Work Text:
“You’re mourning him.”
The laughter died off suddenly, though the smile didn’t fade. Bruce stood, wide-eyed and frozen, and gaped silently at the sight before him.
Clark stood in the middle of the interrogation room, face twisted in fury, with the smiling Joker hanging limp from his arm. Bruce stared as the Kryptonian placed a hand to the clown’s shoulder and pulled his other arm out from the Joker’s chest. The clown collapsed and was still.
Clark turned to Bruce. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, and leapt from the whole in the wall he had entered through and shot away without a word.
“You idiot,” Bruce hissed, not entirely sure who he was referring to as he broke from his reverie and dove down to the limp form below him.
“You’re angry at me for taking the Joker away from you.”
Clark’s anger had faded for a brief moment into what looked almost like understanding, but now it was back full force. His brow creased and his lip twisted in disgust, and he was spitting the words out now.
“That’s it. Hide away behind your mask. You loved having him around. Your constant nemesis. The two of you played your stupid game and people died.”
“You know that’s not true.”
Fingers pressed into the crook of a white throat confirmed what Bruce already knew. After all these years, the Joker was finally dead.
“WHY DID YOU LET HIM DO THIS TO ME, BRUCE?”
Of course he was dead. There was a fucking hole in his chest. And yet Bruce still felt the need to check for a pulse, and there was still a little thrill of horror when he didn’t find one.
Bruce had never heard Clark sound so cold, so disdainful.
“You can’t possibly understand what he took. He stole the life Lois and I would have had together. Our child.”
“You’re not sitting in the dark mourning Metropolis, are you? You’re mourning him.”
The body was still warm, Bruce noted as he gathered it in his arms. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was doing it even as he examined the grin still stretched across the Joker’s face. He pulled the clown toward him, cradled him.
He always knew he would see the Joker killed one day, but not like this. This was just so inherently wrong. So…soon.
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
“But we don’t get to choose who dies,” Bruce said firmly, because he needed it to be true.
“One death,” Clark snapped. “To save millions. One. Death.”
"It always starts with one.”
Bruce would never forget the sound of Clark’s arm tearing through flesh, organ, and bone.
“That’s how justification works.” And this time, Bruce knew it was true. It was the only thing keeping him sane all these years.
“But once you justify something once, you can do it again and again. It becomes easier.”
“The two of you played your stupid game and people died.”
“Right and wrong blur.”
He let his fingers trace the narrow jaw, linger on the pointed chin, cup the cooling neck. Something inside him wanted be glad he would never have to hear that terrible laugh again, and something else mourned that he would never get to.
Clark’s eyes softened, wide as if with realization.
“You loved him, didn’t you?” he asked gently, and Bruce didn’t know how to answer.
“What?” he said eloquently, hoping to cover up his indecision.
But the glare was back on Clark’s face, incredulous and disgusted. “You’re not sitting in the dark mourning Metropolis are you? You’re mourning him.
“You’re angry at me for taking the Joker away from you.”
Did he love him?
Before all this, Bruce would have scoffed at he very idea. But now that the Joker was gone…
Now, he just wasn’t sure.
The corpse Bruce had cradled in his lap had long since gone cold, but still he remained sitting on the floor of Blackgate prison, staring into glassy green eyes, and breathing in the scent of saltwater from the Joker’s clothes and blood from his gaping wound.
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
“Didn’t you?”
“You loved him.”
Maybe, just maybe…he did.