Author's Note: Here's the beginning of a little idea that popped into my head a few days ago. It was just too juicy of a premise to pass up, so here you have it. I'm guessing that this will end up being three chapters. Happy reading!

The Joker tittered, deliriously pleased with his accomplishment. "It was so nice of you all to come and visit me here in my humble hovel," he snickered, glancing at each of his guests in turn. "Of course it would have been easier if you'd just accepted my invitation and come quietly instead of making me go to extra effort to snatch you, but I guess that's the price of playing host." Stalking to where Batman hung against the cold, dripping wall, he leaned in close and leered. "You would think catching the great you would be the hardest part, wouldn't you? But it wasn't. The hardest part was the game. Coming up with games can be difficult, you know, especially when you've played as many as I have and you want something new, something refreshing. But I think you'll agree in the end that I've got a good one this time."

"I don't play games, Joker," Batman growled.

"No," the villain's lip curled as he backed away. "No, you never have, have you? But do you know who love to play games, Batman?" His turned eyes sparking with insane eagerness to where Nightwing and Robin were pinioned nearby. "...Children."

No, the cowled figure bit back an exclamation. No. Not my boys. You keep your hands off of them, you sick son of a bitch. Wasn't Jason enough?

When he didn't offer a rejoinder, the Joker frowned. "Being antisocial again, Batsy? Let's see how long that lasts once you find out what's entailed in tonight's little amusement. Bring them!" he shouted at the armed men ranged around the wide basement. "Pay attention, birdies," he addressed the younger two of his captives. "Pay close attention. In a minute you aren't going to be tied up anymore. But that doesn't mean that it will be a good time to run, or to try and fight your way out of here. No no," a silky warning slipped from his lips. "If you do that – if you resist, if you struggle, if you so much as reach for your belts – you'll both get to watch dear Daddy Bat's brains be blown into an interesting new piece of graffiti." On cue, a gunman stepped up beside the senior vigilante and pressed the barrel of a pistol to the unprotected underside of his chin. "And none of us want that, now do we?"

Both Nightwing and Robin wore tight grimaces as they were nudged towards the table and two chairs that sat in the middle of the room. A floor lamp with one sputtering bulb clicked on in the corner, and as its spotlight was trained on the furniture Batman could make out the chains holding each piece securely to the floor. Damn. That eliminates the possibility of them flipping the table or going over in their chairs as a distraction or the beginnings of an attack, he cursed. What haven't you thought of this time, Joker? There's a way out, there's always a way out...you may have gotten hold of us, but none of us respond well to taking orders from madmen. Never have, never will. There's a way, I just have to find it...

"...Now," the Joker began, circling as Nightwing and Robin were shoved down into seats and their legs were shackled to the cracked concrete underfoot. "The game is simple, and that's why I like it." A revolver appeared in his hand. "Russian roulette," he grinned darkly. "The beauty of the thing is that you don't dare risk pointing it at me or, say, one of the guards and having the hammer come down on an empty chamber. If one of you does try that," he promised silkily, "he'll get to watch the other two die. Although I have to wonder if either of you would dare to break the family gun code to begin with...well, we'll find out in a minute, won't we? But it doesn't matter; even if neither of you gets stupid, someone's going to lose their head tonight." He paused, slowly took in the entire scene he had brought together, and drew a deep breath. "...Let's begin."

I have to stop this, Batman thought desperately. He's got me so well secured that I can't even move my head to radio for help, they're both chained down, there are guns pointed at all of us, and there's no way anyone can make a move without at least one of the others being shot point-blank, but...there must be something. Some error. Some slip up. Some escape...

It had started less than three hours before, and the speed with which events had progressed was startling to the man dangling in the dilapidated basement and watching his sons prepare to die. Nightwing was in Gotham on a long weekend, and when the trio had set out from the cave it had seemed as if that night's patrol would be a fairly standard one. There had been no warning of the breakout that was occurring within the walls of Arkham as they split up, Batman heading for downtown while the younger vigilantes swung towards Crime Alley together. When the signal had appeared against a backdrop of low clouds just past midnight, none of them had hesitated to hasten towards it, believing it to be a legitimate call for help.

Batman had been the first to arrive. ...The Commissioner's office is dark, he'd paused, peering up at the building from ground level in consternation. Jim Gordon, he knew, had long ago taken up the habit of leaving every light blazing in his office if he was going to be so much as in the building after dark, his reasoning being that it should have been more difficult for the cowled man to sneak in on him that way. It was a dead-end hope, of course, since Gotham's protector could appear and disappear almost as easily in daylight as in dusk, but it served as a convenient indicator on nights when Batman needed to speak with the Commissioner and didn't want to waste time going in only to learn that he wasn't available.

Now the light's absence served as a warning, causing him to take a step back to reassess. The signal looked right, so it can't have been a fake...I suppose that whatever's going on might involve Gordon, but if so who ordered the light? The Deputy Commissioner would sooner see me in cuffs than on the case, and unless something's happened to both of them no one else has the authority to call me...

His reasoning had ended there thanks to the flash-bang that was dropped directly in front of him from the roof three stories above. He fell backward, unhurt thanks to his armor but with his ears ringing and his eyes blank. Who the hell is up there?! He struggled to regain his feet quickly, expecting a further attack from his unknown adversary, but the momentary blindness and hearing loss he was laboring under hamstrung him. Getting to his knees, he groped for a smoke grenade in the hopes of giving himself cover under which to retreat and call for backup, but the disturbance to his perilymph was such that he ended up flailing at the air in front of his belt rather than grabbing on to it. Fuck! Who's idiotic enough to set off a grenade this close to police headquarters?!

Still struggling with his tools, he'd stumbled upright swayingly, his vision beginning to return in the spaces between the spots that were swimming vigorously by. He had exactly enough awareness of his surroundings at that moment to realize that someone was rushing towards him, but lacked the coordination to fend them off despite the ferocious snarl of warning that tore from his throat. His assailant quailed at the sound for only an instant before driving their fist upward and into the vigilante's chin, causing the spots, the ringing, and the vague sensation that he was going to be sick if he didn't lie down very soon to fade away.

He had woken to find himself spread-eagled, his mouth tasting of blood and his ears still displeased with him. His vision, at least, had cleared, and as such he had been able to see Nightwing and Robin trussed up to one side of him. Noting the armed men who stood a safe distance away, watching nervously, he'd said nothing as the other masked figures began to stir, uttering faint groans of complaint. I'm guessing whoever planned this used the same technique on them as they did on me, he logicked. Alfred's going to have a field day when we all come home with pounding headaches later. It had been at that moment that he Joker stepped into the room, revealing himself as the orchestrator of their pain and forcing him to amend his thought. ...If we all come home.

The odds of them all making it to dawn with naught more than headaches were looking extremely slim a few minutes after that bitter thought had crossed the cowled man's mind. Leering, the psychopath slammed the revolver down in the middle of the table and reached into his pocket. "There's one other thing to keep in mind, birdies," he advised. "No heroics. If one or both you thinks it would be cute to put the gun against your head and pull the trigger until you find the bullet in a pathetic attempt to save the other two, think again. If you do that, not only will you not save their lives, but you'll make their misery last longer. I promise, if you take away my fun by being 'brave,'" he sneered behind air quotes, "I will do things to the ones you leave behind that you can't even imagine.

"So," he smiled anew, a quarter appearing in his hand, "Nightwing, you're heads, and Robin, tails." Pacing back to Batman, who was reassessing every detail for the third time in the hopes of finding something, anything, that he'd missed, he halted. "You're going to call it in the air," he ordered, "or I'm going to shoot one of them myself."

The coin sailed upward without warning, barely giving the vigilante a chance to answer before it plopped back into the madman's palm. "Tails," he barked. I'm sorry, Tim, it doesn't mean anything, he swore silently. I had to say one or the other. It doesn't mean anything...

"...It is tails," the Joker announced. "You know what that means, Batsy?" He went on when his only answer was a glare. "It means that you get to pick which of them goes first." His voice dropped back to a threat. "Quickly."

...But then why did you go through the hassle of the coin to-...oh, Batman realized. You fucker, you labeled them and then made me pick just so that a little wedge of doubt would be driven between me and whichever one of them I said. Now you're doing it again, and you know I don't dare choose Tim this time and compound the injury...but I don't want to watch Dick put that gun to his head. I don't want to watch either of them do it, and I won't watch them do it on my word! Enraged, he tried to struggle, but it was pointless. The very little movement his bindings and chains allowed him only caused him to chafe against his suit, and it wasn't sufficient to allow him to make any sort of progress towards freedom in a reasonable amount of time. If one of my boys is going to die here tonight, I won't be the person who chooses them!

"Pick!" the Joker shrieked suddenly. "Pick, or they both die!"

"Batman!" Nightwing's voice cut in. "Batman," he repeated as the villain turned to him, intrigued. "...Choose me."

"No!" Robin protested instantly. "Batman, don't!"

...Damn it, Dick, I know you're just doing what you always do, but that doesn't make this any easier, the elder crime-fighter lamented, going limp. Still, he knew, he had little choice; he had to select one of them to start or run the very real risk of losing them both immediately. Choosing Tim at this juncture would lead to ugly questions down the road no matter what combination of the three of them survived the night, and that left him with only one option. "...Nightwing," he gave in morosely. "I...choose Nightwing."

"Very good, Batman," the psychopath reached up to pat his cheek condescendingly before turning back to the main event. "Get their hands," he directed two of his men, who stepped forward with half-circles of iron that had been sharpened to a point at each end. Grabbing their captives' left hands, they hammered the arcs down over their wrists until their arms were snugged tight against the grimy wood, then moved back to make room for their boss. "...Remember," he leaned down to the two costumed figures, affecting a paternal air, "you play by my rules here, not yours. The only way you can save each other," his teeth shone in the glare of the spotlight, "is by being the one who lands on the right cylinder." He slid the gun to his left, leaving it in front of Nightwing. "The funniest part about it is that if you are the chosen one," he crowed as he straightened, "you'll never know." Batman felt his heart sink as his eldest slowly reached for the revolver with his free hand. I don't know how to get us out of this without someone taking a bullet in a lethal area, he cried to himself. Even if I did, I would have virtually no way of relaying the plan to either of you. Damn it! Damn me, always me, never either of them! If someone has to die tonight, it should be me. His eyes flicked to the once-more giggling Joker, whose excitement was as tangible as that of a child on Christmas. But I don't get to make that choice, and damn me for that fact. Dick...Tim...forgive me...