Coauthors: Kagmichiru and DracoCron

Standard disclaimer: None of the characters belong to us, except possibly Whisper.

Harvey Dent gazed in frustration at Batman. The man was so close, so vulnerable, and yet... so untouchable. He was without his gun, and he could not approach the dark knight without instantly losing...the man was untouchable. Batman was in the same predicament; neither could approach the other without forfieting their own life. Dent sighed and tossed his coin to the ground in acknowledgement.

"Stalemate."

Hearing the word yet again, the man watching the screen smiled slightly and leaned back in his comfortable chair. It was Edward Nigma's one guilty pleasure, this custom chess program with the kings being animated 3D models of Batman and Harvey Dent—and the queens being lightly or darkly tinted models of Rachel Dawes, depending on the side. But it fascinated him to see these two men, one of them brilliant by most human standards, the other impeccably orderly, to be pitted against each other on this field of utterly logical battle. It reminded him of who he himself was... and the unlimited potential others would have, once he led them into his enlightened way of thinking.

There could be no higher fate.

The man idly twirled his silver ring—double-sided, each side decorated with an enigmatic curl, a dotless questionmark turned on its side— as he contemplated starting another game. On the one hand, he knew it was pointless: since he had installed the chess simulator in his supercomputer years ago, neither he nor the computer had ever been able to defeat the other. On the other hand, it was a reassuring thing to do once in a while, to remind himself his that skills remained in top condition; if he could consistently match the computer at its own game, he was sure that his logic could consistently trump his human opponents at nearly anything he put his mind to... at least until they stopped relying on transient emotional "reasoning" to solve their problems and tried to match his logic. It was the best he could hope for the future.

He was startled out of his reverie by the opening of the door on the far side of the room. He quickly relaxed, remembering that only one person could even open the door without suffering a painful death. Well, perhaps Batman could have managed it, but Nigma wasn't expecting a visit from him anytime soon. Sadly, the vigilante was now the subject of a manhunt, wanted for allegedly murdering five people.

Nigma didn't believe a word of the accusations. It was a shame, really, that the Batman refused to use lethal force—an utter failure to come to the logical conclusion, like so many others seen in Gotham's broken justice system. But if the Batman were a killer, it would have become obvious long before the oddly scattered killings of five people connected to the death of Rachel Dawes.

Rachel Dawes…her death was the only common factor between the victims. Nigma had puzzled long and hard over who could be responsible for the murders—nothing about them fit the style or character of the Batman, but who else could there be?

There could be Harvey Dent: a powerful lawyer kidnapped at the height of his career, surviving only at the cost of his beloved fiancee's death. How must Dent have felt, Nigma wondered, to know that Rachel Dawes had died in his place? Angry enough to murder those responsible? Angry enough to later kill himself?

"Master?" his reverie was interrupted again. His faithful assistant stood behind him now, her posture unassuming.

He shook himself again. "Ah, Whisper. Is it done?"

"To the extent of my abilities. I believe that conventional forensics officers will be... confused, to say the least."

He chuckled in approval. "Excellent. And if I know them, they'll focus on the wrong question... and find out how it was done long past the time when knowing who did it was helpful for them. It's only too bad you couldn't bring me Maroni's head... I would have liked to see how much space his brain cavity really had inside it."

Maroni. A perfect example of the name fitting the character. How could a man so dull, so shortsighted, have ever risen to such power? Death was practically a blessing for him. Now his assets could be channeled into far more constructive outlets.

Of course, he reflected, sometimes the name had to be changed to fit the character... he himself was proof of that.

"You may go, Whisper. You've performed well."

The assassin smiled slightly, and bowed low. "Thank you, Master." She departed as silently and unceremoniously as she had come.

Alone again, the man reached down to the pocket on his green jacket and removed his purple domino mask. He did love to watch the sun rise... it spoke to him of hope, and the bright future of humanity under his own gentle wing. He donned the mask and walked over to his tremendous bay window, his eyes protected from the light by the mask's filtering effects.

Edward Nigma wondered what the world would call him, when it was his. He could spend ages thinking of all kinds of overly dramatic titles, but he believed that he would remain perfectly content should they choose to call him by the other name he'd chosen, and earned, himself.

The Riddler.

At Arkham Asylum, everything was business as usual. It was early afternoon; lunch had just been dispensed, and prisoners' medications along with it. Prisoners were at their most sedate, and in the staff quarters, Arkham employees could afford to let their hair down and eat their own lunches. They laughed and talked, discussing their stranger cases with the lighthearted humor that all employees eventually developed after spending their days working with twisted minds.

Harleen Quinnzel had always been a little bit of an exception to the rule. The youngest employee as well as the most recent transfer, she took her cases more seriously than the others—too seriously for her own good, she'd sometimes been told. But she was young and bright and charming, and she could laugh things off as well as anyone else when she needed to, so the other Arkham employees humored her. Intrigued by her professional drive, they gave her the cases she wanted—and three months ago to the day, they had given her The Joker.

They still didn't have a name for him. He'd given them nearly a dozen by now, one to go with each story of his past, and the general consensus was that none of them were true. If the truth was hiding somewhere in there among the falsehoods, it was so hopelessly confused that he may as well have maintained a stony silence.

The disturbing thing about the Joker, Harleen Quinnzel thought, was that he made you believe everything he said. Because he believed them himself, when he told them to you, and he spoke with such conviction, such deeply repressed emotion, that you knew that whatever he was saying made perfect sense to him even if it didn't to the outside world.
The Joker's recent suicide attempt had shaken all of Arkham for a few days. The other employees soon laughed it off, just as they did with everything else, but Harleen couldn't. She'd been talking to him for months, and she knew, better than any of the rest of them, what he meant by it. She knew what she had to do.

She ate with the other asylum employees for the obligatory amount of time, eating half her sandwich and very carefully leaving the other half, unfinished, to imply that she intended to return. She excused herself to get something from her coat pocket in the front hall where they left their bags for check-in. What she got from her coat pocket was a key she'd illegally copied and a syringe full of sedative, which she used on the guard behind the front hall desk while his back was turned. With a whispered apology she carefully lowered his head onto the desk. If anyone found him, it would appear he'd be asleep on the job. But by that time they'd have plenty of other stuff to pin on her, so confessing to knocking out the guard would be an easy thing to do.

What she'd really come for was the gun on his belt. The Joker had spent most of the previous weeks of therapy discussing with her life and death. He went on long, strange, pleading tangents, discussing the cruelty of lifelong confinement, the fact that he didn't deserve to live anyway, the fact, which Harleen reluctantly corroborated, that he was incurable and he'd never be safe for the general public as long as he was alive. The tangents had a clear message to them, however incoherent they may have seemed—his aim had been to convince her that escape or death were the only two possibilities for him in the end. His suicide attempt indicated that he'd made that choice, he'd decided to die, and the idiots who ran this asylum had stopped him—

Harleen slipped the gun into the pocket of her labcoat. She didn't want to think about what she was about to do, didn't want to think about it at all, but it was the only humane course of action. The only safe one, the only logical choice…

She imagined she could feel the eyes of the other prisoners on her as she walked towards his cell. She imagined that they detected something different in her step, that they knew something was about to happen. It was a ridiculous notion, she knew, self-induced paranoia, but it was convincing. She found herself glancing to either side repeatedly as she walked the length of the corridor.

The Joker was lounging when she opened the door, stretched out on the cot with his bandaged wrists folded behind his head. Apparently half-asleep, he opened one eye and regarded her lazily. "How ya doin', Harl?"

Harleen closed the door behind her and just stood against it for a moment, looking at him. Humane, she reminded herself. This is humane, the only kind thing to do…

But suddenly it didn't look that way anymore. He didn't look tormented, desperate or accusing, as he had when he went off during therapy sessions, ranting against the world. If anything, he looked mildly expectant. He couldn't have known I was coming—he couldn't! Could he?

His single eye, brown in a face that was surprisingly ordinary without the makeup, strayed to her coat pocket. She still had her hand in it, she realized. Could he see the outline of the gun?

He licked his lips, that compulsive habit of his, and turned to give her his full attention.

He's waiting, he's waiting on me, damn it! Why doesn't he say something? Harleen realized she was very pale and trembling.

"I've gotta say, Harl," the man on the bed drawled, stretching lazily. "I didn't think ya had it in you. Always seemed like such a softie, such a bleeding heart, you know? Don't get me wrong, you're doing the right thing, but I never would have thought…" he trailed off, leaving all sorts of maddening suggestions of his faith in her hanging in the air.

"You tried to kill yourself!" she practically screeched at him, angry now. "You started it! They stopped you, so I came to finish—"

He smacked his lips again and shook his head. "Harley, you're never gonna shoot me. You don't have it in you." He sat up and held out a hand, gesturing. "Give it here and let me show you how it's done."

She closed her hand around the gun in her pocket, lifted it out and pointed it at him. "You're crazy," she quipped, and giggled. The absurdity of him thinking she'd give him a gun, when she came here to kill him with it…

He sat where he was and rolled his eyes. "Sure, I'm crazy. You're the one who came here with a gun to kill me, and I'm the crazy one."

"You wanted this," she almost giggled hysterically, well aware that she was stalling. "This was your idea, you wanted to be—"

And without seeming to move he was on top of her, wrenching the gun from her grasp without difficulty and pinning her to the cell wall. "I'll have to thank you for this someday, Harley." He twisted her around and a minute later held her against him in a vice grip with the gun's barrel pressed to her temple. He smiled down at her, the eeriest grin she'd seen on his face since the first day they brought him in.

"And now," he murmured, "we make our exit."

More coming very soon! Feedback is appreciated. This is our first run at coauthoring, and we're trying to remain true to the characters of The Dark Knight.