#original chaacter

Perched on the top bunk with the comic on your lap, you shoot Mandy a smile. “All good, chief. Thanks for the head’s up.”

“We all heard you cursin’ up a storm last time,” she says with a snort. “Beth was worried you’d broken somethin’ on the fall.”

“Just my pride.” And you bruised your knee pretty bad when you toppled off the top bunk.

Even after a month here, you can get too into a story and totally miss when the time for cell doors slamming shut and the lights going off arrives. The flashlight’s a true boon there; lets you stay up on the bunk instead of crawling over to the much less comfortable desk and chair.

Not that the bed is especially comfy, but they sprung a decent mattress for you, and you get two pillows - nice ones, a favour from Vera a few cells over, who’s a dab hand at getting in the little comforts that makes each day brighter. Which as the Joker’s murderer, you get to benefit from without having to pay the price.

Unless being stuck in prison for the foreseeable future counts, but it really isn’t all that bad.

It’s no Arkham or Blackgate, since you’re (relatively) sane and don’t have powers, though arguments were made for Blackgate being a better choice to keep you protected from retaliation. Joker didn’t have friends, but he did have goons, and a decent number of people now want you dead. Luckily, even more are now pretty big fans, including a lot of the prison population and the guards. So, special treatment is what you’ve gradually gotten used to after, uh, not exactly expecting such a warm welcome.

Look, it isn’t as if you planned for the after.

…You didn’t even much plan for the event itself.

The handy thing about this Batman universe - because who the fuck knows what actual continuity it is, you checked your basics but there’s only so much publicly available - is as delightfully fucked as Gotham is, a lot of the villains are human. Mortal. Killable, one might say.

Yeah, they have some form of crazy advantage (or just plain crazy) which keeps them a regular in the rogues gallery. But a few of them can be hurt like any normal person. By any normal person.

By, say, being run over by a motorbike hours after an Arkham breakout and having their head bashed into a pulp by a rusty iron pipe. And set on fire after a dousing in gasoline, just to make double, ultra sure the clown is dead.

Y’know. Hypothetically.

You flip a page of the Invincible comic, and damn, what a relief it was to find at least some of the old favourites existing in this world too. It’s been a nice refresher, going through the stack of issues and having plenty of ‘oh shit that did happen, I totally forgot’ moments.

You’ve just reached Conquest’s arrival on Earth - probably half an hour into lights off, your flashlight giving the scenes a real ‘uncover the clues to unlock the mystery!’ feel - when your cell door opens.

It should not be opening. Yet, it does - very quietly, and you only catch it because it makes a faint creak. Shit. Is this the part where you finally get murked? Maybe you should’ve played into the crazy factor and risked Arkham, if only to die in more interesting surroundings.

Except, uh.

The man who walks through the door is pretty recognisable, given the red helmet.

You don’t point the flashlight directly at his head, but a dead shot at his chest gives plenty of light to pick out some key features. And also to do a quick decipher on what kind of playbook is on the table here.

Broad red bat on his chestplate, but last you heard, Red Hood was in his crime boss era. However he’s been at it a while, lethality way lower than the first year of establishing himself, with an absence in between you’d put down to Outlaws or some other team up that took him away from Gotham. So, high possibility of some kind of alliance with the bats and birds of Gotham, but maybe in the early stages?

Yeah, those are definitely guns strapped to his thighs. Jesus fucking Christ, those thighs. Their reputation may have preceded them, but they did not give the full and lengthy introduction needed, goddamn.

Red Hood holds up one gloved finger in front of where his mouth would be, under the helmet. It’s a little threatening, gotta say, but you can’t think why Jason Todd would want you dead.

So you nod your understanding, figuring he’s got some thermal whatever the fuck to see you. To be polite, you flick down the settings of the flashlight so it isn’t on so high either. Keep it pointed low as you sit up and swing your legs over the side of the bunk, tugging at a twist in the fabric under your knee.

The orange jumpsuit isn’t so bad now you’re used to it; reminds you of your garage overalls, just considerably cleaner. You keep it loose around your waist the same way, flapping sleeves tied in a knot in front and the white tank top enough when the heating’s fairly decent here. It’s a damn nice prison, you’ve gotta say.

Red Hood moves a soundless step closer, hands back at his sides and making no move toward a weapon, which is pretty swell.

This isn’t your first vigilante meeting - that honour goes to Red Robin, being the first on the scene after your spot of public service and arson - but after a few months in prison, this is exciting. Shame it’s in prison and all, so chatter’s a bad idea.

When Red Hood reaches into his pocket, it’s all slow movements like he’s making an attempt not to alarm you. Hey, more signs toward no imminent murder, cool. Not that it felt likely, but- y’know, continuities. Who the fuck knows what variation of Jason Todd this is, and which writer he was doomed by.

Whatever he brings out, it’s tiny, something dark and plastic-y? It’s only when he points to your ear that you get it.

Oh, clever. You take the earpiece and put it in.

“Don’t talk,” is the first thing he says. A little rude, but yeah, it isn’t like you’re in the helmet keeping his voice silenced beyond the com line. It has that distorted effect to it, an overlay to hide the actual voice beneath, though not the full growl or electronic whine of some versions. “Do you know who I am?”

…Buddy. Pal. Comrade.

Do I look totally brainless to you?

Your fake backstory is a Gothamite through and through; whatever life you took over, it had loads of overlap with your own, just transplanted to the fictional city in all its crime-ridden glory. Your apartment was in the Bowery, for fuck’s sake. You know who Red Hood is. Also-

You point at his helmet, then at the guns, and give a thumbs up.

The line crackles faintly - maybe a snort, or scoff. “I’m getting you out of here. Any objections?”

Oh.

Huh. Wild.

Like, you don’t actually mind the joint, but it is prison. Hardly the ideal vacation destination to the intrepid explorer, unless they have a passion for orange jumpsuits and brutalist architecture. Nowhere near as exciting as being broken out of prison by the Red Hood himself, even if it seems like he’s opted to go stealthmode for this operation. Probably because it’s super easy for him, being a basic prison and all.

So the choice doesn’t require much deliberation. Real cool of him to ask though; nudges the meter in the direction of ‘probably not an ultra violent/unstable Jason’. Then again, he isn’t dealing with a- okay, you are a murderer now, but given the ‘victim’ involved…Yeahhh. A different attitude may be applicable.

Hopping off the bunk, you shuffle around Mister Tall, Dark and Buff as Fuck (seriously, you feel absolutely tiny in comparison to him) to find your sneakers. Then you give him a double thumbs up to indicate your approval for this jailbreak.

“Fantastic,” he says, and even over the distortion it comes through dry.

Then, something explodes with enough force to make the ground shake, and the alarms start wailing.

“That’s our cue. Hope you’re not the type to second-guess.”

Well, that’s a blatant fucking dig at the…planning process involved in killing the Joker.

“Never in my life,” you confirm, since stealth has been blown in favour of distraction.

And you let the Red Hood break you out of prison, with the same lack of consequence-consideration that got you locked up in the first place.

-

On the day the Joker dies, Jason’s nowhere near Gotham.

Feels like design, but when he digs into it, it’s all a big fucking coincidence. He’s off on a case - human trafficking that just happened to overlap with one of his ports, catches his eye, sticks in his teeth - and it takes him halfway across the world, as they always do.

He’s in deep too, relying on lieutenants to hold the ship steady. Well, semi-relying. As shaky as his…let’s say, mutual goal-setting with the bats is, Barbara won’t let word spread of his absence. She’s pragmatic enough to see how it’d play out, and do something about it. She’s also why he has access to Oracle’s video of the Joker’s death, instead of what he’d ripped out of the city network.

It’s a bad location. Out by a junkyard he remembers fighting Killer Croc in once, using the crane to drop a chunky old truck on him. Quiet out there, now Falcone isn’t using it to stash weapons after one bust too many. So not a lot of surveillance aside from the owner’s, and the shit quality is nothing like the couple of angles on Oracle’s network.

That day, no one knew the Joker had broken out of Arkham yet. A decoy situation, of fucking course, and it’s- Who the hell didn’t see this coming? ‘Improved security measures’ his ass, same shit new day, and a shiny new death toll to go along with it.

Or, that’s what would’ve happened.

Joker’s alone, and out in the open. Not his usual pattern, but it seems likely he was gonna use the junkyard for whatever he had planned. Hasn’t changed out of the Arkham jumpsuit, wandering about without a care alongside the outer fence.

Just…right fucking there, like he’s taunting them with it. Like he’d use this clip later, to show off how easy it was for him to get out again. They didn’t track him down in time - all their tech, all that fucking surveillance, and nothing got flagged. Bypassed Oracle’s detection with whatever new bullshit he’s managed this time.

Joker’s alone, until he isn’t.

Someone leaves the junkyard, goes up to a motorbike parked by the gates. Stops beside it, and it’s obvious the moment Robin Wilson sees the Joker, because she goes still. Looks at him, and he doesn’t see her yet, further down the road and absorbed in whatever sick plans he’s making.

Exactly ten seconds pass.

She walks back into the junkyard. Seventeen more seconds, and she’s back at the bike, this time holding a rusty metal pipe. She lays it across her lap after climbing on, and doesn’t bother with her helmet.

The camera nearer the Joker - Oracle’s camera - came with audio. So it picks up on the engine roaring to life. Picks up on the meaty ku-thunk of the heavy motorbike slamming into a body as it swings out to a skid.

Picks up on, “Huh, so you are human,” as she sets the kickstand down, gets off, walks over.

Joker’s on the ground. Not dead, but bleeding. Broken. The fire will take care of a lot of evidence, but Jason can call a broken pelvis and leg when he sees it. Arms still work, but the landing dislocated one, and a gash in his temple is bleeding heavily. Bad injuries, but not a guaranteed death sentence.

That fucking laugh goes strangled, surprised? The feed doesn’t fully pick up what he says. The response is clearer.

“Not the same, yeah, but it’ll do the job. What was it you said back then?” She raises the pipe, gives it a testing swing. “Eh, who gives a shit. Guess you should know…This is for Robin.”

Then, she beats the Joker to death.

Then, she brings over a tank of gas from her bike (a spare, and he recognises the habit on anyone used to shortages and price hikes), douses his body in it, and flicks on a yellow bic lighter.

She lifts it in a toast to no one.

"To a dead boy," she'll say later, when the lawyers ask. "C'mon, we all know this one."

The lighter drops, and the Joker’s body goes up in flames. She waits there until it’s ash, and then she sits on the curb, and waits until she’s arrested.

Jason watches the highlights reel while he’s waiting for lights out. Barbara checks in a final time over coms. He’d say he’ll really owe her after this if she wasn’t the one who looped him in, in the first place.

There were plenty of news headlines once it got out. His favourite? Nice and simple, printed out and stuck to the wall of his most frequented safehouse. They got her mugshot, ruined any chance of her identity being protected. Made the casual grin she gave for the camera all the funnier, like she knew exactly the shit she was in, but didn’t give a fuck.

Robin Kills The Joker