A/N

Well, this is it! It took a few years to round all this up and bring it to a close. But I'll have other stuff. Not necessarily Batman though. I'm working on a George Weasley fic readers should keep an eye out for. Enjoy!

Chapter 7 The Final Encounter

Batman crushed concrete beneath his heel as he stepped from his Batmobile. The Clock Tower loomed over him and cast a deep darkness over his form. He took a few quick glances around him and was glad to know that he had arrived first. There was a tiny feeling in the pit of his stomach that warned that the Riddler might be there already, hiding somewhere, but he dismissed it as simple was no time to check for traps, the Riddler might come at any time, so Batman walked to the side of the tower and pressed his back firmly against it, allowing himself to be lost within the darkness it offered. Veiled dark blue eyes shone through the black and waited for his guest-of-honor to appear, if he hadn't already.

"Hello Batman." A low voice masked the Riddler's excitement that he had guessed right in his identity crisis. He stepped from further shading in the slight alleyway between the clock tower and the matanance building next door. His eyes were practically neon signs that read "HERE I AM" in bright green letters.

Batman turned his head stiffly to the side, fighting the jump that wanted to spring from underneath his feet. It felt as if he hadn't heard the Riddler's voice in years. Batman, his cape concealing his body, stepped from his hiding spot and openly walked towards the criminal before him. He remained silent, deducing that the quicker this ended the better.

Batman could feel the ends of his fingers sparkle with some type of sensation as the Riddler's bright green eyes bit back the darkness surrounding them. No matter how long they were apart...

"You call me here, and have nothing to say?" The Riddler asked coyly. "I don't understand it." He too stepped forward, making the tazor in his pocket easily reachable for such an occasion.

Batman kept his voice monotone as he spoke, "It's nice to know you don't understand everything, Riddler." His footsteps threatened to stop as they slowed down but Batman willed them to get closer.

" I understand many things Batman." The Riddler grinned. "But there are many times when things don't seem to understand me. Hence, the crime." He couldn't laugh, not as he usually did. It would be forced and ugly, like the Joker's laughter, and he disgusted himself thinking about it.

"Crime doesn't have to be your outlet, Riddler." Batman said slowly as his footsteps grew light. "You can find some other way. Turn your back on this and save someone's life, your life."

"I suppose your right Batman." He grinned widely, his familiar spark returning. "I'll reduce myself to a life of macrame and basket weaving. But I'm afraid we'd never meet again." He laughed like his old quizmaster self again, and it felt wonderful; like a liberation from all the confusion he'd been feeling. "Doesn't it just pry something from your psyche to know you'll be dealing with my kind until your dying breath?"

Batman's feet fell silent at the Riddler's comment about giving up his life of crime and forsaking him.. It shouldn't have bothered him as much as it did, and, worse yet, Batman shouldn't have let it show so bluntly. He took one more step, finally meeting the Riddler face-to-face, and said evenly, "No one is like you Riddler, and no one could ever hope to be. Every person I fight is different and, whether you would like to admit it or not, Gotham is getting better. The people are starting to realize that they weren't always like this and that they don't have to stay like this." The wind blew his cape open a bit, revealing the Bat Symbol across his chest. "Sooner or later you and your kind will be done and so will I." He shook his head slowly. "And I'm not going to miss it." It felt like a lie, but Batman knew better.

The Riddler used his index finger to unconsciously trace the Bat symbol on Batman's chest. No one was like him? What a strangely ridiculous thing to say. It would normally be in his way to say that all villains were alike, that they would all go when the time came. He lost his train of thought for a moment. "When the last of us falls, if the last of us falls; it's then I'll know who you really are Batman." His voice was low and concentrated.

Batman flinched sharply, almost drawing back, and slowly breathed in. The Riddler's fingertip felt like a knife grazing over his skin, ready to carve into his rib cage. "Would it really matter?" He said in a low tone, trying to conceal the beat of his scurrying heart. "If I was gone, who then would want my identity? I doubt you would reveal it to anyone, Riddler. Something like that is valuable to you, more so than most, and I would be surprised if you would allow yourself to share that knowledge with anyone else."

His smile softened from a hard grin to a meek twitch of the lips. "I don't share knowledge, I pose questions. Or don't you remember? It has been a while." He mused, wondering if he truly wanted to know who the Batman was, beneath the mask, was he really someone the Riddler could afford to get along with? And would it really matter? He felt as though he wanted to know THE BATMAN and not so much who he was in his spare time.

"I know you do." Batman said softly. He took hold of the Riddler's shoulder with one hand and then placed the other over his hip, dexterously feeling if there was any thing there. If the Riddler released his gas again, at this range, Batman wouldn't have enough time to put on his gas mask. "Which is exactly my point. If they already knew the answer, then who would pay attention to you? If everyone knew my identity, it would be worthless. There would be no value in it. The riddle would be useless if everyone already knew the answer. You would simply fade into background."

Batman hoped that his words were enough to distract the Riddler from his quiet inspection. He pressed his fingertips into the Riddler's hip, holding his breath just in case, but nothing came.

The Riddler lay his hand gently across the hand on his hip, misreading it entirely. "I understand." He told the Batman quietly. "For the first time, to tell the truth," the phrase sounding entirely foreign to him. "I'm not sure I'd want to know."

He could hardly understand why he was being honest with the Batman, just setting himself up to be hurt in one way or another. But the hand on the shoulder and the hand on the hip helped to reassure him completely.

Batman furrowed his brow, lowering his hand from the Riddler's shoulder to his other hip, checking just in case. What was he saying? The Riddler was behaving so softly, as if they weren't here to fight one another but for a completely different reason…

"Riddler…" Batman's voice also came as a surprise. What was he about to say? He stopped himself quickly, not trusting himself at the moment. There were no traps, were there? It was just him and the Riddler. Somehow, that scared Batman even more than any trap he could have come

across.

The Riddler nodded softly beneath his hat, looking below the brim into Batman's mask. He said nothing, as he could think of nothing to add. The atmosphere of the alley shifted, and though his body remained in place, it seemed to turn his stomach. He felt the other hand on his hip and began to wonder what it was about. It suddenly occurred to him that he might be searching for the gas bulbs, which he forgot. He mentally kicked himself but decided, in the long run that it might not matter. Batman had evaded their toxic fumes long enough to prove that.

Finding nothing, Batman slowly moved one hand behind the Riddler and held the middle of his small back, indirectly drawing them closer. "You know this has to end." His voice came almost as a sigh.

Batman was getting tired of saying the same things every single time they met. He knew that the Riddler would never stop until something forced him to, or if his horrific plan, no matter what it was, had been carried out. He didn't feel like engaging in that dance again, for he knew the steps by heart and didn't want the same outcome to repeat itself until the day they both died.

Maybe I should try something different...

"Riddler, why did you come?"

It was a question Batman had wanted to know himself. Wouldn't the Riddler have expected something else? Something a bit more rough and predictable? Why would he come if he knew that Batman had wanted him too? Wouldn't he just think that it was all just another trap? As Batman did? All these other questions could be expressed fully by the look in Batman's eyes, a simple anguish shone brightly through the dark blue abyss of his eyes.

Maybe if he answered this question, this one thing, then Batman could understand the feeling eating away at the palm of his hot hand pressed firmly against the Riddler's back.

"Because," the Riddler began reluctantly. "it-felt different this time round." He'd completely ignored Batman's earlier statement, having heard it so many times before. It just seemed to be a noise he made now, every time they met.

Batman narrowed his eyes almost in disbelief. "But this could have been just a trap. It never crossed your mind that the police could be surrounding us at this very moment and are simply awaiting a signal from me to rush in?" He knew he was entering dangerous territory, but he had gotten used to it. It seemed that every time they met, Batman was always on the edge of something horrific.

He slowly shook his head, "Why would you risk coming out into the open like this? What if there were cameras discreetly placed where every newspaper stand was? I could be that much closer to your identity, does that not bother you? There are so many things, so many variables that I could play, do you just not care?"

Batman felt a bit like the villain at this point. Was this subtle manipulation he was playing, or did he mean every word? It was true that there were plenty of things Batman could have done to have the Riddler play right into his hands, but he couldn't bring himself to do any of them. Ever since the Riddler held his hand out for Batman when he lay on the floor bleeding, it made him see the puzzler in a different light. As if all the villains he battled weren't the same, that they had feelings; they had hearts. And, despite what he'd like to think, so did Batman.
And it just wouldn't stop beating.

"Batman works alone." The Riddler said defensively, as though he himself were the caped crusader. "He wouldn't put the police in that kind of danger, not after... not after that." He was refering to the gas that had killed a few of them, and felt as though he didn't need to mention it and Batman would get the picture. "I was here first, if you recall." His meek smile returning. "If there are any traps here, they are mine and mine alone."

"And your identity?" Batman asked quietly, his mind spinning in circles. "You wouldn't be bothered if I found out?" He lifted the hand from the Riddler's hip and placed it suspiciously close to purple mask on his face. Tips of black gloves rested gently on a high cheekbone. "Everything would change..."

Closer and closer Batman came, but not to the Riddler, to the hidden secret lurking in the bottom of his heart. The reason to why his heart rushed into his throat and shoved the blood faster through his veins. Another step. Another sentence.
But the Dark Knight wasn't sure if he wanted to know or not.

"I wouldn't." He said quietly. "You wouldn't know who I was below the mask Batman." He wanted to say something along the lines of; although I've gotten media attention recently, but thought better of it.

The Batman was so close now that he could take in as much of his strangely garage-like scent as he wanted. Almost to the point that it made him dizzy and even a little giddy, like champagne.

"Why not? Why do you look at yourself in such a dismal light?" Batman couldn't help the bitterness biting the back of his words. It angered him when the Riddler counted himself as such an insignificant and worthless being, because he was so much more than that.
"Riddler..." Batman swallowed the dry lump in his throat. "When you look at yourself, you don't truly see yourself do you? You don't realize..." He bowed his head and his hand fell down the Riddler's face. "You don't realize how incredibly amazing you truly are, how ingenious. No one else could do this. No one else could make me..."

No one else...
Could make this feeling, this damnable feeling...

Batman's own thoughts refused to complete themselves.

"I see only who I am below this mask!" The Riddler shouted, passionately, his meekness replaced not by rage, but by an overwhelming urge to make Batman understand. A sort of impatience. "The Riddler is what completes me! Without questions to pose... without... riddles... I'm..." he couldn't bring his statement to a close; the only word that flashed in his mind was empty.

"Why do you need riddles?" Batman asked quietly, hoping this new tactic of his would work. "Why can't you just see people and let them see you? Riddler..." Batman could feel his suit itch as he gingerly placed three fingers below the Riddler's chin. His heart flipped as those eyes stared back at him again with such overwhelming emotion.

"There's something that I... I think I should tell you...But I wouldn't know..." Batman could feel his words starting to retreat back into his mind as they always did. They took cover behind the stone walls around his heart and stayed there. "I wouldn't know how..." He managed.