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The subject of the third Robin was a sore one, like a horribly broken object in a room which everyone tries to avert their eyes off.
The second Robin, Jason, had been so as well—the difference is he came back. The boy, now a man, had been changed and warped and hurt; still he had come back.
Mentioning Jason’s tenure as Robin was still something that was largely avoided as a conversation topic, despite the fractured healing of time.
But the third… Timothy Jackson Drake— Tim Drake —he’d been taken, never to be returned.
Three years ago, he’d gone on a solo recognizance mission at a new Penguin hideout, just two blocks off from where a Batman had been patrolling, he’d been so close.
When it had been time for their check in (agreed upon to be made every fifteen minutes) the young boy returned radio silence. And when Batman had hurried to the scene, all he found on the roof was a splatter of blood matching Tim’s DNA and a Joker’s playing card.
During the first year of Tim’s kidnapping, the Joker would leave sick little packages for the vigilante to find.
A molar tooth with the blood and nerves still attached to the pearly white, left in a little music box with a robin carved into its wood.
A baggie with a smiley face drawn on it in green sharpie. With a clump of black-turning-green hair filling it, the follicles still attached meaning they were ripped out of the boy’s head.
A picture of Tim, now seven months older than when he had been taken, his body cowering in the corner of a badly lit room, covered in bruises, cuts, needle marks and so much blood . His hair is a dark green, his pale skin somehow even more paper-white now. The intentionally older camera the Joker had used marked the date of the picture being taken just three days before Batman found it in a completely otherwise empty picture-book, its location had been sent via Oracle’s tip line.
The tooth and blood showed very little sign of DNA decay and no frost crystallization indicating Tim might have been dead and frozen by the time Joker decided to rip out the tooth and hair. His DNA showed signs of Joker Toxin too, Bruce shouldn’t be surprised, but he’d hoped the green had been trick of his eyes.
It was all intentional every time, it was all meant to be as painful as possible. Tim was still alive, a full year later. The villain wanted Batman to know, he wanted him to know he’d never find him and that his son was in pain and agony every day.
After that first year, the packages stopped. The not-knowing was worse, Bruce didn’t know how things could get worse, but they did.
He’d wake up with night terrors almost every night for several months; dreaming of a dead Tim on his doorstep. His corpse, dumped in Gotham Bay. His body strung up, hanging from a streetlamp.
But there was nothing.
No Joker.
No Tim.
Nothing.
Then, two years after Tim had been taken, Damian had appeared on his doorstep.
The idea of a new son, and possibly a new Robin, had restarted his night terrors all over again.
Damian with a BANG paper rod sticking out of his chest. Damian in a warehouse full of explosives. Damian being held down by the Joker, as the madman rips the boy’s cheeks wide with a knife.
He shouldn’t let his youngest son don the colors. He shouldn’t train his already skilled child in martial arts. He shouldn’t call out ‘Robin’ and see Damian there, responding to the cursed title.
But he did, and he does.
A cycle is a cycle is a cycle, and Bruce is well aware of being stuck in one.
•••
“Batman?” Jim Gordon's voice sounds in his comm, hesitance and slight impatience in his gruff voice.
“Repeat that.” Batman answers back, as his heart begins to speed up and his lungs tighten.
There is a sigh on the line. “I said: The Joker had been found dead, here at GCPD.”
Damian was throwing his father a look from his side, taking in all the never-shown anxious tells his body is throwing up with each passing moment. The Joker is one of the biggest taboo subjects in the Wayne Home. Dick had filled in some blanks for the young boy; the first time he had asked about the villain, his father’s face had become several shades more white before rushing away, leaving the boy there with his unanswered questions.
“I—“ the Batman chokes on his words, his Robin’s eyebrows going up to his hairline (THE Batman never chokes or loses his words.)
“I’ll be there in five.” He manages after a clearing of his throat, Jim decides not to comment on
He turns to Robin. “Go back to the cave, use the batmobile’s self-drive function.” There is a breathlessness in his voice the boy had rarely ever heard.
“Father, I must insist on accompanying you.” His little hands are clasped together behind his back, spine straight and his masked eyes never wavering from Batman’s face. There is a sigh “I don’t want you seeing a—“ Robin interrupts, an action that would have earned him a strike in his previous home “a dead body? I have seen more than enough corpses to let it phase me by now. That man is a sore subject, I know that, so I will accompany you… support you.” His voice becomes smaller at the end.
Despite the subject of conversation, Bruce can’t help but feel a slight warmth in his chest. Damian had really come far from the boy that had entered his home two years ago.
“You will stick close to me, and let me handle the talking. Agreed?”
“Acceptable terms.”
The following car ride to the GCPD was quiet, with only the rumbling of the car filling the silence.
Damian thought about his second oldest brother, Jason Todd. He had experienced the cruelty of the Joker up close and personal. How would he react to being informed of the villain’s demise? He’d never spoken to Todd about the Joker. Should he have tried?
Next, he thought of his immediate older brother, the one he never even got the chance to meet. Yet the echoes of his presence linger in the manor to this day. A photo of a pale boy with dark hair and bright blue eyes on Father’s work desk. Several contingencies and work plans logged in the batcomputer’s system, courtesy of the third Robin. Photos of sunrises over the Gotham skyline, framed and hung in several rooms, with the name ‘Tim Drake’ signed on the back. A specific brand of sodas in the fridge—one which everyone hates and never takes from, yet Alfred never removed them from their seemingly eternal place inside.
If he had been here, would he and Damian have gotten along? Would they have bonded over art? Trained together?
It’s odd, the young boy thinks, feeling such an attachment to someone you’ve never met.
The car rumbles to a stop, and Damian pushes his feelings aside with practiced ease.
The area surrounding the front of the GCPD is swarming with people—police officers, civilians and journalists hoping to get a picture or statement.
The two vigilantes sweep past them all and the police-tape to Jim Gordon, who is standing by the front door, a black body-bag by his dirt scuffed shoes.
Batman’s eyes linger on the bag for a few moments longer than he’d normally allow, before looking back at the commissioner.
“You sure it’s him?” He asks, trying to ignore that black hole inside of himself that always seems to grow whenever there’s a mere mention of Joker.
Jim rubs a hand on his own nape “We cross-referenced the body’s blood with one of the Joker samples you shared with us a few years ago—identical match. It’s him.”
There is a light tremor in Batman’s hands, barely there, but Robin picks it up with expertise. He takes a step closer to his father, letting his smaller body lean lightly against his side. The tremor seizes.
“Where’d you find the body exactly?” Batman asks next, his voice showing none of that internal turmoil.
Jim looks up to the side, at one of the beams that go above the double doors leading into the GCPD building. “Bastard was strung up with rope from there, hanging right in front of our door like a god damn piñata.” The man sounds exhausted and worn.
“No witnesses? Also, we’d like to have your security footage.”
“During Saturday shift change there is a three minute window with no one out front, I know I know we need to optimize better.” He quickly interrupts Batman’ who looked like he was about to lecture the aged commissioner. “Our security footage got looped by someone, whoever put him up there covered their tracks well— also…”
Jim fished out two see-through police baggies. “This was stabbed into his chest.” Robin goes slightly on his tippy-toes to see the objects handed to his father.
There is a kitchen knife in one, black handle in regular quality and make. Nothing too unique to research buyers.
The other has a white piece of paper with a rip in the middle from the knife. The text scrawled on top of it was in a dark purple crayon, it read ‘WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?’
“We’ll take him,” Batman says, handing the two baggies to Robin. Then he bends down and picks up the body bag of mystery “find out as much as we can.”
Jim makes a ‘go ahead’ gesture with his hand. “You’ll get no complaints from us, just get that son-of-a-bitch as far away from my precinct as possible.” Jim looks at the body-bag one last time. “I hope he’s rotting in hell right now. After what he did to my girl and your boys—as well as everyone else, I can’t help but be relieved about this.”
Batman nods, eyes fixed on the body too for a moment. Then, with a swoop of his cape, the two vigilantes are back in the car, on the way home with an extra body in the trunk
The comms in the car clicks on “Sir,” the voice of Alfred fills the car “am I correct in hearing that the Joker is dead?” Bruce takes a deep breath “Yes. We’re on the way back with the body; ready one of the examination tables.”
There is silence for a few seconds. “Very good sir. I must also inform you that Master Jason and Master Dick are here, they heard the news too.”
He gets a vague ‘hm’ in reply before the comms click off.
Damian tries not to fiddle with his hands. “Father, are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
Damian, for the first time, can see right through one of his Father’s lies. He can’t even be offended at the obvious falsehood, as he slowly watches all the impossible strength his father had always possessed be slowly sapped from him second by second.
“Do not despair.” Damian says, softly.
His father does not reply.
The drive continues on in silence.
•••
The body is barely placed on the cold slab before Jason pushes Bruce out of the way, ripping the zipper down and flinging the body-bag open.
Inside is Joker. So far there seems to be no tricks. He looks mostly the same, albeit slightly more skinny. His face is pulled into that permanent grin, even as the dying nerves and muscles are supposed to relax after death. Across his mouth and up to his ears is a smile painted in drying blood. He is wearing one of his trademark purple suits, the one difference being the stab wound right into the sternum.
“Do your tests,” Jason tells Bruce “we need to know if this nightmare is really over.” His green eyes never leave the corpse as he speaks. Dick, Damian and Alfred all look on from the other side of the slab. Normally, Alfred would have lectured Jason about manners; Dick would have told him to calm down or Damian would roll his eyes at the emotional display. But not now. All of them understand the young man’s reaction. They pain most of them went through when Jason died at that man’s hands. The pain they felt at the disappearance and now lingering void from Tim’s kidnapping and unknown (but unanimously agreed upon) murder.
“Jim said they had done a DNA test, claiming it matches.” Bruce speaks, his voice calm but his insides a hurricane, still. “Run. Your. Tests.” Jason says again, a harder edge to his voice.
Dick speaks up next. “It’s not that I don’t trust Jim to do his work, but I’d feel a lot more comfortable if we redid it all too. Don’t wanna take any chances.” Bruce nods, quickly filling several vials with dead blood and moving to the various analysis machines. They still needed to find out the cause of death.
They still needed to find whomever hung him in front of the police station.
“Did Mister Gordon share anything with you two, Master Damian?” Alfred inquires, as he puts on a pair of latex gloves, then picks up another glass vial, which he scrapes a bit of the dry blood on the Joker’s lips into.
“The commissioner said the person who put him up did so in less than three minutes, during the outside guard shift change. The cameras had been compromised, set to loop old footage to avoid detection. And this—“ the boy laid the two baggies on the slab by Joker’s feet “this was stabbed into his chest, with the accompanying note.”
“I’d like to shake the hand of the person that finally punched that shit-stain’s ticket.” Jason says, a slight grin on his face. Dick looks more thoughtful “The stab didn’t kill the Joker—there’s barely any blood on the knife, and none around his chest. He was already dead when he was stabbed, based on how he looks I’d say he’s been dead for at least a week.”
“Dead for a week or dead for an hour. He is dead! That’s all I care to know.” Jason’s grip at the edge of the slab tightens.
“We still need to unveil the person who hung him up and left that message.” Damian says, ignoring his brother's argument. Jason huffs “Maybe the bastard just got unlucky, someone he wronged got a chance and actually succeeded.”
“He sure did get unlucky, Master Todd.” Alfred says, as he and Bruce approach the boys, a thin stack of papers in their father’s hand. “But not in the way you think.” Bruce adds on, his eyes still reading the contents of the list. His face is pale and his breathing is fast and a bit shallow.
“The Joker didn’t die from murder, he died from cancer. Tumor Markers are through the roof, he was basically a walking cancer cell by the end of his life. The DNA matches too, he is the real Joker. But…” he cuts himself off, crushing the papers between his shaking hands.
“But what?!” Jason demands, fearing the worst but not knowing what that ‘worst’ is.
“The blood—“ Alfred decides to take over, placing a gentle hand on his adopted son’s shaking shoulder. “The blood on his face isn’t the Joker’s, it belongs to Master Tim.”
Beside Damian, Dick’s knees seem to give out. He quickly reacts and catches his oldest brother by the arm, lowering him to sit on the floor. His own little heart quickening at what the butler is saying, what I could mean. Jason’s face is a blank mask, but his hands are shaking even worse than Bruce’s.
“Just like back then, there is no sign of decay or frost crystallization—the blood is fresh, so he is alive.”
Dick bursts into tears on the floor.
“Master Tim is alive.”