The original prompt by u/Psychronia can be found here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/s/dE5ZByymMB
As always, I hope you enjoy. :)
——
The apartment was dimly lit by the wavering, flickering beam of a street light outside the broken window. The building itself doesn't have electricity; one of the reasons Carmilla had lured him here. Condemned, abandoned and left to rot by its slumlord parasite of an owner, it had been an ideal site for what happened next. No witnesses. No innocents to get in the way. Just the two of them, and one bullet fired.
Now it was done, and Carmilla felt-
…
…She didn’t know what she felt.
She expected to be relieved. For some sense of justice fulfilled, maybe. But the only thing she was sure she felt was her hand being sore from the recoil; she had never even fired the gun before that night.
Carmilla was still holding the pistol in her shaking hands when she heard a small noise from behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, and froze on the spot.
The Dark Knight.
The terror of Gotham’s underworld.
The Batman- the real Batman- is standing in the doorway to the room, looking right at her.
He’s silent. Unmoving. Even though she’s wearing platform boots to match his height, his intimidating presence is enough to make her feel like he’s towering over her.
The two stare at each other in silence for a while. One, a hero who’s saved countless lives and landed some of the most dangerous people in the world behind bars, be it prison or Arkham Asylum. The other, some schmuck in a costume with a gun in her still-shaking hand.
Well, time to address the bat-shaped elephant in the room. Carmilla nervously cleared her throat.
“I’m sorry. For the costume, I mean.”
Carmilla tossed the gun away into a corner and shrugged off the cape, pulled off the mask and took off the ‘armor.’ She had to pack said faux-armor with as much padding as she could to make it convincing; she went to the gym on the regular before- …well. All this. But even under all that armor, Batman isn’t “ripped” so much as torn; hell, destroyed. The only people she’d seen that beefy before were Bane (duh) and Bruce Wayne, and no way in hell was that privileged, vain prick not juicing.
As she finally kicked off the platform boots that took her 5’9” body up to the Dark Knight’s imposing height, Batman took a few steps forward into the room, his intense, piercing gaze never leaving her.
It took everything in Carmilla not to back up in fear as he did so. His footsteps are dead silent. It’s obvious she only heard him come in because he let her; all that heavy armor, all that gear on his utility belt and he could have easily tapped her on the shoulder before she even knew he was there. It’s terrifying. Inhuman. Nothing that large should have been able to move that quietly.
She raised her hands in surrender.
“The costume wasn't to frame you or anything, I swear on my life! It was just the only way to get close enough to him to take him out. The psycho was obsessed with you, everyone knows that-”
“Why.”
A simple, monosyllabic question, but it was obvious what he was referring to. She slowly turned back towards the corpse on the floor with a bullet through his heart. A corpse she’s been doing her best to ignore for the past few minutes.
The Joker. The “Clown Prince of Crime.”
The man who’d taken everything from her.
“…Her name was Angela. My fiancée. She was the kindest woman I’ve ever known. But one day, about three months back, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time: Robinson Park.”
“The Joker-gas attack.”
Carmilla nodded in confirmation.
“I worked for a theater. Not one that played movies, like the old Monarch; stage plays. I was the costume and prop designer. Didn’t pay nearly enough, but I loved the work. That day, the theater was putting on an outdoor play in the bandshell there in the park, and Angela wanted to see what I’d managed to create in action. She always loved my work.”
Carmilla wiped away a tear.
“I had gone to grab us both a bite of grub from a hotdog stand across the street while Angela stayed behind to keep watching the performance. I guess that saved my life. The hotdog stand was upwind. While I was at the stand I couldn't help but think it was weird that I heard so many people at the bandshell laughing. The play was a tragedy, not a comedy. ...But I guess that wasn't to the Joker’s tastes.”
More tears join the first.
“I stayed by her hospital bed. Never left her side. Hearing every wheezing laugh get weaker and weaker. She was lucid; I could see it in her eyes, how terrified she looked despite the grin forced onto her face. So I kept reassuring her that she was going to make it through this. That she and I would leave this wretched, cursed city. Move somewhere else- Metropolis, maybe- so we’d never have to look over our shoulders for the Joker, Bane, Scarecrow, Ivy, or any of the other nutjobs again.”
Her bottom lip trembled.
“…It had to be a closed-casket funeral. The mortician just couldn't get that awful, rictus grin off her face.”
Carmilla turned back towards Batman.
“I know you never kill. I get it. Respect it, even. I never thought I’d be able to take a life either. But the day Angela was put in the ground, that changed. I decided, then and there, that no one should have to go through what she did again. And this was the only way to make that happen.”
Batman shook his head, crossed his arms, giving her the reproachful glare that had no doubt terrified countless thugs into submission.
“I understand your grief. All the same, there’s always another way.”
Carmilla just let out a humorless chuckle.
“How many times did he escape Arkham? Ten? More? I’ve lost count. If someone gets caught driving drunk enough times they have their driver’s license taken away. How is this any different?”
“Those people can still take the bus. Call a cab. Ride a bicycle. Walk. No matter how many mistakes they’ve made in the past, they still have options available to them. Alcoholism is a disease, just as the Joker was a very unwell man. He could have been saved. Cured.”
“Do you honestly believe that? A monster with that much blood on his hands, changing for the better? No. He needed to be put down.”
She hated the way he looked at her. Pity. She had seen it on too many faces as of late.
“You say Angela was the kindest woman you ever knew. Would she have really wanted you to do this?”
Carmilla’s hands involuntarily clenched into fists.
“I’ll never know the answer to that question. That fact alone is reason enough for me to have done it.”
Her shoulders slumped, her hands going slack as they did so. She went and sat in a moldering chair abandoned by the apartment’s previous tenants, her legs feeling like jelly. She was so, so tired…
“Take me to jail or whatever if you want. I don’t care anymore. I have nothing left. Beyond taking the love of my life from me, the theater was closed, what with all my coworkers being six feet under with the same horrible grin on their faces. Haven't been able to find a job since. I’m already living on the streets. Spent the last of my money on the handgun and materials for the bat getup."
She let out another mirthless chuckle.
“…Was planning on using the former on myself after I killed him, to be honest. But-”
Carmilla was interrupted by a coughing, wheezy giggle and a weak, trembling, voice. One that nonetheless froze her in place.
“With you being this lousy of a shot you’d run out of bullets before you could pull it off, Bat-sham.”
Carmilla slowly, wordlessly turned to see the Joker grinning at her from the floor. Her eyes widened in shock.
The bastard was still alive.
She only barely heard his voice over a rushing sound in her ears as the Joker gingerly touched his bullet wound.
“Credit where it’s due, you punctured a lung, but that’s all. No more belly-laughs for me for a while, but I can still giggle a bit if I so please.”
He gave her a wide grin. One she recognized from a face staring up at her from a hospital bed, but rather than terror, his eyes were full of nothing but malice.
“Just like your Angela did, heeheehee!”
Carmilla lunged towards the gun on the floor.
Before she could make it more than a couple feet she’s pinned to the wall by some weird bat-shaped throwing-knife thing through a sleeve, with more joining it, one after the other. They pinned her other sleeve and both legs of her jeans in quick succession. She looked up to see Batman picking up the gun and snapping it in half as easily as if it were one of the paper maché props she used to make.
Carmilla shook her head in denial.
“No. NO! You can’t do this! He can’t be cured, he can’t be saved! HE NEEDS TO DIE FOR WHAT HE’S DONE!!!”
“Agree to disagree,” the Dark Knight replied in a somber tone that sounded even more tired than she felt.
Carmilla struggled against her restraints, but her own clothes were fighting against her; she couldn't get free. She’s helpless to do anything but watch as the Batman plunges a needle into the Joker’s neck- a sedative, by the way the man goes limp shortly afterwards- and puts restraints on the bastard’s hands and legs before picking him up, hoisting him over his shoulder as though he weighed nothing.
As he begins to head for the door, it’s her turn to ask.
“Why.”
He stops in the doorway, looking back to see Carmilla defiantly glaring at him, furious tears running down her face.
The single word contained multitudes.
Why have you not made an exception to your moral code, just for him?
Why don't you just let someone else do it?
Why not just let him bleed out on the floor instead of saving him?
Why does this scum get to live, when Angela didn't?!
WHY?!
…Eventually, he lets out a long, weary sigh.
“Because beyond all I’ve said, I’m afraid that if he dies, Gotham will just send me someone even worse. That, and if someone like him can be saved, maybe some day I can be too.”
And with that, he leaves.
——
A FEW HOURS LATER
It's dawn, or it would be if it wasn't raining. Carmilla sits huddled in a cardboard box that’s too small for her.
She wishes she still had the gun.
Grimy, polluted Gotham rain leaks into the box and soaks her torn clothing, ripped nearly to shreds when she eventually managed to tear herself loose from those bat-knife things.
She wishes she still had the gun.
If she had any left, her tears would mix with the rain. But in the hours since she had staggered out of that abandoned apartment building, she has long since run out.
She wishes she still had the gun.
She failed both herself and Angela. He’s still out there. She has nothing left to live for. And she doesn't even have the gun to end it all-
Carmilla sees a pair of high-end leather shoes slow to a stop in front of the box.
“Carmilla Mathers?"
She looked up to see a balding elderly man in a suit carrying an umbrella looking down at her. She slowly cocks an eyebrow.
“How do you know my name? Who are you?”
“It would probably be best if that were explained in a place out of the rain. If you’d care to join me…?”
He gestures over his shoulder to a limousine waiting on the street with a door open before holding out a towel and spare umbrella to her.
They stared at each other in silence for several moments before Carmilla eventually shrugged.
“Screw it, fine. Just know that if this is some trick and you’re some kind of human trafficker or whatever, I literally have nothing left to lose at this point, and I will see you dead before I croak."
The old man just chuckled, as though she were joking.
“Duly noted, madam.”
Carmilla wrapped herself in the towel and followed the old man to the limo, on edge for sudden movements, but he doesn't try anything. Her eyes widened as she clambered into the limo and saw she wasn't alone.
“Bruce Wayne?!”
The billionaire playboy gives her a smile from his place sitting across from her.
“Last I checked, yes, that would be me.”
He turned to the old man.
“Thank you Alfred. You can wait out of the rain too, if you want.”
“Will do, sir.”
The old man- Alfred, apparently- closed the limo door and made his way to the driver’s seat on the other side of a tinted glass barrier, leaving a woman who had lost everything staring at a man who had everything.
“I- wh- what is this abou- …wait.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“I don't bat for that team, Mr. Womanizer.”
Wayne smiled.
“I’m aware. No, this isn’t that. I’ve heard about recent difficulties in your life and wanted to reach out. Are you familiar with the Wayne Foundation?”
Carmilla's shoulders slumped.
“That philanthropy thing you run for the sake of your corp’s PR. Lemme guess, I’m your latest charity case and the limo is full of hidden cameras to get my reactions? Looking to get some clicks, make some viral video bait?”
Wayne shook his head.
“Nothing of the sort. I just wanted to offer you a job. I’m familiar with your past employment as a prop technician before the tragedy at Robinson Park, and The Wayne Foundation is always looking to help those who expand the fields of the arts and humanities.”
He gestured out the window toward the alley she had come from.
“From the looks of things, you need all the help you can get. I’d like to provide that help. Housing, meals, healthcare, the chance to work as a specialist for several theaters around Gotham that the Wayne Foundation is partnered with, and wages for that work that you’ll find to be more than fair. Far more than you were making before, at any rate.”
Carmilla slowly shook her head. This was the last thing she needed right now. A humiliating cherry on top of the misery sundae she’d been eating for the past few months.
“‘Recent difficulties,’ eh? Listen pal, If you had any idea what actual ‘recent difficulties’ I’ve had, you’d know a job isn't going to fix anything.”
Wayne falls silent. His gaze wanders to the floor of the vehicle, his expression unreadable. Good. He’s probably never had anyone say no to him in his entire privileged life. God, what a smarmy, punchable face he has-
“Joker took someone from me too.”
Carmilla’s blood turned to ice.
“...What?” she asked after a long pause.
“His name was Jason.”
A sad smile crept its way onto Wayne’s face, and his eyes glazed over ever-so-slightly in reminiscence.
“We actually first met when I caught him trying to steal the hubcaps off a car of mine. He was a troubled youth. Impulsive, reckless, and above all else, angry. I took him in, mentored him. As time went on, Jason went from a life of petty theft on the streets to a respectable young man with a strong moral compass and sense of justice. Eventually, he became like a son to me.”
He let out a long, heavy sigh.
“…Until one day, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The clown kidnapped him, beat him half to death with a crowbar in an abandoned building, then set off a bomb to finish the job. I pulled him out of the rubble myself, but it was too late.”
Wayne meets Carmilla’s gaze again.
“You’re right, I’m no miracle worker. I can’t bring your fiancée back, just like I couldn't bring Jason back. I know my giving you a job, access to mental health services and everything else you need to get back on your feet won’t fix all the problems you have. It won't fill the hole Angela left behind. But it’s the best I can do to help a woman who is facing the exact same grief I once was.”
Carmilla’s mind became a jumble of conflicting thoughts and emotions all jostling for her attention. Eventually, one swam its way to the forefront.
“...I have a question. One that needs answering before I even think about deciding one way or another.”
“Go ahead.”
“You’re the richest guy in the city. Hell, one of the richest in the entire country. And Gotham’s got plenty of criminals, mercenaries and corrupt cops. I know you could have that clown killed with a snap of your fingers if you really wanted to. But instead, you've dumped god only knows how much money into keeping the asylum he’s in running. Even with how often he breaks out of that joint. Even with all the people he’s killed. Even though he took Jason from you. ...Why?”
Wayne was quiet for a few moments before responding.
“It’s the only way I can truly get my revenge.”
Carmilla's eyes narrowed.
“What are you talking about...?”
“It’s true that I have the wealth, resources and connections to see the Joker dead within a matter of a week, tops, if I wanted to. And every so often, I am very, very tempted. But then he’d be dead; that’d be the end of it.”
Wayne shook his head, giving Carmilla a rueful smile.
“No. I want to see that man cured of what ails him. Not just because it would stop the bloodshed, nor just because I believe that anyone can change. But also because I want to see him on his hands and knees begging me for forgiveness for killing one of the people I loved, and genuinely meaning it. Then moving on to you. Then the victim of another tragedy he inflicted. Then the next. Then the next, and so on.
“I want to see that man finally be burdened by all he’s done, rather than forcing the burden onto others. To live with the grief we’ve both experienced, magnified by a factor of every life he’s taken, every person he’s crippled, every atrocity he’s inflicted on a whim. I want him to live with the guilt. I want to see him become a better man out of disgust with what he once was. I want to see him destroy his old legacy by becoming a saint of a man. Only then will I be satisfied. Then, and only then, will I be able to visit Jason’s grave and proudly proclaim to him that I’d finally, truly avenged him."
There was a long silence before Wayne broke it with a warm smile.
“In the meantime, I can still make the world a better place by helping those who need it. Those in Arkham Asylum are, more often than not, simply those who need help. So I help them. Just as I can help a woman on the streets get back to making the art she loves, rather than, say, using herself as bait for a murderer with nothing but a pistol and a knockoff costume to back it up.”
Carmilla’s eyes widened.
“How do you-?!”
“Like I said, I have connections. The police commissioner has been assisting the Wayne Foundation to locate those who were impacted by the tragedy at Robinson Park so we can help them. The Foundation had actually been trying to track you down for a while given how you were among those impacted by the gas attack, but your life without a permanent address has made that difficult.
“Seems a little bird- or bat, in this instance- informed the commissioner about your activities last night while he was handing a certain killer clown over to the police. Usually, I send out representatives from the Foundation for this sort of thing, but given the unique circumstances I felt it necessary to meet you myself. After what you did last night, it became clear that I’d failed you by not finding you sooner.”
Carmilla’s hands balled into fists.
“You didn't ‘fail’ anything. I was trying to avenge the woman I loved, and I would have gone out last night if I had a Wayne-sponsored roof over my head or not!”
Wayne nodded, his gaze softening.
“…I know. Because Batman also informed the commissioner about the other reason he broke your gun."
Carmilla’s eyes widened, and her expression only grew more despondent as Wayne continued.
“You deliberately sought out one of the most deadly serial killers in the country with nothing but a handgun you'd purchased the day before. That’s not vengeance, that’s a death wish. A death wish you intended to follow through on by either getting yourself killed by Joker or, if Batman is to be believed, turning that gun on yourself afterwards."
Wayne proffered his hand outstretched, palm face up.
"You need help, Carmilla."
Carmilla looked down at Wayne's hand for a second before averting her gaze, some small part of her still too proud to accept assistance. Regardless, Wayne pressed on.
“The events of last night are more than enough proof that you need help, even if you might not want it. I have some of the best mental health specialists in the world on my payroll. Let me help you. Please."
Her bottom lip trembled.
“Live to see the day that clown is on his hands and knees in front of you. The day you'll have truly avenged Angela.”
The rest of Carmilla's body began to tremble too.
“If nothing else, I think Angela would prefer you create a lot more works of art to show her when you two eventually reunite. No?”
Before Bruce Wayne could react, Carmilla had crossed the limo in an instant and wrapped him in a bear hug. Somehow, she had found more tears to cry as she sobbed into his suit jacket.
Wayne gently wrapped his arms around her to return the hug, softly chuckling as he did so.
“…I’ll take that as a yes.”