Boom.
The impact was dull and wet. The Riddler's half-limp body jerked with it, blood leaving his mouth before the sound had finished echoing off the walls. Every punch now was landing on top of previous damage — broken things being broken further, internal bleeding compounding — and everyone in the room could see it was costing him something he couldn't get back.
"This one's for kidnapping me."
Boom.
"This one's for my ex-wife."
Boom.
"This one's for my son."
Boom.
"This one's for Kane."
Boom.
"This one's for Jessica."
Zsasz leaned toward Poison Ivy, genuinely puzzled. "Who's Kane?"
Ivy said nothing.
Batman knew. Kane was the boy in the red jacket — the one Chuck had pulled out of a burning building weeks ago, the one who'd lost his father before the rescue, the one whose mother was Jessica. He'd been there. He remembered the look on Chuck's face when he'd set the boy down.
"Stop, stop, please—" The Riddler was on the ground now, voice high and desperate and completely unrecognizable. "Stop hitting me. Please. I'm begging you."
Chuck didn't stop.
The names kept coming. Monty Paul. Heath Freeman. Steve Holwood. These weren't the ones he'd saved — those names he kept differently, in a warmer place. These were the ones he'd arrived too late for. Men and women, old and young, names that now lived only on headstones and in Chuck's memory and in the precise, grinding pressure of his fists. He thought of his son on the pavement. He thought of the bodies he'd helped carry. He thought of every war zone alley where he'd knelt beside someone he hadn't been fast enough to reach, and his hands kept moving.
"That's enough, Chuck."
Batman's voice was quiet. Not loud — it didn't need to be.
"If you keep going, you'll kill him."
Chuck didn't hear it. Or heard it and kept going. At this point the distinction had stopped mattering.
"Chuck."
Batman stepped past the last knot of supervillains — who, notably, had stopped trying to block him — and crossed the room in four strides. He came down to one knee, got a hand around Chuck's raised fist, and held it.
The room went still.
Chuck looked at the fist in Batman's grip. Looked at the Riddler beneath him — barely a face left, blood across everything, not moving much. Looked at his own hands. He became aware, slowly, of the room around him: the Joker on the floor watching with detached interest, Batman shaking his head, Catwoman watching from the side with an expression he couldn't quite read.
"You're a good man," Batman said quietly. "An honest one. You're not built to kill. And you don't want to carry that."
Chuck was silent for a long moment. Then he lowered his hands, stood, and walked to the far side of the room without another word.
Batman crouched over the Riddler. To any outside observer, he was checking a pulse. His other hand, shielded from view, produced a quarter-piece of fruit candy and pressed it carefully between the Riddler's lips.
The Riddler can't die. The candy can't be seen. And right now I need to keep all three of them — Chuck, Jude, and Nygma — from crossing a line they can't walk back from.
He straightened up and turned to face the room.
"It's over," he said to Firefly and Zsasz. "Both leaders are down. If I were you, I'd go back to Arkham on your own feet while that's still an option."
Zsasz's upper lip curled. "There are three of you. Four if you count the traitorous cyclist over there." He spread his scarred arms. "Tell me why that should scare me."
The wind moved behind Batman's head — barely a displacement of air, but his body was already dropping before his mind had fully processed it. The Riddler's fist passed through the space where his skull had been.
Batman pivoted, caught the follow-through, and put Nygma back on the floor with a single controlled strike.
He stood over him. "You're harder to put down than you look," he said, without particular admiration. "But I'd recommend staying there unless you enjoy the repetition."
The Riddler wasn't looking at him. He was looking past him — craning his neck, eyes wild, searching.
"Move," he said. "Batman, get out of my way. I need to see the Joker's face. Is he smiling?" His voice cracked on the last word. "He's smiling, isn't he?"
Batman held his gaze for a moment, then stepped aside.
Two-Face shifted, gun still leveled, allowing the Joker to become visible. The clown was exactly where he'd been — on the floor, suit rumpled, expression unchanged. That same flat, sullen frown. The mouth that hadn't smiled in over a year.
The Riddler stared at him.
Then he screamed.
"Why aren't you laughing! Why — why aren't you laughing?! You should be laughing! What does it take?!" He pulled himself forward on his elbows, blood streaming, voice climbing toward something ragged and unhinged. "I started a war! I played Batman, I played you, I played the entire city! And then I lost — I got beaten, in front of you, by — by him —" He pointed at Chuck with a shaking hand. "Do you understand what it took to make this happen?!"
Nobody spoke.
"I had to investigate him. I had to maneuver him into position, make him an informant, push the right levers so Batman would bring him to face me." The words were spilling out now, past all containment. "I had to threaten his child. I had to know your backup plan. I had to know you'd show up here. I had to construct a situation where I could be defeated — by you or by him — and I had to beg for mercy convincingly enough that no one would see the seams." He was shaking, both hands fisted in the Joker's lapels now. "This should be the funniest thing you've ever seen in your life!"
He yanked the collar. "You! Should! Be! Laughing!"
The Joker looked up at him. Blinked once.
"...Yeah," he said. Flat. Bored. Entirely unmoved.
The sound that came out of the Riddler then was not quite a laugh and not quite a sob and not quite a scream — something that had collapsed in on itself trying to be all three.
"This has nothing to do with you." He whirled on Batman, eyes bright with fury and something rawer underneath it. "You were never the main character of this story. Not every story is about you."
Batman said nothing.
"You think you're a problem for me? You think I can't handle you?" The Riddler's voice went low and vicious. "I could kill you. I could kill everyone around you. They'd be in the gutter by tomorrow if I wanted them there." He breathed hard, composing himself by sheer force of will. "I keep you alive because you were my first real challenge. The first riddle that actually stopped me — when I was new at this, when I was still learning the shape of the game. A child's first riddle." His mouth twisted. "But the child grew up. The riddle got easier. And you, Batman, stopped being a challenge." His chin lifted. "I keep you around because you were first. You're a trophy. Nothing more."
He turned back to the Joker, some of the hysteria burning down into something colder and more controlled.
"But you," he said, quietly now, almost gentle. "You laugh at everything. Everything in the whole rotten world — and you can't laugh now. When it matters most. When everything is right there in front of you." He crouched to the Joker's eye level. "Here's your chance. I can take you apart. Your mind, your patterns, every gear inside the machinery — I can solve all of it."
The Joker looked back at him.
Said nothing.
The room held its breath.