It was a quiet morning when Alfred woke up to begin his morning routine. After getting dressed and preparing coffee for master Bruce, he went to wake up the young master Duke who was still recovering from the events at the charity ball a few days prior. He accompanied him as he walked through the walls of Wayne Manor to go see Bruce, who had just returned from night patrol at that point.
That was when they heard laughing coming from the stairwell, accompanied by the sounds of furniture breaking. As Alfred rushed to see what the commotion was, he found himself shocked to see the Riddler, Harley Quinn and the Joker standing in the halls of Wayne Manor. They catch the attention of the three villains, and despite Alfred’s attempt to protect the young Duke he gets knocked unconscious.
Over in the Batcave, Bruce is still trying everything he can to unlock the door after discovering it's somehow locked a few minutes ago. No matter what he does, a popup of a jester appears making fun of him for not being able to get out of the Batcave. As Barbara attempts a manual security override on the door, Bruce takes another look at the monitor on the Batcomputer displaying security footage from inside the manor. He becomes furious because the three villains who somehow made their way into the manor are destroying priceless artworks and furniture without him having any way to stop them. He especially has
to do everything he can to keep his anger in check as the three tear apart the last picture he took with his parents before their unfortunate passing.
While flipping through the different security cameras, he gets caught off-guard as one of the cams shows the Joker holding the camera right in front of his face. He seems to be in the middle of a story about how much he enjoys committing crime, but once he notices that Bruce is watching him he stops telling the story and greets him. After getting sentimental and saying how much he missed him while he was rotting away in Arkham, he starts explaining how he managed to sneak into Wayne Manor.
After getting freed from the Asylum by the Gotham Sirens a couple of months ago, he decided to lay low for a while to think about what his next crime should be. He was unable to come up with any good plans, until he heard rumors that a new inmate in Arkham was aware of Batman’s secret identity. There was one catch though; the inmate did not just simply share the name, but you had to answer a number of riddles in order to get the answer. After managing to break him out of Arkham without anyone noticing, the Joker quickly figured out the answers to the riddles and was rewarded with the identity of the Caped Crusader.
Bruce Wayne.
That was when the pieces of a new plan started to fit together. During his time away from the spotlight he heard something about Wayne taking a child into foster care; Duke Thomas. The name sounded familiar to him, and after some digging he remembered that he was the son of two of the victims of one of his earliest crimes. Despite his plans to have him killed too, he got saved by the Dark Knight himself leading to another stay in Arkham. He always wanted to finish the job, and now could be the perfect time to do so.
When Darius Wayne, an ancestor of the Wayne family ordered the construction of the Manor in the middle of the Revolutionary War, he made sure to put a number of secret exits and entrances in the building in case of an emergency. Although almost all of these were forgotten to time, Joker, Quinn and Nygma were able to exploit these vulnerabilities in the security of the Manor due to Bruce not even knowing where all of them were located.
After finishing his lengthy monologue, Joker cuts to the chase. He turns the camera around to show Duke tied to a chair in the library, with Alfred laying on the ground with a gaping wound on his head. If Bruce will publicly admit to being Batman, he promises that he might consider unlocking the Batcave and leaving Duke alive. If he doesn’t comply though, he will personally torture both the child he has in foster care and the butler who served his family for several generations now. As a demonstration, he grabs the crowbar Harley was carrying and hits Duke with it. Before smashing the camera to pieces and leaving Bruce to make his decision, he laughs about him knowing everything about his life now while he is still completely in the dark about him.
Despite his excellent detective skills, Bruce was never able to find out anything about who the Joker was before falling into a vat of acid. Sometimes he shared his life story during monologues when he had taken another person hostage, but those were different every time. One time he said he used to be a crime boss by the name of Jack Napier, another time a failing and mentally unstable comedian by the name of Arthur Fleck, but both of those names along with other ones were false leads. Even when examining the DNA found on the suit he wore when he fell into that vat of acid absolutely nothing came up; it was like he never even existed before that fateful night.
After processing what he heard and saw just now, Bruce is left shocked. Wayne Manor, the only place in Gotham he still felt a sense of security and privacy in, is now infiltrated by some of the worst villains of Gotham. Despite this, his only concern now is getting Duke and Alfred out of this alive. As Barbara’s last attempt at getting the door open fails too, Bruce recalls their recent fight with Mr. Freeze where she used an EMP Grenade to deactivate his cybernetic arm. Remembering that he stored a couple of those in a cabinet next to the Batcomputer, he gives one to her and asks her to try to open the door with it. Despite Barbara trying to talk some sense into him by bringing up the fact that Joker won’t hesitate to murder the two if he notices that Bruce left the batcave, he ignores her and grabs a grenade to open the door himself. Confident that this way he can save Duke and Alfred without having to reveal his identity, he throws it at the door where the electromagnetic pulse from the grenade successfully deactivates the lock. After he and Barbara both quickly suit up, they walk through the door in order to get to the Joker.
Once they have navigated through the halls of Wayne Manor the two arrive in the library, only to find it empty. Although the broken camera, some drops of blood and the chair where Duke was tied to are still in the room, he and Alfred are nowhere to be found anymore. While Batman is busy investigating the scene in order to find any clues about where they are now, he fails to notice Barbara getting knocked out behind him. By the time he hears laughing coming from elsewhere in the house and notices that she’s gone, she has already been dragged away to another room. Hoping that tracking her down will also lead him to the location of Duke and Alfred, he abandons the library and runs through the corridors to find her. But right as he’s about to turn a corner, he sees a baseball bat getting swung in his face before everything turns to black.
When Bruce wakes up, he finds himself tied to a chair too. After fully becoming aware of his surroundings and the pounding headache he now has, he notices that he is tied to one of the luxurious chairs in the living room. The only lightsource is coming from the big fireplace in the middle of the room, which casts long shadows on everything. Shortly after that, he sees three figures also tied to chairs in front of him. It doesn’t take long for him to identify them as Barbara, Alfred and Duke. Before he can try to cut himself free, the chair gets turned around putting him face to face with the Joker. After belittling him for not being able to follow the one rule he gave him despite knowing what’ll happen if he doesn’t comply, he turns around the chair again and forces him to face the consequences of his actions.
First, he snatches Harley’s bat out of her hands and hits Alfred with it several times. But before he can go too far, he stops and throws away the bat stating that the butler didn't do enough to deserve getting killed by his hands. After he’s done with him, he asks Riddler to give him the gun he was carrying in his pocket. He hesitantly gives it to him, and without hesitation Joker shoots Barbara in the back with it. Lastly, he picks up the crowbar he was carrying himself, and ignores the insults thrown his way by the Dark Knight as he begins smashing Duke with it repeatedly. But this time, he doesn’t stop; Bruce’s desperate pleas to leave him alone only seem to make him hit harder. It gets to the point where even Harley starts to get concerned. She tries to make him pause for a moment, but he pushes her aside as he continues beating up the kid. Fueled by rage, Bruce finally manages to break free from the rope that was keeping him tied to the chair and leaps towards the Joker. Before he can react, Bruce slams him on the ground, grabs the crowbar himself and begins hitting him with it. Instead of fighting back or trying to shield himself from the beating though, Joker almost seems to enjoy it as he continues laughing even louder than before. It isn’t until Bruce hears Duke crying out for help that he is reminded of why he was here in the first place; to rescue him from falling victim to the Joker. He throws him aside and rushes to him, silently hoping that he can still save him despite the wounds he got from getting beaten up with a crowbar.
But deep down he already knows that it is too late for him.
He promised to protect him, and he failed.
He was supposed to look after him, and he failed.
As he holds the barely alive body of Duke in his arms, he takes off his cowl and comforts him in his final moments.
After getting himself together from the beating, Joker stands up from the ground and commands the other villains to leave the Manor; their job here is done. He examines the severe wounds and bruises on his face, but simply shrugs it off. Before he walks away, he grabs a small polaroid camera from his pocket and takes a picture of Bruce, unmasked in his suit, bent over the body of Duke. He cackles and mentions how this picture could come in handy in the future as he starts limping towards the exit too.
The thought of putting an end to their rivalry for good flashes through Bruce’s mind at that moment; one leap towards the Joker, a couple more punches and it's finished. He’ll never get such an opportunity again.
But he’s unable to move anymore, paralyzed with regret as the crushing realization of the consequences of his actions truly sets in.
As he calls emergency services to the house to at least save Alfred and Barbara, he stares into the fireplace in the living room. He takes one last look at his cowl before throwing it into the fire.
==============================
