-The Dark Knight Returns-

November 7, 2042

 

29 years have passed since Bruce Wayne retired as Batman. He and Selina Kyle moved to Corto Maltese, a country where the ‘’Caped Crusader of Gotham’’ is nothing more than an urban myth, and have led a safe life there. After changing their identities to Matches Malone and Irena Dubrovna respectively to avoid them getting recognized, the two married a few decades earlier and got a daughter named Helena together roughly 17 years ago. Although Bruce sometimes misses the life he lived before this, he wouldn’t trade his current one for anything.

 

It is a quiet night when Bruce gets awoken by some noise coming from the kitchen. He tries to get back to sleep, but hears something isn’t right when he hears something clattering on the ground. Bruce gets out of bed, puts on a dark red bathrobe and walks downstairs to investigate. Making sure to walk as silently as possible in order to remain unnoticed, he takes a peek around the corner but doesn’t find anything out of the ordinary there. Everything is just as he left it the day before, without any signs of a break-in. He prepares to head back to bed as he notices some sound coming from upstairs now. He hears a window opening in another room, but as he slams open the door he finds another empty room. He takes a look outside the window he heard getting opened which has a view over the wide garden of their house, but he fails to spot anything there either. Bruce decides to leave it be for now and to contact the authorities the next morning as he returns to bed. However, as he enters the bedroom, he is met with a gruesome sight.

 

Before him he sees his wife Selina reaching for her throat, struggling to breathe as blood spills everywhere. He rushes to help her and notices that her throat has been slit open by a sharp object. Knowing that he can’t do anything to help her himself Bruce grabs the phone on the nightstand and dials 911 hoping that he can save her life that way. He gets connected to an emergency medical dispatcher and gives the necessary information to call an ambulance. After this, he lifts her up out of bed and carries her downstairs to make it easier for the paramedics to get her in the ambulance, trying everything to comfort her as he does so. He lays her on the couch as he hears the sirens of the ambulance approaching in the distance. The paramedics rush inside the house, putting her on a brancard and bringing her into the ambulance as Bruce can only watch. He stands next to the brancard in the ambulance, holding her hand as he hears the heartbeat monitor flatlining.

 

A week has passed since the murder on Selena. Both Bruce and Helena are still processing the event. Despite the best work from the local police force they did not manage to find any clues as to who did it, leaving them without a single idea as to why it happened. After not having slept for almost a week and refusing to enter the place where his wife got her throat slit, Bruce decides to finally go in there to clean the mess from that night. As he takes the blood-stained sheets off the bed, he sees something weird under the sheets; a playing card with a bloody, golden knife pierced through it. He takes the knife out of it and takes a look at the card, noting a short message written on there in a messy handwriting.

 

“Why the long face, Bruce? I know this truly puts a smile on my own face.”

 

He turns over the card, almost losing his balance in shock as he sees the trademark design Joker always used on the front of the card. Despite him finding out his identity years ago and ruining his life shortly after, Bruce hoped that he would leave him alone now that he is retired. He looks up what he has been up to for the past years, and finds out Joker has supposedly been in the highest security wing of Arkham for the past 25 years. Despite his instincts telling him to leave it be and just continue to make the most of his retirement, he can't seem to shake off the urge to return to Gotham to get to the bottom of this.

 

A couple of days later, Helena gets awoken by her dad early in the morning. She puts on some clothes and steps outside her room as her dad prompts her to follow him to the attic. As they are making their way there, Bruce asks her if she ever heard of the Batman. Although she has read the rumors online of a vigilante dressed as a bat fighting crime in Gotham for several years, she never really believed them to be real. Despite all of the evidence, from pictures in newspapers to blurry videos of somebody in a bat costume flying over Gotham, something about it just seemed weird to her. Knowing that her parents lived in that city for some time she did ask them about it once, but her dad said all the stories were just hoaxes made up by the police force in order to scare off criminals.

 

After walking up the stairs Bruce turns on a light to illuminate the messy attic. He makes his way over to a wooden closet in the back with a big padlock around the door. As he looks around for something, Helena notices a lot of little trinkets filling up the attic; some kind of jester hat, a glass dome with an old handgun in it, a cane with a weird question mark on it along with a bunch of other items. Bruce finds the key and opens the closet, revealing a suit hanging upside down in it. Helena notices a bat symbol on the chest of the suit as she begins to put together the pieces; her dad was Batman. She picks up a bat-shaped weapon from the ground as Bruce takes the suit out of the closet.

 

“Pack up your stuff.” Bruce says. “We’re going to Gotham.”

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A few days later, after getting on the next flight to Gotham City and after telling Helena of his suspicions, the two arrive in the city. Although Bruce didn’t expect Gotham to look exactly like how it did when he left with Selina almost 30 years ago, he’s still shocked to see how much it changed. As he looks at the skyline of the city through the window of the airport, he sees that the dark and mundane buildings of the city he used to know have all been replaced with tall, futuristic skyscrapers. All personnel on the airport have also been replaced with androids and computer systems. While Bruce struggles to get used to this new and completely different Gotham, Helena guides them to a metro line leading right into the center of the city.

 

Another hour passes before the two find their way to the center of Gotham, making their way towards the newly rebuilt Wayne Enterprises building; a gigantic black structure, contrasting sharply with the clean lightly colored buildings surrounding it and with a big neon-lit sign on top of the roof. Knowing he left most of the gadgets he used as Batman in one of the floors of the building, Bruce hopes that he can still find and use them. He tries to enter, but he gets halted by a security guard asking him why he wants to enter the building. Bruce directs the guards attention towards the sign on the structure as he pulls out his ID-card, making sure to point out the fact that the name plastered on the building belongs to him. The guard nods and lets the two in, turning on his earpiece and muttering something to the person on the other end as he does so.

 

As they find themselves in the lobby, a well-dressed young man approaches Bruce and Helena. He introduces himself as Lucius Fox Jr, current CEO of Wayne Enterprises and son of the late Fox Sr, who he used to know back during his prime as a vigilante. He talks about the stories his father used to tell about him before getting to the reason he is here. Fox guides them to one of the elevators in the building and touches in a specific code into the panel after they enter. A fingerprint scanner flips open from the wall as he asks Bruce to put his thumb on it. He does so and feels the elevator descending downwards right after, despite there officially not being any levels below ground in this building. The elevator stops going down after a short while, giving way to a dimly lit storage area filled with items hidden under big pieces of cloth when the doors open. Bruce walks over to one of the bigger items and takes the cloth of it, seeing that someone put the Batmobile under there. He walks around the place and takes a look at more of the items, seeing that most of what he stored in the Batcave when he retired has been put in here. He sees that one of his batarangs, an old prototype for a suit for Robin and even the old Batsignal were brought to this place. As Bruce shows Helena some of the objects, reminiscing about when he was still in his prime, he suddenly hears a female voice behind him.

 

He turns around and sees Barbara Gordon sitting in a wheelchair behind him. She and him haven’t seen each other since the Joker paralyzed her from the waist down almost thirty years ago, with Barbara cutting off all contact with him shortly after the incident. She begins talking about how after Bruce left Gotham nobody was left to look after Wayne Manor. Roughly 15 years ago, when plans were announced to tear down the vacant house, Lucius Fox took it upon himself to get all of the items left in the Batcave out of there before someone would stumble on them during the demolition. Out of the faint hope that the Dark Knight would one day return to Gotham, he decided to store all of his items right under the Wayne Enterprises building instead of destroying them.

 

During this time, Barbara had moved back to Gotham and got a position within the GCPD again. She got assigned to lead the investigation behind the addicting, strength-enhancing drug known as Venom which had been becoming more and more popular in Gotham over the past years. Due to it becoming more and more difficult to keep track of all the Venom-related incidents within the city, she reached out to Wayne Enterprises for help. Fox Jr. showed her the storage space and asked her to help him look after the Dark Knight's gadgets. Although she refused at first, wanting nothing to do with Bruce and the Batman after the incident at Wayne Manor, she eventually agreed in case he would ever return to Gotham.

 

Barbara then shows Bruce something she has been working on in the past years. After the company abandoned their contract to make military equipment years ago, many projects which were still a work in progress got scrapped and left behind in the Applied Science division. One of these projects was a prototype for an exosuit which would give more strength to older or wounded soldiers, allowing them to be more effective in battle despite their handicaps. Seeing how Bruce isn’t as strong as he was in his prime almost 30 years ago, she modified and prepared the prototype for him to use as a new suit. He walks over to the suit, seeing a gun-metal gray suit with a black cowl and purple gloves outfit on display. He contemplates his decision for a moment, doubting if adopting his Dark Knight-persona again is the right choice, but the thought of figuring out who was behind the murder on his wife finally convinces him to do it. Right next to his outfit is an old, red and green-colored suit originally intended for Duke Thomas to which Helena takes a liking. Bruce tries to talk her out of it at first, remembering the guilt he felt after letting the first Robin getting killed, but her insisting on helping solve the murder on her mother persuades him to let his daughter help him out.

 

A few days have passed when a young man walks down Park Row, now more commonly known as Crime Alley after the murder on the Waynes took place there almost 50 years ago. After finishing his 10-hour shift at LexCorp all he wants to do is go home, but his way gets blocked by a figure emerging from the shadows. He tries to turn around, but two other people are blocking the way there as well. He notices they are all holding some kind of weapon in their hands as one of them asks him to hand over his valuable possessions. The man, paralyzed with fear, finds himself too scared to do anything. Seeing that the man isn’t complying with them, the criminal commands the other two people to beat the man up and to take whatever valuable he has from him after that. They approach the young man, but the two stop in their tracks as the streetlights illuminating the alley suddenly all burst apart. All of the criminals get their phones out of their pockets and turn on the flashlights to investigate as they find a weird, bat-shaped weapon on the ground. Before any of them can react, a shadowy figure drops from the rooftop and lands on top of one of the criminals, knocking him out instantly. The young man drops to the ground in fear while the remaining criminals aim their flashlights at the figure. Before them stands a person with most of his figure hidden behind a completely black cape, wearing a cowl with spikes on top of it. While they can't see the face of the person, the white eyes of his cowl suddenly light up as he looks the two right in the face.

 

In their youth, every kid in Gotham heard the ghost stories of the Batman from their parents, who would come after them if they ever commit a crime. Most kids always thought this was just a myth told to keep their kids from doing anything stupid, but the two criminals are doubting the legitness of these stories as they lay their eyes upon the figure in front of them.

 

One of the criminals clenches his fist around the wooden baseball bat he’s holding and charges at the Batman. He swings the weapon at full force in an attempt to hit him, but Batman grabs the bat right before it strikes him and tests out the power of his new suit by breaking it in half with his hands. After throwing away the one half, he uses the other half to beat up the perpetrator. Once he’s done with him, Batman redirects his attention to the other criminal as he slowly approaches him. Out of fear he pulls out a gun from his back pocket, bringing Bruce back to what happened 50 years prior in this exact alley for a short moment. He fires the gun several times, but finds that the Batman is unphased by the bullets as he continues to steadily walk towards him. Before he’s able to run away, the Bat grabs him by the coat and lifts him in the air. He grabs the gun out of his hand and tosses him against the wall, breaking the gun in two and dropping it on the ground.

 

Then he turns to the young man who is still cowering in fear. He walks towards him as the man tries to get away too, scared that he is going to beat him up too, but stops once he sees that he is just offering him a hand to get up. For the first time since the start of the fight, Batman begins talking and warns him to not go through this alley again as he won't always be there to protect him. He unbuckles the grappling gun from his utility belt, but right before he goes away the man asks him who he is.

 

‘’Me?’’ He asks. ‘’I’m Batman.’’

 

Upon returning to the Wayne Enterprises building not too long after, Batman starts the engine of the Batmobile up for the first time in thirty years. Using Barbara’s connections with the Arkham Asylum, she was able to get him and Helena into the high-security wing of the prison in order to meet up with the Joker. After parking the vehicle in front of the gate, the two head inside to investigate the Clown Prince of Crime’s involvement with the murder on Selina. They register themselves at the front desk and have to follow a security guard in order to get to the proper wing. While they are walking through the lower-security wings of the prison Batman notices a lot of people, both inmates and employees of the facility, staring at him in disbelief. As they descend into the higher security levels Batman begins to see some more familiar faces like Edward Nigma, who is scribbling dozens of tiny question marks on the wall of his cell and even the Condiment King who tries to greet him like an old friend.

 

After making their way through the complex, the guard unlocks the big door leading to the high-security wing. As the gate opens in front of them, Batman and Robin see a long hallway with cells on each side. Despite almost every single cell having their lights on, the one at the end of the wall is completely dark. While Batman avoids any contact with the inmates in this wing, only focused

on the cell at the end of the hall, Helena takes her time to see who is in which cell. Although most of them are empty, she sees one with plants covering every inch of the cell belonging to Pamela Isley and another right next to the one Batman is walking towards containing Mr. Freeze, now not much more than a corpse being kept alive by his own suit. Batman stands in front of the dark room, only being able to make out a vague silhouette in the darkness. He orders the guard to turn on the light, and sees the Joker staring right into his eyes on the other side of the glass when the lights flicker on.

 

He has changed a lot since their final confrontation which led to the death of Duke Thomas; he abandoned his long tousled, spiked up hairstyle in favor of a shorter swept back one, his permanent white make-up almost seems to have faded from his skin, and his smile has disappeared from his face. While Joker does his best to strike a conversation with him, acting like he’s an old friend of his who he hasn’t seen in years and asking what made him come out of retirement, Batman only responds by taking the playing card out of his pocket and holding it in front of his face. Batman explains his suspicions, showing him the message on the back of the card. Joker becomes genuinely confused, stating that he hasn't used those cards in decades because he lost his motivation to commit crime after he drove the Dark Knight out of Gotham. Along with that he has been on constant supervision within this prison, locked behind bulletproof glass walls 24/7, so someone would’ve noticed if he got out of his cell to deliver the card somehow.

 

“Listen Bats, I know you don't trust me at all, but for once I'm not making some sick joke. I swear i was not involved with the murder on your wife.”

 

After this, Joker asks to see it for himself stating that he might be able to figure out some more clues. He manages to slip his fingers through one of the openings in the glass wall, insisting him to hand over the card. Batman hesitates for a moment, but agrees to give it to him in a moment of desperation. He attentively looks at it from all angles, noting how the handwriting is just slightly off from how he actually writes and how the design of the card doesn’t quite match up to what he used as well. As he asks Bruce if he even bothered to check the item for any traces of DNA on it before coming up with this plan, he notices some low beeping coming from the inside of the card. He tears it open without a second thought, discovering that a strange flat device with a blinking light has been sitting in the card this whole time. Joker tosses the torn pieces of the card away to examine the thing, seeing the symbol of an owl embedded on the back of it. Before Joker can comment on it, the device begins beeping louder and louder while the light begins blinking faster as well. Batman realizes he unknowingly gave the Joker an explosive and tries everything he can to prevent it from going off, but it's too late. Joker looks him in the eye for one last time, putting a big smile on his face right before he gets engulfed in a sea of flames.

 

Batman and Robin manage to get out of the blast zone just in time. After the dust settles, he sees that the entire back of the prison wing has been obliterated. Nothing’s left of Joker and his cell along with the ones holding Freeze and Ivy next to it. Only some smoldering pieces of the playing card remain, floating through the air and burning up before they can be salvaged. Alarms start going off as a group of guards rushes into the wing, forcing Batman and Robin out of the wing. As they get guided out of the building, moving past the chaos which has erupted in the other parts of the facility, Batman is struggling to comprehend what he just witnessed. His head’s filled with burning questions; Why did someone pretend that the Joker was behind the murder? Why was there an explosive hidden in the card? Why was there an owl printed on said explosive? And most importantly, why was it detonated at that exact moment?

 

The sun has begun to rise when Bruce and Helena return from their trip to Arkham. As they use a hidden entrance to get inside the Wayne Enterprises building, stories about the explosion in the prison start flooding every news station. Almost all of them point towards the Batman having brought an bomb into the facility on purpose in order to finally get rid of his arch nemesis, despite there not being a lot of actual evidence to support this. Bruce parks the Batmobile in the storage facility and steps out, looking around to see if Barbara is around here anywhere. He calls out for her, but as his voice echoes through the place without a response he begins to think something is not right. Bruce spots three figures standing in the distance, but before he can identify them the lights suddenly turn off. A voice echoes through the space, saying something about the ‘’Court of Owls’’ wanting to see the Dynamic Duo. He tries to approach them, but suddenly feels a small dart piercing through his cowl and hitting him in the neck. He falls to the ground, feeling himself getting dragged away towards the Court as his vision turns black.

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Done