Guiding Light

Guiding light

You forced my hand, Telltale.

You wanted John to end up in Arkham no matter what cause you needed a fundament for your season 3? Okay. We can’t avoid this last battle with Vigilante Joker cause you wanted to give us as much drama as you potentially could? Fine. But at least you could have given us a little bit of choice.

That’s what my fic is going to be about. The choice we could have had.

Chapter 1

How did they end up like this?

That’s the only question Bruce had in his head watching this creepy smile on his best friend’s face. It looked even bigger and wilder than his usual one. Blood of people he killed covered his face. 

This whole view…  

He was gripping two joker-rangs in the hands with such a strength his own blood was dropping from the weapons onto the floor. And now he looked truly insane. Even more like bloody-minded. 

Damn. 

If Bruce didn’t already know this man was John Doe he would have never recognized him…

They stood in front of each other heavy breathing after the fight. But it didn’t seem as it was over. No matter how bad Bruce wanted this. The only solution seemed to be was to beat up Joker until he’d faint or just weaken. That’s however what Batman was used to do with his opponents. But John…

He remembered that day in the past when he was teaching John how to throw batarang. He was so excited. He looked up to Batman and Bruce wanted him to become better version of himself. That’s why he did everything to encourage his efforts of trying to be a hero.

“You have potential, John”, he said to him the same day, “Do something good with it”. “Well, with you to look up to… How could I go wrong?”. And Bruce wanted to believe in that so bad. Because knowing John… He did have a good heart. He had seen it. But his mind was really messed up.

So maybe Alfred was right about Batman’s darkest side affecting John as well? Maybe that’s what made him believe that any problem could be resolved only by using violence? Batman did use his fists more often than he wanted… And if it was his fault he needed to fix it. He needed to show John that not all the things in this world could be solved by violence. But could he potentially do it in such conditions?

[John became completely uncontrollable. I need to stop him at any cost]

[It’s still a chance I could talk him down. I need to comfort him]

He made his decision. No more thinking.

John rushed to him madly laughing and swinging the weapons with his two hands aiming to plant them as deep into Bruce’s body as possible. Batman in his turn hasted to meet him and grabbed with the whole force. He locked his arms around John’s body. But John himself seemed not to pay attention to Bruce’s efforts to show how desperate he was about the whole situation they were in. He wasn’t sobered at all. It looked like some veil covered his mind and he lost the touch with the reality.

Leading by his emotions Joker started stabbing Batman’s back until he succeeded to reach his skin several times.

With Batman’s gasp and Joker’s laugh Bruce decided it was too much for him…

Please, stop.

Enough!

[Throw him away]

“John, please… stop it”

It didn’t work.

“I’m begging you… STOP”. On that one he squeezed John’s body even harder with that kind of hug.

John exclaimed: “Let me go!”.

“Not… until you stop this craziness”

“I HATE YOU! What you did to me!”, he planted the last wound deeper than the others.

“Argh!”, Bruce grimaced.

“By looking up to you I had only lost myself!”

For Bruce hearing those words were even more painful then all of the stab wounds.

“I’m… I’m sorry, John”, he started with the softest voice he could potentially make, “I… really tried my best. And I’m sorry if I failed you…”.

He felt John stopped his attempts to stab him again and relaxed a little bit.

“I know you angry at me but please…”, now Bruce was feeling his body started to weaken because of the blood he was losing. But he needed to tell John what he was feeling. At least this one time. “Just please… I don’t want us to fight anymore… I don’t want you to get hurt… I don’t want to lose you or anybody else! Not again!”.

John shivered.

For Bruce it became harder to speak. “I… wasn’t such a good friend to you as I wished to be. And now it doesn’t seem I’m good enough to take an example from either…”.

“Bruce…”

“So please! Let me fix it. Let me… argh… make up for it”

Bruce’s sight started to drift away but it looked like John finally came to himself. That’s all Bruce was trying to achieve for now.

John dropped his weapons and grabbed Batman’s shoulders. Bruce felt him sobbing now.

“Bruce… What are you… That’s not what I… You…”

Batman loosened his grip revealing Joker and fell to his knees.

“Bruce!”

John rushed back to him willing to swoop up Batman’s wrist but only touched the wounds.

“Argh!”

He immediately recoiled letting Bruce collapsed on the floor.

John’s face covered with blood and tears… That’s the last thing Bruce saw before falling into the darkness.