[A/N: Sorry for the late update, I was just glued since I had too many options on how I planned the story to go. In the end, I want to slow down and take the time to write out MC time as the perfect hero.]
"Aren't you looking lovely today?" Joker laughed with genuine delight, his voice carrying that manic edge that had terrified Gotham for years. He looked admiringly at Sarah's body, which he had gone completely all out to make look beautiful in his own twisted, horrible way—makeup carefully applied, dress positioned just so, every detail attended to with the care of an artist working on his masterpiece.
Grinning ear to ear with that impossibly wide smile, he pressed his painted face directly against her rotting cheek and held up his phone, snapping a selfie with the corpse. Without hesitation, he posted the grotesque image online for the entire world to see, knowing exactly what kind of reaction it would provoke.
"Alright, let's set off the fireworks and really get this party started!" Joker said with an enthusiastic laugh, his finger hovering over the detonator, unable to wait even one more second to see the beautiful chaos this act would unleash across the world.
But Joker didn't get very far with his plan—a hand suddenly grabbed him by the back of his neck with crushing force, fingers digging into his skin like iron clamps. Joker didn't even need to look behind him to know exactly who it was, to recognize who that could be..
"No fun at all! You came far, far too early for the fun part of the show," Joker laughed, his voice still carrying that carefree tone, clearly completely unbothered by the vice-like grip around his neck that would have made most men scared,
"What was your plan here? To make me snap? To push me over some imaginary edge you think I have?" David asked, his voice dangerously quiet as he threw Joker to the ground with enough force to crack his bones. But the Joker didn't seem to care about the impact at all—instead, he twisted around with practiced agility and released a cloud of Joker Toxin directly into David's face, that deadly gas that had killed so many people with smiles frozen on their faces.
But Infinity reacted instantly, an invisible barrier blocking the toxin and filtering it out along with the surrounding air, allowing David to breathe normally as if nothing had happened. Seeing that his ace in the hole had failed so completely, Joker's smile died just a little bit, faltering for the first time—but it returned almost immediately with a loud, genuine laugh, finding the entire situation absolutely hilarious at how his plan failed.
That laugh died abruptly in his throat when David deliberately breathed the toxin in, inhaling it deeply.
"Was that your entire plan? Poison gas?" David asked mockingly, his body slowly beginning to turn an unnatural white color, his skin bleaching, and his veins standing out in stark relief—just to return completely to normal a moment later, as if nothing at all had happened.
The sight left Joker shocked beyond words for several long seconds, his mouth hanging open in genuine surprise. Then he started laughing again, harder than before, because this was just too funny, too absurd—but David saw absolutely nothing funny about any of this situation.
"You and I... we are so much alike, can't you see it?" Joker said with a knowing grin, his eyes gleaming with the kind of insight that few people ever possessed, seeing through to some truth that most people missed entirely. But David just shrugged indifferently, completely unmoved by the observation.
"And? So what if we are?" David replied flatly.
"Do you honestly expect me to sit here and have some deep philosophical conversation with you about how we all have a little bit of crazy lurking inside us, and you just happen to be the only one with zero to absolutely no willpower whatsoever to subdue and control that crazy impulse? Is that what you're hoping for?" David asked, his tone almost bored. The question caused the Joker's grin to die completely on his face, vanishing like someone had flipped a switch, because he absolutely wasn't expecting such a direct, dismissive response.
"What's wrong? Why are you not laughing anymore? What is a clown that's not laughing, really? Just a sad man in makeup," David continued, his voice cutting and merciless.
"Hell, you're not even the best clown out there, not by a long shot. Can you name even one single person who genuinely likes you—someone you didn't have to torture, threaten, or force into pretending to care about you? Go ahead, try. You can't even say Harley Quinn anymore, because she finally wised up and now she hates your guts with every fiber of her being. Your underlings? Every single one of them had to be forced through drugs to be anywhere near you. So tell me honestly—does anyone actually like you? Does anyone care if you live or die?" David asked, stepping deliberately on the Joker's face and beginning to twist his foot slowly, grinding it against the Joker's cheek and nose as the clown tried desperately to lift the crushing weight off.
"As a human being, you're a complete and utter failure. As a villain, you're a failure too—just chaos with no real purpose or point. Are you at least good at being a clown, the one thing you've built your entire identity around? Of course not—who do you make laugh besides yourself? I'm pretty sure Pennywise, a literal clown that embodies pure evil and feeds on children, is more loved and appreciated than you've ever been," David said coldly, finally removing his foot to look down at Joker's face properly. The Joker just stared back up at him with an angry, hateful look, all traces of humor completely gone now.
"Batman doesn't love you either, not even a little bit; the guy wants to kill you, fantasizes about it probably, but he doesn't go through with it because he is fundamentally better than you in every conceivable way. Self-control is a clear sign of willpower and inner strength; you completely lack both of those qualities, which makes you weak, pathetic even. So, I'm going to be generous here and give you three different options for how I can deal with you," David said while lifting one finger before Joker's face.
"Option one is that I find a planet out there in the vast universe where you can live all by yourself, completely isolated from everyone and everything. A planet trillions upon trillions of light-years away from Earth, so impossibly distant that no one could ever reach you even if they wanted to. There, you can live happily ever after in your own little world, while everyone here on Earth gradually forgets about the trash heap of a clown you truly are."
" For years and years to come, stretching into decades and centuries, you would be completely and utterly alone with nothing but your own thoughts for company, so you can laugh all you want at your own jokes, tell yourself how funny you are—because at the end of the day, when all is said and done, you're not the Joker, you're just the Joke," David said with deep, cutting mockery, his words like knives designed to wound. The statement made Joker's face visibly drop, his expression crumbling.
"It's such a fitting name when you think about it, really. It's almost like somewhere deep down you knew you were nothing but a joke, a punchline to a story no one finds funny, so you gave yourself that name as some kind of twisted self-awareness. Because at the end of the day, the absolute funniest and simultaneously saddest thing in this entire world is you—your existence, your choices, everything about you," David continued, his mocking and disdainful look growing more intense with every word. The expression left the Joker clenching his hands into tight fists, his knuckles turning white with barely suppressed rage and something else—maybe hurt, maybe shame.
"The second option is simple and clean: I kill you right here and now, end your miserable existence once and for all. This way, you would be remembered forever as the very first person I killed, the one who pushed me far enough to cross that line. You would go down in history books, be studied and analyzed for generations to come."
" The third option is that I completely cripple your spine, shatter it into pieces, and systematically destroy your nervous system so thoroughly that you can't move anything at all—not your arms, not your legs, not even your fingers—nothing but your eyeballs, which you'd be able to roll around uselessly while you live out the rest of your days as a prisoner in your own unresponsive body," David said with a kind, almost gentle smile that made the options sound even more terrifying. He waited patiently for the clown to make his choice, to decide his own fate.
The silence stretched between them for several long, heavy moments. "...The second option," Joker finally said in a low, defeated tone that sounded nothing like his usual manic voice. His head was lowered, hanging down as if it weighed a thousand pounds, his will to fight completely and utterly gone, drained away like water through a sieve.
"Perfect choice," David said simply. He grabbed the Joker by the collar and teleported away in an instant, vanishing into thin air just as Batman came crashing down from the ceiling above, diving to stop David, to intervene, to do something—but he had been far too slow to make any difference.