*Shifted over from the Batman section because of very good reasons and what not*

Hello all, apologies for the absence of late. I've been busy doing...things. Lots of things. Things that I'll be getting back to once this here story is published.

Long story short; expect erratic to non existent updates for stories like "Behold a Pale Horse" for the foreseeable future. Sorry.

Anyways, here be a story that I gone and done. It probably should be listed as "M" but, well "M" rated stories carry this connotation that there's the bumping of uglies afoot and this story has none of that, so I don't want to lead readers astray. Also I trust our children enough to not somehow lose their minds over the themes presented here. Keep in mind...it's a dark story.

With that said: DC owns the characters, I do not.

Streets of Madness

He was shivering again. Tremors wracked his aged form, his teeth clattered together, and his knuckles stretched under the thick leather of his gloves as they desperately gripped the steering wheel. The weather was dreadful outside his car; rolling black clouds had blanketed Gotham in a torrential downpour, and the air was crisp, freezing both skin and breath. But he knew that the trembling wasn't from the cold or the rain or even the sleep that he had scorned for what he had been told was at least two days.

There was an escape. Again. That special little cell that few ever dared to speak of was empty. And like always, a sinister chill crept its way up his spine every time he thought about it.

The sheets of rain that splattered the windshield left streaks and smudges as the wipers moved back and forth. It gave the gothic architecture of the city an eerie, dream-like aura, compounded by the blaring red glow of the stoplight in front of him. It only served to unnerve him further, but, truth be told, dream-like was an accurate way to describe the last twenty-odd years of his life.

Though, if the near constant shuddering was any indication, it was more like a nightmare.

They had danced this macabre dance hundreds, no thousands, of times before, each starting and ending in the exact same way; a breakout, a call from Jim, a city wide manhunt, and eventually he'd be caught, deemed insane and beyond reason, and locked away in the same damn cell that merely days ago he had broken out of again as if it's walls were revolving doors. No change in the pattern, no deviation in method or madness, it was all a sinister game that was more often than not played using human lives.

This tortured mind lived in his own twisted world, he repeated to himself as the car lumbered forward. It was a world where logic and reason had a different shape, a different name. A city like Gotham, that screamed malevolence even to the sane, would be a grotesque and gangly carnival of horrors to someone like him. Glancing out again through the windows at the soaked world around him, he could understand, deep down, why a mind so torn asunder would rebel against it.

But lives were still in the balance whenever he was loose, and the losses were unacceptable. He knew as much, knew that all personal feelings had to be pushed aside in order to do what was best. But personal feelings abounded, and they would often cloud his judgment.

Such as right now. Today, more than any other day, that insanity would be drawn to that same demonic place that birthed him, ready to begin his reign of terror anew. An army of cops could be waiting for him, poised to strike before any damage could be done.

But there wouldn't be any cops. They would never know about the connection. Because of some overpowering selfish desire, it was his responsibility, and his alone. Because no one else, not even Jim, could even begin to understand.

Everything that this tortured soul did wasn't truly his fault. It was just an echo of all the evil things committed against him that fractured his mind, broke his spirit, and warped his will. It had created a world where his actions made sense, and the torrents had swept him up and refused to let him surface, leaving him drowning in blood that he would never be able to see. But the police didn't understand that. The press didn't understand that. The public most certainly didn't understand, though he couldn't blame them, what with many of Gotham's residents living in fear of their "resident maniac" for so long. The politicians…well they just didn't care.

He wasn't beyond saving, no one was. But saving requires effort. More than that, it needs money, and money was something that places like Arkham almost never saw. Its staff was overwhelmed and under trained, its atmosphere was oppressive, if not outright suffocating. They had no money for healing or rehabilitation or even the simplest of palliative care. If you were sent to Arkham, it was to lock you up and away from society, like you were some cancerous growth that was dangerous to even look at.

That is, of course, if you were even fortunate enough to be allowed in. Most were like the lines of people outside his car window; covered in wet newspaper, shivering in the cold, and wandering through their own little worlds, just as unaware of ours as we seemed to be of them. Like ghosts; desperately in need of a helping hand, but no one was willing to offer it. Some were dangerous, like the man he was chasing after, but that was all the more reason to try and help them, to try and get them off the streets and into a warmer place where they could finally start to see the sun again.

No one was beyond helping, he refused to believe otherwise. Even someone who had murdered as many people as….

One of the wandering homeless ducked out in front of his car, forcing him to slam on the brakes and hydroplane into oncoming traffic. He regained control and swerved back into his lane, but a cold, metallic objected pressed up against his chest, and a wave of sadness swept over him. No one was beyond saving, but if no one was willing to try….

He would escape again, the moment he was caught. It was inevitable. He treated his cell as his base of operations, typing on massive computers that didn't exist, plotting out actions on maps that were little more than the stone walls that surrounded him, prepping inventive gadgets that were only air in his hands. He talked to people who didn't exist, so far as the records showed, and he told fanciful tales of impossible things. Things that couldn't exist in our world; a beautiful Amazonian Princess, a Man of Steel from a planet long since dead, a league of super powered beings dedicated to protecting the planet from unspeakable evils from the depths of space. He would try to engage with this raving madman every time he visited, to see if he couldn't break through the fog of insanity, to try and salvage the promising young boy that lost so much at such a young age.

But it never worked. He was far too dedicated to a crusade that was warped by his fractured mind. Just as soon as the visit was over, like always, he'd be gone, escaping back into the night. He'd contact Jim, thinking that there was some great signal in the sky when really there was only rolling, dark clouds, who would try his best to placate him and his delusions until reinforcements arrived. But he'd always slip away, and soon, the body count would begin to rise yet again.

He sighed, weary with age and stress. If no one was willing to try….then there was only one course of action left.

He could see the alleyway through the streaks of rain. It was dark, save for a single, flickering lamppost jutting out in the middle of its brick walls. He pulled the car up beside it and, feeling his heart rate increase and his breath become more and more shallow, he turned off the car, and stepped into the pouring rain.

The shivering started almost immediately.

Just down the alleyway, he could hear a fierce growl and a repeated thumping, echoing over and over in the crisp night air. He closed the door to the car, and, pulling out the cold metal cylinder from his pocket, he walked into the darkness.

The growling grew louder. He heard the same name repeated over and over again. Joker. He wanted to know where he was, what he was up to this time, where he had stashed the chemicals. With trepidation, he moved forward, his heart threatening to beat out of his chest. His shoes were already soaked.

He rounded the corner, and finally saw him, dressed in a tattered, black costume with a torn, flowing cape and bent ears on the cowl. He was beating a young man senseless; he couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen. He continued to growl on about the Joker, and why he was working for him, when a loud scuffing of shoes drew his attention away from his victim, and towards a soaked and shaking man in a tweed suit and a pencil mustache. His eyes widened when he noticed the gun in his gloved hand.

"Alfred?" he asked, with a slight hint of fear and betrayal.

"Yes, Master Bruce." He replied. His voice cracked, and a tear slid down his face. He raised the gun.

And fired.

For the third time in the alleyway's history, under the same flickering street light, on the very same day as the last, a gun claimed the life of a Wayne. Alfred sank to his knees, tears flowing as hard as the rain, as his surrogate son's blood spilled out into the streets that created and broke him.

He stared, bleary eyed and ignoring the approaching sirens, at the puddle before him, slowly filling with crimson. The reflection of the Gotham skyline wavered, like in a blood-stained dream, while his old hands, encased in his gloves, continued to tremble….

Welp, there you have it folks, ze story is finished. I hope you liked it. Feel free to speculate what the hell I was talking about in the comments section (and if you want to recommend a good psychologist, that'd be appreciated too).

Meanwhile, I'll just get back to writing stuff that hopefully would make Harold Bloom cry, if only because he screams "RUINED FOREVER!" about as frequently as a G1 Transformers fan...I'm sure he'd find the comparison to be very flattering.