A/N: Gah, hates me! Uhm... Sorry to people getting Author Alerts, I made the mistake of trying to add chapter 2 before putting on any notes in the Documents section, then when I went to delete it, deleted the first chapter instead. Evil! This fic was done for my LJ friend AngelGidget, who posted two fic prompts: Joker goes to Bludhaven and is shot by Officer Grayson and Amy Rohrbach overhears a conversation between her partner and the legendary Batman. So far this story is in 3 parts. Please review!

It was dark as midnight, even though it was only 8 and the summer sun was just starting to set. The air had been sweltering, but once the storm had rolled in, sheets of ran gave the evening an eerie chill. Of course, that chill might have had less to do with the rain than it did the situation Officer Dick Grayson had found himself in.

He and his partner on the Blüdhaven PD, Amy Rohrbach, had pulled over to investigate a Good Humor van parked illegally in an alleyway. Normally they would have ignored it, but there had been reports lately of drug dealers working out of ice cream trucks. The van was deserted, from the looks of things, but they could hear the engine clicking as it cooled down. Something about the whole situation was making the hair stand up on the back of Dick's neck. Rohrbach must have felt the same, because she had her hand on her holster as she stepped up into the truck.

Dick looked around the alleyway for any sign of the driver, but couldn't see one. "Holy Effing Christ… Hey, Rookie…" Amy's voice came from the van. "Look at this…"

Dick waited for her to step out of the van, noting the pale, slightly green tone her skin had taken on. He stepped into the van and almost immediately saw what had shaken his normally unflappable partner. A man, roughly mid twenties, had been stuffed into the ice cream freezer. His body was giving off a faint steam; it hadn't been dead long. The uniform identified the body as the Good Humor man. It was his face that identified the cause of death and made Dick's blood run cold: eyes crinkled in pain and mirth, lips drawn back in an over wide, teeth-bearing, grotesque rictus of a smile. Dick didn't need the Medical Examiner that he could hear Rohrback calling over the squad car radio to tell him that this man died of asphyxiation caused by exposure to The Joker's laughing gas. It was a COD Dick had seen far too many times.

Moving quickly, Dick looked into the front seat of the van for any clue to the clown's whereabouts. He covered his hand with a bit of his shirt and pressed it into the drivers seat. Still warm. The Joker couldn't have gone far. He started to turn back out of the van when he heard the last voice he wanted to ever hear in Blüdhaven.

"Well, well… Would you look at this? I take a two second break and suddenly everyone wants an Atro-pop from the Good Humor man." Dick felt his skin crawl and his stomach drop into his groin at the sound of that voice. He made it to the van's back door just in time to see Amy spin around, pulling her gun from it's holster. She wasn't fast enough.

A gunshot cracked like thunder and Dick watched in horror as Amy fell back against the patrol and slid to the ground leaving a smear of crimson along the door and side fender. "Sorry, Kiddo…" Joker said in a sinister tone, "All sold out."

Dick could have though about how he'd just watched the Joker take down another person dear to him; First Jason, who he had barely gotten to know, the Barbara, who he loved with all his soul, now Amy, the one person at Blüdhaven PD who he truly gave a damn about. He could have thought about how he was probably about to die, because the Joker had just spotted him and Dick could distantly hear the monster saying something about 'nosy piggies'. He could have thought about the 15 different ways he could duck, dodge, or otherwise attack the Joker. He could have thought about how this must be what life feels like to speedsters, because in that moment time seemed to have stopped.

Instead he didn't think. He had never been one to think before acting. He was motion and movement and always had been. But for once, the movements were not that of Dicky Grayson, Acrobat or Robin, Boy Wonder or Nightwing, Protégé of the Batman. They were the movements of Officer Richard Grayson of the Blüdhaven PD. Dick didn't know when he'd pulled his gun from it's holster, but before he had a chance to feel the sting of the Joker's own bullet pass through his shoulder he had pulled the trigger.

Bang. Bang. Bangbangbang. Bang!

The Clown Prince of Crime didn't laugh. He didn't smile. He looked dumbly down at his own chest, six little rosettes of blood blossoming against his purple suit. He let out what might have been a "ha" before falling forward onto the pavement, rain washing his blood into the gutter.

Dick stumbled out of the van, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and numbness in his arm. He knelt by Amy and felt for a pulse. Thready, but there. And she was breathing, though unconscious. He reached up into the patrol car and pulled out the radio unit's receiver,

"Officer down, Alley off Land Ave between Grayson and Dixon. Send immediate back up. The Joker…"

He could already hear sirens, probably responding to Amy's call and the sun of gunshots.

Dick let go of the radio and turned his attention to Amy. He found himself praying in every language he knew, English, Romany, Japanese, Spanish, Tamaranian… and to any god he thought might listen that Amy wouldn't become one more in the long list of the Joker's victims. He very gently moved her so he could apply better pressure to the wound in her side and began CPR.

When the 4 back up squad cars and paramedics showed up on the scene did Dick finally let up on the relentless 2/30 count mantra of CPR. One of the paramedics looked at him in concern, "Hey, Grayson… you're bleeding."

"Yeah… Got clipped. Kinda hurts…." Was all Dick managed to get out before succumbing to shock.