasies, “dance with me, Brucie.”
Bruce blinked. “What. Why?”
His kind of dancing was more the rocking-out awesome type during battle. Not slow dancing to orchestral music. At grand events like this, Bruce preferred to just chill and exude an aura of charm.
Even under the top hat--why a top hat? everyone in town these days knew that a top hat made you look like the Penguin--Bruce could tell that the stranger was rolling his eyes.
“Because I asked,” the stranger said simply. “Come on.”
“Go have some fun, Dad,” Dick said, still busy studying the cheeses.
“I don’t have fun at charity balls,” Bruce said. “I’m here for the cause. I’m a philanthropist.”
“Name the cause, then,” the stranger said.
“Uh…dogs.” Everyone liked dogs, right? This was probably about dogs.
“Nope.”
Bruce cast about for inspiration, but couldn’t find a banner that might give away the answer. His gaze landed on Dick and he guessed, “Orphans?”
The stranger shook his head.
“...Orphaned dogs?”
The stranger’s mouth twisted. He muttered something that sounded like, “I can see how Wayne’s obtuseness appealed to him; it’s exactly the same,” which didn’t make any sense at all, and there was a renewed determination in the stranger’s eyes.
And so that’s how Bruce got dragged to the dance floor.
Joker was debating the best method how to kidnap Bruce Wayne. Some dramatic colored smoke would do the trick to cause chaos and make for neat optics. Right now, he steered the billionaire toward the center of the ballroom, gripping his left hand.
That was when he took Wayne’s other hand into his, and oh.
Oh.
The first thing he noticed was the fresh scar on Bruce Wayne’s wrist, a fading slash of red. Last week, Joker and Batman had been involved in a short range tussle, wrestling with Batman’s batarang between them. One of Batman’s gloves had slipped off during the fight.
Joker touched the scar with his hand, tracing the line slowly, and he felt the expression on his face soften.
The second thing he noticed were those stupid abs, which were pretty unmistakable even under that suit.
The third thing he noticed was--
“You’re wearing our ring,” he said. The ring he had left on the floor of the cave.
“Joker?” Bruce Wayne--Batman--said. “This is awkward. The secret identity thing--well. We can handle it later. Anyways, of course I am. It’s almost our Nemeversary. Why did you leave the ring at that cave? The robot piranhas almost ate it.”
“There was a misunderstanding,” Joker said, not without embarrassment. He blushed slightly.
“You deranged drama king,” Batman said, with a sigh. He paused. “Er. You’re not here to cause a ruckus at this charity ball for orphaned dogs, are you?”
“Not immediately,” Joker said. They were standing there at the middle of the ballroom, their hands still joined, sort of swaying. He didn’t want to let go.
“Good,” Batman said.
“So,” Joker said, “our hatred is really mutual, right?”
“I don’t know why you keep needing reassurance,” Batman said, exasperation in his voice, but mixed with a tinge of fondness. “I mean, I said.”
“So say it again, Bats.”
“Fine, fine,” Batman said. “Joker, you are endlessly frustrating, patently dangerous, and worst of all, ridiculously needy. You’re my greatest nemesis and I’m happy to chase you down for the rest of my days.”
It was enough. It was more than enough.
“I’m happy to run,” Joker said gleefully.
But right then and there, he did the exact opposite of running, and he leaned forward to press their foreheads together. The movement knocked off the top hat on Joker’s head, and they looked silly, still half-dancing like that.
Joker beamed. Then he drew back and said, “Catch me if you can,” and purple and green smoke erupted from the toppled hat’s brim.