-Batshit Insane-

Several weeks have passed since the Joker, Harley Quinn and Riddler attacked Wayne Manor. Although most people in Gotham have already forgotten about the incident, the event is still fresh in the mind of Bruce Wayne himself. Although he did manage to save Alfred and Barbara from succumbing to their wounds, this was not without a cost. Alfred decided to quit working for his family and retire after that night while Barbara, now paralyzed from the waist down after getting shot in the spine, has cut off all contact with him and moved to Blüdhaven. On top of that, the guilt of not being able to save Duke from getting killed by the Joker is getting worse with the day.

 

Without anyone to rely on now, Bruce’s mental state is rapidly declining. As a result of deciding to quit being Batman as well, his days and nights are now mainly spent aimlessly wandering around the Manor without doing anything. Along with that, he became too depressed to take care of himself, not even having the motivation to eat at times. After experiencing several mental breakdowns, he finally decides to do something about it and checks himself into a mental hospital.

 

After getting evaluated by a psychiatrist in order to determine a proper treatment plan Bruce gets appointed to Professor Hugo Strange, supposedly a master in the field of psychology. He gained some attention after managing to cure the son of crime boss Carmine Falcone of his mental problems years ago, but Bruce has never heard of him before. A bald man with a thick gray beard and round glasses introduces himself as Professor Strange and welcomes Bruce into his office. Before he offers him a seat Strange asks if he wants a cup of tea, to which he agrees. He grabs a bright pink teapot from his desk and pours him a cup of tea as he starts asking how he feels. Bruce begins describing his current situation while drinking from the cup, but he gets cut off by Strange after a while. He tells him that he thinks he figured the cause of all of his psychological problems as he opens one of the drawers in his desk. Bruce is unsure of what to think of it until he takes the cowl of his Batman costume out of the drawer and puts it on the table, leaving him in a state of shock. He burned his costume in the fireplace of Wayne Manor after failing to prevent the murder of Duke; how did Strange recover it and find out his identity?

 

He tries to jump out of his seat to question the professor, but his legs suddenly feel very heavy. As he falls out of his chair and smacks on the cold tiled floor, he hears the door opening behind him as Strange welcomes someone else into his office. Despite his blurry vision, he can make out a man dressed in an old-fashioned outfit and wearing a big top hat introducing himself as Mad Hatter, who pours him another cup of tea. Then it hits him; the tea was drugged. He hears Strange telling the man to prepare him for something before everything goes black for him.

 

When he wakes up, Bruce finds himself strapped to a hospital bed in a surgery room with a bright light pointed at his face. Because he does not know how much time passed since he got knocked out by the tea or if he is even still in the same building, he begins calling out for help. Upon realizing nobody is hearing him he manages to grab one of the sharp surgery scalpels laying on the table next to him to cut himself free. As he stands up he notes how awfully quiet it is outside. Bruce opens the door and finds a seemingly endless and dimly lit hallway in front of him, without any doors or windows on any side. He begins walking down the hallway hoping to find some help if he manages to reach the end.

 

After walking for what feels like an eternity, he finally spots another room on the right side of the hallway. Bruce makes his way inside, only to find a dark archive room on the other side of the door. He opens some of the file cabinets and discovers that they are all filled with items from his own past; newspaper clippings from the night of the murder on his parents, family pictures taken before the incident, police reports about a man running around dressed in a bat costume and more. It's almost like somebody documented his entire history and archived it in this place. He walks over to some of the other cabinets and opens them, only to find them filled with items relating to events that happened not too long ago; News reports about the events at the GCPD Fundraiser Ball along with the incident involving the Joker shortly after and even gossip magazine items speculating about him checking into a mental hospital. Upon closer inspection he notices the items detailing the events wrong though; every single one of them blame Batman for causing all of it to happen, with one even going so far as to say he could have saved Duke but consciously chose not to.

 

One of the lights in the back of the room flickers on, drawing Bruce’s attention to a rusted, old file cabinet in the corner of the place. He walks over and opens it, but finds it almost completely empty in contrast to the full drawers from the other cabinets. It’s a death certificate of him, dated 2041, stating that he passed away after breaking his back. A doctor noted at the bottom of the document that nobody showed up at his funeral and that not a single soul cared about his death.

 

After having looked at everything in the room, Bruce decides to walk out of the door to continue his trip down the long hallway. However, as soon as he opens the door he finds that the hallway is nowhere to be seen anymore; instead, he finds himself in what seems to be a dimly lit morgue. Before him are two tables both with a bodybag on them. Bruce walks over to the tables and opens them, only to be met with a gruesome sight. Inside the bags he finds the dead bodies of his parents, looking almost exactly like how they did on that fateful day in 1996. Before he can properly process the sight before him, the corpses start speaking and berading Bruce for not standing up to the criminal who shot them and allowing it to happen. He turns around and tries to run out of the room, but is stopped as the silhouette of a young man blocks the door. One of the lights near the door suddenly flickers on, revealing that the person standing there is Duke dressed in his Robin suit. Bruce slowly walks over to him as his eyes start to fill with tears, wanting to sincerely apologize to him for allowing the Joker to murder him. As he gets closer to him though, he notices all of the severe wounds inflicted by the Joker’s crowbar slowly appear on his skin as it starts decaying more and more. He tries to look him in the eyes, but only sees empty sockets while his face is dressed in the same clown makeup Joker wears.

 

The shock of seeing this gruesome sight is enough to snap Bruce out of his drug-induced hallucination. It takes him a short while to calm down, but when he has himself under control again he notices he’s not in the same wing of the mental hospital anymore. He finds himself sitting on a comically small chair in what seems to be a decaying basement, with a coffee table filled with teacups in front of him. As he looks in front of him he sees a mannequin with the cowl and cape of his Batman costume sitting on the other side of the table. He suddenly notices someone talking in the room upstairs, prompting him to put on the cowl over his hospital gown and walk up the stairs to investigate. As he peeks through the door at the top of the stairs he sees an abandoned room of the facility, with Strange sitting in the middle of the space. He seems to be calling someone, unaware that he has already awakened, giving Batman the perfect opportunity to strike him down. However, as he listens closely to the voice on the phone he notices it sounds a lot like the Joker’s voice on the other end of the line. Strange is desperately trying to arrange a deal between the two, boasting about how he has the identity of the Dark Knight and how he is willing to tell it in return for a huge sum of money. The tone of Joker’s voice suddenly shifts as he tells him to piss off, stating that nobody cares about that now that his identity is starting to become an open secret within the criminal underworld.

 

He hangs up the phone, waits for a moment, and then addresses Batman asking if he seriously thought he did not notice him standing there. Strange stands up from his chair and turns towards him, slightly amused at the sight of the Dark Knight dressed in a hospital gown before him. He begins talking about how obsessed he has been about finding out what makes him tick ever since Batman first made his appearance in Gotham back in 2008, and claims to be the only one who truly understands him now. However, he thinks that the way he does things is deeply flawed and believes that somebody should replace him. After news broke out about the tragedy in Wayne Manor, Strange took the opportunity to break into his house while he was away, save the cowl which he threw into the fire and repair it without him ever knowing. He opens his lab coat to reveal a homemade dark blue Batsuit underneath, reminding Batman of the cheap halloween costumes people started wearing during that holiday after his first appearance. He expresses his desire to become the Batman himself, saying that he will not hesitate to kill Bruce if it means being able to take over the role. Despite this, he grabs a Batarang for himself and slides one towards Bruce in order to make the conditions fair for one another.

 

He pushes the chair he was sitting on away, and starts walking towards Bruce. Batman throws the batarang towards him but Strange manages to dodge it. He grabs the thrown weapon from the ground with his one hand and hurls the batarang towards Batman with his other hand, successfully striking him in the arm. Before he can recover, he feels the other batarang piercing into his chest before Strange kicks him to the ground. Batman tries his best to counter his punches, but soon gets overpowered by him. Because of his aged and fragile appearance from the outside Batman severely underestimated the abilities of the doctor, and quickly realizes that with his current physical condition he could actually manage to beat him if he does not act fast. He pulls the batarang stuck in his arm out and stabs Strange with it in the leg, distracting him just long enough to plan out how to make it out of this alive. He turns around and makes a run for the basement door, closing and locking it behind him right before the doctor catches up to him.

 

Batman takes a look around the basement to look for anything he can use to beat Strange, and quickly remembers the teacups and teapot which are still standing on the small table. Right after he makes it down the stairs, he hears the door getting kicked open behind him. He’s barely able to jump out of the way just before the door flies out of the opening and hurls against the wall. Strange jumps down the stairs and throws the batarangs towards him again, and while one slices through the side of his leg he manages to dodge the other one. He tries to grab something to defend himself against the doctor, but Strange grabs him by the cape, pulls it towards him and punches him in the face as he loses his balance. Batman feels his head slamming against the coffee table as he falls to the ground while Strange pins him down. He pulls off Batman's mask and puts his hands around his neck, preparing to end the Wayne legacy once and for all. Despite his efforts to get the doctor off him, Bruce simply doesn’t have the energy in him anymore to overpower him. As he feels his consciousness fading he recalls the teapot standing on the table. He reaches out, wraps his fingers around the handle, and uses the last of his energy to strike Strange with it in the face. The pot bursts apart upon impact, leaving dozens of tiny shards in the face of both Bruce and Strange and knocking the doctor off him. Bruce gaps for air as Strange tries to recover from the attack, but he finds himself unable to stand up. He brings his hand to his mouth and feels that some of the spiked tea used to drug Bruce got into his mouth. He attempts to grab his broken glasses from the ground and reaches out to Bruce, muttering something about him never being able to take on the mantle of Batman after this before passing out.

 

A severely wounded but alive Bruce emerges from the abandoned hospital wing, finding his way to one of the operational wings and alerting one of the nurses working there at the moment. He explains how Professor Strange along with another man drugged and attacked him while leaving out the details of why this happened, leading to the police arriving at the scene. While they quickly find the unconscious Strange still in his Batman outfit, they turn up empty-handed after looking for the Mad Hatter.

 

A few weeks have elapsed since the event at the mental health facility now. As Bruce is visiting the grave of Duke on a cold morning he gets approached by a strange woman on the street. The woman takes off her coat and sunglasses revealing she’s Selina Kyle, also known as Catwoman, someone who Bruce has a long and complicated relationship with. In his first year of fighting crime she was one of the first who figured out his identity after Alfred found out, but he hasn't seen her since she joined the Gotham Sirens. Selina offers her condolences to Bruce for Duke, telling him she heard what happened through rumors in the underworld. The two decide to grab some coffee at a nearby place to catch up. Bruce begins talking about how the past months have gotten him to think about if Batman actually does more harm than good to Gotham, with him considering retiring for good. Selina tells him that she has been considering the same thing since neither her life of thievery nor her life of vigilantism seems to be working out. She proposes that the two give their relationship another chance and retire together. It takes some time for Bruce to consider the offer, but he eventually agrees.

 

The two decide to settle down on Corto Maltese, leaving their lives in Gotham behind. Before driving away to the airport, Bruce takes one last look at the skyline of Gotham City, the city he was born and raised in. If a threat arises in the future that only he can defeat, Bruce will be the first in line to respond. But for now, the city will have to save itself without the Batman being around to protect people.

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Done