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Part Fifteen: Chapter 107: Condemned

Bruce's POV

I had lost track of how many nights I've sat awake behind the bat computer, staring obsessively for any tiny hidden things I might have missed in the Joker's files. Its been almost eighteen months since I left him at Arkham and walked away. Naturally he escaped, and I've yet to recapture him. What's it matter anyway? I catch him, he escapes, over and over again, and the cycle is never broken. But the Joker has been laying low and letting other criminals have their time in the spotlight..I wonder if his laying low was as hard on him as it was on me?

Truth is...I missed him. I hated that I did, but I just couldn't purge those feelings from my soul. He used me and made a fool of me twice, and I still couldn't get him out of my heart. But I knew better than to act upon my feelings again. I couldn't allow myself to be weakened by all the things about him that I loved. I never stop seeing his flawless smile, and that laugh of his haunted my dreams. I can't forget the way his eyes that looked at me with love, even when I knew they were lying. I touched my lips, feeling the passion of his fevered kisses. I can't help but remember the way he made love to me. He had been so patient and gentle, constantly making sure I was ok. Then there was the way he trusted me to take his body, despite the horrible memories of being raped in Arkham. I keep seeing the way he looked as he slept, so peaceful and vunerable. His words, no matter how calculated, were always my undoing, even when I knew that at the end of the day, he really only cared about himself.

I bring a glass of whiskey to my lips with a sigh. It was never enough to put a smile on my face. I just never could seem to drink enough to relax, because it was never enough to make him go away. It was never enough to stop the dreams that left me too afraid to close my eyes. It's never enough to put me in a state of belligerence where I could hate him. It was never enough to blur my vision so that I couldn't stare at his face on my bat computer.

"Master Bruce, do you intend on staring at the Joker's file all day...again?" Alfred asks, coming to retrieve the untouched tray of food he had last brought me. "I'm afraid this...thing you have for him, is becoming very unhealthy," he says glancing at the glass in my hand. "What is it about a man thats...thats broken your heart, that you can't seem to let go of?"

I run my hand over my head and glance at Alfred before taking another drink. I sigh. "He's the only mystery I can't solve Alfred," I confess. "Gigabyte after gigabyte of information, and I still know so little about him."

"What's so hard to understand?" He asks and takes away the mostly empty bottle from my desk. "Cruelty and being evil are the only things that make sense to him. And he will take on any form he needs to with his liquidy nature to prove that point. There is no solving his mystery master Bruce. Even his choice of name tells you that."

"What do you mean?" I ask behind sinched eyebrows.

"in a deck of cards the Joker card has no fixed value. Its mutates to be any number it needs to be to beat the opposing hand. It's the wild card that usually ensures winning, and you can't beat the winning card. Though, I don't understand why the game is so important to him," he says as he stares at the Joker's pictures.

"Because he wants to prove a point. He thinks people are selfish, ugly, and nasty. And that's what he's the piped piper of. He's the monster under your bed who tells you that everything you fear is true. And he wants to prove that to me by forcing me to break my only rule. He wants to laugh at me as I realize it's true," I explained.

"But why does he want it to be you who he pushes to kill him?" Alfred asks.

"Because I refuse to give up hope on the world and everyone in it. In some weird way he thinks he would be doing me a favor if he proved his point. To him, his life is a small price to pay to open my eyes. Breaking me is his way of caring about me I guess," I shrug.