Work Text:
CASE XXXXXX
July 18, 2XXX
Recorded Confession Of [REDACTED]
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It’s interesting, don’t you think? How heroes and villains seem to operate, almost as if everything is just a big old game of cat and mouse, with the roles reversing every so often, to give birth to the supposed great fight between “Good” and “Evil”, all the while seeming to forget exactly how they got here and, more importantly, that in the great scheme of things all their fights, their speeches and collateral damage would be and mean nothing at all without us, the rest of the population at large, the so called “civilians”.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, none of them forget the peoples’ presence, after all, what would a villain and a hero be without a public to constantly terrorize and save at every turn? That doesn’t mean, however, that they truly gave us too much thought, after all, even if our role is fundamental to the battle, as pawns, targets and victims, there comes a point where our lives and reactions become just a mass of numbers and repetitive actions, day after day, scream after scream, just waiting for the next time we are saved or killed, without any input on our part, in the end, it’s a tiring cycle.
And that is how we got here, years and years down the line, with dozens of vigilantes on the streets, working every night without pause, and Gotham seems as dark and hopeless as ever, It’s almost amusing, if it wasn´t so depressing, the number of petty crimes and small time criminals walking the streets might have been almost decimated, but that doesn’t make things any safer, on the contrary, if before you only risked being robbed, assaulted and/or killed every time you left your home, now the citizens of this fine city have to worry about a bunch of lunatics on colorful costumes and their henchmen spreading nightmarish gases, throwing bombs and destroying whole streets after once again getting out of the revolving door that is the so called “Maximal Security” of Arkham Asylum in their efforts to catch the attention of the Batman, our first, and most famous, vigilante.
But even though there’s way too many assholes with more than a few screws loose who delight in mayhem and mass murder, walking on what are supposed to be our streets, everyone is in complete agreement about whom is the worst of all, or maybe I should say was, the illustrious Clown Prince of Gotham: The Joker, a clown faced psychopath obsessed with getting the Bats attention in the worse ways possible, causing death and trauma everywhere he goes with a fucking laugh that never stops and a horrible gas capable of forcing you to laugh until you die or get so fucked by it you are never able to function again, this man, if it can be even be called that at this point, was the single worst thing that ever happened to us and it almost seems like our supposed saviors, the Batclan, with all their recourses, experience and training, don’t realize that what we need wasn’t for him to get locked up for a while, but for him to die and leave us in peace.
Don’t misunderstand me, I know about the Batclan’s no killing rule, even if the fact that they got Red Hood on the roster and everyone knows at this point that he’s the Robin that got brutally murdered by the Clown, should have given him a pass, it’s not like anyone has forgotten the duffel bag full of heads, thank you very much, but not killing him themselves doesn’t mean they couldn’t call in one of their super-colleagues to deal with that stain on humanity’s history, or even, I don’t know, Not Saving Him When He Gets Himself In Life Threatening Situations To Get Their Attention! It's not that complicated!
But you know what? This had gone on for far too long, this game would’ve never ended by itself and is us, the so called “unimportant” civilians who will keep on getting the short end of the stick. Well then, no more, I thought long and hard about this, I said to myself -more than once actually- “What’s the worst that could happen?” I could have ended up dead or something but, honestly, I had the same probability of ending up like that just by being on the wrong place at the wrong time and have no friends or family left that could end up hurt, so I did it, and, you know what the worse part was? How fucking easy it turned out to be!
Everyone knew where he was, the last breakout from Arkham was only two days ago and every single soul was avoiding that damn warehouse, might as well have a neon sign on the door proclaiming Beware: Murderous Clown In Hiding! Seriously, I don’t know how none of our so called heroes didn’t get there sooner, but whatever, it just made my job easier, I’m big, I can look intimidating, some combat boots, a black jacket, a creepy clown mask bought out of the city and my gun visible on its holster and the thugs just let me right in. After that everything was very anticlimactic, asshole was alone in a side office, sitting on a desk, didn’t even let him stand, shot to the head and that was it, didn’t even let him laugh, I think the men thought he had just killed one of them out of boredom or something, because no one came to check after the shot.
It was that easy, then I sat on the floor, tossed the gun to the side, and called 911, operator didn’t fucking believe me when I told him I had just killed the clown, told me that prank calls to emergency services were a felony, and hung up, like I hadn’t just admitted to another, but whatever. Was going to try again but the Bats arrived quickly, what do you bet they keep tabs on the emergency services? Assholes kept asking who I worked for. Can you believe it? Like someone needed to be fucking paid to want to off the bastard, like there is a single person old enough to understand what death means in our city that hasn’t thought, at least in passing, but mostly with full intent, how they would kill that thing. Honestly!
So yeah, that’s it, there wasn’t anything big behind it, I’m no new villain trying to get rid of the competition or some kind of vigilante/anti-hero hoping to start my career, the only difference between and anyone else is that when I got tired of the status quo where my role on the game was to die, run away, or be saved by someone else, I chose a new option else, there comes a point where you just can’t go on, most people just move out of Gotham, but, Honestly? This is my home, it may be a shithole full of corruption and darkness, but it’s mine and while I might end up on a prison cell for a while, at least It’ll still be there when I get out.
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