Batman was trapped in a dilemma that promised regret no matter which path he chose. Under any other circumstance, he would have chosen Jason over the Joker without hesitation—but this moment forced him to weigh one life against another, knowing that saving one meant condemning the other.
"So what's it gonna be?" Jason asked, his tone cool and detached, giving Batman nothing to latch onto, no emotion to exploit or reason with. Jason had said his piece. The choice now rested entirely on Batman.
Everything around Jason felt strangely lucid and yet disturbingly blurred, as though he were caught in the middle of one of those episodes—moments when he donned the hood and later lost time, waking with no memory of his actions, only fragments resurfacing later in broken, dreamlike flashes.
But this time felt different—unnervingly so. It was as though he could sense the other presence he sometimes spoke to in the mirror, not lurking in the background, but fully awake. Both sides of him felt active at once, overlapping rather than taking turns.
"You said you wanted to be a better Batman than me," he said quietly. "This isn't how you do it."
Jason tilted his head, studying him, as if trying to understand where he was going with this.
"The road you're on won't give you the justice you're looking for," Batman continued. "Even if you kill Joker, you'll keep walking through Gotham with that same pain in your chest. Trust me, it won't ease it. Not even a little." His voice softened at the end, weighted with hard-earned truth.
Unbidden, his mind flashed back to the night at the theater, the echo of a single gunshot dropping his father, followed by another that stole his mother's final breath.
His thoughts drifted back to the raw, aching grief of losing his parents—the void that followed, and the desperate search for purpose that came with it. That pain had driven him across the world: to Tibet, to the League, and finally into the cowl. He had become a vigilante so that no one else would ever have to feel what he had felt on that night when his parents were taken from him.
"You might be right," Jason said at last.
For a fleeting moment, Batman wondered if his words had reached him.
"But if this clown doesn't die tonight," Jason continued, his voice hardening as he spoke, "Gotham will be left with a vengeful vigilante, one willing to unleash his wrath on anyone whose actions cost innocent lives." His gaze locked onto Batman.
"Unless you stop me. And the only way you'll stop me is by killing me. Because for as long as I can remember, this moment—standing here with a gun between the eyes of this mass-murdering lunatic—has been all I've thought about."
Batman studied him closely. Beneath the fury, there was pain—raw, exposed—and with it, the faintest glimmer of hope.
His gloved hand tightened around the shard of broken glass he'd taken earlier from the shattered window.
But hope didn't change reality.
He could only disarm one of Jason's hands: the left gripping the gun pressed to Joker's head… or the right holding the detonator.
"If that's the case," Batman said quietly, "then I'll be there to stop you every time. You should know that, no matter what you've done, you still have a place in this family. You are my son. And I will do everything in my power to pull you back from the path you're walking now—the path Ra's set you on."
His words were sincere. He knew brute force wouldn't reach Jason this time. But maybe honesty would.
"If that's true," Jason replied after a moment, "then let's hope I find my way back eventually."
For the first time, it was clear he saw that Bruce didn't hate him for what he'd become—that he still believed redemption was possible.
"But you've got one thing wrong," Jason added.
The cold, distant look in his eyes faded, replaced by the familiar green beneath the turquoise color as he seemed to fully come back to himself.
"I forgave you for that night a long time ago."
Batman's eyes widened, then slowly softened. He had always believed Jason's anger, his rebellion, was directed at him—punishment for failing to save him.
"I never blamed you for failing to save me that night," Jason said quietly. "My anger was never about that. It was because your refusal to kill this clown is what cost me my life. And even after my death, you still let him live. That's no different from signing the death warrants of his future victims, just like you did with me."
He drew in a slow, steady breath.
"What if Damian ends up being one of them?" Jason asked. "What if the cycle repeats itself?"
The question made Batman stiffen. For a split second, he pictured Damian. Ever reckless, driven, too eager to prove himself—charging headfirst into danger the same way Jason once had. He imagined the Joker delighting in the opportunity, turning another death into a cruel punchline meant solely for him.
Batman forced himself to steady his thoughts.
"We can't punish someone today for crimes they haven't committed," he said at last. "As for the past, Joker will be returned to Arkham."
Jason didn't look away. His gaze remained fixed on Batman as he spoke.
"This time, I'll personally oversee his containment," Batman continued. "I'll make sure there's no possibility of escape. He'll serve a life sentence. There's no need to kill him—letting him rot in Arkham, knowing he'll never change, will be his punishment."
He laid out the plan carefully, hoping it might reach the wounded part of Jason, the part that still wanted justice, even if letting go remained difficult.
Batman knew that when he had been consumed by grief and rage, he'd had Alfred to guide him through it—to keep him from being swallowed by the darkness.
In Jason's case, there had been no Alfred—only Ra's al Ghul. For two years, Ra's had trained him to kill, sharpening him into a weapon and teaching him that blood could only be answered with blood.
Those lessons had taken root deep within him. The moment his memories returned, Jason had already decided the Joker's fate, and he had come back to Gotham with that single purpose guiding him.
As Batman turned these thoughts over in his mind, Jason's voice cut through them.
"I can see you have no intention of choosing," Jason said. "So I'll make the decision for you—the one your morality and guilt won't let you make."
He finally broke eye contact, turning instead toward the Joker. Despite his battered state, the clown's eyes gleamed with barely restrained delight as Jason spoke of Batman's greatest failure.
The failure that haunted him still.
Batman had carried that burden for years, the knowledge that his relentless pursuit had driven a desperate man into a vat of chemicals, giving birth to the Clown Prince of Crime Gotham had come to fear.
"I don't know which clouds your judgment more," Jason continued, "your guilt, or that fossilized sense of right and wrong." His grip tightened around the gun. "Either way, tonight might finally open your eyes."
"No!" Batman shouted, hurling the shard of broken glass toward Jason's gun arm. He had calculated the throw with precision—aiming for the forearm, targeting a cluster of muscles linked to a nerve that should force Jason's grip to fail.
Pain, momentary paralysis, the gun dropping from his hand. It would have given Batman the opening he needed to close the distance, disarm him, and neutralize the detonator in one fluid sequence.
He wasn't afraid Jason would fire by reflex. The strike wasn't meant to cripple—only to disrupt his grip on the gun. Long enough for Batman to finish it.
But there was one variable he hadn't fully accounted for.
Jason's reflexes.
In a sharp, instinctive motion, Jason pivoted. His boot snapped out with spot-on efficiency, striking the shard midair and sending it clattering harmlessly into the wall. The move was effortless—trained, honed, lethal.
Batman, already committed to the follow-up, had launched himself forward the instant the glass left his hand. With the plan collapsing in real time, he was forced to halt abruptly, momentum bleeding off as his eyes widened in realization.
"Nice try, Bruce," Jason said flatly.
The use of his real name made it clear what was about to happen.
Batman knew then, without doubt—that Jason had crossed the point of no return. And that the Joker's life was hanging by a thread.
Three sharp gunshots tore through the room in rapid succession. Jason fired without hesitation, sending three bullets straight through the Joker's mouth. The clown collapsed lifelessly to the floor, and Jason watched coldly as the light drained from those mad, unblinking eyes.
"No!" Batman shouted—but the word came far too late.
The instant Jason confirmed the Joker was dead, he moved.
"Now it's settled."
The voice snapped Batman's attention upward. Jason was already perched at the shattered window, framed by the night beyond.
Anger and devastation surged through Batman as he started toward him—only to freeze when Jason lifted the detonator into view.
"See you around, Bruce," Jason said evenly.
Then he leapt backward through the window, his thumb pressing down on the trigger as he vanished.
Batman abandoned the chase instantly, diving into the adjacent room just as the explosion detonated. The blast thundered through the structure, rattling walls and flooding the space with shock and debris.
By the time the dust began to settle, the concussive force had left Batman disoriented—any chance of pursuit lost in the chaos.
To his surprise, the bomb he had spotted earlier on the ceiling fan turned out to be nothing more than a decoy. The real explosion had detonated much closer.
Scanning the devastation, he realized that Jason's discarded hood had been the true bomb.
Batman shoved aside chunks of rubble that had collapsed around him as a result of the unstable, half-renovated structure. He forced himself upright, eyes narrowed, then began digging through the debris with grim urgency.
It didn't take long.
Joker's body emerged from beneath the wreckage, charred and unmistakably lifeless. His face was grotesquely mangled, yet somehow still twisted into a mockery of a smile beneath the charred flesh.
The outcome of the night weighed heavily on Batman for more reasons than he cared to count. But he refused to linger on it. Pushing his emotions aside, he contacted Gordon, briefly informing him of the explosion and confirming Joker's death.
Once that was done, Batman vanished into the night before the authorities arrived. He had no desire—nor the strength—to answer questions about what had transpired that evening.