Hugo Strange's body was never found. The funeral was held for a memory and prayers were spoken over an empty coffin.

As befitting the sombre occasion, Gotham opened up her skies and rained, turning the grass underfoot to mud and rolling rain drops down the faces of stone angels like tears. Gotham Cemetery on that grey, dreary morning was filled with the sound of water pattering on the many monuments to the city's dead. The gentle sounds were easily drowned out by the droningly loud voice of a priest reading the final rites, his black-garbed form hidden under a huge umbrella to prevent the pages of his prayer book from getting wet. His voice boomed out from beneath it, rolling out across the cemetery like thunder.

He needn't have spoken so loudly, for the group of mourners was a small one. Standing nearest to the priest, with his head bowed in respect and hands clasped in front of him, was Bruce Wayne. As Arkham Asylum's main funder he was here out of duty; as the Batman he was here in the hopes of laying a few personal demons to rest alongside the coffin.

Beside the young millionaire was Police Commissioner James Gordon, whose presence was also grounded in duty. The doctor's death had been brought about by the criminal Mister Freeze, and Gordon felt that some official mark of respect was needed from the police force. It was the least he could do. In a way, he felt partly responsible, thinking that if he'd only somehow seen through Janice in the first place or done something sooner, then a man might still be alive.

Standing opposite the two prominent public figures but separated from them by the open grave, was an unknown blonde woman crying silently into a delicate handkerchief. She hadn't said a word throughout the service, silenced by grief, and no one had attempted to draw her out of it.

Completing the grave ensemble was a man, a late-arrival who stood a little way back from the others. He was bundled up against the weather in a heavy black greatcoat, a scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face and a formal hat pulled down low over his eyes. One of his arms was held against his body in a plaster cast and sling, the undamaged hand in his pocket, suggesting an attitude of casualness, but out of the quartet, he seemed the most intent upon the priest's words. His head was turned towards the man of God, and the forward slope of his shoulders gave off the impression that he was hanging on every spoken word.

"…Dust to dust…" The priest droned on like righteous thunder, sounding somehow soothing, a part of nature.

The avid attention of the stranger putting him to shame, Bruce stared straight ahead at nothing, lost in his own brooding thoughts. He let each varying emotion about Strange's death wash over him like the rain, not analysing it as he usually did with his emotions, instead just letting them happen. Perhaps he would never know how he truly felt about the doctor's death. But despite the constant wave of conflicting emotions, beneath them all, he felt as empty as the man's coffin. A part of him had died along with Hugo Strange and he would never get it back. Nothing was ever going to be the same.

"…The earth and the sea shall give up their dead…"

Across the yawning expanse of the grave, Bruce found that he had been staring at the stranger's feet. They were ordinary enough feet, caked in cloying mud just as Bruce's were, but something about them arrested his attention and for a moment took his mind off of empty graves and last rites. It wasn't the obviously battered quality of the shoes beneath the mud – footwear was subject to a lot of tear and wear – nor was it the fact that they seemed subtly out of proportion with the rest of the man, as if they were a size too big for him. In fact, Bruce realised, it wasn't the boots that were strange at all, it was the trousers that the man was wearing.

His heart stopping momentarily in his throat, Bruce glanced quickly to the sad, serious face of the Commissioner beside him, using it to ground himself back in reality. He reasoned that he couldn't have just seen what he thought he had. With all the psychological trauma he had recently been through and considering how it was always on his mind, keeping him from sleep, it was perfectly understandable that he should see things. Especially with the rain distorting everything. He just had to take a deep breath, ignore the nagging unacceptable feeling that he was suffering from wishful thinking, look again and it would be gone.

He looked again. The man was still wearing purple trousers, a disrespectfully jaunty colour amongst the uniform black.

The emptiness inside Bruce seemed to swallow him whole and for a fleeting moment he thought he heard laughter in his head, distant and weak, but laughter all the same. Slowly, he raised his eyes and looked straight into the muddy, sickly feverish gaze of the stranger who was well known to him. The eyes, shadowed by the brim of the hat above them, but ablaze with a light of their own, burned into him with intimate hatred and twisted amusement.

He felt nothing but disgust for those eyes. Perfect understanding seemed to pass between the two men and for one final time they were one.

"…He is able to subdue all things unto himself…"

Then the stranger dropped his eyes, disinterested and indifferent and it was as if the moment had never happened. He was just another unnamed mourner, wet and saddened, waiting for the formalities of death to be over so that he could get out of the rain. He most certainly wasn't the Joker.

The priest closed his prayer book with a snap, intoning "The Lord be with you."

Faithfully, the mourners replied "And with thy spirit." Bruce recovered his senses just in time to join in with the final "Amen" and then it was all over. The stifling oppression seemed to lift a little, although the disorientating grief remained. But a duty had been done and the completion of such is always greeted with some relief, whatever the outcome.

The man with his arm in a cast turned and said a few quiet words to the woman on his side of the grave, who nodded and replied something into the depths of her sodden handkerchief. Having done so, he looked up, seeking out the millionaire opposite. Catching the man's attention, he lifted his unencumbered hand in a farewell gesture that almost could have been mocking, and then turned and began walking away.

Bruce was riled enough by this to be about to chase after the man, when he found himself stopped by Gordon's hand taking his own in a warm handshake.

"It was good seeing you again," Gordon was saying, his face drawn and thoughtful behind the smile.

"You too, Commissioner," Bruce forced himself to smile back and return the other man's handshake, calming the impatience he felt at being waylaid. "Just a shame that it had to be under such unpleasant circumstances."

The Commissioner nodded his agreement and goodbyes were said, along with a few ritual compliments to the dearly departed. By the time he had left Bruce, the man who couldn't possibly have been the Joker was long gone, along with the grieving woman and the priest. He was alone with the dead.

Shaken and sick at heart, Bruce made his way back to his car that he'd left parked just outside the cemetery gates. He avoided the route that would take him past the final resting places of Thomas and Martha Wayne, not wanting to sully them with his own dark feelings. He saw no sign of the other mourners on his way, even though he kept an especial eye out for the man in the purple trousers.

Even if he had seen the man again, he wasn't sure what he would have done. In a way he was glad Gordon had prevented him from going after the stranger. He didn't want to know the truth and he certainly never wanted to see the Joker again. But if that was so, then why did he feel so empty? Like a man who all his life has been fighting a debilitating illness who wakes up one morning to find himself perfectly healthy and doesn't know what purpose his life has anymore, now that the fight has been won. He finds himself suddenly alone.

That night after Strange's death, he had searched everywhere for the murderous clown, but had been unable to find him. Since then, Bruce had seemed to be living in a fugue state, unsure of his direction in life and of whether he even wanted to find the missing criminal, unable to maintain a firm grip on what was his waking life and the dreams that haunted what little sleep he could get.

Getting into the car, Bruce hauled off his soaking wet coat and threw it onto the back seat. Then, sitting back, he angled the mirror down so that he could see his face and began gently to remove the flesh-coloured bandaging that covered one cheek. The gauze had been disguised to blend in perfectly with his skin, covering up a wound that could have easily given away his secret identity to Gordon. The bandage came away bloodied, sticking to his weeping skin and stinging as it was pulled away, but the cut wasn't as bad as it looked. It was actually healing remarkably well, considering how deep the knife had gone into his flesh, although there was no doubt that it would leave an ugly scar.

Bruce turned his head and silently studied the lasting reminder of his final fight with Joker in the mirror. A red gash ran up from the corner of his lips in the sick parody of a smile that wept blood, mocking everything he was and everything he stood for. He turned his face the other way and was met with smooth, unmarred skin. Like a tongue returning to probe an aching tooth, he displayed his frightening half-smile to the mirror once again.

Joker had always said they were alike, the clown and the bat, just two freaks standing on the edge of society together; too dangerous, too different to be allowed in. He'd never wanted to believe it, he hadn't believed it, but here was the proof grinning at him from the mirror. He felt sickened. The clown had marked him, made Bruce more like him, but he hadn't won. He couldn't be allowed to win. Bruce's was only half a smile, which meant there was still hope.

The night is darkest just before the dawn and Bruce thought that maybe, just maybe, he could see the first rays of the sun creeping over the edge of the horizon. But bats are nocturnal creatures and have always felt more at home in the dark.

Bruce Wayne, the Batman, turned the key in the ignition and the radio came on of its own accord, playing an old David Bowie song. Then, for a long time, he just sat there with his head resting on his hands on top of the steering wheel and listening to the rain outside.

Though nothing
Will keep us together
We could steal time
Just for one day
We can be Heroes
For ever and ever
What d'you say

A/N: Well, that's the last of it. Although it seems I've become somewhat addicted to this writing lark, and since there are a few loose threads left hanging in this story I thought I might knit them all together into a sequel. So watch this space, bat-fans, I might be writing something to put in it. XD Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed this.

And the lyrics at the end are from David Bowie's song 'We Could Be Heroes'.