The Batman Who Laughs stood at the broken threshold of the abandoned warehouse, body tall and spindly like something stretched on a rack and taught to walk again. His silhouette screamed contradiction: cowl with those needlepoint bat ears, mouth forever torn into a grin like a carved pumpkin left too long in the sun. His blindfold of barbed iron sat over empty eyes, but he saw. Oh, he saw. Things in heat signatures, in screams echoing through drywall, in the way the shadows flinched when he entered.

The straps on his chest shifted against each other as he moved, shoulders rolling with delighted malice. Each step echoed too long, like the warehouse was trying to warn someone. But no one ever listened to screams this far out. That was why he chose it for the hideout.

Something moved in the rafters above just moments ago, too big to be a rat but too small to be a threat.

"Straggler," he hissed, voice like piano wire tightening around a throat. He tilted his head back, listening. The way he used to before the toxin, before the multiverse cracked open like a skull. The detective was still in there.

Laughs clicked his tongue.

"Little mouse in the walls. Watching the cat set the traps? Brave. But oh… so dumb."